Set against a backdrop of world-changing historical and political events, Fire and Rain tells the extraordinary story of one pivotal year in the lives and music of four legendary artists, and reveals how these artists and their songs both shaped and reflected their times. Drawing on interviews, rare recordings, and newly discovered documents, acclaimed journalist David Browne “allows us to see—and to hear—the elusive moment when the '60s became the '70s in a completely fresh way” (Mark Harris, author of Pictures at a Revolution).
The Beatles' Abbey Road and Let It Be were the group's last recordings. Learn how the group began to unravel just as they attempted to return to their roots as a live performing band. For the first time, interviews with key participants provide insights into the "Fab Four's" final days. The inside story of the recording sessions is brought to life in rare photographs, documenting two of the best-selling rock albums of all time. Also included are critical reviews, a full discography, and list of bootlegs.
Music writer Womack delivers a fascinating, in-depth look at the creation of Abbey Road, the Beatles' penultimate album released 50 years ago.... Womack displays a detailed and insightful analysis that fans will hope he applies to the band's other albums.― Publishers Weekly Acclaimed Beatles historian Kenneth Womack offers the most definitive account yet of the writing, recording, mixing, and reception of Abbey Road. In February 1969, the Beatles began working on what became their final album together. Abbey Road introduced a number of new techniques and technologies to the Beatles' sound, and included "Come Together," "Something," and "Here Comes the Sun," which all emerged as classics. Womack's colorful retelling of how this landmark album was written and recorded is a treat for fans of the Beatles. Solid State takes readers back to 1969 and into EMI's Abbey Road Studio, which boasted an advanced solid state transistor mixing desk. Womack focuses on the dynamics between John, Paul, George, Ringo, and producer George Martin and his team of engineers, who set aside (for the most part) the tensions and conflicts that had arisen on previous albums to create a work with an innovative (and, among some fans and critics, controversial) studio-bound sound that prominently included the new Moog synthesizer, among other novelties. As Womack shows, Abbey Road was the culmination of the instrumental skills, recording equipment, and artistic vision that the band and George Martin had developed since their early days in the same studio seven years earlier. A testament to the group's creativity and their producer's ingenuity, Solid State is required reading for all fans of the Beatles and the history of rock 'n' roll.
(Super Easy Songbook). It's super easy! This series features accessible arrangements for piano, with simple right-hand melody, letter names inside each note, and basic left-hand chord diagrams. This edition includes 60 Beatles favorites: Across the Universe * All You Need Is Love * Blackbird * Come Together * Eight Days a Week * Eleanor Rigby * Get Back * Good Day Sunshine * A Hard Day's Night * Help! * Here Comes the Sun * Hey Jude * I Saw Her Standing There * I Want to Hold Your Hand * If I Fell * Let It Be * Michelle * Nowhere Man * Penny Lane * Revolution * Something * Ticket to Ride * We Can Work It Out * Yesterday * and many more.
(Piano/Vocal/Guitar Artist Songbook). Over 100 timeless hits from the Fab Four in piano/vocal/guitar arrangements, including: Across the Universe * All My Loving * Back in the U.S.S.R. * Blackbird * Can't Buy Me Love * Come Together * Don't Let Me Down * Eight Days a Week * Eleanor Rigby * The Fool on the Hill * Good Day Sunshine * Here Comes the Sun * Hey Jude * I Want to Hold Your Hand * In My Life * Let It Be * Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds * Michelle * Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown) * Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da * Penny Lane * Revolution * Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band * She Loves You * Ticket to Ride * Twist and Shout * When I'm Sixty-Four * Yellow Submarine * Yesterday * and more.
Hailed as one of the most in-depth portraits of a band ever presented, "Get Back" traces, minute-by-minute, every move that the Beatles made during the fateful month of January 1969.
Ringo: With a Little Help is the first in-depth biography of Beatles drummer Ringo Starr, who kept the beat for an entire generation and who remains a rock icon over fifty years since the Beatles took the world by storm. With a Little Help traces the entire arc of Ringo's remarkable life and career, from his sickly childhood to his life as The World's Most Famous drummer to his triumphs, addictions, and emotional battles following the breakup of the Beatles as he comes to terms with his legacy. Born in 1940 as Richard Starkey in the Dingle, one of Liverpool's most gritty, rough-and-tumble neighborhoods, he rose from a hardscrabble childhood – marked by serious illnesses, long hospital stays, and little schooling – to emerge, against all odds, as a locally renowned drummer. Taking the stage name Ringo Starr, his big break with the Beatles rocketed him to the pinnacle of worldwide acclaim in a remarkably short time. He was the last member of the Beatles to join the group but also the most vulnerable, and his post-Beatles career was marked by chart-topping successes, a jet-setting life of excess and alcohol abuse, and, ultimately, his rebirth as one of rock's revered elder statesman.
The recording sessions for Let It Be actually began as rehearsals for a proposed return to live stage work for the Beatles, to be inaugurated in a concert at a Roman amphitheatre in Tunisia. In this thoroughly researched book, Steve Matteo delves deep into the complex history of these sessions. He talks to a number of people who were in the studio with the Beatles, recording the sights and sounds of the band at work bringing to life a period in the Beatles' career that was creative and chaotic in equal measure.