www.post-gazette.com
Paul McCartney 'feeling great' as he heads Consol Energy Center
By Scott Mervis / Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
July 3, 2014
Paul McCartney was off to a good start in 2014 before things went a little downhill.
Having wrapped up his 2013 touring just before Thanksgiving in Japan, he had the world stage in late January at the Grammy Awards. That’s also where they shot “The Night That Changed America: A Grammy Salute to The Beatles,” a star-studded CBS special that aired Feb. 9, the 50th anniversary of the band’s performance on “The Ed Sullivan Show.”
February and March were spent doing whatever rock ’n’ roll legends do, and then he got back on the road in late April for six dates in South America, including his first visits to Ecuador and Costa Rica.
If you held tickets for Monday’s show at Consol Energy Center, you may have gotten a shiver when the postponements started rolling in, beginning with the return trip to Japan in late May.
It was a “virus,” he said, and he apologized for “letting my fans down.” His management pointed out that, basically, he’s not Morrissey: “Paul has only ever had to reschedule a handful of shows in his entire career and so he is upset about this situation, he hates to let people down.”
The virus wiped out the seven concerts he had booked for June, leaving July up in the air until he released the cheerful video blog that he was “feeling great!” The Consol show is now the second one back, usually a good place to be, following the new tour opener in Albany, N.Y., Saturday.
This will be just the fourth chance for Pittsburghers to see him on our turf: Of course, there was the one and only Beatles show here at the Civic Arena on Sept. 14, 1964; the two shows in February 1990, on his first North American tour in 13 years; and his long-awaited return to christen Consol Energy Center Aug. 18-19, 2010.
The main thing new on this “Out There” tour is “New,” the album, released in October, that got him back to rock ’n’ roll after making the standards record, “Kisses on the Bottom,” the year before.
Don’t worry too much about it pushing out the Beatles songs. On that most recent date in Costa Rica, he played a 39-song set with four “New” songs (including “Queenie Eye,” which he played at the Grammys), 25 Beatles songs, six Wings songs and the rest from his solo catalog.
As anyone who has followed Mr. McCartney knows, when it comes to set lists, he’s a creature of habit, and when it comes to energy, he’s got an abnormal amount for 72.
Where: Consol Energy Center.
When: 8 p.m. Monday.
Tickets: Sold Out.
www.facebook.com/FansOnTheRun
July 7 2014
Soundcheck in Pittsburgh via Bob Gannon:
Didn't write them down but
Pittsburgh Jam
Matchbox
Queenie Eye
Alligator
Midnight Special
Ram On
Whole Lotta Shaking
C Moon
Lady Madonna
Bluebird
Flaming Pie
Things we said today
Drive my car
One after 909
Every Night
www.facebook.com/PaulMcCartneyOnTour
July 7 2014
Yellow Submarine for Ringo's birthday!! #OutThere #pittsburgh
www.facebook.com/john.fernandiniballesteros
July 7 2014
Paul McCartney in Consol Energy Center of Pittsburgh, PA,
Setlist : Paul McCartney today in Consol Energy Center of Pittsburgh, Pensilvania
Eight Days a Week
Save Us
Listen to What the Man Said
All My Loving
Let Me Roll It/Foxey Lady
Paperback Writer
My Valentine
Nineteen Hundred and Eighty Five
The Long and Winding Road
Maybe I'm Amazed
I've Just Seen a Face
Yellow Submarine
We Can Work It Out
Another Day
And I Love Her
Blackbird
Here Today
New
Queenie Eye
Lady Madonna
All Together Now
Lovely Rita
Everybody Out There
Eleanor Rigby
Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite!
Something
Ob-la-di, Ob-la-da
Band on the Run
Back in the USSR
Let it Be
Live and Let Die
Hey Jude
Encore 1:
Day Tripper
Hi Hi Hi
Get Back
Encore 2:
Yesterday
Helter Skelter
Golden Slumbers/Carry That Weight/The End
www. YouTube.com
Live and Let Die
Maybe I'm Amazed
www.liverpoolecho.co.uk
John Lennon and Yoko Ono's son Sean Lennon to play Liverpool gig with model girlfriend Charlotte Kemp Muhl
By Jade Wright
Jul 04 , 2014
Sean Lennon and his model girlfriend Charlotte Kemp Muhl are to play a Liverpool gig at the Kazimier.
Sean, who is John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s son, will play a show at the Wolstenholme Square venue with his band The Ghost Of A Sabre Tooth Tiger on Tuesday September 9 at The Kazimier.
The band was formed in 2008 by Sean and Charlotte, after they met at the Coachella Music Festival.
Sean says he knew then Charlotte would one day be his girlfriend, but due to the age difference – he’s 12 years her senior – they waited to begin dating.
Now they’ve brought their romantic partnership into the workplace and formed a duo, The Ghost Of A Saber Tooth Tiger.
“We’re named after a play I wrote when I was seven,” Charlotte has said. “Sean found it in a box under my bed when he was rifling through my things, which he shouldn’t have been.
“It was about a girl who goes into a room at the Natural History Museum, sees this old tiger, all taxidermy-ed up, touches it and brings it back to life. It was completely ridiculous.”
Charlotte was the youngest person to appear on the cover of prestigious fashion magazine Harper’s Bazaar and the face of campaigns by Donna Karan, Tommy Hilfiger and Dolce & Gabbana.
Despite living together and being ‘hopelessly in love’, Charlotte didn’t tell Sean about her musical talents for more than a year.
“She’d written a lot of stuff like screenplays and stories, but I never knew she played guitar and sang,” said Sean.
“Her best friend came to stay one weekend and they played me a bunch of songs they’d written when they were 14.
“I find it amazing in this day and age that someone had kept that so quiet, because everyone seems to show off their talents now. We started writing songs, at first because it was a way of spending more time together.”
Tickets are now on sale for £10 from http://www.seetickets.com/event/the-ghost-of-a-saber-tooth-tiger/the-kazimier/803350
Sean Lennon and girlfriend, model Charlotte Kemp. AP Photo/Thibault Camus
www.timesunion.com
PAUL McCARTNEY
'OUT THERE' U.S. TOUR 2014
July 5: Albany, NY - Times Union Center
Paul McCartney performs at the Times Union Center Saturday July 5, 2014, in Albany, NY. (John Carl D'Annibale / Times Union)
www.timesunion.com
McCartney returns to stage after hospitalization
By DAVID BAUDER, AP Entertainment Writer
Saturday, July 5, 2014
ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) — Paul McCartney returned to a concert stage Saturday after being sidelined for two months because of a virus, spinning out songs from the Beatles, Wings and a solo career that has spanned more than 50 years of rock 'n' roll.
"It's great to be back," said McCartney, who turned 72 two weeks ago. He looked none the worse for wear, putting on a show of just under three hours with 38 songs before finishing with the three-song medley that ends the "Abbey Road" album.
McCartney was briefly hospitalized in Tokyo in May because of the viral infection. The illness forced him to cancel a Japanese tour and a concert in South Korea and reschedule half a dozen June dates in the United States before resuming his "Out There" tour in Albany.
Before his illness, McCartney last performed May 1 in Costa Rica.
McCartney opened with the Beatles' "Eight Days a Week." He wore black jeans and a sky blue blazer. When he took the jacket off four songs in, he joked that it was the only wardrobe change of the evening.
The crowd-pleasing show contained a mix of expected hits like "Hey Jude" and "Let it Be," four songs from McCartney's latest album and a generous sampling from more obscure corners of his catalog, including the Beatles' songs "Lovely Rita" and "Being For the Benefit of Mr. Kite" and Wings work such as "Another Day" and "1985." Most of the 1980s and 1990s were passed over.
He paid tribute to the two late members of the Beatles, singing "Here Today" to former songwriting partner John Lennon, which McCartney described as the conversation they never had. He began playing George Harrison's song "Something" on the ukulele, and it built into a full band rendition.
McCartney also honored another late rock star, Jimi Hendrix, with an instrumental interlude of "Purple Haze."
McCartney's wife, Nancy, was on hand and he dedicated the song "My Valentine" to her. Perhaps one oblique reference to his absence was the new song, "On My Way to Work," which McCartney said he hadn't performed publicly before.
During his second encore, he brought a couple from Rochester onstage after the woman held up a sign saying her boyfriend wouldn't marry her until he met McCartney. After the man led the audience in a verse of "When I'm 64" to honor his age, he went to his knees and successfully proposed.
"And he booked us for the wedding," McCartney joked.
It's a busy year for McCartney, who marked the 50th anniversary of his first appearance on "The Ed Sullivan Show" this winter, which marked the beginning of Beatlemania in the United States. He has 19 U.S. shows scheduled, including one at Candlestick Park in San Francisco, where the Beatles made their final concert appearance in 1966.
The other surviving ex-Beatle, Ringo Starr, is also on the road this summer.
Sir Paul McCartney performs with his band during the “Out There" Tour at the Times Union Center on Saturday, July 5, 2014, in Albany, N.Y. (Photo by Hans Pennink/Invision/AP) (Hans Pennink, Hans Pennink/Invision/AP / Invision)
Sir Paul McCartney, left, performs with band member Brian Ray during the “Out There" Tour at the Times Union Center on Saturday, July 5, 2014, in Albany, N.Y. (Photo by Hans Pennink/Invision/AP) (Hans Pennink, Hans Pennink/Invision/AP / Invision)
Sir Paul McCartney, center, performs with his band during the “Out There" Tour at the Times Union Center on Saturday, July 5, 2014, in Albany, N.Y. (Photo by Hans Pennink/Invision/AP) (Hans Pennink, Hans Pennink/Invision/AP / Invision)
Sir Paul McCartney performs with his band during the “Out There" Tour at the Times Union Center on Saturday, July 5, 2014, in Albany, N.Y. (Photo by Hans Pennink/Invision/AP) (Hans Pennink, Hans Pennink/Invision/AP / Invision)
Live and Let Die / Hey Jude
When I'm 64
Maybe I'm amazed
All Together Now
www.timesunion.com
PAUL McCARTNEY
'OUT THERE' U.S. TOUR 2014
July 5: Albany, NY - Times Union Center
A hopeful Ed Warzala of New Paltz tries for a ticket outside the Times Union Center before the Paul McCartney Out There tour concert Saturday July 5, 2014, in Albany, NY. (John Carl D'Annibale / Times Union)
Three generations of Beatles fans, from left, 10-year-old Joshua Moon, his mom Kelly Moon and grandmother Joan Walton, all of Niagara Falls, Canada, take a selfie as they arrive at the Times Union Center for the Paul McCartney Out There tour concert Saturday July 5, 2014, in Albany, NY. Originally from Liverpool, Joan Walton had seen the Beatles at the Cavern Club and has remained a fan all these years. (John Carl D'Annibale / Times Union)
Fans takes turns being photographed with a Paul McCartney cut-out at the Times Union Center before the Paul McCartney Out There tour concert Saturday July 5, 2014, in Albany, NY. (John Carl D'Annibale / Times Union)
Jessica Dionne shows off a tattooed Paul McCartney autograph from a 2010 concert as she and Alexander McCulloch, both of Montreal at the Times Union Center before the Paul McCartney Out There tour concert Saturday July 5, 2014, in Albany, NY. (John Carl D'Annibale / Times Union)
Fans arrive at the Times Union Center before the Paul McCartney Out There tour concert Saturday July 5, 2014, in Albany, NY. (John Carl D'Annibale / Times Union)
Jim and Kathleen Pendergrass of Argyle look down from a concert bill at the Times Union Center before the Paul McCartney Out There tour concert Saturday July 5, 2014, in Albany, NY. (John Carl D'Annibale / Times Union)
Fans queue up for official tour merchandise at the Times Union Center before the Paul McCartney Out There tour concert Saturday July 5, 2014, in Albany, NY. (John Carl D'Annibale / Times Union)
news.nationalpost.com
How John Lennon’s impulsive decision to play a 1969 concert in Toronto helped speed the Beatles breakup
Tristin Hopper
July 4, 2014
Over the next two months, more than five million foreigners will come to Canada on their summer vacation. For the rest of the summer, the National Post presents this series on the revolutionaries, luminaries and criminals who have taken time out from shaping world events to pay us a visit — and how that visit shaped them. Today, how a Toronto rock concert killed the Beatles:
In August of 1966, the Beatles had just arrived in Toronto for a pair of appearances at Maple Leaf Gardens that, unbeknownst to the world, would be among their last. Prior to the shows, in a press conference at the arena’s Hot Stove Lounge, a reporter asked John Lennon if the band — who had failed to sell out the 16,00-seat venue — would ever split up.
“We obviously are not going to go around holding hands forever,” he replied, eliciting laughter from the assembled press.
John Lennon playing in Toronto in 1969, where he discovered that there was “life beyond the Beatles.”
Youtube/GravityLimited
Lennon added, more seriously, “we’ve got to split up or progress … it might happen. It’s quite possible.”
The Toronto reporters could not have known, but by the end of the decade, their budding metropolis would soon become the catalyst for the destruction of the greatest band of all time.
In September, 1969, a very different John Lennon stepped into the arrivals lounge at Toronto International Airport.
The 28-year-old had traded his moptop for long hair and a bushy beard, he had married a Japanese artist seven years his senior and the Beatles were now barely on speaking terms.
Lennon himself had grown particularly disillusioned with the Fab Four. He had been showing up to recording sessions blasted on drugs, he had lambasted Paul McCartney’s contributions to the album Abbey Road as “granny music” and he had begun to openly resent the Beatles’ entire rise to fame as a colossal sellout.
“It’s torture every time we produce anything. The Beatles haven’t got any magic you haven’t got. We suffer like hell anytime we make anything,” he would tell music columnist Howard Smith in a Canadian interview.
By 1969, the Beatles were hardly speaking to each other.
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www.hollywoodreporter.com
Ringo Starr Looks Back on 'A Hard Day's Night': 'It Was Mad, But It Was Incredible' (Video)
by Gary Graff, Billboard
07/03/2014
"Four guys from Liverpool making a movie — it was so great," says the Beatle of the 50th anniversary of the film.
Fifty years later and even with a solid IMDb entry to his credit, A Hard Day's Night remains a surreal experience for Ringo Starr.
"I mean, we were in a movie, man. We were making a movie!" Starr recalls to Billboard. "Four guys from Liverpool making a movie — it was so great. I loved it, and as you can tell, I loved it because the next movie [Help!] was sort of based around me, based around the ring and Kaili." A Hard Day's Night returns to movie theaters for the holiday weekend, starting July 4 and continuing throughout the summer (a full schedule of screenings can be found here). This follows the June release of a Criterion Collection version of the film on DVD and Blu-ray, featuring a new digital restoration of the film approved by director Richard Lester, audio commentary, several documentaries about the movie and The Running Jumping & Standing Still Film, an Academy Award-nominated short directed by Lester, starring Peter Sellers and Spike Milligan.
Conceived to capitalize on the Beatlemania sweeping the globe at the time, A Hard Day's Night offered a day-in-the-life view of the group at the time, culminating in a concert in London. Its madcap, fast-paced and dry-witted flavor made it a fresh kind of cinematic experience, cited as an influence on subsequent spy films, music videos and, of course, The Monkees TV series. The film premiered on July 6, 1964, in London and on August 11, 1964, worldwide. It was nominated for two Academy Awards — best screenplay for Alun Owen and best adaptation score for Beatles producer George Martin, while the accompanying album hit No. 1 in the U.S., U.K. and Australia and the title track won a Grammy Award for Best Performance by a Vocal Group.
"It was a really exciting thing to do," says Starr. "We were making records and, wow, the records were taking off and then we're playing to bigger and bigger audiences and that's taking off, and now we're doing a movie. It was mad … but it was incredible." The theatrical return of A Hard Day's Night is part of a number of The Beatles' 50th anniversary celebrations this year, including the group's arrival in the U.S., honors at the Grammy Awards and a subsequent Record Academy CBS special saluting Starr, Paul McCartney and their late bandmates John Lennon and George Harrison.
"It's just been one of those incredible years," notes Starr. "I mean, how incredible that it's 50 years since we landed in New York and Paul and I did the Grammys and … It's massive! But it's interesting — when I was in New York, in the hotel, I took a photo outside the Plaza and there's nobody there; when the last time we were there, it was like thousands of people outside. So things have changed." The Beatles in Mono, a 14-LP vinyl collection, will be released Sept. 8, with the albums also available individually. Starr, meanwhile, is currently on the road celebrating the 25th anniversary of his All-Starr Band and will celebrate his 74th birthday on July 7 with a "peace and love moment" in front of the Capitol Records building. Ringo Starr: A Lifetime of Peace and Love, filmed during the Grammy Week event where he was honored by the David Lynch Foundation, debuts at 8 p.m. ET July 13 on AXS TV. McCartney launches the next U.S. leg of his Out There tour on July 5 in Albany, N.Y., after postponing the first seven dates due to health concerns. This story originally appeared on Billboard.com.
The Beatles with George Martin (center), who produced the score for the hit film "A Hard Day's Night."
Courtesy of Apple Corps Ltd.
www.tmz.com
Sir Paul McCartney
Here Comes the Sun ...
And Lots of SPF!
BY TMZ STAFF
6/30/2014
Paul McCartney got a little help from his friend/wife while roasting in the sun.
Paul and Nancy Shevell have been chilling in Ibiza ... where most people are capable of applying sunscreen on their chests without assistance -- but most people aren't Beatles and Knights.
Sure ... 53-year-old Nancy might look kinda like a nursemaid lathering ointment on a patient -- but we're guessing rubbed up 72-year-old Paul ain't complainin'.
In case you forgot ... it's good to be a Beatle.
