Imagine
I was cleaning out my file cabinet the other day and found this. When I was young, I had written Lennon a letter. His assistant typed back a thank you note. At the bottom, John had scrawled a personalized note.
Journalist, Author & Syndicated Columnist
I was cleaning out my file cabinet the other day and found this. When I was young, I had written Lennon a letter. His assistant typed back a thank you note. At the bottom, John had scrawled a personalized note.
The first film ever released on DVD was the Beatles’ “A Hard Day’s Night.” When it came out in the mid-1990s, it was an anomaly. Gadget geeks were attracted to the shiny new format that promised to replace bulky videocassettes, but the public wasn’t so sure. They remembered the fate of laser discs, Beta tapes and 8-track cartridges.
Obviously not running from his past, Paul McCartney embraced the band that made his career and treated fans to a concert that was top-heavy on Beatles hits. His set list Tuesday night at the United Center didn’t veer much from the former Beatle’s two sold-out concerts here last April. Neither did his onstage patter, a fact he joked often about. “Those of you who were here last time already heard this story,” said the world’s most famous bassist. “But I’m going to tell it again.” With that, he regaled the audience with tales about John, George, Linda and Heather. He reminisced about a massage therapist in Tokyo who croaked out a Beatles tune as she tended to his sore muscles. Sorry, Ringo fans–the drummer wasn’t mentioned.
We asked our readers to tell us which Beatles love song was the most romantic. We wanted to know, in 100 words or less, what special memories you might have attached to that song.
Of the many readers who entered, 10 of the best responses garnered copies of “The Beatles Anthology.” But the best and most charming entry came from Judy “Jude” Finkel of Chicago, who told us how “Hey Jude” brought her and her husband, Harvey, together.
Thirty years after the Fab Four broke up, Paul McCartney has put together a “new” Beatles single. McCartney announced Tuesday that the new single, “Free Now,” offers snippets from the band’s recording sessions in the 1960s.
If there’s one thing Paul McCartney knows, it’s how to charm an audience. Wearing a casual black suit, white T-shirt and a pair of trendy “trainers” (they’re sneakers to us Yanks), the former Beatle came across as relaxed and congenial during a live telecast and Webcast Saturday afternoon.
Although she was the subject of the film “Backbeat” and was engaged to a member of arguably the most famous band in rock history, Astrid Kirchherr is a relative unknown in America. But Beatles fans worldwide equate her name with the German beauty who stole Stuart Sutcliffe’s heart and who took enigmatic photos of the Fab Four when they were still a scrappy quintet.
You’re a novice Beatles fan. You could pick John Lennon and Paul McCartney out of a lineup. But you don’t know which one sang “Strawberry Fields Forever” (John). And you don’t have a clue on where to begin to get a handle on the world’s most famous musical group. What to do? Plenty. ABC’s “The Beatles Anthology” can help get you up to speed on the Fab Four’s career and chronology.
When the producers started auditions for the film “Backbeat,” they saw more than 100 actors for the role of the “forgotten Beatle” Stuart Sutcliffe, at least 50 actresses for the part of his German girlfriend Astrid Kirchherr and dozens of other actor-musicians for the other members of the Fab Five. But when it came time to cast the role of 19-year-old John Lennon, they saw only one actor – Ian Hart.
There is a heartache in Matthew Sweet’s voice that pegs him as a romantic who knows both the euphoria of being in love and the pain of breaking up. On his first Chicago gig as a headliner, Sweet performed a tantalizing midnight show Saturday at the Cabaret Metro where he and his tight backup band channeled his wisely ambiguous lyrics with playful abandon, letting the audience know that though he may have been beaten up emotionally, he’s not a whiner.