Egil’s 5 choices:
1. John Lennon -Happy Christmas (War Is Over):
Beatles
Nov 29: Concert for George 2002
On November 29, 2002, a year after his death, a tribute concert for George Harrison was held at Royal Albert Hall. Friends and family gathered to play his songs, and it was an impressive, if predictable, roster:
Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, Billy Preston, Tom Petty, and Eric Clapton, who also served as musical director, took center stage, but George’s son Dhani Harrison was also there, as was Ravi Shankar’s daughter Anoushka, early British rock & roller Joe Brown, and Gary Brooker. Unlike many all-star lineups, everybody had a close personal connection to George.
Who’s your favorite songwriter – Lennon or McCartney ?
This post is all about the songs…
Although the songs where credited Lennon-McCartney / McCartney-Lennon, one of them usually contributed more than the other.
Many books, interviews, articles & not at least the artwork itself have helped us get a sense of who was the “mastermind” behind each song. Most of them where collaborations.. but usually one of them was more to “blame”.
Some important books on this subject:
- Ian Macdonald – Revolution in the head
- William J. Dowlding – Beatlesongs
- Mark Lewisohn – The Complete Beatles Chronicle
- The Beatles – The Beatles Anthology
- Bård Ose – Beatles hele livet (Norwegian)
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August 15: The Beatles played at Shea Stadium in 1965
August 15: The Beatles played at Shea Stadium in 1965
“Now, ladies and gentlemen, honoured by their country, decorated by their Queen, loved here in America, here are The Beatles!”
– Ed Sullivan
The Shea Stadium concert on 15 August was record-breaking and one of the most famous concert events of its era. Over 55,000 people saw the concert. “Beatlemania” was at one of its highest marks at the Shea show. Film footage taken at the concert shows many teenagers and women crying, screaming, and even fainting. The crowd noise was such that security guards can be seen covering their ears as The Beatles enter the field.
The Beatles interview before Shea Stadium:
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August 6: The Beatles released “Help!” in 1965
.. a big step forward, exploring doubt, loneliness, alienation, adult sexual longing, acoustic guitars, electric piano, bongos, castanets, and the finest George songs known to man. … Help! was utterly ruined in its U.S. version, which cut half the songs and added worthless orchestral soundtrack filler, so it’s always been underrated. But Help! is the first chapter in the astounding creative takeoff the Beatles were just beginning: the soulful bereavement of “Ticket to Ride,” the impossibly erotic gentleness of “Tell Me What You See,” the desperate falsetto and electric punch of “You’re Going to Lose That Girl.”
~rollingstone.com…. the album’s masterpiece is McCartney’s brooding, deceptively simple chamber-pop ballad “Yesterday.” … it’s compositionally complex, one of the first major pop songs to draw directly from classical music, juxtaposing acoustic guitar with a string quartet, shifting from minor to major chords. It set the stage for one of the most groundbreaking and innovative periods in The Beatles’ career, not to mention pop music in general.
~Mark Kemp (pastemagazine.com)
Help! – from a 6-song set filmed for British television in August of 1965:
From Wikipedia:
| Released | 6 August 1965 |
|---|---|
| Recorded | 15–19 February, 13 April, 10 May& 14–17 June 1965, EMI Studios, London |
| Genre | Rock |
| Length | 34:20 |
| Label | Parlophone |
| Producer | George Martin |
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July 17: Yellow Submarine the film was released in 1968
Yellow Submarine is a 1968 British-American animated musical fantasy comedy film inspired by the music of the Beatles.
The film was directed by animation producer George Dunning, and produced by United Artists and King Features Syndicate. Initial press reports stated that the Beatles themselves would provide their own character voices; however, aside from composing and performing the songs, the real Beatles participated only in the closing scene of the film, while their cartoon counterparts were voiced by other actors.
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