Beatles
They say it's John's birthdayFriday, 09 October 2015![]() Not just a mere rock star but spiritual guru, peace campaigner, political icon, thorn in the flesh of Richard Nixon and the CIA, and ultimately martyr. John Lennon, who would have been 75 today (9 October), has proved an impossible act to follow.... Read more... |
DVD: Danny CollinsFriday, 02 October 2015![]() Though packaged as a tale of an ageing rock star, Danny Collins is really an autumnal comedy-drama about regret, redemption and trying to seize life's second chances. As the title character, a cheesy AOR veteran pitched somewhere between Neil... Read more... |
Hot August Night: The Beatles at Shea StadiumSaturday, 15 August 2015![]() Half a century ago today, on a warm August Sunday night in New York, The Beatles played a 30-minute concert in a baseball field. Home to the New York Mets the venue was called the William A Shea Municipal Stadium and had opened in spring 1964.In... Read more... |
theartsdesk on Vinyl: Volume 7 - Northern Soul, The Fall and moreFriday, 17 July 2015![]() One of vinyl’s more controversial corners is the postal subscription club. Sign up to one of these and, for a fee, a number of records are sent to your home. The draw is supposed to be exclusivity of content or simply trusting the taste of a... Read more... |
The Story of The Beatles' Last SongThursday, 01 January 2015![]() Summer was nigh. In May 1969 the Lennons bought Tittenhurst Park, an 85-acre estate in the same stockbroker belt as John’s first Beatles home, Kenwood. It needed work and a while would pass before they moved in. At EMI, John and Yoko busied... Read more... |
CD: The Flaming Lips 2014 - With a Little Help from My FwendsWednesday, 29 October 2014![]() Choosing the cutesy-pie “Fwends” – as The Flaming Lips have before – for the title rather than "friends" instantly suggests this track-by-track revisit to The Beatles’ Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band isn’t going to be entirely... Read more... |
Classical CDs Weekly: Gallay, Emma Johnson, Wihan QuartetSaturday, 20 September 2014![]() Jacques-François Gallay: Chamber music for natural horn ensemble Les Chevaliers de Saint Hubert (Resonus)Shove a funnel in one end of a length of hose pipe, and explore the quirks and thrills of the natural horn. Namely that most of the low notes... Read more... |
Cilla, ITVTuesday, 16 September 2014![]() With Cilla Black still fighting fit and eminently telly-worthy at 71, it feels a bit odd to find a three-part dramatisation of her life popping up on ITV. Black apparently gave the project her blessing and has hailed Sheridan Smith's performance in... Read more... |
Hobson's Choice, Open Air Theatre, Regent's ParkWednesday, 18 June 2014![]() Director Nadia Fall has taken that patriarchal purveyor of footwear Henry Horatio Hobson and his family out of their natural habitat - a traditional proscenium arch theatre - and into a different time, the 1960s. Does this staple of British drama,... Read more... |
The One and Only Cilla Black, ITVThursday, 17 October 2013“I hate surprises!” joked Cilla Black, for 20 years host of the family reunion show Surprise, Surprise, in ITV’s toothsome tribute to her 50 years in showbusiness. She needn’t have worried, for there were no shocks in this clean-heeled gallop... Read more... |
Extract: George Harrison - Behind the Locked DoorSaturday, 12 October 2013![]() Following the completion of the White Album, and the conclusion of recording sessions in Los Angeles with new Apple signing Jackie Lomax, in late November 1968 George Harrison and his wife Pattie Boyd departed for Woodstock in upstate New York. They... Read more... |
10 Questions for Musician Yoko OnoSaturday, 21 September 2013![]() Normally we introduce these interviews with a few biographical details about the subject. With Yoko Ono, however, there hardly seems any point: she’s as much a part of late 20th-century history as an musician. But if the whole world knows who she is... Read more... |
