the beatles
George Harrison’s All Things Must Pass to Get Massive 50th Anniversary Reissue
George Harrison’s iconic 1970 album All Things Must Pass, recorded and released in the wake of The Beatles dissolution, reached its monumental 50th anniversary in November 2020. To celebrate the anniversary, a deluxe, special edition of All Things Must Pass will be released on Aug. 6 via Capitol/UMe. Harrison’s voluminous range of ideas will now be compiled into 70 tracks, 5 CDs, and 8 LPs which include 42 unreleased demo recordings, session outtakes, and studio jams. While you listen through all of Harrison’s work, you’ll be able to flip through the exclusive All Things Must Pass scrapbook, which is also included in this new edition, that collects archival notes, track-by-track annotation, rare photos, memorabilia, and more. All Things Must Pass 50th Anniversary Edition is available for p...
Ringo Starr Reveals His Favorite Beatles Song
Ringo Starr nonchalantly revealed his favorite Beatles song while participating in Stephen Colbert’s “Colbert Questionert.” The segment, which was originally filmed during the legendary drummer’s appearance on The Late Show in March, featured Starr answering a number of questions, ranging from favorite sandwich to “You get one song to listen to for the rest of your life. What is it?” “Come Together,” Starr responded without hesitation. “There’s lots of other favorites, but if you want one, ‘Come Together’ can’t be bad,” he added, confirming it’s his favorite Beatles song. “I just think it worked perfectly with the band and the song and John being John. I loved that moment.” Elsewhere in the “Questionert,” Starr shared his unique take on the afterlife. “I think we go to heave...
Paul McCartney Recalls First Time Bob Dylan Got the Beatles High
For Bob Dylan’s 80th birthday next month (May 24), Paul McCartney spoke to Uncut for a special series on the legendary songwriter called “Dylan Revisited.” McCartney recounted the time Dylan gave the Beatles marijuana, getting them high for the first time. “I’m not sure whether he’s very keen on me telling this, but here we go,” McCartney said, innocently pretending this is his first time telling his favorite story of all time. But, in honor of the soon-to-be octogenarian, let us revisit: “It was at the Delmonico Hotel on Park Avenue and 59th in New York City in August 1964,” McCartney began. “We were in a hotel room, all being good lads having our Scotch and Coke – it was an afterparty, I think. Dylan arrived and he went into the bedroom with h...
Rare Unearthed Electronic Songs by Legendary Beatles Producer to Be Reissued
Before he arranged music for The Beatles, legendary record producer George Martin experimented in electronic music. Now, two of his unearthed songs, which he has said greatly influenced his pioneering work with the Fab Four, are receiving a reissue. Back in April 1962, just two weeks before Martin met the Beatles, the late musician and audio engineer collaborated with the BBC Radiophonic Workshop’s Maddalena Fagandini to produce two electronic tracks, “Time Beat” and “Waltz in Orbit.” Both songs were released under the duo’s nom de plume, Ray Cathode. Those two songs have now been remastered and will be reissued on a rare collectible 12″ vinyl in a limited run of 100 copies. The release will also feature remixes of both tracks b...
Peter Jackson Releases Initial Footage From Upcoming The Beatles: Get Back Documentary
The Lord Of The Rings filmmaker Peter Jackson has revealed footage of his much-anticipated documentary The Beatles: Get Back, which is slated for an Aug. 27, 2021 release. Jackson says he’s “halfway through editing” in New Zealand, going through “56 hours of never-before-seen Beatles footage.” He emphasizes that this is “not a trailer, it’s not a secret, it’s like a montage of moments that we’ve pulled to give you a sense of the spirit.” And that spirit, from the 1969 Let It Be sessions, is jolly and loose. Scenes show several false starts in the studio while recording “Get Back,” with Yoko Ono sitting in front of John Lennon. All the members, Paul McCartney — in his full beard era — George Harrison and Ringo Starr, are shown goofing around. Linda McCartney is also in control room sce...
Paul McCartney Says the Beatles Struggled With Mental Health Issues
Paul McCartney recently revealed that The Beatles were most likely struggling with mental illness at the height of their fame. Instead of talking about it with each other, “they talked about it through [their] songs.” In The Sunday Times, McCartney discussed how he, Ringo Starr, John Lennon and George Harrison would all hide their problems by making fun of them. He mentioned how John especially would use songwriting as a way to express his issues. “‘Help! I need somebody,’ he wrote. And I thought, ‘Well, it’s just a song,’ but it turned out to be a cry for help,” McCartney said. He continued: “Same kind of thing happened with me, mainly after the break-up of the band. All of us went through periods when we weren’t as happy as we ought to be.” He added: “Ringo had a major drinking...
Tommy, Can You (Still) Hear Me?
Music in general is too rarely inspirational. It has too often become the white noise we shove into the background as we scan social media feeds. If music is a savior that pulls us together, we’ll need to embrace the resurrection of the almighty concept album. They fill in the small pixels that complete the big picture, and sometimes inspire other musicians to elevate their game. If you said Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band by The Beatles, you are wrong. But you may also be right. That’s because the term “concept album” is rather ambiguous. In its most generic form, it’s an album where all the songs adhere to a certain theme or concept. The purists, however, will tell you that it maintains a cohesive theme via a narrative of some sort. Hip hop artist Deacon The Villain describes them ...
Listen to GUNSHIP’s Chilling Synthwave Cover of The Beatles’ Iconic “Eleanor Rigby”
Trailblazing British synthwave duo GUNSHIP decided to surprise fans this Halloween with the release of a stirring new cover. This time, the trio took on “Eleanor Rigby” by a little-known rock band called The Beatles. Breathing new life into the 1966 classic, GUNSHIP emphasizes the relevant theme of the original with a jolt of retro, stylized sonic flair. The emphatic vocal delivery of the chilling lyrics combined with darkened synth creates an eerie ballad perfect for spooky season. In a series of ten tweets, the band shared many insights into their scintillating “Eleanor Rigby,” explaining how their version tells a story of how the title character would behave in 2020. Later on in the thread, they would also go on to give some backstory on the a...
Watch IDLES Cover the Beatles, the Strokes and More
IDLES have never been afraid to do things their own way, and the British rockers’ unique spin on classics by bands like the Beatles and the Strokes is a perfect example. The two videos, along with a handful of others, were filmed while the group was recording at the legendary Abbey Road and provide a nice balance to the handful of tracks they’ve already released from the upcoming Ultra Mono (out Sept. 25 via Partisan Records). Of course — as with anything IDLES does — the covers are significantly different than their original versions. Fans of the original bands expecting to hear a familiar version of “Reptilia” or “Helter Skelter” may be sorely disappointed, but there’s no denying the creativity flowing through the new takes on them. For those looking for more IDLES origina...
The 25 Best Soundtrack Albums of the 1990s
In the 1980s, music and film collided for cross-promotional blockbusters both transcendent (Purple Rain) and transcendently cheesy (Footloose). In the ‘90s, soundtracks continued to sell in the millions, capturing cultural moments like the Seattle grunge of Singles or the Britpop and electronica of Trainspotting. Auteurs like Quentin Tarantino and Wes Anderson reached deep into their record collections to set the mood while movies like Above the Rim and Menace II Society pioneered the concept of soundtracks as hip-hop mixtapes. A great soundtrack can propel an unsuccessful single, like Seal’s “Kiss From A Rose,” to the top of the charts, or revive a decades-old hit, like Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody.” It can also push a cult singer-songwriter like Elliott Smith or Aimee Mann to an Oscar perf...
Cavern Club ‘Could Close Forever’ in the Wake of COVID-19
Liverpool’s Cavern Club was the site of nearly 300 Beatles shows before the British Invasion, and now it “could close forever” in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. On Friday, Mayor Joe Anderson warned that despite the UK beginning to reopen music venues with reduced capacity, the historic venue is in danger of permanently closing if its bid to the Government’s Cultural Recovery Fund falls through. “The fact that the world-famous Cavern could close forever because of Covid-19 should bring home to the Government how much our hugely treasured music industry is in peril. This virus has caused unimaginable pain and grief but it’s proving to be an existential threat to our cultural scene,” Anderson told The Liverpool Echo. “The prospect of losing a national jewel like the Ca...
Robby Krieger Explores Jazz for His Upcoming Solo Project, But With ‘a Little Zappa, a Little Doors’
The album — the guitarist’s first in a decade — will arrive Aug. 14. One of Neil Young’s best-known lyrics — “It’s better to burn out than to fade away” — can be applied to numerous casualties of ’60s rock n’ roll. Yet despite the turmoil he has experienced over his career, Doors guitarist Robby Krieger has neither burned out nor faded away. Krieger wrote some of The Doors’ best songs, including “Light My Fire,” “Love Me Two Times,” “Touch Me” and “Love Her Madly.” And for the past 10 years, he has written jazz, blues and rock music from his home studio; guested on other people’s albums; formed the charity Art for a Cause to sell prints of his colorful paintings; and performed both Doors tunes and his solo material on tour. Now, a decade since his last album, ...
