On April 11, 1963—54 years ago today—the Beatles released their third single, “From Me to You” b/w “Thank You Girl.” With the group following closely on the heels of “Please Please Me” with yet another UK chart-topper, “From Me to You” proved to be an early success in what would eventually come to be known […]
Everything Fab Four: The Beatles As “Plagiarists Extraordinaires”
The evidence of the Beatles’ musical borrowings was hidden in plain sight. There may be no more influential—and, at times, vexed—musical relationship than the Beatles’ artistic debt to Chuck Berry, who recently passed away at age 90. As John Lennon remarked way back in 1972 as he introduced the legendary guitarist on the Mike Douglas […]
Everything Fab Four: Ray Connolly’s Being Elvis
Ray Connolly’s Being Elvis: A Lonely Life is a revelation. In many ways, it is the Elvis Presley biography that we’ve always needed—the one that takes us deep inside the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll’s dizzying highs and soul-crushing lows. Published in conjunction with the 40th anniversary of Presley’s untimely death, Being Elvis traces the […]
Everything Fab Four: Sprinkling “Flowers In The Dirt”
“My Brave Face” clearly stands as the high point of McCartney’s post-Beatles songwriting partnerships. As the 10th and latest release in the Paul McCartney Archive Collection, Flowers in the Dirt makes for an interesting, if dubious installment. The previous entries have included a spate of Wings classics like Band on the Run and Wings Over […]
Everything Fab Four: Love, Love, Love—The Beatles and Saint Valentine’s Day
Saint Valentine’s Day’s longstanding associations with romantic love find their origins in fourteenth-century courtly love traditions. For the twentieth-century Beatles, the trials and tribulations of romantic love were their stock-in-trade—particularly during the band’s early years. Back in the heady days of Beatlemania, Lennon and McCartney mined romantic love for all its worth, celebrating the first […]