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This is my tribute to my favorite rock band of all time-The Beatles. I am trying my best to post something about them every Tuesdays and forgive me if there are times I wasn’t able to do so.

I have been a big fan of the 60’s band since high school. I love their music to, the bones. Everytime I hear their songs in the radio or on a cd I get excited and inspired. I can name a few of my favorite songs but love all their music.  This one here is from sir Paul McCartney’s concert in Kiev, Ukraine last June 14, 2008.

As is true of many of McCartney’s songs, the melody and first line of the song came to him as he was playing around on his piano. The name that came to him, though, was not Eleanor Rigby but Miss Daisy Hawkins. In 1966, McCartney recalled how he got the idea for his song:

Others believe that Father McKenzie refers to ‘Father’ Tommy McKenzie, who was the compere at Northwich Memorial Hall^[3][4]

McCartney originally imagined Daisy as a pre-pubescent girl, but anyone who cleaned up in churches would probably be older. If she were older, she might have missed not only the wedding she cleans up after but also her own.

McCartney said he came up with the name Eleanor from actress Eleanor Bron, who had starred with the Beatles in the film Help!. Rigby came from the name of a store in Bristol, Rigby & Evens Ltd, Wine & Spirit Shippers, that he noticed while seeing his then-girlfriend Jane Asher act in The Happiest Days Of Your Life. He recalled in 1984, “I just liked the name. I was looking for a name that sounded natural. Eleanor Rigby sounded natural.”^[5]

The Beatles finished the song in the music room of John Lennon’s home at Kenwood. John Lennon, George Harrison, Ringo Starr, and their friend Pete Shotton all listened to McCartney play his song through and contributed ideas. Starr contributed the line “writing the words of a sermon that no one will hear ” and suggested making “Father McCartney” darn his socks, which McCartney liked. Shotton then suggested that McCartney change the name of the priest, in case listeners mistook the fictional character in the song for McCartney’s own father.^[6]

The song is often described as a lament for lonely people^[7] or a commentary on post-war life in Britain.^[8][9]

McCartney couldn’t decide how to end the song, and Shotton finally suggested that the two lonely people come together too late as Father McKenzie conducts Eleanor Rigby’s funeral. At the time, Lennon rejected the idea out of hand, but McCartney said nothing and used the idea to finish off the song, later acknowledging Shotton’s help.^[6]

source

Sir Paul McCartney live in Kiev, Ukraine (2008). You will hear a lot different Paul McCartney here. I even thought it wasn’t Him because he sounds a lot low. He even played wrong notes. It’s just sad to see him slow down a bit.

For me, still he is a legend and forever will sound great. Full respect for him for giving us great songs that we can enjoy.

In Penny Lane there is a barber showing photographs
Of every head he’s had the pleasure to know
And all the people that come and go
Stop and say hello

On the corner is a banker with a motorcar
The little children laugh at him behind his back
And the banker never wears a mac
In the pouring rain…
Very strange

Penny Lane is in my ears and in my eyes
There beneath the blue suburban skies
I sit, and meanwhile back

In Penny Lane there is a fireman with an hourglass
And in his pocket is a portrait of the Queen.
He likes to keep his fire engine clean
It’s a clean machine

Penny Lane is in my ears and in my eyes
Four of fish and finger pies
In summer, meanwhile back

Behind the shelter in the middle of the roundabout
A pretty nurse is selling poppies from a tray
And though she feels as if she’s in a play
She is anyway

In Penny Lane the barber shaves another customer
We see the banker sitting waiting for a trim
Then the fireman rushes in
From the pouring rain…
Very strange

Penny Lane is in my ears and in my eyes
There beneath the blue suburban skies
I sit, and meanwhile back
Penny Lane is in my ears and in my eyes
There beneath the blue suburban skies…
Penny Lane.

McCartney and Lennon grew up in the area and they would meet at Penny Lane junction to catch a bus into the centre of the city. The street is an important landmark, sought out by most Beatles fans touring Liverpool. In the past, street signs saying “Penny Lane” were constant targets of tourist theft and had to be continually replaced. Eventually, city officials gave up and simply began painting the street name on the sides of buildings. This practice was stopped in 2007 and more theft-resistant “Penny Lane” street signs have since been installed though some are still stolen. The Abbey Road sign is also frequently stolen for the same reason (see Street sign theft).

Beatles producer George Martin has stated he believes the pairing of “Penny Lane” with “Strawberry Fields Forever” resulted in probably the greatest single ever released by the group. Both songs were later released on the US Magical Mystery Tour album in November 1967. In the UK, the pairing famously failed to reach #1 in the singles charts, stalling one place below Engelbert Humperdinck’s “Release Me”.^[1] In the US The song reached #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 for a week before being knocked off by The Turtles song “Happy Together“. The song features contrasting verse-chorus form and was credited “Lennon-McCartney“, although McCartney was the main contributor to the song. ^[2] The song’s title is derived from the name of a street in the band’s hometown, Liverpool. The area that surrounds its junction with Smithdown Road is also commonly called Penny Lane. Locally the term “Penny Lane” was the name given to Allerton Road and Smithdown Road and its busy shopping area. Penny Lane is named after James Penny, an 18th century slave trader.

Following the success of the double A-side “Yellow Submarine”/”Eleanor Rigby”, Brian Epstein inquired if they had any new material available. Both songs, though recorded during the sessions for Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, were left off the album — a decision George Martin regretted ^[3], although the Beatles usually did not include songs released as singles on their British albums. This was also the first single by the Beatles to be sold with a picture sleeve in the UK, a practice rarely used there at that time. However, packaging singles in individually designed sleeves was standard in the US and various other countries (such as Japan).

More on: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penny_Lane

Here’s another hit song from The Beatles. Written by John Lennon and Paul McCartney. Hope you’ll enjoy this you all Beatlemania fans out there!

“IN MY LIFE”

“According to Lennon, the song’s origins can be found when English journalist Kenneth Allsop made a remark that Lennon should write songs about his childhood. Afterwards, Lennon wrote a song in the form of a long poem reminiscing on his childhood years. The original version of the lyrics was based on a bus route he used to take in LiverPool, naming various sites seen along the way, including Penny Lane and Strawberry Field.

However, Lennon found it to be “ridiculous”, calling it “the most boring sort of ‘What I Did On My Holidays Bus Trip’ song”; he reworked the words with Paul McCartney, replacing the specific memories with a generalized meditation on his past. “Very few lines” of the original version remained in the finished song. According to Lennon’s friend and biographer Peter Shotton, the lines “Some [friends] are dead and some are living/In my life I’ve loved them all” referred to Stuart Sutcliffe (who died in 1962) and to Shotton.

According to Lennon, McCartney supplied harmony and the “middle eight” or bridge section of the song. The section to which Lennon referred is unclear, as the song does not contain a recognizable bridge aside from a brief instrumental break. McCartney claimed he set Lennon’s lyrics to music from beginning to end, claiming that he wrote the whole melody but took inspiration from songs by Smokey Robinson and The Miracles. Of the disagreement, McCartney said, “I find it very gratifying that out of everything we wrote, we only appear to disagree over two songs”, the other being “Eleanor Rigby”.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_My_Life

I would love to watch The Beatles concert in a flat screen tv with a dolby surround sound system. Our tv is not lcd flat screen. I even have to find appropriate tv stands for our humble crt type television.