McCartney Joins Starr Onstage For Birthday Surprise

Any dream of a Beatles reunion was of course shattered by Lennon's senseless murder in 1980. We did get as good of a reunion possible with the Anthology project. The DVD bonus features of the three surviving Beatles jamming is pretty priceless even though they seem a little tentative around each other.

Of course with Harrison's death a few years later, we have half the band dead. Just like The Who as a matter of fact. So we take whatever we can get when it comes to reunions.

Which leads me to this post. Ringo turned 70 this week. He is on his umpteenth All-Starr band tour and who joined as a surprise guest in New York? The one and only Sir Paul. As reported by Spinner:

All Ringo Starr asked for as a 70th birthday gift on July 7 was "peace and love" from all his fans around the world. However, he was the one who delivered a big birthday surprise to the wildly cheering attendees at his celebratory concert at Radio City Music Hall in New York when Paul McCartney joined the legendary Beatles drummer onstage, fronting Ringo's All-Starr Band for a joyous encore appropriately consisting of the Fab Four's 'Birthday.' Sir Paul, clad in a tight black suit and skinny tie right out of 1964, waggled his iconic Höfner bass in time while delivering his full-throated take on the song. Starr merrily bashed away behind him on his kit alongside his drummer son Zak Starkey, with Joe Walsh joining in to supply guitar pyrotechnics.

And thanks to the Internet (God bless the Internet), here it is:

Rolling Stone Has Format Makeover

Got my Rolling Stone in the mail yesterday and thought it was a Nordstrom catalog for my wife! The publishers have shrunk the magazine size from the 10-by-12-inch size they have been using since the early 80s, to a standard magazine format.

Unlike many of the other print publications dying on the vine, RS added more pages to accommodate the same amount of content and ads. And they put Obama on the cover for the third time in the last six months.

I have subscribed off and on since the mid 80s and have a love-hate with the magazine. As liberal as I am, even I have to question the tone of some of their political coverage. And I get sick of some of the new music and fashion fads they feel that they need to cover to sell to the newer generation.

But like SNL, RS has been around so long, it's an institution all its own. I have to say, I like the new format. It's fresh and doesn't take away from the content. Most importantly, I'll be reading that Obama interview. One thing is that RS usually asks pretty good questions in their interviews.

And speaking of Ringo Starr (non sequitur), he has gone off the deep end yet again with this bizarre video on his site, telling people not to send items for autographs anymore.

Well, as of October 20. You still have time to get something in the mail people!

WTF? Why October 20? Why so grumpy, Ringo?

1970 - What A Year for Beatles Fans

Between checking out the Lost Lennon Tapes, digging through years worth of Beatles bootlegs and re-buying early 70s Beatles solo albums Ram (McCartney), Plastic Ono Band and Imagine (Lennon) and All Things Must Pass (Harrison), I have to say, those of you who lived through 1970 had a hell of a year, musically.

Me, I turned two on the day that Jimi Hendrix died in 1970. (Oh and as a side story, according to the book The Beatles Complete Recording Sessions, the band recorded the song Birthday on the day I was born - no shit - look it up - 9-18-68).

Anyway, there was obvious uncertainty about the band's future in 1970. Let It Be the film and album were both issued in May. Anyone who has seen that movie can see that the writing was on the wall big time.

But in a bootleg interview with Harrison from 1970, he says the guys are all enjoying the freedom they have to record on their own (even giving McCartney's album a nice plug) and saying that he's sure they'll be back together soon to record a new group album. Of course that didn't happen.

Whatever the case, here is what people got in a 14-month period, full-length album wise, from the fab four:

--September 26, 1969 - Beatles - Abbey Road
--March 27, 1970 - Ringo Starr - Sentimental Journey
--April 17, 1970 - Paul McCartney - McCartney
--May 8, 1970 - Beatles - Let it Be
--May 20, 1970 - Beatles - Let it Be (the film)
--November 27, 1970 - George Harrison - All Things Must Pass (triple album)
--December 11, 1970 - John Lennon - Plastic Ono Band

Notable is how strong Lennon and Harrison's albums were. Lennon ripped the myth off of the Beatles and laid his soul bare on Plastic Ono, and Harrison had three albums worth of backlog to unleash on the world - and almost all of the non-jam songs are classic tunes.

McCartney's album is a surprising piece of crap. I have tried about ten times over the past 20 or so years to listen to it with fresh ears and the only two songs I can stand are Junk and Maybe I'm Amazed - and I prefer later versions of both to the originals.

In the Lost Lennon Tapes, Lennon tells Rolling Stone that he was surprised how bad Paul's album is, and how happy he is about that, as he is self-admittedly very, very competitive.

Ram from March 1971 is better, and I really like all the Wings albums from Band on the Run all the way to the end. I guess it took Paul some time to pick up steam while the others hit the ground running but then petered out later. Paul was for sure the 'bad guy' in the early 70s, and I am sure the pressure was rough, with three Beatles vs. one. He admits this in the truly excellent Wingspan DVD.

A very cool post sent to me by Nedmusic asks the question, what if the band HAD done one more album in 1970 or 1971? Given that the songs would have to be from the 1969-1971 period, the writer put together a pretty cool "lost album" and goes into great detail as to why he chose what he chose (and what he didn't!)

Check that out here.