“It’s rip-roaring, infectious stuff, with the accent on beat throughout,” wrote Derek Johnson in the New Musical Express. “Beatles For Sale is going to sell, sell, sell. It is easily up to standard and will knock out pop fans, rock fans, R&B and Beatles fans,” predicted Melody Maker’s Chris Welch. Nevertheless, the Fab Four’s fourth […]
What John Lennon described as “the most miserable sessions on earth” were recalled by George Harrison as “the low of all time”. Yet, while such statements may have accurately reflected their respective mindsets, they also helped fuel widespread misconceptions about The Beatles’ January ’69 ‘Get Back’ project that evolved into the ‘Let It Be’ film […]
Such was the growing British interest surrounding The Beatles by mid-1963 that, on 1st July, fans gathered outside the EMI Studios on Abbey Road where the group was recording both sides of its next single: ‘She Loves You’ and ‘I’ll Get You’. Since the late-Sixties, ‘She Loves You’ has been short-changed; dismissed by many as […]
How, when and where did our passion for the Fab Four first get ignited? What form did it take and how has it evolved, personally and professionally? Our friend Mark Lewisohn, the group’s foremost biographer, joins us for an informal chat recorded at Erik’s home studio that provides perspective and reminiscences from both sides of […]
It was a new age: the young were going to rule the world—well, parts of it. And they were certainly taking hold of the music business… or so they thought. 1967 was a halcyon year in the annals of psychedelic rock and the counterculture movement on both sides of the Atlantic. Yet, high hopes and […]
During a taped business meeting attended by three Beatles and Neil Aspinall while Ringo was away – likely in mid-September ‘69, a month before that in which John would say he wanted “a divorce” from the group – JL remarked, “Alright, let’s move on. We’ll do another album. We’ll all do four songs. How’s that? […]
There’s a notion that American popular music was in the doldrums when The Beatles first touched down in New York City. The original rock ‘n’ rollers had either gone soft (Elvis Presley), gone to jail (Chuck Berry), gone into the church (Little Richard), gone with their 13-year-old cousin (Jerry Lee Lewis) or gone from this […]
At the suggestion of press officer Tony Barrow, The Beatles ended their first year of national fame by thanking the members of their UK fan club with a flexi-disc single containing a specially recorded Christmas message. So began an annual tradition that not only endured as long as they were together, but also mirrored and […]
“There is something magical about watching a man who has lost himself find his way back home,” ‘Eye’ magazine’s John Landau commented when reviewing Elvis’s 1968 ‘Comeback Special’. “He sang with the kind of power that people no longer expect of rock ‘n’ roll singers. He moved his body with a lack of pretension and […]
This is a new phase STTS episode… Essential to the concept of the ‘International White Album Symposium’ at Monmouth University, New Jersey, was that we recorded the show in front of an audience, revisiting and merging the much-discussed topics of Episodes #2 and #4 with a couple of our mates: celebrated Beatles author Mark Lewisohn […]