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This is a website about all things Beatle. There will be news if we find them attractive, there will also be articles and features about sol...
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McCartney & Wings – One Hand Clapping – It’s Official + Pack Shots - Six days after the news mistakenly slipped out, Paul McCartney has officially announced the release of audio from the 1974 live studio performance called O...
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JOHN LENNON's GUITAR UP FOR AUCTION AFTER DISCOVERY IN ATTIC AFTER 50 YEARS - Julien’s Auctions announced Tuesday, April 23 that Lennon’s Framus 12-string Hootenanny acoustic guit...
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LIBB P768: 22 April 2024 - Show 1461 Panel: Graeme Dickenson, Gavin Myers, Jo MacCarthy *LIBB Show 1461 WynFM Podcast P768* Download Or Stream LIBB Show 1461 WynFM Podcast P768 ...
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Feel your own pain – John’s ‘Plastic Ono Band’ demos - When a deluxe edition of John’s classic John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band album was first seriously mooted back in 2020, I was curious to see how deep they coul...
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Restored Let It Be film coming to Disney+ 05-08-24 - The Beatles’ 1970 film Let It Be is coming to Disney+ on 8 May 2024. The film, directed by Michael Lindsay-Hogg in January 1969, has been commercially un...
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Having a Large Time! - I’m still working on the manuscript, but I just got the proof for the cover for my upcoming book about Southern music, and I’m very pleased with how it tur...
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Harry Benson : « Paul » livre l'intimité de McCartney - C’est en 1964 que Harry Benson commence à photographier le jeune Paul McCartney, année charnière pour les Beatles qui déferlent sur l’Amérique, sillonnen...
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ED治療の際はシルデナフィルの使い方を正しくマスターしよう! - シルデナフィルはED治療によく使用されていますが、使い方を間違えると命に関わることもありますので注意が必要です。一番良い方法は、医師や薬剤師など専門家に相談し、指示を守って服用することですが、ここでは一般的に言われているシルデナフィルの正しい使い方についてご紹介します。 市販されているシルデナフィルには25...
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William Leslie Anthony (Les Anthony): 30 April 1933 - 21 May 2020. - Les Anthony, John's driver from 1965-1971, has died. The story goes that John was having problems finding a suitable chauffeur, and so Brian Epstein, upo...
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The Decca Tapes - First Time In Stereo (By Lord Reith) - BITRATE: FLAC TRACK LISTING: Money The Sheikh Of Araby Memphis, Tennessee Three Cool Cats Sure To Fall September In The Rain Take Good Care Of My Baby Till...
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The Final Beatles' Recording Session - On April 01 1970, final work was done on three of the tunes for the upcoming "Let It Be" (formerly known as "Get Back") project. The session was held in St...
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There are seven levels. - [image: giphy (4)]
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Bitcoin and Other Donations - Hello fellow Beatle-people! I have not been idle but been working on many things including the promised book for Comprehensive Beatles. I hope to have new...
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Beatles Rarity of the Week – “Act Naturally” (Ringo Starr duet with Cilla Black, 1971) - Welcome to the Beatles Rarity of the Week. On August 1st, 2015 long-time Beatles-friend and fellow Liverpudlian Cilla Black (real name Priscilla Maria Vero...
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The Beatles' "Long Tall Sally" EP, featuring a photo of The Beatles in Sweden. Ok, so we brougth you a survey of the most ...
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George Harrison Video Collection By Mike Carrera A fan recently asked which was the best Harrison “promo clip compilation” and my resp...
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This website is all about The Beatles and the individual members of The Beatles. It is kept by Roger Stormo, who has been associated with the Norwegian Beatles fan club, "Norwegian Wood", since 1980. Feel free to quote from the site, but please give me credit and a link back to the original item. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. This is not a news site per se, but if we hear about something that has yet to be reported by other Beatles news services, we tend to write about it. Apart from that, we will write stuff about the Beatles on an irregular basis at the whim of the author. A lot of our readers arrive at specific articles from internet searches or references to this site from forums and other Beatles sites. If you did, we encourage you to click here to access the main page, and also to indulge in our archives - you may find other posts that are interesting. You may also subscribe to news from the site and have each new issue delivered to your rss feed reader.
This is not a begging letter... but feel free to support me by donating money! It'll keep me in business... Or just buy a t-shirt! Or take a look at my Amazon wish list...If you have Beatles related product to push, feel free to send us a copy, the address is:
Roger Stormo
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Move over, Ms L!
Wednesday 23 July 2008
Two new books due
Read about The Beatles' Irish heritage here.
Read about The Beatles and Scotland here:
The Beatles and Scotland
The faces are young – instantly recognisable, but not yet fully-grown into what will become the four most famous faces in the western world – and happy as they grin towards the camera in the cold. One of them holds a thumb aloft as they pose beside the roadside sign that proudly proclaims 'HASTE YE BACK!'
The time is January 1963, the thumb (and one of the grinning faces) belongs to John Lennon, and the three other faces belong to Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr. The Beatles – at the Scottish Border, returning from playing four Scottish dates in glamorous venues like the Museum Hall in Bridge of Allan and Dingwall Town Hall. Within a year they would be phenomenon on Britain and playing at the London Palladium, within two years they would conquer America. But for now, frozen in time in candid black and white, they were just four lads, barely out of their teens and happy to be travelling the country playing music.
Not that 1963 was the Beatles first visit to Scotland. As any real Beatleologist will tell you the band's first concerts outside of England – even before they went to Hamburg – happened in the spring of 1960 when The Silver Beetles (as they were still called) came to tour north east Scotland as the backing band for a singer called Johnny Gentle.
The trip was not without incident. Indeed the whole of musical history – if not popular culture – was nearly changed forever one night in May 1960, when the Silver Beetles' heavily laden tour bus was involved in a collision near Fraserbugh. Luckily – or unfortunately, depending on which seat you were sitting in! – the only member of the band to be seriously injured was temporary drummer Tommy Moore (Ringo was still two years away from joining the band) who lost a few teeth and had to be taken to hospital for stitches. It would not be a Beatles' last brush with Scotland's roads and hospitals. . . .
But the Fab Four's connection with Scotland goes back much further than the 1960's. The group's original bass player Stuart Sutcliffe – the member generally credited with having much to do with the Beatles' early imaging – was born in Edinburgh. Perhaps even more significantly from a creative perspective was John Lennon's connection with Scotland. . . .
Back in the late 1940's and early 1950's, between the ages of nine and fourteen, Lennon would regularly spend his summer holidays at Durness in Sutherland, the most north-westerly village on mainland Britain, staying at a croft in Sango Bay that belonged to relatives. He would be packed off on the bus from Liverpool to Edinburgh, where he would be collected by his cousin Stanley Parkes before the family travelled north together.
Back in the early fifties Durness was one of the most remote, inaccessible parts of the country and Lennon, Parkes says, "Loved the complete wildness of the place. We went hunting and fishing and John loved going up into the hills to draw or write poetry. He loved hillwalking, shooting and fishing and would have been quite a laird!"
It is fascinating to think of the teenage John Lennon – just a few years away from meeting Paul McCartney and changing history – writing poetry in the Scottish hills, developing the lyrical talent that would in time make him one of the most important songwriters the world has ever known. Lennon's youthful connection to Scotland was highlighted earlier this year when North Highland Tourism Operators – headed by Prince Charles – launched a new website to help celebrate Lennon's links to Durness.
Mr Parkes says "John never forgot those times at Durness. They were among his happiest memories and I hope many tourists will visit the area that meant so much to him and enjoy its beauty and charms as he once did."
Lennon was to return to Scotland many years later – bringing his wife Yoko Ono and his young children, six-year-old Julian and five-year-old Kyoko, back to Durness for a holiday in the summer of 1969. By this time, of course, Lennon was one of the wealthiest and most famous men in the world and yet he took his Scottish break with very little ceremony. . . .
Just as he had done years before Lennon and family stayed with the Parkes' in Edinburgh before heading north in an Austin Maxi, a far cry from the psychedelic Rolls Royce more commonly associated with rock stars in the late 1960's!
However, the trip was to culminate in Lennon's second cataclysmic experience on the roads of Scotland. Just as the Beatles' 1960's had begun with a Scottish car crash, so they were to end when Lennon, who had notoriously poor eyesight and who rarely drove himself, crashed the Austin Maxi on a tight Highland road.
It was a serious smash, writing off the car and leaving Lennon requiring 17 stitches for facial injuries and Yoko needing 14 in her forehead. Lennon was rushed to Lawson Memorial Hospital in Golspie, Sutherland where he was to spend five days convalescing. Ironically the peace and tranquillity of the hospital provided Lennon with a welcome break from the hectic life he was leading in 1969 – the height of his celebrity and notoriety when he and Yoko were regularly front-page news with their famous 'bed-in' peace protests.
While a media frenzy was being whipped up in London around the release of Lennon's new single Give Peace A Chance, the singer himself was enjoying fresh fruit scones, home-made marmalade and line-caught salmon while reading the newspapers quietly in the secluded grounds of a Scottish hospital! On returning to London Lennon told reporters, "If you're going to have a car crash, try and arrange for it to happen in the Highlands. The hospital there was just great!"
Around the same time as Lennon's accident, over on the other side of Scotland, on the west coast, his former songwriting partner was also beginning to fall for the charms of life north of the border.
Sir Paul McCartney originally bought High Park Farm near Campbeltown in 1968 as a tax break, but he soon grew to love the atmosphere of the property with its westerly views over the Kintyre peninsula and has credited the place with helping him recover from the depression he suffered in the wake of the Beatles split. "It's like a little hideaway," McCartney said. "I love it. I love the people there. I can sort of breathe when I get up there. Breathe pure air."
By the mid 1970's the McCartney's were regularly enjoying long summer holidays at their Scottish farmhouse and it was there, while watching the spring lambs gambolling in the fields, that the family made the decision to become vegetarians, a decision that would have an enormous impact years later when McCartney's wife Linda launched her best-selling range of vegetarian food. Fittingly she was photographed in the farmhouse kitchen in Kintyre to promote the dishes.
The area was to repay McCartney's love for it handsomely in 1977, when it inspired him to write Mull of Kintyre. The song went on to stay at number one for over two months, selling upwards of two million copies (far more than even the Beatles biggest hits) and becoming the biggest selling British single of all time in the process; a record it held until Band Aid's Do They Know It's Christmas? in 1984.
One can only wonder how it might have sounded had John Lennon penned his own musical tribute to the charms of Scotland's East Coast. . . .
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