Fifty years ago today (March 22), EMI/Parlophone released Please Please Me, the debut album release by The Beatles, in the United Kingdom.
The New Music Express said on March 8th 1963: “Things are beginning to move for the Beatles, the r-and-b styled British group. The disc Please Please Me follows closely on the heels of their first hit ‘Love Me Do’ written by group members John Lennon and Paul McCartney. It looks like a bright future for the Beatles, but knowing them I don’t think they’ll let it go to their heads.”
George Martin recalled, “Please Please Me was done in a day – we started at 10 o’clock in the morning finished at 11 at night, and that was the record made.”
In the United States, most of the songs on Please Please Me were first issued on Vee-Jay Records’ Introducing … the Beatles in 1964, and subsequently on Capitol Records’ The Early Beatles in 1965. Please Please Me was not released in the United States until the Beatles’ catalog appeared on CD in 1987.
The Beatles, atop Apple Studios in 1969. Those were the days.
On this day in January, 44 years ago, The Beatles climbed to the rooftop of Apple Studios in London to give what would be their last public live performance.
The unannounced live show was a bit of a stunt, and an improvised ending to the documentary movie they were filming at the time, Let It Be. The movie was to be a fly-on-the-wall look at the Fabs working in the studio, cranking out songs for the planned Get Back album. What it turned out to be was a look at the world’s most famous rock band deteriorating in front of our eyes.
The rooftop show was a temporarily happy ending – the short set included “Get Back,” with Billy Preston on keyboards, “Don’t Let Me Down,” “I’ve Got A Feeling,” “One After 909,” a snippet of “Danny Boy,” “Dig A Pony,” then finally another run-through of “Get Back.”
We all know what happened: the cops came up and shut ’em down for making too much noise in the middle of a busy work day. And John Lennon’s signoff “I’d like to say thank you on behalf of the group and ourselves, and I hope we passed the audition” neatly capped the era for the Beatles.
That quote appeared at the end of the Let It Be album from 1970, released after the group had already broken up. But in reality, the 1969 rooftop concert wasn’t the Beatles’ last work. They eventually got together in the spring and summer of that year to record what would become Abbey Road, arguably their best album.
A few weeks ago, during his concert in Houston Paul McCartney paid tribute to his friend Jimi Hendrix. At the end of “Let Me Roll It,” McCartney’s churning rocker, he appended some surprising lead guitar work in the form of “Foxey Lady.”
How awesome is a musician who has earned a tribute even from a Beatle? When Eric Clapton and Steve Winwood toured together, the finale of their show was a fiery guitar duel on Hendrix’s “Voodoo Child (Slight Return)” and ZZ Top’s Billy Gibbons regularly rips into “Hey Joe,” in the style of his mentor.
Hendrix was, as you can see, a musician’s musician. He was only in the spotlight for a short time – he gained international fame in 1967 at the Monterey Pop Festival and died in 1970 – but the recordings he made have influenced thousands of other guitar players and songwriters.
Had he lived, it’s inconceivable what Hendrix would be like today. It’s also hard to fathom what rock music would be like today as well, because wherever Hendrix went, music followed.
Jimi Hendrix would have been 70 years old today. Happy birthday, Jimi!
YouTube: “Voodoo Child (Slight Return)”
YouTube: Jimi Hendrix interviewed in England just seven days before his death in September 1970.
Paul McCartney’s stage filled the outfield of Minute Maid Park in Houston.
Paul McCartney’s recent set of concerts on his current “On The Run” tour are epic, full of breathtaking singing and instrumental virtuosity on faithful renditions of some of the greatest songs in the rock and roll canon. His show last night (11/14) at Houston’s Minute Maid Park was exactly that.
But there’s also a sense – certainly fleeting – of wistfulness and summing up of a brilliant, unparalleled career belonging to one of the greatest entertainers of all time. At one point of the show in Houston, Paul said “These events are so cool … I just want to take a moment for myself and drink it all in.”
Then he stepped aside from the mic and just stood there, surveying the nearly sold-out crowd (about 39,000) as it cheered him on.
He did that same thing when we saw him in 2011, at the beginning of this tour in New York’s Yankee Stadium. I can’t help but think this may be a victory lap for the 70-year-old ex-Beatle but who knows? He can keep this going for quite a while.
Because it’s obvious McCartney is clearly invigorated by staging these grandiose rock shows. He played for three hours in Houston, staying on stage virtually the entire time and never once sipping a drink of water or wiping sweat with a towel. It helped that the ballpark’s roof was open, and it was a crisp, cool Houston evening.
The voice is still there: on “All My Loving,” hitting the same notes he did in 1963, crooning on the goofy “My Valentine” and rocking out on “Got To Get You Into My Life” and “Paperback Writer.”
And the dude can play: he strapped on an electric guitar eight songs into the set to take the lead on “Let Me Roll It,” which morphed into an impressive instrumental rendition of Jimi Hendrix’s “Foxey Lady.” He pounded the piano keys for Band On The Run deep cut “1985” and the Beatles warhorses “Lady Madonna” and “Hey Jude.”
Video screens made the Beatle’s show feel intimate, even from the cheap seats.
McCartney has proudly accepted the mantle of keeper of the Beatles’ flame, and in addition to his own compositions he paid deeply touching tribute to his fallen fellow Fabs George Harrison and John Lennon. Harrison was remembered fondly with a great rendition of “Something,” which started out on ukulele and wound up with a full-on band treatment.
After that highlight, McCartney mentioned that George wrote that one “all by himself.” And he capped it with “Frank Sinatra once said that ‘Something’ was his favorite Lennon/McCartney song,” Paul shrugged.
Lennon’s tribute consisted of the acoustic ballad “Here Today,” written by McCartney after his mate’s murder in 1980. Then, later, Paul wound up with Lennon’s “A Day In The Life” appended to a singalong “Give Peace A Chance.”
Fireworks both figurative and literal peppered the homestretch: “Get Back,” “Helter Skelter,” “Let It Be,” and the James Bond theme “Live and Let Die,” punctuated by an impressive pyrotechnics display.
Say what you want about McCartney’s cute/pop/cloying tendencies over the past 50 years – in 2012 this is the Cadillac of rock shows. To steal from another James Bond song (not written by McCartney), nobody does it better.
We’re taking a brief break from work tonight, to catch Paul McCartney at Minute Maid Park in Houston. Wish you could be here with us – you can celebrate too, by enjoying Sir Paul’s greatest interview.
Would Gene Simmons and KISS go disco? You bet! (Photo by Keith Leroux for KISSOnline)
A few years ago, while riffling through my closet, I came across my old pea green leisure suit. In one pocket was a ticket stub to a Bee Gees concert, circa 1979 in the Houston Summit. (Yes, that was the one with the guest dancer appearance by one Mr. John Travolta, in town filming Urban Cowboy). Horrified at this perfect polyester time capsule, I bundled it up and gave it as a Christmas white elephant gift at the office party.
I bet there are some pretty famous people who can’t get rid of their disco mistakes so easily. Remember the Beach Boys’ disco cash-in from 1979, “Here Comes The Night”? So do we, unfortunately. How about the Electric Light Orchestra hiding behind an Olivia Newton-John vocal for the horrid “Xanadu” (1980)? Or Paul McCartney’s “Goodnight Tonight” (1979)? Truly frightening.
Unbelieveable, really.
Even artists you wouldn’t expect to do disco, people with a lot artistic integrity, did some booty-shaking tracks back in the day. They may have tried to disguise it, but a disco by another color still smells … well, you know. How about Bruce Springsteen’s “Cover Me” (1984) – a bit late in the game but you can’t deny that driving backbeat. The Eagles doing “One Of These Nights” (1975) might have been a little early in the curve so you can give them the benefit of the doubt, but had it come out a few years later it would be disco. And what about “The Magnificient Seven” by the Clash (1981)? Hmmm.
Then there are the Rolling Stones. How many disco songs did they actually do? Aside from “Miss You” (1978), there’s “Emotional Rescue” (1980) and probably “Beast of Burden” (1978). And the less said about “I Was Made for Lovin’ You” by KISS (1979), the better.
So do you have a leisure suit in the closet? Break it out, dust off your old dance moves and let’s shake some tail on this Saturday night to your favorite rock acts gettin’ down with some disco!
Last week, producers of the new James Bond movie Skyfall dropped the epic theme song from the movie, by British singer Adele. When it comes out in the United States Nov. 9 (Oct. 16 in the U.K.), Skyfall will be the 23rd James Bond movie since 1962, and each has had its own theme song.
Some of the world’s biggest artists performed these songs, including Shirley Bassey, Tom Jones, Nancy Sinatra, Louis Armstrong, Paul McCartney, Madonna and Alicia Keys. Which one is your favorite? “Skyfall” certainly measures up to some of the better songs from years past – so let’s take a listen to that one first.
Aside from Adele, which theme songs from James Bond flicks are the best? Let’s pick a handful of our favorites:
The best known song from all the Bond films may also be one of the best: Shirley Bassey sang the theme from 1964’s Goldfinger. This was the Welsh singer’s only U.S. Top 40 hit.
Flip the coin and you get Matt Monro, a British singer who was a huge international star in the 1960s. He cut the title song for 1963’s From Russia With Love, but it didn’t run over the opening credits, as has become the tradition. Instead, an instrumental version ran at the beginning and Monro’s vocal version was heard on a radio in the film and over the closing credits.
OK, so you may have noticed something else up there in the From Russia With Love clip – it starts out with a shot of Bond through a gun barrel, or an eyeball. That iconic opening actually comes from the first James Bond film, Dr. No, from 1962. That little ditty you hear over it was composed by Monty Norman and arranged by the great John Barry – it was the first true James Bond theme song. It’s followed by a highly stylized main title sequence, usually both created by Maurice Binder, but in this case Binder only designed the gunbarrel sequence. Robert Brownjohn is responsible for the title sequence in From Russia With Love.
One of my favorite James Bond movies when I was a kid was Thunderball, from 1965. Bond took it to a new level in this one, with some of the coolest gadgets in and out of the water. Shirley Bassey actually cut the first song for this movie, something called “Mr. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang,” but the movie’s producers yanked it at the last minute because the song doesn’t have the movie’s title. So they wrote up a new one and got newcomer Tom Jones to cut it. Here’s Jones doing the song on some TV show back in the day.
By the time they got to You Only Live Twice, the producers of the Bond series were chucking out most of Ian Fleming’s novels and coming up with plots of their own. This fifth Bond movie, from 1967, is Sean Connery’s last Bond film from that decade (he would later return in 1971 with Diamonds Are Forever and the off-brand Never Say Never Again, from 1983). Anyway, here’s Nancy Sinatra doing “You Only Live Twice.”
We get out of the 1960s and into the 1970s with certainly the most acclaimed Bond theme song, “Live And Let Die,” by Paul McCartney & Wings from 1973. What can you say about this one – it’s tuneful, it’s exciting, and it was a HUGE hit on the radio. To this day, it’s a showstopper for Sir Paul whenever he plays live – he whips out the coolest pyro this side of KISS every time he plays this song. If you haven’t yet caught McCartney live, you have a chance in November when he plays a handful of U.S. and Canadian dates.
McCartney’s success inspired the Bond film producers to use more rock and pop stars to do their theme songs, with varying success. We like Duran Duran’s “A View To A Kill” (1985), Carly Simon’s “Nobody Does It Better,” the first Bond song to be titled differently than the film it’s in (The Spy Who Loved Me, 1977), and Tina Turner’s “GoldenEye” (1995), written by the Edge and Bono.
One more – probably the best of the bunch; let’s go with Shirley Bassey’s “Diamonds Are Forever,” from 1971. This was Connery’s return to the Bond role after his one-movie retirement (do you remember who played in only one Bond movie after Connery? George Lazenby, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service in 1969) and Bassey’s second Bond theme after “Goldfinger.” Shirley would do one more Bond theme song, “Moonraker” in 1979; she is the only artist to perform three theme songs from James Bond pictures.
Paul McCartney, at age 70, is a textbook example of how old guys can still rock.
It used to be very true that rock and roll was not made by old people. “Old” used to mean people over age 30. So what happened?
Bob Dylan (age 71) just released Tempest to glowing reviews – it should appear on the upper reaches of the Billboard album charts in a few days, but probably not at No. 1. Paul McCartney (age 70) is currently performing close to three-hour sets on his “On The Run” tour, which began last summer in New York City. Roger Waters (age 69) and Rod Stewart (age 67) are also touring, while relative youngster Bruce Springsteen (age 62) can’t be dragged off a stage for anything.
Paul Simon (age 70), Crosby, Stills & Nash (average age 69) and the Beach Boys (average age 70) have live DVDs and/or CDs from recent tours. Van Morrison (age 67) is about to release his 34th studio album, Born To Sing: No Plan B, in early October. Mark Knopfler (age 63) and ZZ Top (average age 60) have strong new albums out, Neil Young (age 66) is readying a new album and tour, and the Rolling Stones (average age 68) keep threatening to do something to celebrate their 50th anniversary. And you can’t stop Willie Nelson (age 79)!
So what gives? Is there something in the water?
Well, pretty much all of these guys mentioned above are big draws on the concert circuit so one can cynically say that the lure of the big bucks is enough to get these codgers out of their rockers. Nobody makes money off albums any more, so each of these acts will go on the road to support an album if they haven’t already. Hell, Dylan’s been touring constantly since the early 1980s.
You think maybe it’s an indication that music being produced today somehow doesn’t measure up to those classics of the past? Perhaps – nothing sends concertgoers to the restrooms/beer vendors faster than “a new song off our latest album.” Even superstars like McCartney and Dylan know better than to populate their concerts with new material.
And it’s tempting to say worthless stuff like “do you think we’ll be paying to see Bon Iver or Green Day live in 15 years?” Because unless you are a total idiot, you know the answer is yes. It may not be Bon Iver or Green Day specifically, but it could be that Weezer reunion or the surviving members of Mumford and Sons or the remnants of Radiohead.
Because it’s not necessarily about who is playing, but what they’re playing. It’s rock and roll, and despite what smartasses over the years keep saying, it’s not dead.
It’s pretty damn old, and it’s not pretty (take a close look at the cover of the latest issue of Rolling Stone). But rock and roll is still alive because we want it to be. The footsoldiers of rock and roll are sticking around because we want them to – the audience changes more than the artists, and as we discover new acts we like, we also go back and appreciate the past. My kids know more about the Beatles and the Stones and the Who than I ever did, when I was a teenager and those boys had brand-new songs on the radio every day.
Women seem to know better, they know when it’s time to fade away – although you can make a pretty good case for rockers like Joan Jett and Bonnie Raitt being here for quite a while. Pop artists are another thing entirely: Madonna has well overstayed her welcome and the decline of Katy Perry, Britney Spears, et. al. won’t be pretty.
Perhaps it’s best just not to think about these things. We’re all going to get to the end of the trail – literally and figuratively – one day. Rock and roll is here to distract us from that brutal truth, to keep us dancing until we can’t any more.
So. The Rolling Stones may tour next year? Don’t know about you, but I’m gonna buy a ticket. For a few hours, I’m gonna be young again.
One of the greatest songwriters and singers in rock and roll, Sir Paul McCartney turns 70 today (June 18). With the Beatles and later as a solo performer and bandleader, McCartney created some of the best (and worst) music in rock and roll history. He isn’t as cool today as he was in the 1960s or in the early part of the 1970s, but even at the twilight of his career McCartney is still a formidable talent.
In 1965 McCartney wrote “Yesterday,” which the Guinness Book of World Records says is the most covered song ever. It has been covered more than 3,000 times and in the 20th century alone the song was performed more than 7 million times.
Here you have a handful of tunes to represent Sir Paul’s long and fruitful career. McCartney may be rather unfairly judged by his output over recent years, but most of this shit rocks. Happy birthday!
30 Days Out 