| |
NAVIGATION
|
|
|
|
The Beatles
|
 Alrighty, this is my "Beatles Page" beacause The Beatles are frikin awesome. I know you probly don't want me to write their bio on this page, so i won't, but you should go read it somewhere else. It is very interesting and they were the founders of our music today, except opera, country, and classical. RIP to John and George, and to the deranged fan who killed him, know that you killed off one of the four founders of cool music. That is all. I love The Beatles |
|
|
Paul McCartney
|
 Here is timeline of Paul:
1942
James Paul McCartney is born in Liverpool on June 18th.
1956 Paul writes his first song, I Lost My Little Girl.
1957
Paul meets John Lennon at St. Peter's Church Fete, Woolton, Liverpool. He joins his first group, The Quarrymen and performs in his first gig at The New Clubmoor Hall, Liverpool, on October 18th.
1960
Formation of The Beatles, who play residencies in Hamburg and at The Cavern in Liverpool.
1961
First Beatles recordings issued in Germany, as the backing group for Tony Sheridan.
1962
The first Beatles Parlophone recording, Love Me Do, reaches number 17 in the British charts.
1963
The birth of Beatlemania. Please Please Me gives the group their first British Number 1. She Loves You cements their success. Please Please Me and With The Beatles albums released.
1964
First triumphant American tour. The Beatles perform at the Royal Command Performance and release their first film, A Hard Day's Night. Their single I Want To Hold Your Hand sells at the rate of 10,000 copies an hour in New York alone. Release of Hard Day's Night and Beatles For Sale albums.
1965
The Beatles are each awarded the MBE. They release their second film, Help! Their number 1 hits include I Feel Fine and Ticket To Ride. Release of the Help! and Rubber Soul albums.
1966
The Beatles perform their last public concert at Candlestick Park, San Francisco on August 29th. Eleanor Rigby and Paperback Writer are the group's singles hits. Their new album Revolver revolutionises the music world.
1967
The Beatles break more boundaries with the release of the Penny Lane/Strawberry Fields single. They top this with the release of the legendary album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. The Beatles perform on the first global telecast, playing All You Need Is Love, the anthem of a generation. Brian Epstein, The Beatles manager, dies. The group write and appear in the TV film Magical Mystery Tour.
1968
Formation of Apple Corps. The first single on the Apple label, Hey Jude, becomes the band's biggest singles hit, selling eight million copies in the UK & USA alone. The Beatles release their third film, the cartoon Yellow Submarine, and their only double album, The Beatles (The White Album).
1969
Paul McCartney marries photographer Linda Eastman. The Beatles release the Abbey Road album and the Get Back single. The group play live for the last time, staging an impromtu concert on the roof of the Apple building in central London. A daughter, Mary, is born to Paul and Linda.
1970
The Beatles' fourth and final film, Let It Be, is released. The Let It Be single and album of the same title top the US charts. The dissolution of Apple sees the break-up of The Beatles. Paul releases his first solo album, McCartney.
|
|
|
George Harrison
|
 February 1942
Born in Wavertree, Liverpool
1950s
Passes his 11-plus and wins a place at the Liverpool Institute, one of the city's leading grammar schools where he meets Paul McCartney, who lived nearby
1958
McCartney invites Harrison to join his skiffle group, and after some resistance from John Lennon, he joins the band after impressing the others with his guitar playing
1959
Leaves the Liverpool Institute with only one exam pass, in art, because he was so into his music
1962
The Beatles had signed their recording contract with EMI. Harrison writes such songs as I Need You, Taxman, While My Guitar Gently Weeps, and Here Comes the Sun
1965
Meets and becomes a pupil of Ravi Shankar, the celebrated Indian sitar player and composer
1967-8
Harrison's interest in Indian music leads to the Beatles' famous entanglement with the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. By 1968, the Beatles were drifting apart. Both Lennon and McCartney antagonise Harrison who walks off the set of the film Let it Be after an argument
1970
Harrison is the first Beatle to start a successful solo career, selling 3m copies worldwide with his first album, All Things Must Pass
1971
Organises a benefit concert in New York following the floods in Bangladesh. The event sets a precedent for other big benefit concerts which would follow
1973
Releases the hit solo album Give Me Love (Give Me Peace on Earth)
1974
Tours the US with Ravi Shankar. Throughout the 1970s his interest grew in horticulture, rare books, writing, and car racing
1979
Harrison focuses on a new career as a film producer, and forms the company Handmade Films with Dennis O'Brien. The first success was Monty Python's The Life of Brian
1980
Lennon's death inspires Harrison to write the tribute song All Those Years Ago which he records with Paul and Ringo
1980s
Handmade create the acclaimed movies The Long Good Friday, Time Bandits, A Private Function, Mona Lisa, and Withnail and I
1986
Handmade's Madonna vehicle Shanghai Surprise flops and heralds a downturn in the company's fortunes - it is wound up in acrimonious circumstances with Harrison winning a $11m lawsuit against his former business partner
1987
Harrison returns to recording music. Harrision and Jeff Lyne of the Electric Light Orchestra co-produce the album Cloud Nine, which has two hit singles, Got My Mind Set On You (a US no 1), and When We Was Fab
Harrison also put together a new rock group, the Travelling Wilburys, with Bob Dylan, Jeff Lyne, Roy Orbison, and Tom Petty
1990s
Keeps a low public profile during the 1990s, living quietly in the lovingly restored 19th century mansion in Friars Park, Henley-on-Thames, with his second wife Olivia Arias and their 24-year-old son, Dhani 1998
Harrison, previously a heavy smoker, reveals he has undergone treatment for throat cancer
December 1999
Schizophrenic Beatles fan Michael Abram breaks into Harrison's home in Friars Park and badly injures him. Abram is detailed indefinitely at a secure psychiatric hospital
November 2001
Aged 58, he loses his fight against cancer, and the tributes pour in from all over the world
|
|
|
John Lennon
|
 b. 9 October 1940, Liverpool, England, d. 8 December 1980, New York City, New York, USA. John Winston Ono Lennon has been exhumed in print more than any other popular musical figure, including the late
Elvis Presley, of whom Lennon said that he "died when he went into the army". Such was the cutting wit of a deeply loved and sadly missed giant of the twentieth century. As a member of the world's most successful group ever, he changed lives, mostly for the better. Following the painful collapse of the Beatles, he came out a wiser but angrier person. Together with his wife Yoko Ono, he attempted to transform the world through non-musical means. To many they appeared as naïve crackpots; Ono in particular has been victim of some appalling insults in the press. One example shown in the film Imagine depicts the cartoonist Al Capp being both hostile and dangerously abusive. Their bed-in in Amsterdam and Montreal, their black bag appearances on stage, their innocent flirting with political activists and radicals, all received massive media attention. These events were in search of world peace, which regrettably was unachievable. What Lennon did achieve, however, was to educate us all to the idea of world peace. During the Gulf War of 1991, time and time again various representatives of those countries who were initially opposed to war (and then asked for a cease-fire), unconsciously used Lennon's words; "Give Peace A Chance". The importance of that lyric could never have been contemplated, when a bunch of mostly stoned members of the Plastic Ono Band sat on the floor of the Hotel La Reine and recorded "Give Peace A Chance", a song that has grown in stature since its release in 1969.
Lennon's solo career began a year earlier with Unfinished Music No 1 - Two Virgins. The sleeve depicted him and Ono standing naked, and the cover became better known than the disjointed sound effects contained within. Three months later Lennon continued his marvellous joke on us, with Unfinished Music No 2 - Life With The Lions. One side consisted of John and Yoko calling out to each other during her stay in a London hospital while pregnant. Lennon camped by the side of her bed during her confinement and subsequent miscarriage. Four months after "Give Peace a Chance", "Cold Turkey" arrived via the Plastic Ono Band, consisting of Lennon, Ono, Eric Clapton, Klaus Voormann and drummer Alan White. This raw rock song about heroin withdrawal was also a hit, although it failed to make the UK Top 10. Again, Lennon's incorrigible wit worked when he sent back his MBE to the Queen, protesting about the Biafran war, Britain supporting the American involvement in Vietnam and "Cold Turkey" slipping down the charts.
In February 1970, a freshly cropped-headed Lennon (who had legally changed his name to John Ono Lennon the previous April) was seen performing "Instant Karma' on the BBC Television programme Top Of The Pops; this drastic action was another anti-war protest. This Phil Spector-produced offering was his most melodic post-Beatles song to date and was his biggest hit thus far in the UK and the USA. The release of John Lennon - Plastic Ono Band in January 1971 was a shock to the system for most Beatles" fans. This stark "primal scream" album was recorded following treatment with Dr. Arthur Janov. It is as brilliant as it is disturbing. Lennon poured out much of his bitterness from his childhood and adolescence, neat and undiluted. The screaming "Mother" finds Lennon grieving for her loss and begging for his father. Lennon's Dylanesque "Working Class Hero" is another stand-out track; in less vitriolic tone he croons: "A working class hero is something to be, if you want to be a hero then just follow me". The irony is that Lennon was textbook middle-class and his agony stemmed from the fact that he wanted to be working-class. The work was a cathartic exorcism for Lennon, most revealing on "God", in which he voiced the heretical, "I don't believe in the Beatles . . . ", before adding, "I just believe in me, Yoko and me, and that's reality." More than any other work in the Lennon canon, this was a farewell to the past. The album was brilliant, and 20 or more years later, it is regarded as his finest complete work.
Lennono's most creative year was 1971. He released another strong single, "Power To The People". After his move to New York, the follow-up album Imagine was released in October. Whilst the album immediately went to number 1 internationally, it was a patchy collection. The attack on Paul McCartney in "How Do You Sleep?" was laboured over in the press and it took two decades before another track, "Jealous Guy", was accepted as a classic, and only then after Bryan Ferry's masterly cover version became a number 1 hit. Lennon's resentment towards politicians was superbly documented in "Gimme Some Truth" when he spat out, "I'm sick and tired of hearing things from uptight, short-sighted, narrow-minded hypocrites". The title track, however, remains as one of his greatest songs. Musically "Imagine" is extraordinarily simple, but the combination of that simplicity and the timeless lyrics make it one of the finest songs of the century.
A Christmas single followed in December, "Happy Christmas (War Is Over)", another song destined for immortality and annual reissue. Again, an embarrassingly simple message: "War is over if you want it". The following year's Some Time In New York City was recorded with the Plastic Ono Band and the New York-based Elephant's Memory. This double set contained a number of political songs, and was written during the peak of Lennon's involvement with hippie-radical, Jerry Rubin. Lennon addresses numerous problems with angry lyrics over deceptively melodic songs. The lilting and seemingly innocent "Luck Of The Irish" is one example of melody with scathing comment. The album's strongest track is yet another song with one of Lennon's statement-like titles: "Woman Is The Nigger Of The World". Once again he was ahead of the game, making a bold plea for women's rights a decade before it became fashionable. The following year he embarked on his struggle against deportation and the fight for his famous "green card".
At the end of a comparatively quiet 1973, Lennon released Mind Games, an album that highlighted problems between him and Yoko. Shortly afterwards, Lennon left for his "lost weekend" and spent many months in Los Angeles in a haze of drugs and alcohol. During a brief sober moment he produced Nilsson's Pussycats. At the end of a dreadful year, Lennon released Walls And Bridges, which contained more marital material and a surprise US number 1, "Whatever Gets You Through The Night", a powerful rocker with Lennon sounding in complete control. That month (November 1974), he made his last ever concert appearance when he appeared onstage at Madison Square Garden with Elton John. That night Lennon was reunited with Ono and, in his words, "the separation failed". Rock 'N' Roll was released the next year; it was a tight and energetic celebration of many of his favourite songs, including "Slippin' And Slidin'", "Peggy Sue", and a superb "Stand By Me". The critics and public loved it and the album reached number 6 on both sides of the Atlantic.
Following the birth of their son Sean Lennon, the singer became a house husband, while Ono looked after their not inconsiderable business interests. Five years later, a new album, Double Fantasy, was released to a relieved public and went straight to number 1 virtually worldwide. The following month, with fans still jubilant at Lennon's return, he was suddenly brutally murdered by disturbed fan Mark Chapman outside his apartment building in Manhattan. Almost from the moment that Lennon's heart stopped in the Roosevelt Hospital the whole world reacted in unprecedented mourning, with scenes usually reserved for royalty and world leaders. His records were re-released and experienced similar sales and chart positions to that of the Beatles' heyday. While all this happened, one could "imagine" Lennon calmly looking down on us, watching the world's reaction, and having a huge celestial laugh.
Lennon had a brilliant sense of humour and a deeply romantic heart. He could be cruel and unbelievably kind; he could love you one minute and destroy you with his tongue a few minutes later. Opinions as to his character are subjective. What is undeniable, is that the body of songs he created with Paul McCartney is the finest popular music catalogue ever known. His composition "Imagine" was voted one of the songs of the millennium, and for many of us has more power and meaning than any national anthem.
|
|
|
Ringo Starr
|
 When Ringo was born on July 7, 1940 in Liverpool, his parents, Richard Starkey and Elsie Gleave decided that Ringo should be named after his father. But his parents marriage did not last and Ringo and his mother had to move to a smaller house because of financial constraints. His mother remarried a few years later and Harry Graves became Ringos step father. It was Harry who bought Ringo his first drum set.
In 1959, Ringo officially joined a band called Rory Storm and the Raving Texans. It was around this time that Ringo received his nick name. Since Ringo used to wear many rings on his fingers, he was urged to adapt the moniker Ringo; it placed a western, cowboy spin to the word ring. He also decided to shorten his last name Starkey to Starr so that his drum solo act could be billed as Starr time. And thus the name Ringo Starr was born.
Later the group decided to change their name to Rory Storm and The Hurricanes. In 1960, the group went over to Hamburg to play at the Kaiserkeller and this was where Ringo became acquainted with The Beatles. In August of 1962, Ringo was asked to join The Beatles and he jumped at the opportunity.
Five years later, Ringo married his long time girlfriend Maureen Cox and they had three children together. When The Beatles finally split up in 1970, Ringo already had two solo albums under his belt; Beaucoups of Blues and Sentimental Journey. He went on to release a string of singles that were hits. Ringo also decided to act in the movies and dabbled in producing them as well.
The younger generation may know him as the magical character, Mr. Conductor in the PBS hit series Thomas The Tank Engine and Friends. He also appeared in made for tv movies like Alice in Wonderland. Ringo performed on the drums on a few songs for Paul McCartneys Pipes of Peace and George Harrisons Cloud Nine albums.
1989 saw the birth of Ringos first solo concert tour when he formed his own group called Ringo Starr and His All Starr Band; Ringo and The All Starr live music album was released the next year. This marked the first in a series of concert tours. The members in his All Starr Band would change from one world tour to another world tour. Currently Ringo is performing in his 6th world concert tour in the United States of America with his All Starr Band. The band members for this round are Jack Bruce, Eric Carmen, Dave Edmund, Simon Kirk and Mark Rivera.
Beatles fans attending his All Starr concert should be forewarned that the format for his concert is that Ringo performs a few of his own songs, and each of the band member takes a few turns singing and performing their own hits. Those who attend the concert hoping for renditions of Beatles songs may get disappointed, at the most a Beatles fan can expect is one Beatles song from Ringo.
|
|
Do not steal anything off this site
Make a
free website at Freewebs.com
| 
|
|
