Tag Archives: Paul McCartney

Feb 15: The Beatles recorded “Ticket To Ride” in 1965

ticket to ride beatles picture sleeve

The Beatles were such a prolific album act that it’s sometimes hard to abstract their later singles; here, they ride their roots as a bar band in Liverpool and Hamburg to a new kind of glory.
~Dave Marsh (The Heart of Rock & Soul)

The opening circular riff, played on 12-string guitar by George Harrison, was a signpost for the folk-rock wave that would ride through rock music itself in 1965.
~Richie Unterberger (allmusic.com)

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The Beatles 40 best songs: at 16 She Loves You

Beatles_-_She_Loves_You

She loves you, yeah, yeah, yeah
She loves you, yeah, yeah, yeah
She loves you, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah

“John and I wrote She Loves You together. There was a Bobby Rydell song (Forget Him) out at the time and, as often happens, you think of one song when you write another.

We were in a van up in Newcastle. I’d planned an ‘answering song’ where a couple of us would sing ‘She loves you…’ and the other one answers, ‘Yeah, yeah.’ We decided that that was a crummy idea as it was, but at least we then had the idea for a song called She Loves You. So we sat in the hotel bedroom for a few hours and wrote it.”
– Paul McCartney (Anthology)

“She Loves You” is a song written by John Lennon and Paul McCartney and recorded by English rock group the Beatles for release as a single in 1963. The single set and surpassed several records in the United Kingdom charts, and set a record in the United States as one of the five Beatles songs that held the top five positions in the American charts simultaneously on 4 April 1964. It is their best-selling single in the United Kingdom, and was the best selling single there in 1963.In November 2004, Rolling Stone ranked “She Loves You” number 64 on their list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time. In August 2009, at the end of its “Beatles Weekend”, BBC Radio 2 announced that “She Loves You” was the Beatles’ all-time best-selling single in the UK based on information compiled by The Official Charts Company.

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The Beatles Seven records of Christmas

beatles

The Beatles Seven records of Christmas

From 1963 to 1969, the Beatles recorded and released seven special Christmas singles through their fan club. These were closer to “Monty Pythonesque”-comedy than their normal releases. The first ones are whimsical, cheery and thankful for their success, but later records are more esoteric. They reflect their development as a unit, the 1969 recording is four separate pieces.

Each recording was pressed onto a 7″ flexi disc and mailed free to the British members of the Fan Club.

beatles yule copy

The results are interesting curiosities for all  Beatles fans. A compilation album (with all the 7 singles) was released in 1971 and available from the fan club between 1970 and 1972. It was never released commercially, and most  copies are bootlegs.

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The seven Best Box Sets of 2014

Bob Dylan Basement Tapes Complete box set

Best Box Sets of 2014

Wikipedia:
A box set (or boxed set) is a set of items (for example, a compilation of books, musical recordings, films or television programs) packaged in a box, for sale as a single unit…contemporary box sets are usually made up of three or more discs boxes, covering a broad range of boxes of the music of a given artist or genre. Artists and bands with an extremely long and successful career often have anthology or “essential” collections of their boxes of music released as box sets. These often include rare and never-before-released tracks.

Our list has box sets that has audio, film and tv recordings and books. It’s been a good year for box sets.

1. Bob Dylan and The Band – The Basement Tapes Complete, The Bootleg Series Vol.11:

bob dylan_basementtapes

A treasure that has to be enjoyed in portions, it’s so overwhelming. If you try to take it all in, you’ll be guaranteed to miss some of the gems in this chest. Better sound than on the bootlegs and a lot of songs we hadn’t heard before. I would have put it on the top spot just for Sign on the cross to be honest, that one song is worth the whole set.

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Dec 3: The Beatles released “Rubber Soul” in 1965

beatles-rubber-soul

There are places I’ll remember
All my life, though some have changed
Some forever, not for better
Some have gone and some remain
All these places had their moments
With lovers and friends, I still can recall
Some are dead and some are living
In my life, I’ve loved them all

Rubber Soul documentary included in the remastered Box-set:

All four faces of The Beatles appear stretched on the cover of 1965’s Rubber Soul, but it is not only the picture that is mind bending, the music within stretches the boundaries of popular music, too. In my mind it is he first truly unified album by The Beatles (and their first recorded within a specified session period), it is a quantum leap compared to the band’s past work. The Songwriting is out of this world, and the instrumentation was cutting edge. A milestone in rock history.
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