October 29, 2022
"I will be taking a couple of weeks off from the Ottawa Beatles site news cycle as I enjoy the Super
Deluxe vinyl set of Revolver" - John Whelan

Spotify Promoting the Beatles "Revolver"

Jerry Lee Lewis passes away, Ringo Starr Pays Tribute on Facebook

"I got to see Jerry Lee Lewis at the National Arts Centre in Ottawa. Man, what a great rock and roll show that was! R.I.P. Jerry Lee." - John Whelan

Related Link from the CBC news services:

Jerry Lee Lewis, flamboyant and controversial rock and roll pioneer, dead at 87



October 26, 2022
The Abbey Road/EMI studios promoting the Beatles "Revolver" Super Deluxe release in two days
time! :)




October 25, 2022
CROWN LANDS Unleash Ferocious Cover Of THE BEATLES' "Come Together" In Partnership With TSN;
Audio
by Brave Words

 

Juno Award-winning, powerhouse rock duo Crown Lands - Cody Bowles (vocals and drums) and Kevin Comeau (guitar, bass, and keys) - reveal a raw rendition of The Beatles’ quintessential rally song, “Come Together”, released in partnership with TSN as part of a campaign for the Canadian Men’s National Team as they gear up for the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022™ starting November 20.

 

This is the first time since 1986 that Canada’s men’s team has qualified for the FIFA World Cup™ and Crown Lands’ version of the song captures the spirit of this historic occasion.

 

Listen to Crown Lands' cover of The Beatles' "Come Together" here, and below.

 

Crown Lands infuse the 1969 original with a jolt of their distinct style. Bowels chants the familiar lyrics over pummelling guitars and cascading drums creating palpable energy. Crown Lands describe, “We specifically recorded ‘Come Together’ for the purpose of a partnership opportunity and it has worked out beautifully, we’re honoured for the song to be a part of the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022™. There is no disputing the magic that The Beatles created together and it’s nice for us to have ‘Come Together’ to add our little twist to it. In other words, we cranked the vocals up an octave, added a metric-ton of Leslie guitars and threw in some fat Taurus synth bass bombs into an already great song.”      

 

“Thanks to ongoing collaborations with TSN, when the opportunity to soundtrack a pivotal moment for Canadian sports came up, we knew Crown Lands had the ability to create something that would resonate with that energy and captivate fans," said JP Boucher, Senior Vice President, Marketing, at Universal Music Canada.  “Crown Lands have consistently come to the table with powerful, sophisticated original music that’s deeply rooted in the past while evolving for the future and we’re proud to say they delivered with a track that will support Team Canada through the tournament.”

Crown Lands continue to introduce themselves to the rest of the world through their high energy live shows.
This month, they join Greta Van Fleet on the final leg of their Dreams In Gold world tour as it wraps up in the
US. Early next year, they will head out with fellow Canadian rock outfit, July Talk, playing iconic venues
across their home country on The Never Remember Tour.

A really cool photo manipulation of the Beatles

From "We Love The Beatles" on Facebook

October 24, 2022
The Beatles release a second version of "Got To Get You Into My Life" (Unnumbered Mix)


Beatles' Revolver: 'It's time travel' says Giles Martin
by Mark Savage, BBC Music Correspondent

Last month, in Abbey Road's legendary Studio 3, Giles Martin performed a magic trick.

He was there to unveil something that should have been technically impossible - a remixed, reinvigorated version of The Beatles' seventh album, Revolver.

 

The band's first record after announcing their retirement from live performance, it saw them explore new sonic territories and styles of composition, from the chamber pop of Eleanor Rigby to the kaleidoscopic eruptions of Tomorrow Never Knows.

 

It took 300 hours to record (almost three times as long as the Beatles' previous album, Rubber Soul) as they experimented with tape loops, back-masking and LSD.

 

Fans have long been clamouring for an expanded edition of the record - but there was a problem.

 

Unlike their later albums, the Beatles recorded Revolver's basic tracks direct to tape, standing in a circle, playing as a band. That made it almost impossible for future generations to separate and isolate the instruments and vocals.

 

Until now.

 

Back in Abbey Road, Martin cues up Taxman, Revolver's tense and brittle opening track.

 

"What would it sound like without George Harrison's guitar?" he asks, pulling down a fader that eliminates him from the mix. Next, he drops out Paul McCartney's bass, so the only thing you hear is Ringo Starr's drum kit.

 

It's a revelation. The kick drum pedal squeaks on every beat, and the snare reverberates off the studio walls. No-one, not even Ringo, would have heard those details at the time.

 

Martin compares it to being given a cake and having the ability to break it down to its constituent ingredients. And it's only possible because of the technology that Peter Jackson's audio team created for the Get Back documentary.

 

"The dialogue editor [Emile de la Rey] was doing a really good job of removing the guitars from the dialogue, and I said to him: 'Let's have a look at Revolver. Can you separate the guitar, bass and drums?'" says Martin.

 

"He did a rough pass and it was so much better than anything I've ever heard. I said: 'OK, we need to work on this', and it got to a stage where it became extraordinarily good."

 

Martin isn't clear on how the de-mixing process works, but he knows it involves elements of AI and machine learning.

 

"It has to learn what the sound of John Lennon's guitar is, for instance, and the more information you can give it, the better it becomes.

 

"So we were going through the tapes just looking for bits where someone played a guitar with no-one else playing - and that's how the computer can can go: 'Okay, this is what I'll extract'.

 

"But all that means is that, when people listen to the record, the band don't have to be on each other's lap."

 

For his new version of Taxman, Martin discards the original's gimmicky stereo mix, which placed the instruments in the left speaker and the vocals in the right, Now, the band spreads out across the soundstage, putting the listener in the middle of a Beatles performance.

 

It's a technique Martin applies to the whole album. Compared to the muddy CD mixes that emerged in the 1980s, the new Revolver is bristling with life, full of presence and attack.

 

"People forget that it's just a young band playing in the studio," says Martin. "Everything is fairly aggressive. Everything is in your face. Everything the Beatles recorded is a little bit louder than you think it is."

 

Eleanor Rigby is a perfect example. Instead of using the string section as a soft underscore, Paul asked them to play in sharp, staccato stings inspired by Bernard Herrmann's score for Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho.

 

"Which is a funny influence if you think about it - you take the shower scene with a woman being stabbed and put it on Eleanor Rigby," reflects Martin.

 

An expanded, deluxe edition of Revolver captures the strings being recorded at Abbey Road, with Giles's father George Martin arranging the musicians on the fly.

 

"Do you want them to play the chords without vibrato?" he asks McCartney, who listens to several options before declaring he can't tell the difference.

 

"All those years of learning," the musicians grumble good-naturedly, "and he says it sounds the same."

 

McCartney eventually opts to lose the vibrato, giving the recording its razor-sharp immediacy.

 

"What impresses me is the speed of thought," says Martin. "You have to remember that 10 minutes before that conversation, no-one would have ever heard the Eleanor Rigby strings before. It's an amazing session."

 

It's one of many insights on the box set, from a rehearsal of And Your Bird Can Sing where the band can't stop laughing - "It reminds you that maybe there was some pot smoked during that time" - to a previously unheard demo of Yellow Submarine.

 

While Beatles historians have always attributed the song to McCartney, the newly unearthed work tape is pure Lennon. He strums a sad acoustic guitar figure and sings: "In the town where I was born / No-one cared, no-one cared..."

 

It's unrecognisable from the bumptious singalong it became - the words Yellow and Submarine are conspicuously absent - but Martin says the development of the song shows the Beatles at their most harmonious.

 

The scale of their confidence was such that the first song they tackled in the studio was Lennon's nightmarish sound collage Tomorrow Never Knows, full of sitar drones, processed vocals and unholy seagull calls (actually a speeded-up recording of McCartney laughing).

 

Derided at the time, it's now recognised as a landmark of psychedelia, and a pioneering example of sampling and manipulating tape loops.

 

"And the thing about the Beatles is they never tried it again," says Martin. "I can't work out the mentality of it, in all honesty, what was going through people's minds.

 

"Even my dad, you know? He was always pretty straight-laced, but he just accepted 'Okay, well this is what we're doing'!

 

"I always think it's like surfing, in a way. There's been very rare times in my life where I've done creatively good things but most of the time, I'm treading water or trying to avoid getting hit by the waves.

 

"But the Beatles spent their whole time on the crest of a wave."

 

Which raises the question, why remix the album at all?

 

There are Beatles fans who refuse to listen to Martin's remasters and remixes, accusing him of rewriting history.

 

"I kind of embrace them because, in a way, they're absolutely right," Martin says. "There's no reason why you should listen to these mixes. It's not like I've deleted anything."

 

Instead, he likens the process to sandblasting the exterior of St Paul's Cathedral, and seeing it as Sir Christopher Wren would have done in 1697.

 

The surviving Beatles supervised the mixes (McCartney told him off for being "too polite" with And Your Bird Can Sing) and the idea is to preserve their songs for a new generation who primarily listen on headphones, where the original hard-panned version of Taxman is awkward and disorientating.

 

"I remember mixing Strawberry Fields and the young guy working at Abbey Road with me had never heard the song before," says Martin. "And there's no reason why he should. It's bloody old.

 

"But there's also no reason why a 26-year-old Paul McCartney shouldn't sound like a 26-year-old does now.

 

"So essentially, what we're doing is time travel. And I like that even now, 56 years on, we're trying to break new ground. Because that's what the Beatles did."

From the Beatles Official Facebook Pages...

The Beatles' unheard track of John Lennon singing Yellow Submarine leaves fans in tears
by George Simpson for Express

Earlier this year, Giles Martin, the son of The Beatles’ producer George Martin, announced that a treasure trove of 31 outtakes and three home demos would feature on his Super Deluxe Edition of Revolver: Special Edition, due for release on October 28. The 1966 studio album, recorded by the Fab Four after they quit live touring, features classic tracks like Eleanor Rigby and Yellow Submarine – but now the truth behind the latter is out.

John Lennon and Paul McCartney’s Yellow Submarine is a much-loved children’s song with Ringo Starr the vocals on what is also the subject and the title of The Beatles’ surreal animated movie.

 

According to Rolling Stone, the apocryphal origin story was that Macca wrote it quickly and Lennon tolerated it. However, one of the outtakes from the Revolver recording sessions that has been released digitally ahead of the new box set has the late star singing it himself with different lyrics.

 

In this melancholy version recorded at home, he sings: “In the place where I was born/No one cared, no one cared/And the name that I was born/No one cared, no one cared.”

 

Martin said: “I had no idea until I started going through the outtakes. This was a Lennon-McCartney thing. I said to Paul, ‘I always thought this was a song that you wrote and gave to Ringo and that John was like, ‘Oh, bloody Yellow Submarine.’ Not at all. That’s like a Woody Guthrie song. But it’s beautiful in a way, where you realise that there’s so much depth behind it. When you listen to the outtakes, even knowing the beauty of that John version, you know why Ringo ended up singing it. And it was acutely, let’s face it, the right decision to make.”

 

Nevertheless, fans listening to the sad Lennon version have admitted to tearing up.

 

One tweeted: “I don’t know how Yellow Submarine made me sob even more than it already did (long story) but of course only John Lennon could make me cry in new ways.” Another replied: “Literally [crying emoji]… but this one cuts deep I’m like damn you can really hear the pain in his voice.”

 

Ringo has also shared memories of how he ended up singing Yellow Submarine instead.

Speaking with USA Today, Ringo said: “The boys used to write a song for me and they’d present whatever
they thought would be good for me. They had this song and they decided to liven it up. I think Paul thought
of [a yellow submarine]. It could have been in a green submarine, but a yellow submarine is much better. Or
a deep purple submarine, that would have been like, ‘What are they talking about now?’ But, yeah, it was a
Ringo song, like ‘With A Little Help From My Friends’ was a Ringo song.”
 


October 23, 2022
The Beatles REVOLVER - Rarities From Around The World
by Polygram Auctions



Quirky cover by Giacomo Bondi and The Apple Pies frees up "Dr. Robert"

A cover version that would even put a smile on the face of Beatles producer George Martin - if he were still
alive today. Have a listen...




October 22, 2022
Wait, John Lennon Singing ‘Yellow Submarine’? Hear Wild ‘Revolver’ Outtake
Demo from Super Deluxe Edition has never been bootlegged or even rumored, not even among the most
hardcore Beatle geeks strong
by Rob Sheffield for Rolling Stone

The Beatles could pack an emotional punch like no other band. Their 1966 masterpiece Revolver is full of moments where John, Paul, George and Ringo reach right for the heart. But not “Yellow Submarine.” Until now. The world has always cherished this song as a cheerful kiddie novelty, something the lads whipped up fast for a laugh.

 

So it’s a real shock to hear John Lennon sing it, alone with his guitar, as a sad acoustic ballad. Taken from the new Super Deluxe Edition of Revolver, out October 28th, it’s one of the biggest surprises: who expected emotional depth from “Yellow Submarine”?

 

But like so many moments on the new edition, “Yellow Submarine” makes you rethink everything you thought you knew about the group. It shows how far they were willing to experiment on Revolver, pushing out of their comfort zones. “The whole album is them saying, ‘Hey, let’s make it all completely different,’” says Giles Martin, producer of the new version and son of the original producer George Martin. “This was the nitroglyercine that blew everything up.”

 

The new Revolver has plenty of surprises. It kicks harder than ever, remixed by Martin and engineer Sam Okell in stereo and Dolby Atmos, using the “de-mixing” technology developed by Peter Jackson’s audio team for the the Get Back documentary. But the Super Deluxe collection has 31 outtakes from the vaults, including three home demos. (There’s also a four-track EP with “Paperback Writer” and “Rain.”) It all captures the freewheeling spirit of the Revolver sessions — four boys running wild in the clubhouse, inventing the future.

 

The “Yellow Submarine” demo has never been bootlegged or even rumored, not even among the most hardcore Beatle geeks. John sings it in his melancholy confessional mode, over folkie guitar picking. He sings, “In the place where I was born / No one cared, no one cared / And the name that I was born / No one cared, no one cared.” It feels like he’s opening up to his painful childhood memories, the way he would in “Strawberry Fields Forever,” “Dear Prudence” or “Julia.” It could fit on the White Album or even Plastic Ono Band. This is “Yellow Submarine”?

 

Paul McCartney wrote the classic sing-along chorus. But it’s a shock just to realize John was so deeply involved, since people tend to assume he looked down his nose at it. “I had no idea until I started going through the outtakes,” Martin says. “This was a Lennon-McCartney thing. I said to Paul, ‘I always thought this was a song that you wrote and gave to Ringo and that John was like, ‘Oh, bloody ‘Yellow Submarine’” Not at all.”

 

The world knows it as a showcase for Ringo Starr, always the kiddie’s favorite. As Paul recalls in a new Foreword he wrote for this edition, “One twilight evening, lying in bed before dozing off, I came up with a song that I thought would suit Ringo and at the same time incorporate the heady vibes of the time. ‘Yellow Submarine’ — a children’s song with a touch of stoner influence, which Ringo still wows audiences with to this day.”

 

But it’s a case of John and Paul combining two imdividual fragments into a perfect whole, like “A Day in the Life” or “We Can Work It Out.” They discussed the song’s origin in a 1966 radio interview for the Ivor Novello Awards. “I seem to remember, like, the submarine,” John tells Paul. “The chorus bit, you coming in with it. And wasn’t the other bit something that I had already got going, and we put them together?” Paul agrees, “Right. Yeah.”

 

It’s one of two Revolver outtakes released today. The other is a fantastic high-energy early romp through “Got To Get You Into My Life,” having a bash at Stax-style Memphis R&B. No horn section yet — George Harrison plays the hook on fuzz-tone guitar, for a garage-band vibe.

 

But “Yellow Submarine” is the one that’s a whole new trip. In another work tape from the box set, they sing it together as a harmony duet a la the Everly Brothers. You can hear Paul pull back, generously recognizing that his mate is going deep into a personal zone and giving him all the room he needs. It’s staggering to think of John getting so vulnerable in this tune, then handing it over to Paul to rework into a Ringo hit. So many beautiful Beatles stories wrapped up in one song. It’s a tiny snippet, sitting unheard in the vault for almost 60 years. But it encapsulates so much about the unique Beatles chemistry you can hear in every moment of Revolver.

The MonaLisa Twins brilliantly cover Day Tripper


Flashback: Wings Let 'Em In

Promo from Cash Box, June 26, 1976

Paul McCartney - Let 'Em In. With Hot City Horns (Kenji Fenton, David Burton and Mike Davis). First show in Kraków ever, second time in Poland ever. Live at Tauron Arena, Kraków - 03-12-2018.

October 21, 2022
The Beatles: Sir Paul's unpublished appearance in Dandy revealed
by the BBC news services

The half-finished strip shows The Beatles star waking up and catching a bus

 

An unpublished comic strip featuring Sir Paul McCartney has gone on display in a museum.

 

In 1963 - soon after The Beatles released their first single - the musician said it was his dream to appear in The Dandy.

 

The half-finished storyboard, created by cartoonist Nigel Parkinson, has gone on display at Liverpool Beatles Museum.

 

It shows the musician waking up and catching a bus before being chased by fans.

 

The strip also refers to some of his famous lyrics, from songs including A Hard Day's Night, Ticket to Ride and I Want To Hold Your Hand.

 

Mr Parkinson, who draws Dennis the Menace for The Beano, said: "It was nerve-wracking drawing Sir Paul.

 

"I've drawn lots of celebrities before and normally I capture them quite quickly.

 

"But I have been looking at him on TV since 1962, have seen him in magazines and I've seen him in concert a couple of times, so I thought it would be quite hard to capture all the different factors of his personality."

 

Although the idea was never completed, Sir Paul did feature in the final issue of the long-running comic in 2012, alongside characters including Desperate Dan.

 

Mr Parkinson sent two copies of the last edition to the musician after they sold out.

"He emailed me to say:

 

"He told me some members of his family said it was the greatest thing he'd ever been associated with."

 

Cartoonist Nigel Parkinson said it was "nerve-wracking" drawing Sir Paul

The incomplete storyboard is on display at Liverpool Beatles Museum in Mathew Street

Ottawa Beatles Site spotlight on Derek Taylor





October 20, 2022
Paul McCartney's Epiphone Casino that he used on Taxman and Paperback Writer
From "Buskin with The Beatles" on Facebook...


John Lennon introduces Esther Phillips: "And I Love Him"


ESTHER PHILLIPS: BLUES, JAZZ AND SOUL
by Robert Palmer, New York Times, March 19, 1982

ESTHER PHILLIPS sat rocking in a chair at Fat Tuesday's, the jazz club at 17th Street and Third Avenue where she is performing through Sunday. She had flown into New York City from Los Angeles earlier in the day and said she was tired, but her pianist, George Spencer, had been rehearsing the three New York musicians who were hired to back her, and after several hours they were beginning to sound impressively tight.

 

So Miss Phillips picked up a microphone, carried it over to the table where she was sitting, and began to sing along. Her voice had the richness, the range, the supercharged emotion and the grainy, textured edge that have been her trademarks since the early 1950's, when she made her first recordings as Little Esther. The club would be empty of fans until later in the evening, but she did not seem to be holding anything back.

 

Although she is still petite enough to make a convincing Little Esther, Miss Phillips has a voice that is not at all small. She already had it in her early teens, and it attracted the attention of Johnny Otis, the Los Angeles bandleader and recording artist.

 

Triumph at the Barrelhouse

 

''I was born in Galveston, Tex., in 1935, lived in Houston, and moved to Los Angeles when I was 5,'' Miss Phillips recalled during a break from her rehearsal. ''By that time I was singing in the sanctified church, and by the time I was 12 or 13 I was singing like Dinah Washington; that was who I wanted to be. One night my teen-age sister told me that since I liked to sing so much, she was going to take me out to make some money. She dressed me up to make me look older and entered me in an amateur contest at the Barrelhouse, Johnny Otis's nightclub in Watts. I won the $10 first prize. My sister and her friends kept $9, gave $1 to me, and took me home. That was in 1949.''

 

Mr. Otis was impressed by the young singer, but she slipped away before he could find out her name. He scoured amateur shows in the Watts area of Los Angeles hoping to run into her again, and several months later he did. ''He came to my house and asked my mother if I could sing with him,'' Miss Phillips said. ''She was working as a domestic in those days. She said I could, but when the band toured, she made sure I had a tutor to teach me my lessons, and she went with me, too, carrying a baseball bat. That's the truth!''

 

Johnny Otis had begun his career as a swing band drummer, but by 1949 he was an important innovator in the emerging rhythm-and-blues field. In addition to helping run the Barrelhouse and leading his band, he also made records and served as a talent scout for the Newark-based Savoy label. In 1950, Savoy enjoyed the No. 1 rhythmand-blues hit of the year with Mr. Otis's ''Double Crossing Blues.'' The record featured a vocal by Little Esther and the Robins, and over the next few years Miss Phillips sang in several more Otis band hits. She also toured with the group, playing in dance halls, theaters and tobacco warehouses across the country.

 

''Johnny was a great cartoonist as well as a musician, and he put out a newspaper on the band bus,'' Miss Phillips remembered with a smile. He called it The Black Dispatch. One night the trumpet player had me in a corner talking to me when my mother wasn't looking, and the next day there was a great big cartoon of us in The Dispatch. Everything that happened, Johnny would get in the back of that bus and draw a cartoon of it.''

 

The Otis band broke up in 1951 and Miss Phillips began making records for the Federal label. She was one of America's most popular rhythm-and-blues vocalists, but she was also developing a jazz orientation. ''I began to like Sarah Vaughan, and also Charlie Parker, who played prettier than anybody I ever heard in my life,'' she said. ''I started singing some of his saxophone solos while I was still in Johnny Otis's band and the guys used to look at me and ask each other what I was doing.''

 

Life was a constant round of touring and recording; the gradual coming-of-age that is such an important part of most teen-agers' lives is something Miss Phillips missed almost entirely. ''Sometimes I feel bad about being in the business all my life,'' she reflected. ''It doesn't seem normal. I was never a cheerleader at a game, and whenever teen-agers were dating and going to dances, I was working at dances. But I guess I wasn't meant to have those experiences.'' A Trunkful of Ups and Downs

 

Hers has been a career with more than its share of ups and downs. The high points included some impressive recordings for Decca, Atlantic and other labels and exciting mid-1960's performances at the Newport and Monterey Jazz Festivals and in London, where she appeared with the Beatles on the BBC television show ''Ready, Steady, Go.'' The low points included a frequently unsettled personal life and an on-again, off-again drug problem that was finally cured after therapy in the late 1960's.

 

In 1971, Miss Phillips signed with a new record label, C.T.I. ''That was a real good company,'' she said, ''and my producer at C.T.I., Creed Taylor, is one of the greatest producers I know. I had a lot of fun on that label because he allowed me to stretch out and say whatever I wanted to say.''

 

Mr. Taylor's principal accomplishment at C.T.I. was the creation of a fresh, commercially-successful fusion of jazz improvisation with pop polish and dance rhythms. The records he made with Miss Phillips were pop-jazz gems, and one of them, a funk-tinged remake of the standard ''What a Difference a Day Made,'' became an influential dance record and a substantial hit. Miss Phillips was nominated for a Grammy in 1973 for her performance of the song. Aretha Franklin was given the award instead, but Miss Franklin turned around and gave the trophy to Miss Phillips.

 

'Between Record Labels'

 

C.T.I. eventually succumbed to major-label competition, and in recent years Miss Phillips has been ''between record labels.'' This situation may be the result, at least in part, of the uncategorizable nature of her talent. Her own assessment of this talent is straightforward. ''I sing jazz, blues and ballads,'' she says. ''I've always loved the blues, and I try to stay as close to the blues as I can.'' But one can't call what Miss Phillips does pure blues, pure jazz or pure soul; it has elements of all three.

 

Furthermore, the raw intensity she must have learned to project when she was singing in sanctified churches is always evident in her work. Her performances of pop standards like ''Lover Man'' are emotionally charged and often musically challenging; she seldom skims over a telling lyric or takes the easy way around a harmonic impasse. What would a profit-minded record company do with a singer as gifted, as original and as searing as Miss Phillips?

 

Fortunately, one can hear her sing at Fat Tuesday's this weekend without waiting for an adventurous company to rise to the challenge. Her shows are at around 9 and 11 P.M. and 1 A.M. tonight and tomorrow night and at 9 and 11 only on Sunday. The cover charge is $8.50, with a $5 minimum, or one can sit at the bar for an $8 admission charge that includes the price of one drink.

 

The number to call for reservations is 533-7902.

October 19, 2022
Rick Wakeman's piano tribute to the late drummer Alan White

Rick Wakeman, keyboardist for the "Yes" rock band, pays tribute to his fellow band member Alan White.

The drummer performed with John Lennon and Yoko Ono on their "Live Peace In Toronto 1969" album
and also played drums on John Lennon's smash hit "Instant Karma! (We All Shine On)".



Watch Alan White play drums on "Instant Karma" by John Lennon


Vinyl Sales Soared 22% in First Half of 2022, Per RIAA Mid-Year Report
by Jem Aswad for Variety (originally published by Variety on September 21, 2022)

 

U.S. recorded-music revenue climbed 9%, streaming revenues are up 10% and vinyl sales soared a whopping 22% in the first half of 2022, according to the Recording Industry Assn. of America’s mid-year report released on Wednesday.

 

Total revenue climbed 9% to $7.7 billion at estimated retail value; total streaming revenues rose 10% to $6.5 billion, and paid streaming-service subscriptions are up to 90 million, with their revenues rising 10% to $5 billion and comprising almost two-thirds of the first half total. However, the report notes, at wholesale value, revenues grew 8% to $4.9 billion.

 

Streaming represented 84% of total revenue, with physical next at 10%, digital downloads at 3% and synch at 2%.

 

But the most exciting statistic for many is the continuing rise in vinyl sales, which have been climbing consistently since 2006. The number of units shipped rose 15.7% over the same period last year — from 18.8 million to 21.8 million — and dollar value is up from $460.5 million to $570.2 million. CD sales continued their slow downward slide, going from 18.4 million to 17.7 million and $204.3 million to $199.7 million.

 

While vinyl sales rose a jaw-dropping 97% in the same period last year, that number was dramatically skewed by the pandemic, which forced the closure of most record stores for many months, although mail-orders thrived during that period.

 

Although physical product claims just 10% of total revenue, the continuing rise of vinyl carries much stronger impact: While the number of CDs and vinyl units shipped is comparable, vinyl brings in much more revenue (and costs more to manufacture).

 

“Today’s report is good news for artists, songwriters, streaming services, and fans — everyone with a stake in music’s future,” said RIAA chief Mitch Glazer. “We truly are seeing the power of recorded music’s rising tide to lift all boats across the music family.

 

“Indeed, artists share of music revenues have risen faster than labels’ and a recent UK study found that label investment in artists has doubled over the last five years while A&R spending on new talent has grown two and a half times faster than company revenues. Songwriters and publishers have seen tremendous growth as U.S. collectives like ASCAP and BMI reported record payments reflecting an increase in the writer/publisher share of music revenues of 50% since the CD era. Digital services also have had unprecedented success as earnings at just one major service rose 22% last year pushing it to over 400 million active listeners worldwide. And 2022 is already shaping up as one of the strongest years ever for live music — roaring back after the long struggle against the pandemic."

October 18, 2022
Klaus Voormann poses with the new Revolver boxed set
Photo culled from "Buskin with The Beatles" on Facebook...


How the Beatles' Revolver ripped up the rulebook for popstars
Ahead of a new remix, GQ speaks to producer Giles Martin about revising the daring 1966 record, and how it
paved the way for the experimental eras of artists like Kate Bush, Kanye West and Radiohead
By Fergal Kinney for GQ

 

 

Before Revolver, the template for pop stardom was as follows: stars got bigger, stars got safer. If you’ve seen Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis, you’ll know how the provocative teen idol was tamed for middle America. The Beatles’ Revolver – released this month in a blockbuster new reissue and remixed by Giles Martin, son of original Beatles producer Sir George Martin – was the album that ripped up that template forever, for those who dared. It laid down a challenge that has been taken up by artists from Kate Bush to Kanye West.

 

By 1966, Beatleamania was in full swing. To outsmart the screaming fans at that summer’s NME Poll Winners show, the group dressed as chefs and entered the venue via the tradesman’s entrance, holding plates of food. But the four Beatles were growing restless. London was where it was at, and touring was becoming a drag. More than his bandmates, Paul McCartney was for the first time absorbing the new culture all around him – theatre, art, cinema, classical music and the avant-garde. When The Beatles entered Abbey Road studios in April that year, their ambitions were bigger, and stranger, than before.

 

“Revolver,” says Giles Martin, “is The Beatles turning [away from] the four-headed beast that wears a suit and has a moptop. They went on holiday, discovered pot, had all these ideas and just exploded into the studio.” In this sense, explains Martin, it’s more a concept album than Sgt Pepper. “Every song sounds different and it’s them trying to push the boundaries - and pushing my dad - into new directions that they didn’t even know was possible.”

 

Martin began work on the new Revolver immediately after working with Peter Jackson on 2021’s The Beatles: Get Back. “It was like going from a band that had already opened their Christmas presents and didn’t want to play with their toys,” says Martin, “to a band on Revolver who are just unwrapping their presents and having all of their ideas.”

 

Remember the moment in Get Back when Paul and John’s conversation in a crowded cafeteria is suddenly isolated? To remix Revolver, Martin used the technology pioneered for that film to separate the instruments. A few years ago, this technology would have been unthinkable. “There are so many surprises because there are so many ideas,” he says. “You have to be careful and respect the original, but I had no idea that Ringo was drumming on “For No One”. The finger snaps on “Here There and Everywhere”. There’s a bunch of things.”

 

The final test was Martin sitting alone in a room in Los Angeles with Sir Paul McCartney. The Beatles legend had his finger on a big button that could alternate between the 1966 version and the 2022 edition. A daunting day at work? “It’s fun!” laughs Martin, “it’s intimate, the passion is all about the music. He remembers making and mixing the album, and I make sure that if he has any comments I address them.” On the album’s opener “Taxman” – inspired by that era’s Labour government’s 95% supertax on high earnings – Martin had left the guitar solo sounding “a bit too polite.” McCartney said no. “It should be loud, that’s the whole point. He still got the punk, aggressive nature of it even though he’s 80.”

 

Revolver is the high point of The Beatles’ inclusive experimentation. Sessions began with the revolutionary “Tomorrow Never Knows'” Indian-influenced exhortations to “turn off your mind, relax and float downstream.” And yet, it’s the same album that contains "Here, There And Everywhere", which McCartney still regards as the finest love song he ever wrote. Love songs, drug songs, and love songs about drugs – the Motown stomp of “Got To Get You Into My Life” was McCartney’s love letter to marijuana, which had just arrived in the group’s social scene (a giggly demo of “And Your Bird Can Sing”, John Peel’s favourite Beatles song, will leave you in no doubt of that.) As an album, it’s the soundtrack of a moment of unique working-class ascendency in culture; an optimistic moment underlined by the England football team winning the World Cup one week after Revolver’s release.

 

The Revolver reissue also shows stranger roots to the most familiar of material. “Yellow Submarine”, still bellowed out in British primary school halls in 2022, was testament to the band’s genuine affection for children’s music (producer George Martin had form too, producing “Nellie The Elephant” a decade earlier). It began life, however, as a dour, melancholy Lennon demo, beginning “In the place where I was born / no one cared, no one cared.” The demo is released for the first time on the new Revolver reissue.

 

In the modern day, what Revolver has changed is profound. It created an entirely new trope in pop music: the artist that enters the mainstream, and then bends the mainstream to their will. Though Kate Bush’s earliest hits were highly ambitious, it would take her walking away from touring in 1979 – as The Beatles did – to begin her period of hugely inventive studio masterpieces. Or the left turn in Kanye West’s career following the stark minimalism of 808s & Heartbreak in 2008, beginning his purple patch of high studio experimentation. The 2000 release of Kid A by Radiohead was a similarly defining break with their past. Getting weird has since become a necessary rite of passage for any self-respecting artist.

 

Revolver predicted the future, and the future kept on playing catch-up. In 1980, The Jam took the “Taxman” bassline straight to the top of the charts again on their “Start!” single. “People say Oasis sound like the Beatles,” says Giles Martin, “but what they actually sound like is ‘She Said She Said’ and ‘Rain’ from those sessions.” Only with dance music would “Tomorrow Never Knows” really be matched – it is hard to imagine any other song from 1966 being used as part of a Chemical Brothers set at the Haçienda.

 

Perhaps, though, Revolver’s biggest capacity to surprise is its role in a pop culture story that – almost sixty years later – is losing none of its appeal. Thirty-per-cent of The Beatles’ streams come from those aged 18 to 24, a figure set to rise in the aftermath of the phenomenal success of Peter Jackson’s Get Back. In pop music, this was not supposed to happen. People were not supposed to be this excited about songs that were hits before their mothers were born. 

 

Revolver Special Edition by the Beatles is released 28 October.

October 17, 2022
Love Me Do comes back to 20 Forthlin Road

Neo-Jazz singer-songwriter Ni Maxine

 


Flashback: Dick James "Step Inside Love" promo in Billboard Magazine, May 11, 1968



October 16, 2022
The Making of The Beatles REVOLVER Album Cover
by Parlogram Auctions



Historical Flashback: "Beatles Honored For Charity Work"
by Cash Box, Sept 5, 1964




October 15, 2022
The Beatles share new video for 'Taxman'
by Sam Kemp for Far Out Magazine

 

The Beatles have shared an official video for ‘Taxman’ directed by Danny Sangra. The single is the first track from the newly remixed and the expanded special edition of Revolver – set for release on October 28th.

 

‘Taxman’ was recorded between April and May 1966. Penned by George Harrison, the song was intended as an attack on the top rate of income tax introduced by Harold Wilson’s Labour government, otherwise known as the ‘super-rich’ tax rate. It also just so happens to include a wink to the Batman TV theme tune. What’s not to love?

 

Infused with elements of James Brown’s 1966 hit, ‘I Got You’, Lee Dorsey’s ‘Get Out Of My Life Woman’ and The Spencer Davis Group’s ‘Somebody Help Me’, ‘Taxman’ evolved over the course of about 24 hours, with McCartney offering up a thrilling guitar solo in the studio. And yet, it still emerged as one of the starkest tracks on Revolver and serves as a brilliant opener for one of The Beatles’ most cohesive albums.

 

Revolver marked a huge shift in The Beatle’s ethos. It helped usher in a new age of experimental, avant-garde production and was essential to their creative evolution. Today, it remains many Beatles fans’ favourite record by The Fab Four. Now, you can fall in love with Revolver all over again with this newly expanded and re-mixed Special Edition. The album is available from October 28th, 2022, with 5CD and 4LP Super Deluxe Box Sets available, as well as 2CD Deluxe, Picturedisc 1LP, 1CD, download and streaming options.

 

The album features new Stereo and Dolby Atmos mixes by Giles Martin. You’ll also find previously unreleased session recordings and demos. The Super Deluxe CD and vinyl sets also include a new book featuring a forward by Paul McCartney. Check out the video below.

Paul McCartney in Saltaire featured in Songs the Beatles Gave Away
by Emma Clayton for Telegraph & Argus

Paul McCartney with the Black Dyke Mills Brass Band

ON June 30, 1968 Paul McCartney visited Saltaire to record an instrumental tune called Thingumybob, which
he had written especially for a brass band to play.
 

Accompanied by his Old English Sheepdog, Martha, he spent a morning in Victoria Hall, and in the street, recording the track with Queensbury’s Black Dyke Mills Brass Band. The recording of Thingumybob was for a theme tune for a TV sitcom.

 

Now the Saltaire recording is featured in a new book taking an in-depth look at songs written by the Fab Four, never recorded or released by the Beatles, but instead made famous by other artists.

 

The Songs The Beatles Gave Away is by Colin Hall, who was given access to interviews he and Bob Harris, legendary music broadcaster and former Old Grey Whistle Test presenter, conducted in 2008/9 with Sir Paul McCartney, Sir George Martin, Cilla Black and others. The book brings together these exclusive interviews for the first time and takes a whole new look at the Beatles’ legacy.

Writes Colin: “Throughout the Sixties it seemed everything the Beatles touched turned to gold. John Lennon and Paul McCartney’s compositional talents got better all the time, as did George Harrison’s. Every new single and album marked a startling progression that took the group and its fans in new, exciting directions.

 

“No group has been quite so attuned to the zeitgeist of their time. Where the Beatles went others eagerly followed. Through it all Lennon and McCartney rarely wasted a song. Tunes that somehow didn’t work for the Beatles themselves would be stored away, on tape or in the memory, to be returned to at some time in the future, more often than not to offer to other artists for whom they were deemed better suited.

 

“And once the Beatles were up and running, John and Paul were occasionally moved to compose brand new songs specifically intended for other artists. They were encouraged by their manager Brian Epstein, who knew this would keep the Beatles brand on the charts beyond the time enjoyed by the group’s own releases. John and Paul were well aware that the ‘pop’ scene of the late 50s and early 60s was notoriously fickle. The big ‘stars of today’ had a tendency to become the ‘havebeens of tomorrow’. Journalists would frequently pose the question of how long they thought the Beatles would last. Their replies were always modest, realistic and based on their experience of who and what had gone before. As the Beatles began to top music charts around the world, Lennon and McCartney were eager to establish their reputation as composers, so that when the bubble finally burst they could continue to earn a healthy income as writers.

 

“During the Sixties, many artists ‘covered’ songs written by John and Paul that the Beatles had already recorded and released, but not as singles. Beatles albums were eagerly seized upon and songs composed by John and Paul were turned into hits by acts such as Marmalade with Ob-la-di, Ob-lada and Joe Cocker with With a Little Help from My Friends.

 

“My focus has been those heady days of the Sixties when the 45rpm single bossed the world of ‘pop’ music and the charts. The singles featured here, however, were not ‘covers’ of Beatles. For want of a better expression, they are tunes John, Paul and George ‘gave away’. They are a separate Beatles songbook: a body of work released by other artists fortnate enough to be gifted original tunes, some composed for them, others originally written with the Beatles in mind, but not actually released by the group themselves.

 

“My story also encapsulates the amazing journey the Beatles made from the early days as the Quarry Men and Silver Beatles to the heady days of Beatlemania and beyond, to the years when they ceased touring.”

 

The book, says Colin, is about the post-war music scene: “Coming out of the deprivation and rationing of the war years, they were fuelled by an energy the like of which we are unlikely to experience again.”

 

The Quarrymen

 

In his preface, Bob Harris writes: “It was a moment of fabulous energy - a glorious Rock ’n’ Roll fuelled transition as the austere, ration-book, post-war age of the monochrome Fifties burst into the new, exciting culture explosion of the technicolour Sixties.”

 

The Songs The Beatles Gave Away was inspired by the 2009 Radio 2 documentary on which Colin worked with Bob Harris and his wife, Trudie Myerscough-Harris. Colin has since spoken to artists such as John Clay who played with the Black Dyke Mills Band and McCartney in Saltaire. The book is illustrated with photographs from Colin’s collection, those donated by friends and promotional photos from the period. Liverpool-born Colin is a regular contributor to music publications and in 2006 was invited by Bob Harris to contribute to Sony Award-winning Radio 2 documentary The Day John Met Paul. Its follow-up, The Songs The Beatles Gave Away, was the inspiration for Colin’s book.

 

The Songs The Beatles Gave Away, Great Northern Books, £19.99. Call (01274) 735056 or visit gnbooks.co.uk

October 14, 2022
Ringo Starr gets Covid 19 again and cancels his remaining tour!

Get well Ringo! Your health comes first before the touring! From Ringo's Official Facebook pages...


Related link: Ringo Starr cancels North American tour with Covid by BBC News

"Think For Yourself" - The Beatles - Full Instrumental Recreation (4K)
by Michael Sokil



The Beatles "Sgt. Pepper" still soaring high at the #1 slot on Billboard while the Monkees "Headquarters" is at #3 for September 16, 1967




October 13, 2022
Paul McCartney's brother Mike was the original Beatles drummer
by Celebretainment for InsideNova

Sir Paul McCartney's brother Mike McCartney was The Beatles original drummer but lost out on the gig of a lifetime.

 

Younger sibling Mike, 78, has revealed that he was the first person to pick up the sticks behind two of the eventual Fab Four - Paul and John Lennon - when they started out as The Quarrymen, but after he broke his arm at Scout camp he was left with nerve damage which meant his drumming days were over.

 

When asked if he had been The Beatles original drummer in an exclusive interview with BANG Showbiz, he replied: "Yes."

 

Further explaining the situation, Mike has said: "I was The Beatles drummer, but I broke my arm in the Scouts. It was when John used to come to the house in Forthlin Road with The Quarrymen, before George was even there. I broke my arm at camp and it affected the nerves that control the wrist. They were dead.

 

"I had to have electric shocks and hot stuff put on my arm to get the nerves back. For a couple of years, I had to wear a support strap with a wire.

 

"If I hadn’t broken my arm, I’d have been a Beatle. But I did break my arm and I’m not a Beatle. You always have to deal in reality, not dreams."

 

After guitarist George Harrison joined the band it was drummer Pete Best who got the job of performing with The Beatles when they went to Hamburg, Germany, before he was being fired from the group in 1962 and ultimately replaced by Ringo Starr who completed the line-up as Beatlemania swept across the globe.

 

Rather than regret what could have been, Mike reinvented himself with the stage name Mike McGear and formed the trio The Scaffold with Roger McGough and John Gorman, performing comedy, music and poetry.

 

The Scaffold had several chart hits between 1966 and 1974, including the 1968 UK Christmas Number One 'Lily the Pink' and 1967 single 'Thank U Very Much', which was the favourite song of the late Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother and former British Prime Minister Harold Wilson.

 

Mike spilled: "I wrote 'Thank U Very Much' . It was The Queen Mother and Prime Minister Harold Wilson's favourite record. And then I wrote his most hated ... it was a song called 'Yesterday's Men' about his deposed government."

 

Mike is also a renowned photographer and has published books documenting the early years of The Beatles and the group backstage and on tour, and in 2005 he exhibited a collection of photographs that he had taken in the 1960s entitled 'Mike McCartney's Liverpool Life'.

 

His latest book, 'Mike McCartney’s Early Liverpool', is an insight into the rebuilding of Liverpool post World War II and how, due to the cultural explosion of the Merseybeat scene and nightlife, Liverpool was firmly put on the UK cultural map. Mike documented this pivotal time period as he experienced it, and now reveals many unseen/unpublished images from his personal collection and artistic works.

 

Discussing his life-long passion for photography at the Atlas Gallery in London at a preview of photographs from the tome, Mike said: "I take photos everyday. Because you can't not take photographs. Photography is something that is part of your very soul."

 

The Collector’s Edition of 'Mike McCartney’s Early Liverpool' is available at Mikemccartneybook.com now.

October 12, 2022
Giles Martin says that he could only remix The Beatles’ Revolver album in stereo because of
Peter Jackson’s AI-powered audio separation technology: “It opened the door”
by Ben Rogerson for MusicRadar

Special Edition CD and vinyl box sets will be available here, there and everywhere on 28 October

Originally developed for the Get Back documentary series, and later used by Paul McCartney so that he could ‘duet’ with John Lennon at the Glastonbury Festival, Peter Jackson’s AI-powered audio separation technology has now been called upon by producer Giles Martin for his new stereo mix of The Beatles’ Revolver album.

 

Martin had already remixed Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, the White Album, Abbey Road and Let It Be, but thought that, due to the fact that The Beatles only had access to 4-track recorders when they created Revolver in 1966, that album and others, such as Rubber Soul, were off the table, because multiple instruments (guitars, bass, drums, etc) were bounced onto a single track.

 

However, the game changed when Jackson’s WingNut Films Productions got involved, and Martin got talking to the company’s Machine Learning Engineer Emile de la Rey.

 

“He developed this system and it got to the stage when it became remarkable,” Martin told Mark Ellen at Word In Your Ear, “and at the end of Get Back I said to Emile ‘I’ve got this Revolver album - do you want to have a go at doing it?’

 

“I sent him Taxman, and he literally sent me guitar, bass and drums separately - you can even hear the squeak of Ringo’s foot pedal on his kick drum. It’s alchemy… and we honed it and we worked together on it, and it ended up being the situation where I could have more than just the four tracks to work with, and that’s why we could do the stereo mix of Revolver. It opened the door.

 

Martin gives the analogy of a cake being ‘unbaked’ and separated into its original ingredients - flour, eggs, sugar, etc - which enabled him to take Revolver’s songs and put them back together in a different way.

 

Speaking to Variety  about the Get Back documentary in 2021, Peter Jackson said. “To me the sound restoration is the most exciting thing. We made some huge breakthroughs in audio.”

 

Explaining further, he added: “We developed a machine learning system that we taught what a guitar sounds like, what a bass sounds like, what a voice sounds like. In fact we taught the computer what John sounds like and what Paul sounds like.

 

“So we can take these mono tracks and split up all the instruments - we can just hear the vocals, the guitars. You see Ringo thumping the drums in the background but you don’t hear the drums at all. That allows us to remix it really cleanly.”

 

Paul McCartney, meanwhile, brought the technology to a festival audience when he performed I’ve Got A Feeling - a track from 1970 album Let It Be that was recorded during the iconic 1969 rooftop gig - with a ‘virtual’ John Lennon during his Glastonbury set earlier this year.

 

The new special editions of Revolver will be released on 28 October on CD and vinyl. New Dolby Atmos mixes will be available digitally.

 

Find out more on The Beatles’ website.

October 11, 2022
Ringo gets over Covid 19 and resumes his tour

Above image is from Billboard, November 25, 1967.

October 10, 2022
Is This the World's BEST Sounding Beatles Cassette? MoFi/MFSL Alert




October 9, 2022
Happy Birthday!



October 7, 2022
Leave the West Behind - How Russia Pirated the Beatles
by AbouttheBeatles.com

After the fall of Communism in the U.S.S.R., a former underground producer became a hero to a nation starved of the Beatles and rock and roll.

 

The Beatles (Битлз) were a symbol of emerging counterculture throughout the world, and in few places was this more dangerous to the establishment than the Soviet Union. The Communist Party valued culture, and state-run media offered only Soviet folk, classical, and other traditional styles of music and dance to the nation. As culture changed in the 1960s, censorship against Western music became even more strict.

 

But the emerging black market – helped immensely by Radio Luxembourg – brought rock and roll to Soviet youth. For years, music was recorded onto discs made of discarded x-rays, called “ribs” or “bones”. The process of making these records was called “Roentgenizdat”; pilfered x-rays were cut into circles by hand and a cigarette was used to burn the center hole. A reverse engineered phonograph was usually used to etch the grooves at 78 RPM and was good for 5-10 plays. Opportunists raided the refuse of medical facilities for more material. Peddlers hid the discs up their sleeves, selling them for 3 rubles each. Friends arranged to buy different discs, forming lending circles and tape recording each other’s music. Unknowing customers asked for specific titles in shops, and unscrupulous shopkeepers often simply retrieved an unlabeled disc from a back room, hand-wrote the requested title on it, and sold it. Who knows how many Russians went years thinking any given song was something else entirely! Eventually roentgenizdat fell out of favor as people moved on to tape reels and, later, cassettes.

 

The Beatles were a specific target of the Communist government, banned even after the Rolling Stones (among others) had state-sanctioned music released officially. They were widely bootlegged and were a favorite for smuggling from travelling sailors and actors returning home. It was a dangerous practice; being caught could mean having international travelling rights revoked by the state, removal from the Communist Party, or expulsion from university. Vendors caught making or selling smuggled discs or copies of could be subject to jail time. Sellers developed code to protect themselves from undercover police, asking prospective sellers trivia about British or American rock and roll. Failing the quiz meant no sale. Genuine recordings and even some pirated copies could cost half a month’s wages.

 

Of course, there is subject to speculation what level of influence this illicit import of mop top propaganda had on the Soviet youth. A 2009 documentary titled How The Beatles Rocked The Kremlin examined how Western rock and roll – and the Beatles specifically – helped bring about a cultural revolution which became political. Even for citizens who didn’t understand the words of the songs that were not overtly political, the music awakened the desire for freedom from an oppressive government.

 

“Of course, the processes by which the Beatles and their music promoted change in the Soviet Union are complex and elusive. From Stalinist times, culture had often been an agent for change in a society where other political processes were suppressed and unavailable…Their music arrived at just the moment when the hopes of a young generation were being dashed by Brezhnev’s crackdowns. What was conveyed through the music, and what was troubling to the Kremlin was a youthful spirit of freedom and unchecked energy. Everyone I met from the Soviet Beatles generation emphasized the word Freedom, and talked about how their music somehow freed the ‘slave within us.’” – Leslie Woodhead, director of How The Beatles Rocked The Kremlin

 

Only two official EMI-licensed LPs were issued during Communist rule in the U.S.S.R., and only then not until 1986 after much consideration by the Communist government what the safe amount of exposure of the Beatles to its people could be allowed. A Taste Of Honey was a 16-song compilation consisting of songs released pre-1965. The cover utilized the four individual portraits included in The Beatles (“The White Album”). A Hard Day’s Night was issued that same year, omitting When I Get Home from the original UK release due to its suggestive lyrics. Both were issued on the state-owned Melodiya (also known as “Melodia”) label.

After the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, piracy of Western music and movies was as rampant as ever. For Western copyright holders it was a catch-22; piracy arose because of their inability to release legitimate issues of their goods, and because it was so widespread most companies saw little benefit to trying to fight it.

 

“Foreign sound recordings, as of the present moment, are not protected in Russia. There is no point of entering a market in which you are going to get ripped off and there is nothing you can do about it.” – Eric H. Smith, executive director of the International Intellectual Property Alliance, 1993

 

It was then that a producer and promoter named Andrei Tropillo (Cyrillic: Андрей Тропилло) took advantage of this vacuum. In 1990, Tropillo was put in charge of the St. Petersburg branch of Melodiya. He created his own label, Antrop, and began issuing Beatles, Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, and others. Many of these releases bore printed disclaimers “Recorded from radio broadcast” which were attempts to get around what little copyright law existed at the time, but in reality the Beatles discs were sourced from the 1987/88 compact disc masters. Antrop functioned as a legitimate record label and, because they used Melodiya facilities, the releases bore two catalog numbers – the Melodiya numbers being continued from the legitimate releases dating back decades. Manufacturing of the discs was humorously credited to “Rock’n’Roll Parish of United Evangelical-Lutheran Church of Russia” after Tropillo moved the Antrop headquarters from Melodiya to the St. Petersburg Evangelical-Lutheran Church.

Tropillo often made changes to the album artwork — sometimes subtle, sometimes not so much — at least in part to circumvent copyright law. Cover text was translated to Cyrillic/Russian, including decorative text such as that used on Rubber Soul or Magical Mystery Tour. On the cover to Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, Tropillo placed a head shot of himself in the crowd behind the Beatles, and one of notable Russian Beatles fan Kolya Vasin. On Abbey Road, John was made barefoot instead of Paul.

 

Presented here are the covers and original-language track information for each of the Antrop releases, including some special notes about each album.

Beatles For Sale carries a distinctive light blue border around the cover photo, likely an easy way to cover the original cover text and logos.

Beatles For Sale, back cover. Notice the “B” in the top middle which was taken from an early Beatles logo.

Revolver and Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band were issued as a double LP, with the front and back covers featuring the (edited) covers, respectively. Karl Marx is replaced with noted Russian Beatles fan Kolya Vasin, and Andrei Tropillo’s face appears in the top row. The cover of Револьвер features completely different photos than the original cover.

Magical Mystery Tour and Yellow Submarine were issued as a double LP, with the front and back covers featuring the (edited) covers, respectively.

Early pressings of Битлз mistakenly omit Piggies from the track list, but it does appear on the album. The poster was edited to feature the lyrics in Russian. The discs were each labelled Side 1/Side 2 in early pressings, but were later changed to Side 1/Side 2/Side 3/Side 4.

The Antrop version of Abbey Road features a barefoot John instead of Paul, as it is on the original, official version. The back cover did not feature translated song titles.

The back cover featured the translated song titles next to the original English titles.

October 6, 2022
Ringo Starr to release "Live At The Greek Theatre" on November 25, 2022



Norwegian Wood - The Beatles - Full Instrumental Recreation (4K) - Feat. Perry Stanley & Sam
Popkin

The Beatles "Revolver" LP Chart Position on Cash Box for November 19, 1966



October 5, 2022
What Is The BEST SOUNDING Version of The Beatles Abbey Road? SOLVED!

Klaus Voormann's "Revolver 50" book is now out

This is the advertisement for the Beatles "Help!" album that appeared in Billboard Magazine on August 14, 1965

On December 12, 1964 "Beatles '65" becomes the topselling Beatle disk up until that point in time





October 4, 2022
Paul McCartney’s Brother Just Found the First Color Photo of The Beatles
Technically, it's the first color photo of the Quarrymen
by Tobias Carroll for Inside Hook

Photo credit: Mike McCartney

It’s worth a reminder that Paul wasn’t the only artistic-minded member of the McCartney family coming of age in post-war Liverpool. His younger brother Mike was involved in a number of acclaimed albums over the years, and has also received plenty of notice for his work as a photographer. And, as budding photographers tend to do, the young Mike McCartney took plenty of images of the world around him — including of his brother and his brother’s bandmates.

And so, as The Telegraph reports, the younger McCartney recently came upon a photograph in his archives which is believed to be the first color photo of The Beatles ever taken. It dates back to 1958, when the band was playing under the name of the Quarrymen. McCartney told The Telegraph that he believes that this was taken on George Harrison’s first show with the group; he was 15 at the time.

 

“This may have been George’s first performance with the group,” he said in an interview. “John, without his glasses, couldn’t see a thing — but we could clearly see from his red cheeks that he was bevvied.”

McCartney also chalked up the lack of many color photos of The Beatles to the price of color film at the time. “[I]t would have been a special present from dad to get colour film for me,” he told The Telegraph.

This photograph is a fascinating glimpse of the band before they were The Beatles — both literally and figuratively. And if that exploration into musical history intrigues you, it’s not the only early image from McCartney that’s recently re-emerged.

Yoko Ono, Sean Lennon and the folks at Studio One send Get Well Wishes to Ringo!

From the Beatles Official Facebook pages...


October 3, 2022
Ringo Starr cancels tour due to health problems

From Ringo's Official Facebook pages...

The Beatles: Rare images of early Cavern Club gigs found
by the BBC  

Rare photos of The Beatles performing in their early days at Liverpool's Cavern Club have been discovered.

 

The images were taken in 1961, a year before their debut single Love Me Do was released.

 

The photos show Sir Paul McCartney and John Lennon singing, with George Harrison on guitar and a partly-obscured original drummer Pete Best.

 

Historian Mark Lewisohn described them as "whippet-thin under-nourished lads" following their tour to Germany.

The band, who were then aged between 18 and 20, had recently returned from performing in Hamburg, where they had been "slogging 500 stage hours in 90 days", he said.

 

"So slender has this marathon made them, it's as if their heads and bodies are stranger.

 

"A look emphasised by the unusual clothes - leather trousers and cotton tops. No other photos show them dressed this way."

 

Mr Lewisohn, who has written a number of books about the band, said the photos showed The Beatles playing to a lunchtime or evening audience in July 1961.

 

"Three months from here, John and Paul went to Paris and returned with what became known as 'The Beatle haircut'.

 

"Days later, Brian Epstein saw The Beatles in the Cavern, offered to become their manager and set them on a course that changed our world."

 

Pete Best was dropped from the band in 1962 and replaced by Ringo Starr.

Ringo Starr still has aspirations at 82: 'My aim is to be Frank Sinatra'
by Melissa Ruggieri for USA TODAY (originally published on Sept. 22, 2022)

Ringo Starr will tell you with a grin that he’s really good at hanging.

 

He might go for a walk on the beach with Toto guitarist Steve Lukather, a member of his All-Starr Band for a decade, given the appropriate location. Or engage in some of his other talents, such as painting or photography. Of course, the gym always beckons the Beatles icon, a seemingly ageless 82.

 

“I don’t like that word, ‘rest,’ ” he says.

 

On this day, Starr is checking in from a hotel room in Florida, where the legendary drummer and his All-Starr Band – Colin Hay, Edgar Winter, Hamish Stuart, Warren Ham, Gregg Bissonette and Lukather – are playing a round of shows on the tour that runs through October.

 

Starr is disappointed that rain and lightning have thwarted his beach strolling plans, but the eternally chipper, “peace and love”-spouting musician is happy to talk about his third extended play in two years – cleverly titled “EP3” – a four-song release featuring Lukather, Linda Perry and Dave Koz.

 

Question: You are in amazing shape. What kind of regimen do you adhere to?

 

Answer: I go to the gym a lot. I work out to get my heart racing to shift the stuff that gets jammed in your arteries. I’m a vegetarian and I (drum) when we’re on tour. If I’m at home, I’m painting, I’m doing something. I have two ways: I’m busy or I’m not. I can handle both of those; it’s the bit in the between that gets you crazy. ... Just keep moving as much as you can. If you’re in the gym, you’re on the treadmill and lifting weights and you have a program. When I get back to LA, I have my trainer three times a week. I work out nearly every weekday, sometimes six days a week. How hard is it to go and do something good for yourself for an hour?

 

The four songs on the new EP all have an element of positivity and hope, especially “Let’s Be Friends.” Did you look around at the world at the moment and think, OK, let’s try to find some unity here?

 

I think I looked around the world many years ago. I think we, as far as I and the band were concerned, started looking in the ’60s in San Francisco with the hippies and we wanted a lot of peace and love. Every song I’ve done on this EP leads to peace and love. I was offered songs that I didn’t like the attitude of the song, so I didn’t (record it).

 

I’m not sure people would expect to hear Dave Koz with you. How did it come about to have him on the album?

 

Dave Koz is getting me a lot of publicity (laughs). He’s America’s premiere sax player. (“Free Your Soul”) is quite a long track and we felt like jamming through it. When Dave came in, it worked perfectly.

 

Do you think you’ll add any of the new songs to the setlist on this current tour?

 

No. I used to say (in concert), “I’d like to thank the five of you for buying my CD” (laughs). People are there to see me from the Beatles days and (hear) the Beatles songs and some songs through the rest of my life. This year for the first time, we’re doing “Yellow Submarine” and I put in “Octopus’s Garden.” I never wanted to do two underwater songs. But the audience, thank you, Lord, they love it.

 

You’ve been doing the All-Starr Band tours for 30-plus years. Did you ever envision it going on this long and with this type of variation in musicians?

 

It was a good idea in 1989. Someone asked somebody to ask me, would Ringo go on tour? I didn’t have a band but I said yes. Then I said, “What have I said yes to?” So I had to start calling people like Dr. John and Billy Preston and Levon Helm. The first band had three drummers. I was so insecure. … But then everybody was saying yes. I had to close up my phone book. Then I decided we’re going to change the whole band every time. You have to have hits (to be in the All-Starr Band), that’s part of the deal. I’ve had some really incredible players and several who didn’t want to put in 100%.

 

And they were not invited back?

 

No.

 

What’s it like backstage before you all go on? Any rituals?

 

We all get backstage and the band runs on and then I have 30 seconds of fear.

 

Really, still?

 

Still! It’s so far out. It's like, oh, God, it’s not going to work. My brain takes over. That’s why I run on stage. My aim is to be Frank Sinatra and just stroll on, like (affects a smooth-crooner-with-cocked-eyebrow voice), “Hey, how are you doing?” I saw him once and I wish I could do that. He started singing behind the curtain, so relaxed. He was so great. I still haven’t managed to do that. I have a moment of fear and then I run on and as soon as I grab that mic, I’m home. It all just fades away and we’re there to have fun.

WORCESTER - Ringo Starr and His All Starr Band, featuring Steve Lukather, Colin Hay, Edgar Winter, Warren Ham, Gregg Bissonette, and Hamish Stuart at The Hanover Theatre, Friday, June 3, 2022. Photo credit: Allan Jung/Telegram & Gazette

October 2, 2022
Flashback to the to the Beatles Monthly Book July 1964 introduction


In 1964 the Four Preps created a novelty song entitled "A Letter to the Beatles"


The Beatles "Don't Pass Me By" Goes #1 in Scandinavia



Nicholas Schaffner writes the following from his book "The Beatles Forever"





October 1, 2022
From the 1968 edition of McCall's Magazine

The Beatles’ Revolver 2022 Box Set: Andre’s Exclusive Review
by Andre Gardner for 102.9 Classic Rock MGK

On October 28th, The Beatles Revolver Special Edition sets will be released worldwide through Apple/Universal.  With this album, The Beatles pushed the recording studio, and songwriting, to their limits, with incredibly inventive songs recorded in an entirely different way, and generating sounds never before heard in a studio or captured on tape.  In fact, manipulation of that tape was a key element of the sound of Revolver. This special edition follows the similar format of most of the previous four SE releases: a remixed album by Giles Martin and Sam Okell at Abbey Road Studios, a mono mix of the album, and several discs of outtakes, demos, and rough mixes, available on CD, vinyl or digital. The only difference is, this time, there’s no DVD/Blu-ray included with the deluxe set. A stellar 100+ page book is also included, with many rare photos of the band in the studio, of master tape boxes and track sheets, a new Klaus Voorman graphic novel telling the story of the making of the album’s cover, and in-depth descriptions of the songs on the set. As my second favorite album of all time, after The Beatles (White Album), Revolver was a set I was really looking forward to hearing. This was the album that expanded my musical horizons like no other did, and the thought of hearing outtakes, demos and early mixes of the songs I hold so dear was very exciting. When I hosted “Breakfast With The Beatles Sunday,” which I ended back in January, I used to love playing and talking about tracks from the Let It Be, Abbey Road, The Beatles (White Album), and Sgt. Pepper box sets weeks before release, so you were one of the first in the world to hear them. In lieu of that, I thought I’d share my thoughts on this special set, which I have literally been listening to nonstop since I first received it. Two bits of caution: there are several spoilers in this review, so read at your own risk! Also, this review represents my opinion and mine alone. Your mileage may vary. I’ll look at the set disc by disc:   CD ONE – REVOLVER New Stereo Mix   Once again, the team of Giles Martin and Sam Okell were tasked with the job of remixing a Beatles album.  In the case of Revolver, though, the job was a bit more problematic than it was for the other box sets.  The reason was the album was recorded on a four-track tape machine and, in the cases of many of the songs, multiple instruments were recorded onto one single track.  Until recently, it would have been impossible to separate those instruments and do a remix “from scratch” but, now, thanks to cutting edge technology developed by Get Back director Peter Jackson’s team, it can be done.   The result, to my ears, is certainly a better balanced and clearer mix of the album, no question, but at what cost?  Yes it’s true some Beatles fans have scoffed over the rather dramatic nature of the 1966 stereo mixes, but that was the way we’ve heard them for over 55 years.  The sounds on the ’66 mix are tight, harsh in spots, heavily compressed, reversed, slowed down, sped up, and treated to heaps of the Ken Townshend-Abbey Road invention, artificial double-tracking, but it is PERFECT that way to me.  I LIKE hearing the sound of the amplifier hum at the beginning of “Taxman.”  On this 2022 mix, the hum is gone.  I LIKE hearing the first syllable of Paul’s “Eleanor Rigby” vocal in two channels, before it shifts to just one.  I know that was a mixing error by young Geoff Emerick, but that is planted in my musical DNA forever.  The 2022 mix, though, has perfectly balanced stereo vocals throughout.  Yes it sounds great, but is it BETTER?  It depends who you ask.

 

On “Yellow Submarine,” Martin and Okell saw fit to model the stereo mix after the original MONO mix, a practice they have followed in their previous works.  Having said that, for the first time, the guitar strum on the first note of the new stereo mix is now there, as is John’s “a life of ease” line, which had only previously been reserved for the mono mix.  This was the highlight of the remix disc for me.

 

The vocals on “She Said She Said” are just too flippin’ loud, I’m sorry.

 

On “Got To Get You Into My Life,” there is a keyboard bit at the end fade that gets faded out and faded back in on the original 1966 stereo mix, as the chords played didn’t exactly match what was going on with the rest of the song.  On this new 2022 version, the keyboard part plays throughout the end fade and, to me, it sounds clunky.

 

Overall, while it is a ‘cleaner’ stereo mix of the album, it lacks the punch and raw aggression of the original, is flat in spots and, dare I say, seems poorly mixed in a number of places, particularly in some of the vocals.  To me, Revolver spotlighted The Beatles’ harmonies like no other album, and spreading the voices out in the stereo picture takes a little away from my listening experience.

 

I will end the review of CD ONE on an up note:  on a few songs, Giles and Sam let the fades go on just a wee bit longer.  Love that!

 

CD TWO – Sessions One

 

NOW we’re getting to the gold.  There was some early concern there wouldn’t be enough outtake material to warrant a standalone version of Revolver, that maybe Rubber Soul and Revolver would be combined into one set but, thankfully, that wasn’t necessary. There are lots of incredible alternate versions on this set to keep fans interested for sure and, like the previous editions, the outtakes are arranged chronologically by the date they were recorded.

 

Every one of these sessions tracks are special, though several have appeared before as part of The Beatles Anthology series in the mid-90s.  The nice part about the previously-released versions is, with a few exceptions, there is extra audio at the beginning, end, or both on the tracks.

 

Kicking off the outtakes discs is the first take of “Tomorrow Never Knows,” take 1.  It’s the same take as previously released on The Beatles Anthology 2, but with more audio and Lennon silliness at the end. For the second “TNK” outtake we get a first-ever digital copy of remix mono 11.  That was the mono mix released for a day before George Martin ordered a different mix be put in its place.  It’s fun to hear in such clarity, with the sound effects appearing at different spots and in different order, than the commonly-known mono mix.

 

There are three outtakes of “Got To Get You Into My Life” featured.  The first one is the same take 5 as was on Anthology 2, except it’s in stereo and there’s a great conversation between John and Paul before the take starts regarding the organ intro.  The second outtake called “(Second version) – Unnumbered mix – mono” is SO good!  It’s the basic track with a different Paul vocal, and features what sounds like a fuzzed guitar playing the parts the horns would later play.  The third outtake is the backing track, take 8, without vocal, and it sounds absolutely marvelous!

 

One of the real highlights of the set for me is the “Love You To” sequences.  The original take 1 is featured, a lovely outtake with just George on acoustic guitar and vocal, and Paul singing the high parts on the last word of the end of the verses.  Next is a rehearsal of the song with George working on his sitar licks, and the third outtake, take 7 is just wonderful.  It’s the released version, but with Paul singing the high part of the entire last line of the verses, rather than just the last word, over top the other harmony vocals.  This was mixed out of the final version but does sound really nice here.  The version also has a great slate by engineer Geoff Emerick, and the song dies out when the tape is shut off, which makes me very, very happy to hear.

 

The two takes of “Paperback Writer,” the only two takes they did of the song, are very similar to the bootleg versions we all know and love except, with take 2, there are no vocals.

 

The “Rain” outtakes are a real gem.  With the first outtake we get to hear the backing track just as The Beatles recorded it – at a frantic pace!  It makes me respect their tightness as a band even more after hearing it this way.  I do wonder, though, if the bass was added after they slowed down the tape.  The second “Rain” outtake is the slowed down version with a full ending.

 

Take 7 of “Doctor Robert” was exactly what I’d hoped for – the unedited version of the song.  The longer version contains an extra verse, a repeat of the second verse with the chorus.  It also ends clean, so you hear John’s “OK Herb,” or whatever he was saying, very clearly before the master tape cuts him off mid-sentence.

 

The disc ends with two outtakes of  the first pass at “And Your Bird Can Sing,” one of which has the “giggling” vocal, and is basically the same as the one heard on both Anthology 2 and various bootlegs.  The only difference is there’s more talk before and after the takes.

 

 

CD THREE – Sessions Two

 

The disc opens with another “And Your Bird Can Sing” outtake, the re-make take 5, a much heavier-sounding rendition.  They still didn’t know how to end the song, but that would be figured out on take 6.  This version is positively delightful.

 

Fans of “I’m Only Sleeping” will delight in four versions of the song on this set, three of which have never been heard before.  Only the rehearsal take included has been previously released, and it’s fantastic to hear how the song developed over time.

 

Next up are two simply stellar outtakes of “Eleanor Rigby.”  The first features a conversation between George Martin, the string players, and Paul discussing whether or not to use vibrato on the strings during the verses.  This exchange was captured so beautifully by Beatles historian Mark Lewisohn in his book “The Beatles Recording Sessions At Abbey Road,” but it still brought me to tears hearing this behind-the-scenes conversation going on as a true masterpiece was being recorded.  The next outtake of “Eleanor Rigby” is the complete take 2, strings only.  It’s nice to hear the strings so clean, too, as the outtake featured on The Beatles Anthology 2 was treated to additional reverb through Abbey Road Studios’ “ambiophonc” speaker system.

 

The sweet take 10 of Paul’s melancholy “For No One” is next, just the backing track before Paul put his vocal down.  It starts with Ringo asking Paul how to play the drum part and Paul advising him.  The take ends with Ringo asking, “what do you think?”

 

Some of the most mind-blowing outtakes on the set are the “Yellow Submarine” outtakes.  The first two come from what’s being called a “Songwriting Work Tape.”  On the first outtake, John accompanies himself on guitar and while he has the melody of the verse down, the lyrics are totally different and quite sad.  It was only when he and Paul got together to work on the song (as heard in the second work tape outtake) that you hear the song take shape.  The only thing they didn’t have finished was the last verse (Donovan would help with that later!)  The third “Yellow Submarine” outtake was the finished version, without the sound effects and shouting added.  The whole tape is sped up, including Ringo’s vocal.  The final outtake of the song is very similar to the one released on the “Real Love” CD single, except for a few extra seconds of audio at the end.

 

The next outtake is of George’s phenomenal “I Want To Tell You.”  The take opens with George Martin asking George Harrison what the song is called and when George responds that he doesn’t know, John makes a hilarious suggestion to call it “Granny Smith, Part Friggin’ Two.  You’ve never had a title for anything except ‘Don’t Bother Me.”  “Granny Smith” was George’s working title of “Love You To.”  You hear engineer Geoff Emerick call it “Laxton’s Superb,” another apple variety, and Ringo also chimes in and suggests titling it “Tell You,” which turned out to be a good one.  This is the most disappointing outtake on the set for me because, for reasons known only to Giles Martin and Sam Okell, the decision was made to include only 39 seconds of the actual song!  There’s a brief bit of chat with Paul and George Martin at the end when someone walks into the studio while the red recording light is on, and I’m glad they kept that in, but couldn’t the whole take 4 have been included?  It would easily have fit onto the CD.

 

A positively gorgeous outtake of “Here, There And Everywhere” is featured next, take 6 in this case.  It’s a different take than the one featured on the “Real Love” CD single (that was a combo of take 7 and vocals from take 13), with just Paul’s beautiful guide vocal and the backing instrumentation.

 

Rounding out the outtakes are a demo and rehearsal outtake of “She Said She Said.”  The John demo has been bootlegged for decades, but it is nice they included it on this set.  The second outtake is a rehearsal of the song, preceded by some funny chatter captured during the actual takes two and three.  This would put to bed the long-held belief that, after an argument, Paul left and the three recorded the song without him, as he is clearly heard on that opening chatter.  The rehearsal take, incidentally, is KILLER, and possibly my favorite of all the outtakes.

 

Interestingly, there are no outtakes of “Good Day Sunshine” featured on this set, and only Giles and Sam know why.  Lack of space on the disc was clearly not the reason.  I’d have settled for the basic track with no vocals.

 

CD FOUR – Original mono master

 

This disc features the original 1966 mono mix of the album by Geoff Emerick, mastered beautifully by Thomas Hall.  According to the technical notes found in the deluxe book, this was mastered from the digital mono master.  I know some Beatles audiophiles aren’t thrilled with the mono mix of Revolver but I just love it!

 

CD FIVE – Revolver EP

 

Just four tracks on this disc, both the stereo and mono versions of the two songs recorded during Revolver that weren’t on the album but, instead, were released on a single, “Paperback Writer” and “Rain.”  The stereo tracks are new mixes by the Martin/Okell team and, like the rest of the remixed album, suffers from a lack of sonic ‘excitement’ to these ears,

 

Remixing warts aside, I still give this set a 5/5.  It’s bloody REVOLVER, after all!

 

Listen for my special one hour “unboxing” of the new Revolver Special Edition set, airing in late October on 102.9 MGK!  Details to follow.

 

@Andre Gardner/andre@wmgk.com

By popular demand, the Beatles "Rock and Roll Music" goes #1 in Sweden, #2 in
Denmark and Norway on April 17, 1965






September 30, 2022
On this date the Beatles release "Tomorrow Never Knows" (take 1) on Youtube


Ottawa Beatles Site spotlight on Ravi Shankar



A rare photograph of Neil Sedaka and George Martin




September 29, 2022

There is a new paperback on John Lennon by James Patterson

Flashback: From Cash Box December 28, 1968 Edition...





September 28, 2022
Flashback: John Lennon and Yoko Ono "Happy Xmas (war is over)" advert in the
December 25, 1971 edition of Cash Box

For Ringo Starr, it's still about peace and love — and laughter
Former Beatle, 82, bringing his All Starr Band tour to several Canadian cities, including Winnipeg on Oct. 4
by Emily Brass, journalist for CBC Manitobia

More than 60 years after Ringo Starr first hit the stage with the Beatles, the rock 'n' roll superstar and multimillionaire says performing still hasn't gotten old. 

 

"Music keeps you young," Starr said in a video call with CBC. "I've never had a day that I've said, 'I don't want to do this anymore.'

 

"Musicians have magic nights," he continued, leaning into the lens with excitement. "The band is together, the audience is together, we're all joined. That's the hook.

 

"Some nights, it's just great. Other nights, it's incredible. And I love that feeling."

The former Beatle is on the second leg of a North American tour that will see him hit more than two dozen cities in under two months — pretty impressive for an 82-year-old. He has a string of upcoming Canadian dates, starting Monday in Laval, Que., and continuing with shows in every province to the west, including an Oct. 4 Winnipeg stop.

 

That date has been highly anticipated for decades by Winnipeg fans like author and rock historian John Einarson. He was just 12 years old when the Beatles' plane touched down in Winnipeg to refuel on Aug. 18, 1964 — the band's first time on Canadian soil.

 

The layover was announced on the city's radio stations just an hour before landing. 

 

"[Beatles manager] Brian Epstein happened to look out the window and saw hundreds and hundreds of kids on the outdoor observation deck," said Einarson. "He convinced the four Beatles to get off the plane."

 

Einarson, who sometimes leads Beatles tours in the band's hometown of Liverpool, U.K., still laments not having found a ride to the airport that August day.

 

"It was a big, big deal," said Einarson. "The Beatles were everything in 1964. They were starting their first North American tour, heading to San Francisco, and they stopped in Winnipeg — in the middle of nowhere — and greeted the fans.

 

"And it was Ringo who said, as they were going back onto the plane, 'Hope to see you again!'" 

 

Six decades later, those 20 minutes on the tarmac might have been less remarkable for Starr.

 

"I don't remember landing," said the rock star with a chuckle. "We were on tour, baby! You know what it's like."

 

But the legendary drummer said he's happy to return to the city, showing his affection for the local audience with one of his trademark ribbings.

 

"Just to freak everyone out in Winnipeg, the plane will land and 21 minutes later, we'll take off," said Starr, with a belly laugh. "Then you'll be saying, 'Yes, and last time you were here for 21 minutes.'"

 

'We all make the world go round''

 

Another thing that puts Winnipeg on Starr's map is the Guess Who. Burton Cummings and Randy Bachman have both appeared in the All Starr Band over the years.

 

Einarson interviewed the renowned Canadian guitarist for his book Still Takin' Care of Business: The Randy Bachman Story. Playing with Starr was one of the highlights of his career, Bachman told Einarson.

 

"He said that every night, he'd be playing on stage and he'd have to kind of look around and say, 'Oh my God, I'm playing with a Beatle,'" the author recalled.

 

"Randy sold gazillions of records, and he's an extremely successful rock star. But here he is on stage with a Beatle," he said. "It really humbles you."

 

"Last time I let them in the band," said Starr with a big grin, when asked about the famous musicians from Winnipeg.

 

"Burton Cummings had great songs [like] American Woman and, you know, Randy played fine."

 

As his quick laugh and non-stop kidding suggest, anyone who plays with Starr must be able to take a joke. Another prerequisite is having hits.

 

This tour, the rotating cast of the All Starr Band includes Edgar Winter, as well as past and present members of Men at Work, Average White Band and Toto.

 

But one thing that doesn't change is the message. Unity is still at the heart of Starr's music, with lyrics from his latest EP like, "We all make the world go round, you're not alone in this."

 

"Some people have sent me other songs that don't quite say peace and love, and I don't do them anymore," said Starr.

 

"Through all these years, the main thing is peace and love," he said, flashing a peace sign with both hands several times during the interview.

 

Einarson said those gestures still strike a chord with fans old and young.

 

"When you consider the times and the war in the Ukraine, it's nice to have someone who still believes in peace and love," said Einarson, adding he can't wait to see the musical hero perform at Winnipeg's Canada Life Centre.

 

"The audience is not going to be all boomers like me," he said. "There'll be more graying ponytails … but there'll be younger fans as well.

 

"He is a real, live Beatle coming to Winnipeg. That always creates excitement."

AI-Generated Portraits Imagine How Celebrities Would Look Like If They Were Alive Today

AI-generated art has become quite popular on the internet. Today, many artists and designers are using AI technology to create dynamic images, videos, and interactive content.

Edited by Bhavya Sukheja for NDTV

 

Images generated by Artificial Intelligence (AI) have been making waves recently, and now one Turkey-based artist has used this technology to bring back celebrities from the dead. Photographer and lawyer Alper Yesiltas used AI technology to imagine what celebrities, including John Lenon, Heath Ledger and Michael Jackson, would look like if they were still alive. 

 

Taking to Instagram, Mr Yesiltas shared his collection of the project, titled "As If Nothing Happened". "With the development of AI technology, I've been excited for a while, thinking that 'anything imaginable can be shown in reality'," he wrote about the project in his blog. 

 

"When I started tinkering with technology, I saw what I could do and thought about what would make me the happiest. I wanted to see some of the people I missed again in front of me and that's how this project emerged," the artist added.

 

He stated that the hardest part of his creative process was to make the image "feel real". "The moment I like the most is when I think the image in front of me looks very realistic as if it was taken by a photographer," he said. 

 

Further, Mr Yesiltas informed that to create the images, he used software like the AI photo enhancer Remini and photo editing programs like Adobe Lightroom and VSCO. He created portraits of celebrities such as Princess Diana, Freddie Mercury, Paul Walker and Tupac Shakur.

 

The similarity between each of the celebrities featured in Mr Yesiltas' project is that they all died at a young age and under tragic circumstances. According to him, "Behind this project lies the question of 'how would people look if some great events had not happened to them'". 

 

Mr Yesiltas wants to now extend the "As If Nothing Happened" project, but in a very sensitive way. However, he said that the process is a little bit slow. He also intends to continue using the same AI bot that he developed, and come up with images for projects like "Life in 2050" and "Alternate Museum". 

 

AI-generated art has become quite popular on the internet. Today, many artists and designers are using AI technology to create dynamic images, videos, and interactive content. There are several applications and tools widely available that allow users to create such pictures by simply entering the text or phrase in AI text-to-image generators.

 


September 27, 2022
Rocking Through The 60s!


Where the 1960s "psychedelic" look came from


ILLUSTRATION & THE COUNTERCULTURE OF THE 1960s




Listen to a very funky cover version of "Taxman" by Caleb Davis


Rastrelli Cello Quartet does an excellent cover of "Here, there and everywhere"



Why George Harrison Said He Was Very Proud of This ‘Revolver’ Song: ‘I Literally Invented That
Chord’
by Hannah Wigandt for Showbiz Cheatsheet

In 1966, George Harrison felt tired and bored. The Beatles were constantly touring, and he was sick of it.
Most of the group agreed, so they stopped touring. It was the best decision they ever made, mainly because
it allowed them to focus on their music even more.

They progressed as musicians and songwriters. They became sponge-like, allowing so many things to inspire
and influence them. The result was some of their most iconic albums, including Revolver, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely
Hearts Club Band and virtually all their albums after that. By opening themselves up to the world of music,
they soon became the masters influencing the rest of the world. And according to George Harrison, Revolver
featured one song in particular with a lasting legacy.

George Harrison said The Beatles became ‘more conscious of so many things’ after they stopped touring

 

George Harrison’s ‘Revolver’ song ‘I Want To Tell You’ was a source of pride

 

September 26, 2022 Listen to Willy Chirino's excellent cover of Yellow Submarine
("I swear that Willy Chirino sounds a lot like Paul Anka!" - J.W.)


Brazil's unique label design for the Beatles "Revolver" LP issued in 1966





September 25, 2022
Watch the Hellacopters perform a raucous cover of the Beatles classic "Eleanor Rigby"


The Beatles Magnificent Memorabilia Collection | Beatles Museum #4

A review of The Beatles Revolver
by altrockchick on March 24, 2016
 

September 24, 2022
Watch Circe Link perform a psychedelic trip covering the Beatles Rain

Movie: "Yellow Submarine 3D Virtual World" (see the video below this write-up)

Celebrating ‘Revolver’: Beatles’ First On-Purpose Masterpiece
How 1966 album showcased band at its cocky creative peak
by Rob Sheffield for Rolling Stone

1966: the most manic of the Beatlemania years. The lads get chased around the world, playing 25-minute sets that have nothing to do with the increasingly complex music they’re exploring in the studio. A long-forgotten John quote about religion – “We’re more popular than Jesus now” – gets dug up and creates a scandal in America. A Ku Klux Klan protest outside their Memphis show draws 8,000 people. The butcher cover gets censored. The drugs get heavier – Paul dabbles in cocaine, John dabbles in acid. George gets serious about Indian music and religion. Ringo starts a construction company called Bricky Builders. And in their spare time, the Beatles make the greatest rock album ever, Revolver, released on August 5th, 1966 – an album so far ahead of its time, the world is still catching up with it 50 years later. This is where the Beatles jumped into a whole new future – where they truly became the tomorrow that never knows.

 

Crazy as it seems now, Revolver wasn’t released in the U.S. in its full 14-song glory until the 1987 CD version. For 20 years, Americans knew only the butchered U.S. LP, which cut crucial tracks like “And Your Bird Can Sing” and “I’m Only Sleeping.” So it took time for Revolver to get recognized as the Beatles’ peak album-as-album statement. The mop tops were gone, yet the Beatles didn’t return to the Rubber Soul sound either. Not many acoustic guitars on Revolver; not many love songs, either. The album’s distinctive sonic flourish is that abrasive electric rush – “Taxman,” “Here, There And Everywhere,” “Tomorrow Never Knows” – yet there’s also more piano than ever, their first horn section, attempts at raga, chamber music, R&B, whatever pops into their expanding heads. Rubber Soul had come as a surprise to them – crashing it out in a few weeks for the Christmas 1965 deadline, the Beatles stumbled into a revelation of how how far they could travel over the course of a full-length LP. Revolver was the first time they set out to make a masterpiece on purpose, arrogant bastards serenely confident that any idea they tried would turn out brilliant. And this time, at least, they were right.

 

Revolver is all about the pleasure of being Beatles, from the period when they still thrived on each other’s company. Given the acrimony that took over the band at the end, it’s easy to overlook how much all four of them loved being Beatles at this point and still saw their prime perk as hanging with the other Beatles. Despite the fact that all doors of society and celebrity were open to them, the Beatles’ main human contacts were each other, four lads tuned into some wavelength other people around them could sense but couldn’t share. As John told biographer Hunter Davies, “We have met some new people since we’ve become famous, but we’ve never been able to stand them for more than two days.”

 

The whole album gives off the vibe of the studio as a clubhouse, with everyone feeding off each other’s ideas. The competition is friendly (at this point) but fierce. John responds to “Yellow Submarine” by leaving Paul a note: “Disgusting!! See me.” Paul is getting seriously into the London avant-garde scene, or at least he’s into getting high with these guys who are friends with his girlfriend’s older brother – they run an art gallery or maybe it’s a bookstore but they know all this cool shit he’s certainly not going to miss out on (“I vaguely mind people knowing anything I don’t know” is the way he puts it) and that’s that. Paul gives an interview to longtime friend Maureen Cleave for the Evening Standard: “I’m trying to cram everything in, all the things I’ve missed. People are saying things and painting things and writing things and composing things that are great, and I must know what people are doing.” She reports, “He is most anxious to write electronic music himself, lacks only the machines.” That might not even have been a joke. 

 

There’s an endearing hubris all through the music – captured perfectly in the eight-second guitar break that cuts in at the end of “Got to Get You Into My Life,” flipping it into a whole new song, or the dizzying guitar frills in “And Your Bird Can Sing.” You can hear that in the band’s press conferences from their summer tour, as when a reporter in L.A says, “In a recent article, Time magazine put down pop music. They referred to ‘Day Tripper’ as being about a prostitute and ‘Norwegian Wood’ as being about a lesbian. And I just wanted to know what your intent was when you wrote it, and what your feeling is about the Time magazine criticism of the music that is being written today.” Paul replies with a straight face. “We’re just trying to write songs about prostitutes and lesbians, that’s all.”

 

Arrogance like that doesn’t happen often, but without it, an achievement like Revolver would be unthinkable. George Martin brought their craziest ideas to life – as he put it, “I’ve changed from being the gaffer to four Herberts from Liverpool to what I am now, clinging onto the last vestiges of recording power.” One of the most important sonic innovations on Revolver was a sweater – their new teenage engineer Geoff Emerick stuffed Ringo’s wool sweater into his bass drum, giving Ringo’s drums that distinctive thwomp everybody else spent years trying to copy. “He was always experimenting and the bosses at EMI didn’t like it,” Martin said. “He got severely reprimanded when they found him putting a microphone in a pailful of water to see what the effect was.” The Beatles got everyone in Abbey Road thinking along the lines of improv – never saying “no,” responding to every idea with “yes, and …”

 

Paul moved into his new bachelor pad on Cavendish Avenue, near Abbey Road; he now had no problem coming into the studio earlier than anyone else and pushing his ideas. Jane Asher exposed him to classical music and theater; her brother Paul introduced him to scenesters like the Indica Bookshop’s Barry Miles and John Dunbar, absorbing the art scene, reading Robert Crumb comics or the Evergreen Review, listening to Ornette Coleman’s Free Jazz and Albert Ayler’s Spiritual Unity, which Paul enjoyed playing to annoy George Martin when he came over for dinner. Still living in the attic of Jane’s parents, his gold records piled under the bed, Paul began making primitive tape loops with a pair of Brenell reel-to-reel machines. He and his new friends spent stoned hours recording loops they considered avant-garde sound collage; they rarely bothered to play them back the next day. But one turned into “Tomorrow Never Knows,” replacing the usual guitar solo with a “tape solo” in a crash of psychedelic thunder. It was the first song the band finished for the Revolver sessions in April and set the bar high for everything that followed over the coming months.

 

A more dangerous influence was cocaine, which Paul flirted with heavily that year. Cocaine was so little known at the time, the cops who raided Keith Richards’ Redlands mansion in 1967 threw his stash away because they had no idea what it was, while seizing his collection of hotel soaps. Paul’s hook-up was the posh art dealer Robert Fraser, who got busted for heroin in that same infamous Redlands raid, around the same time he helped the Beatles select the faces on the Sgt Pepper cover. (He does everything he can, Doctor Robert.) Paul quit cocaine because he couldn’t take the crashing comedowns. “You didn’t stay high,” he complained years later, exasperated at the drug’s inefficiency – a very Paul reason to quit. 

 

Meanwhile, John was looking on enviously from his stately suburban home out in Weybridge, bored in his crumbling marriage, lounging in bed or watching TV all day, hiding his inner turmoil behind the flashy wit of “I’m Only Sleeping” or “She Said She Said.” His nearest neighbor was Ringo, who lived just around the corner, so he was the one John visited most, usually dropping in unannounced and sitting in his garden. When John wasn’t with the band, he’d go two or three days at a time without speaking a word. “I have to see the others to see myself,” he told Davies. “I have to see them to establish contact with myself and come down. Sometimes I don’t come down.” People who weren’t Beatles didn’t really cut it for him. “Most people don’t get across to us.”  

 

George wrote three of the highlights – the Quiet One’s big breakthrough as a writer. “Love You To” was his first full-on foray into Indian music, with sitars and tablas played by the North London Asian Music Circle, breaking down his mystic detachment with his bitch-wizard vocals. “I’ll make love to you, if you want me to,” George informs the people of Earth. “Taxman” tweaks British politicans by name. (“Mr. Wiiiiilsoooon! Mr. Heath!”) George might not have a firm grasp on how taxation works – they tax your car to pay for the street, not the other way around – but there’s no arguing with the brash aggression of the music. “I Want to Tell You” is one of his most bizarrely underrated gems, with that jangling dissonant piano (played by Paul, as was the “Taxman” guitar solo) to echo the noise in a shy boy’s head.

 

Paul’s songs have a new caustic realism, even the piano ballad “For No One,” lamenting “a love that should have lasted years” – a very different sentiment from “mine forevermore.” It’s the ultimate “you stay home, she goes out” break-up song. Paul sits in his empty room, replaying her voice in her head, thinking up snappy comebacks for arguments that ended months ago, while she keeps wearing less and going out more. “Got to Get You Into My Life” has the album’s funniest line, the wonderfully snide tongue-twister “If I am true I’ll never leave and if I do I know the way there.”

 

John never cared for “And Your Bird Can Sing,” but it’s one of his best songs ever, so scathing and yet also so empathetic and friendly, packed with tiny musical triumphs. (I must have heard it 30 or 40 thousand times before I fully noticed the girl-group hand-claps that sneak into the song for the middle guitar break, and then just as mysteriously vanish.) It’s a hipster-baiting putdown like the ones Mick Jagger was perfecting on Aftermath – but after John sneers that your whole phony world will come crashing down, he also assures you that he’ll be around, the last thing Mick would ever say. The album gives off the vibe of the Beatles as a self-sufficient commune, sharing secrets all the lonely people outside will never get. The Beatles are so confident of their superhuman hipness it doesn’t even occur to them to argue the point, which is how Revolver can sound so arrogant yet so suffused with warmth. If you play “And Your Bird Can Sing” or “Love You To” back to back with “Ballad of a Thin Man” or “Nineteenth Nervous Breakdown,” Dylan and the Stones sound like sophomores trying a little too hard to impress the seniors.

 

“We do need each other a lot,” John explained to Davies. “When we used to meet again after an interval we always used to be embarrassed about touching each other. We’d do an elaborate handshake just to hide the embarrassment. Or we did mad dances. Then we got to hugging each other. Now we do the Buddhist bit, arms around. It’s just saying hello, that’s all.” That Beatle bond was at its closest on Revolver, and would remain that way for another year or so, right up until Brian Epstein died. No other album gives such an immediate sensation of hearing them think on their feet together, hearing them communicate so fluently, madly in love with being Beatles. They talked about calling it Magic Circle, then went with the pun Revolver, but either way the title presents a good idea of how tight the Beatles’ revolving circle was, yet how open it remains to anyone who wants to listen – which turned out to be everyone.

September 23, 2022

15 August 1966: Edward Greenfield reviews The Beatles’ latest album

by Edward Greenfield for the Guardian

 

“Turn off your mind; relax and float downstream; it is not dying. Lay down all thought; surrender to the voice: it is shining. That you may see the meaning of within: it is being.”

 

A curious sort of poetry, and the Beatles devotee might detect the hand of John Lennon. These are the words of the most remarkable item on a compulsive new record, the Beatles’ latest LP (Parlophone stereo PCS 7009; mono PMC 7009), called in typical punning way “Revolver.” The song quote, “Tomorrow never knows,” is musically most original, starting with jungle noises and Eastern-inspired music which merge by montage effect into the sort of electronic noises we associate with beat music. Then Lennon moaning out the words above, which in their sinister way define the real point of the song: pop-music as a substitute both for jungle emotions and for the consolations of religion. After all, teenagers are not the only ones who through the ages have “turned off their minds” and “surrendered to the voice,” whether to the tribal leader, the priest, or now the pop-singer. Thank goodness Lennon is being satirical: at least one hopes so.

In studying Beatles philosophy one does of course have to distinguish between the natural acquisitiveness of George Harrison in “Taxman” and Lennon and McCartney and their rather lefter-wing views. But all three creative Beatles habitually (as serious artists always must) in specific feelings and specific experiences. “Dr Robert,” for example, is a brilliant send-up of an expensive doctor-psychiatrist (which Beatle went to him one wonders?). “Well, well, well, you’re feeling fine,” the doctor is made to say, and the link with what the Beatles think of as prepackaged religion is underlined by the Victorian hymn-tune accompaniment below.

 

 

Even the already ubiquitous “Yellow submarine” is specific in its simplicity, and a number like “I’m only sleeping” brings a vivid picture of the pop-world: the late-sleeping Beatle being jolted into consciousness – nicely illustrated in the repeated jolting back to life of the music. “Eleanor Rigby” (with “square” string octet accompaniment) is a ballad about a lonely spinster who “wears the face that she keeps in a jar by the door” and about Father McKenzie “writing the words of sermon that no one will hear,” the verses punctuated by wailing cries of “Look at all the lonely people: where do they all come from?”

 

There you have a quality rare in pop music, compassion, born of an artist’s ability to project himself into other situations. Specific understanding of emotion comes out even in the love songs – at least the two new ones with the best tunes, both incidentally sung by Paul McCartney, the Beatle with the strongest musical staying power. “For no one” uses Purcellian tricks to hold the attention, gently-moving, seamless melody with characteristic descending bass motif, over which half way through there emerges a haunting descant, beautiful by any standards, Alan Civil, no less, playing the French horn.

It is not just a question of the Beatles and Paul McCartney in particular paying lip service to classical values. “Here, there and everywhere” brings yet another Beatles tune that like “Yesterday” or the best of Ellington, Cole Porter or Sandy Wilson (taking highly contrasted examples) can be demonstrated by the most hide-bound analysis to be a good melody. After the unexpected success of “Yesterday,” I shall be interested to see whether this new “sweet” number with its rising fifths and sevenths (forbidden interval in “pop”) again vindicate the perception of popular taste. The Beatles’ whole success, based demonstrably on musical talent, is fair vindication in itself.

 

Got To Get You Into My Life - Leonid & Friends (Earth, Wind & Fire cover)


 

September 22, 2022 

Why ‘Revolver’ is The Beatles’ best work

by Keith Mulopo, the Boar News, University of Warwick

2021 marks the 55th anniversary of arguably the most remarkable record in pop history. By 1966, The Beatles were pushing themselves to the limits of their musicianship. Having burst onto the scene as a pop sensation, producing some of the catchiest and refreshing music of the early 60s (tracks like ‘She Loves You’ and ‘I Want To Hold Your Hand’ are prime examples), the band grew tired of their pop songwriting mastery. Albums like Rubber Soul reinforce this, with songs like ‘Michelle’ and ‘Girl’ indicative of The Beatles mocking their proficiency of such numbers. 

 

‘Paperback Writer’ backed by ‘Rain’, the first tracks released by the Fab Four in 1966, were the work of a maturing band. The A-side: an unemployed man’s desire to be a writer; the B-side: an exhibition of sonic, psychedelic experimentation. The themes and sonic landscapes found in this single would characterise their album that year. With songs like The Byrds’ ‘Eight Miles High’ and albums like the progressive pop masterpiece in The Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds, psychedelia was gaining legitimacy musically, providing the perfect platform for a supremely talented band, with excellent producers and engineers, to create an LP that would change pop music irreversibly. Revolver is that LP. 

 

Revolver marries everything that makes The Beatles amazing. This project displays some of the hardest sounding guitar passages the foursome ever recorded, which become apparent in records like the White Album or Abbey Road. For instance, the jarring riff that underpins ‘She Said She Said’ is delightful in its unashamed presence on the mix. Also, Paul McCartney’s guitar solo on the opener, ‘Taxman’, nicely compliments the frustration and indignation in George Harrison’s sentiment and vocals; meanwhile, Harrison’s riff on ‘I Want To Tell You’ is packed with much nonchalant confidence. The poppiness that coated the band’s earlier works are evident here too: catchy hooks characterise songs like ‘And Your Bird Can Sing’, and lush harmonies appear on ‘Good Day Sunshine’ and ‘Doctor Robert’ in its charming Liverpudlian cadence. 

 

The quality of the tracklist is consistently high. Although there’s no obvious single, it’s more a reflection of the strong individual songwriting being accompanied by superb sonic consistency. ‘Eleanor Rigby’ is a brilliant McCartney track that, like ‘Paperback Writer’, focuses on the plight of individuals – George Martin’s rampant string arrangements successfully adds to the pathos found in the lyrics and vocal melodies. Harrison’s raga rock number ‘Love You To’ is wonderfully hypnotic and its psychedelia is unobtrusive, contrasting nicely with most of the tracklist. Ringo Starr’s ‘Yellow Submarine’ is endearingly juvenile, and a song which plays to his limited vocal strengths. 

 

George Martin and Geoff Emerick as producer and engineer deserve special praise. The production is pristine, and the psychedelic edge in these songs are very tasteful. Their work on tracks like ‘I’m Only Sleeping’ makes an ordinary song in concept and structure part of an inspiring set of opening tracks; effects such as double-tracked vocals, reverse guitar solos, and bursts of drowning vocal arrangements prove sublime. The closer, and the album’s best song, in ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’ truly exemplifies both the producers and the foursome’s glory. The first track to be recorded for the album is an extraordinary achievement in musical engineering. For a song composed of mainly abstract sounds and a vocal performance that has no discernable melody, it grooves harder than many psychedelic songs produced ever since. Ringo’s looped drumbeat, the distorted and fragmented guitar solos, and Lennon’s philosophical utterances makes this one of the best psychedelic songs ever conceived. 

 

Revolver is utterly masterful. It’s the transformative result of young, exceptional songwriters throwing caution to the wind, guided by incredibly competent producers. A cleverly sequenced album: no one voice is heard in succession – playing into the LP’s title. An exhibition of a band pulling together, not marred by conflicting artistic visions that plagued their subsequent albums, nor dealing with a songwriting talent deficit found in their earlier projects. 

 

Though Revolver arguably didn’t perfect psychedelia, it demonstrated how the genre can be truly artful.  Influencing contemporaries like The Byrds and The Jimi Hendrix Experience shown in Younger Than Yesterday and Are You Experienced respectively, and paving the way for the success of current artists like Tame Impala, ASAP Rocky, and Travis Scott for instance. It foresaw the pivotal role the producer has in creating a stellar album currently, as without Martin and Emerick this album wouldn’t have been such a revelation. Revolver is The Beatles at their most creatively ambitious and competent – a band hitting their peak. 

O.A.R. cover the Beatles song "I Want To Tell You" on the Howard Stern Show