Author uncovers John Lennon's letters

More than 250 letters and cards sent by John Lennon to his family and friends are to be published for the first time.

Author Hunter Davies, who wrote the only official biography of The Beatles in the 1960s, is trying to track down every missive written by the singer.

 

"I've found a lot of letters that nobody's ever seen," he said.
Davies, whose book comes out next year, said it was the first time Lennon's widow Yoko Ono had given permission for his private letters to be published.
The author said there were "no dramatic revelations" but that the letters gave an insight into Lennon's life and his humour.
"You see him as a tortured soul," he said. "You see him being funny, you see him showing off, you see him depressed, you see him in different stages."
Davies has tracked down some correspondence through auction houses that have sold Lennon memorabilia over the years.
Relatives, members of the Beatles inner circle, memorabilia dealers and collectors have also given access to letters.
"His first reaction to any emotion, whether it was fury or amazement or hatred, was not really to go to the piano or the guitar," the author said of Lennon.
"He was just as likely to pick up a pen and write it. And he wrote such amusing letters.

A letter to Lennon's first wife Cynthia was auctioned at Christie's in 2006

"When he wrote a letter or a postcard to somebody, he saw it as a challenge to write a unique piece for them and to amuse them and respond to their humour."
Mr Davies was speaking at the annual Beatles Convention in Liverpool, part of International Beatle Week, which drew fans from around the world for tribute bands, talks, tours and a memorabilia fair.
The speakers also included Lennon's half-sister Julia Baird, who wrote the story of their family in her memoir Imagine This: Growing Up With My Brother John Lennon.
She said she had to set the record straight after being confronted by inaccuracies in accounts by Beatles experts.
"When I die I will know that I didn't let my mother's name be sullied and do nothing about it," she told the BBC.
"I was exasperated for a long, long time, and then I thought, you've got to do something with that energy. So I decided to write."
The event also saw John Lennon's original band return to the high school where they founded the group that would become The Beatles.
On Saturday, The Quarrymen performed in the school hall at Quarry Bank School, now called Calderstones School, where they played with Lennon as teenagers in the 1950s.
Banjo player Rod Davis - who was replaced by Paul McCartney in the band - said: "It was great fun.
"The school hall looks even better than I remember it 50-odd years ago. We actually played on that stage for a couple of school dances. So it was pretty authentic really."
 
--By Ian Youngs Entertainment reporter, BBC News

McCartney & Turpentine? 10 Things You Might Not Know About Sir Paul

Few lives have been as thoroughly documented as the life of Paul McCartney. Biographies – both of The Beatles and Sir Paul – number in the hundreds, many filled with minute details about the public and private life of the former Beatle. Still, we managed to unearth a few interesting tidbits that may have eluded all but the most avid fans. Feel free to chime in, in the comments section, with interesting McCartney facts we might have missed.
10. The artist who showed him the option to play guitar left-handed was… Slim Whitman.
McCartney’s father bought him a trumpet for McCartney’s 14^th birthday, but the young lad had his dad exchange it for a cheap acoustic. The future Beatle struggled mightily with the instrument until he happened upon a photograph of Slim Whitman, the country yodeler who played guitar lefty-style. McCartney flipped his guitar, modified the string setup, and soon wrote his first song, a ditty titled “I Lost My Little Girl.”
9. Long before the edict came down from Brian Epstein, McCartney himself insisted that he and Lennon be nattily attired.
In the very first show McCartney did with The Quarrymen, he outfitted the band in matching shirts and string ties. Furthermore, to set himself and Lennon apart from the others, he came up with the idea that the two frontmen should wear matching cream-colored blazers. All of 15 at the time, McCartney muffed his first turn in the spotlight when he botched his featured guitar solo on the Arthur Smith tune, “Guitar Boogie.”
8. “Yesterday” is the most recorded song in history. But nipping at its heels is a song by… Tony Orlando and Dawn.
According to Guinness World Records, more than 1,600 different cover versions of “Yesterday” have been recorded to date. The popular standard, “Stardust,” ranks second, with more than 1,500 recorded versions. Incredibly, however, the 1973 Tony Orlando and Dawn hit, “Tie a Yellow Ribbon Round the Ole Oak Tree,” rates nearly as high, with well over 1,000 recorded versions out there, somewhere.
7. It was he who salvaged The Beatles’ legendary summit with Elvis Presley.
While in Los Angeles in 1965, The Beatles went to Elvis’s house in Bel Air to meet The King for the first time. According to McCartney biographer Peter Ames, Lennon irritated Presley with talk of Vietnam and by flirting with Elvis’s wife, Priscilla. McCartney saved the day with the words, “Can we play some music?” An impromptu jam ensued (with Elvis on bass) wherein the group played a clutch of Presley hits.
6. The only instance in which McCartney has utilized a string quartet, other than on “Yesterday,” was on a tribute song he wrote for John Lennon.
String sections have been employed on lots of McCartney’s songs, of course, both with the Beatles and post-Beatles. But with the exception of “Yesterday,” the only time McCartney enlisted a string quartet was on “Here Today,” the moving remembrance of John Lennon he wrote for his 1982 Tug of War album. Tug of War also marked McCartney’s reunion with George Martin, who produced the disc.
5. One of the first bands he tried to sign to Apple Records was… Chicago.
During a trip to Los Angeles in the spring of 1968, when McCartney was trying to get the newly launched Apple Corps off the ground, he went to the Whisky a Go Go to take in a B.B. King show. An upstart group called Chicago Transit Authority happened to be on the bill as well. Impressed, McCartney tried to recruit them as an Apple band, but alas, the group were already in talks with Columbia Records.
4. His favorite band at the dawn of 1965 was… The Who.
Released in January 1965, The Who’s “I Can’t Explain” impressed McCartney to the point that he proclaimed The Who his favorite band. Coming at a time when groups like Herman’s Hermits and Wayne Fontana and the Mindbenders were dominating the charts, McCartney’s proclamation was remarkably prescient. Throughout that year, The Who would assail the singles charts with soon-to-be classics like “Anyway Anyhow Anywhere” and “My Generation.”
3. Before they became Wings, McCartney’s post-Beatles band nearly became… a paint thinner.
In August 1971, when he was trying to get his post-Beatles band off the ground, McCartney was having a terrible time coming up with a name for the nascent group. Among the top name-candidates floated were The Dazzlers and, for reasons unknown, Turpentine. Alas, while praying for his wife, Linda, as she was giving birth to their daughter, the image of “wings” kept springing to mind.
2. He began reversing The Beatles’ “Lennon-McCartney” songwriting designation as early as 1976.
Although The Beatles first album, Please Please Me, featured songs credited to “McCartney-Lennon,” McCartney famously acceded to pressure to henceforth adopt the designation, “Lennon-McCartney.” But when Wings released their live triple-album, Wings Over America, in 1976, McCartney elected to designate the five featured Beatles songs as “McCartney-Lennon” compositions. He continued the practice on other post-Beatles albums.
1. His 1980 hit, “Coming Up,” was a prime factor in John Lennon’s decision to get back into music.
This charming ditty, from McCartney’s homespun 1980 album, McCartney II, was first heard by Lennon as he was traveling with his assistant, Fred Seaman. The next morning, Lennon confessed to Seaman that he couldn’t get the song’s distinctive riff out of his head. Seaman later said the track stirred the muse in Lennon. “If Paul was writing decent music,” Seaman wrote, in his memoir, “John felt compelled to take up the challenge.”
 ---gibson.com

First Beatles Club In Cuba Opens

Beatlemania has made its way to Havana, Cuba with the opening of the country's own version of the Yellow Submarine Club.

The club in honor of the Beatles—whose music was outlawed by dictator Fidel Castro for years-has been opened by the Cultural Ministry, who charge $2.50 for entry, as part of a push to revitalize nightlife in the country's capital. The club features the band's music, Beatles-inspired memorabilia and posters on the walls, and waiters in black vests.
A report in Britain's Daily Mail newspaper noted that "queues formed outside the club to hear the house band play hits including 'Dear Prudence' and 'Let it Be.' And as the music plays, there are guitars and Beatles lyrics on the walls of the bright yellow and blue interior."
A Cuban fan of the club told the Havana Journal: "You don't understand. This music, it used to be banned."
The legalization of the Beatles' music came after Castro attended a concert by the Manic Street Preachers.

by RTT Staff Writer
    rttnews.com