Two Beatle-related Second-hand Finds

Posted on March 15, 2015 by beatlesblogger

A couple of weeks back we got the chance to re-visit the harbour city of Newcastle in New South Wales. We’ve previously scored some Beatle goodness there (click here, and here) and this time was no different.

The first item came from Rices Bookshop on Hunter Street:

The Long and Winding Road – An Intimate Guide to the Beatles is a soft cover book (124 pages) by Ted Greenwald*. Published in 1995 in the USA, it details the history of the band from different perspectives. There are biographies, discographies, details of major stage appearances, films, significant books, as well as details about Beatle family and friends. As you can see, the layout inside is rudimentary, but there is a lot of information here:

The book is mostly chronological and there are lots of Beatle photographs, record cover images, and examples of memorabilia inside:

Just up the road from Rices is the Indigo Bookshop. They usually only sell second-hand books, but this visit they also had some boxes of used LP’s on display which we’d not seen before. In one box we found this little Beatle-related rarity:

As you can see this example has some water damage to the cover (which looks worse in the photo than in reality), but the vinyl itself is in mint condition. Denny Laine of course was a long-time McCartney collaborator and member of Wings. It’s no surprise then that Paul and Linda McCartney feature on a number of tracks of this 1984 solo album by Laine. Also represented are fellow ex-Wings members Steve Holly, Denny Seiwell, Lawrence Juber and Henry McCullough.

The song ‘Send Me the Heart’ was co-written by Laine and McCartney in 1974 and has Paul on bass. It was recorded during the same Nashville Wings sessions for ‘Junior’s Farm’.

‘I Would Only Smile’ was made at the same time as the sessions for the McCartney/Wings release Red Rose Speedway (1972). Similarly ‘Weep for Love’ was an out-take from the recording sessions for the Wings 1979 LP Back to the Egg. It features backing vocals by Paul and Linda.

So, once again the second-hand stores of Newcastle come up trumps!

* Ted Greenwald is also the author of The Beatles Companion – The Fab Four in Film, Performance, Recording and Print, published in 1992:

Double Fantasy – Lennon & Ono in Vanity Fair Magazine

Posted on March 14, 2015 by beatlesblogger

For those of us not well-heeled enough to shell out A$870 (for the standard edition), or A$1933 (for the deluxe art edition), perhaps this Vanity Fair magazine slideshow of images from a new book by photographer Kishin Shinoyama will just have to do….

Double Fantasy: John Lennon and Yoko Ono is published by Taschen Books:

The Taschen site has some additional images in a slideshow, too.

Shinoyama’s 800 images were captured in just two days in 1980 – during the period John Lennon and Yoko Ono were in recording sessions for their album Double Fantasy. It was Shinoyama’s images that were used for the record and CD cover, front and rear:

And also for 1884’s Milk and Honey:

Ringo’s “Postcards From Paradise” Lyric Video

Posted on March 7, 2015 by beatlesblogger

Lots of Beatle song references here…..

Of course it’s not the first time Ringo has featured the Beatles and postcards.

Ringo Starr’s new album Postcards From Paradise will be released March 31. Sounding good!

McCartney at Rollins College – Full Video

Posted on February 28, 2015 by beatlesblogger

The Beatles in the News

Posted on February 21, 2015 by beatlesblogger

Stumbled across a blog site that takes an interesting approach to Beatle history.

The Beatles in the News is just that – a site where multiple, random articles from across the decades and from all over the world are aggregated and re-published daily.

There are newspaper and magazine articles, concert reviews, TV news, and advertisements. It’s not only about the Beatles as a group but also as solo artists. Around 500 items from the past are uploaded every month.

One of the posts from January 23 this year caught our attention. It features – in full – a special colour supplement produced by the iconic Australian Women’s Weekly magazine in March, 1964 at the very height of Beatlemania:Of course, being a “women’s magazine” from the day meant you had to have a section dedicated to what to cook for that special Beatles party:

Just love those mop-top muffins with the chocolate hairdo’s! And also how to dress in Beatle fashion:

Fantastic stuff.

With this site you never know from day-to-day just what gems might pop up.

For anyone interested in the Beatles The Beatles in the News is well worth visiting regularly. You never know what you might find.

Eight Arms to Hold You – A Book Celebrating the Beatles “Help”

Posted on February 8, 2015 by beatlesblogger

Crowdsourcing (or kick-starting) has been defined as “…the process of obtaining needed services, ideas, or content by soliciting contributions from a large group of people, and especially from an online community, rather than from traditional employees or suppliers…” and it’s become all the rage as a way to get new projects of all sorts off the ground.

For example a friend just crowdsourced A$10,000 in funds from fans and well-wishers to help pay for studio time to record her new album. Heck, Neil Young even used it to back the multi-million dollar development of Pono, a new high-definition digital playback system.

Now comes an idea for a crowdsourced Beatle book called Eight Arms to Hold You – The Forgotten Archives:It’s called Eight Arms to Hold You because that was the working title of the 1965 Beatle film now better known as Help!.

2015 marks the 50th anniversary of the movie’s release.

Cue the specialist archival restoration publishing company, Archivum which has launched an ambitious plan to produce a limited edition, high-quality book detailing the making of that historic film – using as its centrepiece a huge cache of rare and previously unseen photographs taken during the making of the film. But to pull it off they need the help of Beatles fans around the world to pre-order the book in a variety of forms. Collectors and keen Beatle fans can help contribute to the creation of a unique, limited fan edition, with every pledger who pre-orders the first edition being immortalised with their name in the credits.

Through direct-to-fan site, Pledge Music there’s also the opportunity to directly play a part in the content, with the best stories, memorabilia and fans photographs being included. In addition, pledgers also gain the chance to attend book launches at the legendary Cavern Club and other famous Beatles venues. Alongside the collector memorabilia contributions will be great, previously unseen photos like these lavishly sprinkled throughout:

The book will have over 250 photographic pages, featuring fully restored colour and black and white photographs. Find out the full details at pledge music.com

‘Only One’ Video by Kanye (featuring Paul McCartney) Goes Live

Posted on February 4, 2015 by beatlesblogger

The other collaboration project Paul McCartney has been involved with is with Kanye West (see his team up with Rihanna, too).

West has released a video to accompany the song ‘Only One’. It’s a Spike Jonze-directed home video of the rapper and his daughter, North, walking around a misty field:

I Want to Hold Your Hand – Beatles Rare Japanese Promo CD

Posted on February 2, 2015 by beatlesblogger

When we posted on last year the Beatles 5 CD Japan Box we were intrigued by a thin paper postcard included with he set. We can’t read Japanese, but it looked like you could fill out your details, attach a postage stamp and send off to receive an additional, limited edition CD single of ‘I Want to Hold Your Hand’ in a replica sleeve of the first Beatles Japanese vinyl 45 from 1964. The postcard looked like this:

Turns out we were correct. Only a few lucky Japanese Beatle fans were eligible to get what undoubtably will become a rare collectors item to add to their Japan Box box sets as the special offer/application postcard was valid only to purchasers of the box set who lived in Japan. The offer expired on July 9, 2014 – and even then it was like a ballot. Only some of those who applied got a copy.

We’ve been checking around the web to see if any had since come up for sale.

The big music collectables online site eil.com now has this listing for the rare CD single – but no copies are currently available: “The Beatles ‘I Want To Hold Your Hand’. Super rare 2014 Japanese only 1-track promotional only mono CD, only available to competition winners by sending a postcard from the Japanese Album box set, and was a lottery as to who receives a copy. The disc is printed with the similar design that featured on the 1964 legendary 7″ with the Odeon Records label, housed in a custom card wallet picture sleeve replicating the artwork from the single with ‘Sampler / Not For Sale / Promotional Use Only’ text on the front, whilst the back promotes the actual Japan Box release, comes with a two page Japanese press release. Another stunning promo from Japan that is sure to become very sought after and highly collectable SIC-9045).”

One copy was recently on Ebay – with an asking price of US$538.00. It was accompanied by these photographs which gave some more detail about the CD single:

So – this is indeed destined to become one very rare collectable. If anyone has one and wants to tell us how they got hold of it please get in touch!

Behind the Scenes of FourFiveSeconds – Rihanna, Kanye & McCartney

Posted on February 1, 2015 by beatlesblogger

Singer Rihanna has made a short behind the scenes video of the filming of her ‘FourFiveSeconds’ music clip, featuring Kanye West and Paul McCartney.

‘FourFiveSeconds’ is the first single from Rihanna’s still to be named upcoming album.

Different Photo Montage for Wings at the Speed of Sound

Posted on January 31, 2015 by beatlesblogger

In our last post we featured the two Best Buy editions of the recent Venus and Mars and Wings at the Speed of Sound Paul McCartney Archive Collection reissues.

Darienzo has pointed out that the photo montages of the band on the back of the 2014 reissued Speed Of Sound are not the same as those used for the original sleeve in 1976.

Here’s the original rear cover for the Wings at the Speed of Sound LP:

And here’s the 2014 Speed of Sound Archive Edition LP:

Not really sure why they felt the need to re-do all those photos…..

By the way, Mojo magazine last year had a very interesting article about the photo shoot for that rear cover, including these original images (by photographer Clive Arrowsmith) which were used to create the striking over-layed look of the five band members:

P.S. It was Clive Arrowsmith who took the famous Band on the Run front cover image:

Beatles Blog

Adventures in collecting Beatles music

Two Beatle-related Second-hand Finds

Double Fantasy – Lennon & Ono in Vanity Fair Magazine

Ringo’s “Postcards From Paradise” Lyric Video

McCartney at Rollins College – Full Video

Eight Arms to Hold You – A Book Celebrating the Beatles “Help”

‘Only One’ Video by Kanye (featuring Paul McCartney) Goes Live

I Want to Hold Your Hand – Beatles Rare Japanese Promo CD

Different Photo Montage for Wings at the Speed of Sound

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