mmdevil91 asked:


i want my hair to be like the beatles hair. Like when they first started, not when they went all hippy.

Dolores

bballer9871 asked:


I would like to know how many Beatles cover songs and albums there are, what is the most covered Beatles song? How many times has the song “Yesterday” been covered? And any other information on covers of the Beatles.

Charles

Roger Munns asked:


Britain’s Queen Elizabeth came to the British throne when she was only 25, and at her side has been Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh, who married the Queen in 1947.

In the modern world of celebrities, celebrity relationships, marriages and highly publicised breakdowns - including that of her son Prince Charles and Princess Diana - it is easy to forget that the Queen has acted with grace and seldom complains of press coverage when it is unfavourable - unless it is simply untruthful, when the British Press Complaints body intervenes.

And the Queen now celebrates over sixty years of marriage to Prince Philip, and in typical fashion chose a low key couple of days on the island of Malta to celebrate, before heading off to Uganda on official business as Head of the Commonwealth.

Five years older than the Queen, Prince Philip first met the then Princess Elizabeth when she was 13, but it was some seven years later before they started courting and became engaged, and married at Westminster Abbey in November 1947.

The time they spent together before Elizabeth acceeded to the throne is thought to be among their happiest memories. Prince Philip was still a Royal Navy Officer when they married and he was stationed in Malta. The island was quite different then from what it is now, with hotels in Malta now dotting the landscape.

The island of Malta allowed Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip to live a life as near as possibly could be called normal as an heir to the British throne.

The Malta of today is unrecognisable from the Malta when the Queen lived there. The island had been involved in the Second World War and gallantly held out as the German and Italian air forces tried to bomb her into submission, and Malta was awarded the George Cross on April 15 1942 by the Queen’s father, King George VI.

Accommodation in Malta

In 1942 61 RAF Spitfires, famous for their role in the Battle of Britain, arrived on the island to fight off the German and Italian airforces and Malta survived to become today a member of the EU, and from January 1 this year even voluntarily surrendered part of her hard fought for independence and national identity to adopt the Euro as her official currency.

The modern Malta the Queen and Prince Philip visited as part of their 60th wedding anniversary celebrations has been transformed into a holiday island, with cheap flight to Malta deals bringing in tourists from the United Kingdom, and increasingly from Italy, although the UK remains Malta’s most important market.

Meanwhile, the population of Malta has swollen from just over 300,000 in 1950 to over 400,000 now, with the Maltese people moving away from the rural areas to the capital Valletta and towns such as Sliema. Mellieha, a sleepy village on Malta’s north coast then, is becoming a popular holiday resort with hotel and villa holidays popular with British and German holiday makers.

Since the 1970’s Malta has been a holiday destination and a large part of her economy now relies on the Malta holidays industry. A few years of decline have been reversed by the acceptance of low cost airlines, not just from the UK but other parts of Europe too, and the island is able to offer both 5 star Malta holidays but also cheap Malta holidays too.

When Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip lived on the island few if any people were taking a holiday in Malta, and the population was Maltese with British and some Commonwealth military and civilian workers. Until recently the vast majority of those taking a Malta holiday were British, but the cheap airlines are allowing diversification with tourists not just from the UK - although it remains Malta’s prime market, but from Italy, Germany, Spain and the Scandanavian countries.

It’s worth bearing in mind just how long Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip have been married - sixteen years already before the Beatles had their first number 1 and they weren’t far off their silver wedding anniversary when Neil Armstrong became the first man to walk on the moon and the Beatles were splitting up and Paul McCartney was first thinking of his new group Wings.

Malta will be hoping the Royal couple visit the island again for their 70th wedding anniversary for a vacation.



Rodney

kristin o asked:


I have pots of flowers on my deck that are infested with japanesse beatles. Its becoming a problem, I wondered if anybody had any home remedies to get rid of them.

Constance

SkaterGirl9696 asked:


I’m doing a project on the Beatles, and my teacher wants to know why they changed there name from the Quarrymen to The Beatles? I can’t find it on Wikianswers and Wikipedia or google… So does anyone know why?

Glen

Robert Benson asked:


When CD’s were first introduced in the early 80’s, they were the “next best thing” in the music world. Certainly an upgrade from cassette tapes, CD’s conveniently packed the music and artwork into a neat, small package. But one of the major flaws is the lack of cover art you get with a CD, especially when you compare it to the vibrant, lifelike album cover art you get with vinyl records.

In this three part series about album cover art, we will explore some of the most legendary album covers of all time, look at some of the most controversial album covers as well as gauge the impact that major retailers have on cover art. Let’s start with a band that broke the ground for many of their other fellow musicians.

One of the pioneering bands to take advantage of album cover art and its power of marketability were, of course, one of the most famous groups of all time, the “Beatles.” From such famous album covers as “Yesterday and Today” (1966), “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” (1967) and even including the simplicity of the “White Album”, the Beatles certainly took full advantage of the allure of a great album cover (it didn’t hurt that the music is legendary).

In fact, their album “Yesterday and Today” (also known as the “butcher album”) is highly collectible and, if you have an original, highly priced and is one of the holy grails of record collecting. Although Capitol Records recalled the album, many were released as promotional material to DJ’s and critics. Only then did the uproar ensue. You see, the Beatles were tired of Capitol Records chopping up their albums and repackaging them (the songs on this particular release are album cuts from previous Beatles’ albums including “Help!” and “Revolver”), so they posed with decapitated baby dolls, slabs of meat and fake blood as kind of a quasi protest, not ever thinking it would go out to the public. Capitol Records quickly intervened and recalled thousands of record albums and pasted over the “butcher cover” with what is now known as the “trunk cover” (just a picture of the fab four with a large trunk).

The Beatles also have one of the greatest album covers of all time (it was selected by Rolling Stone Magazine as the best) and the group won a Grammy Award (for Best Album Cover) in 1968 for the legendary album cover for “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.” Created and designed by Jan Haworth and Peter Blake, the cover features the group posing with a collage of famous singers, composers, comedians and other worldly figures including Lenny Bruce (comic), Edgar Allen Poe (writer), W.C. Fields (comic), Fred Astaire (actor), Bob Dylan (musician), Marlon Brando (actor), Marilyn Monroe (actress) and Karl Marx (philosopher/socialist), among many others.

But there were a few people that were originally intended for the front cover, but were excluded, for a variety of reasons. For instance, Jesus Christ was omitted because the album was released just a few months after John Lennon had declared that the Beatles were more popular than Jesus. Adolf ****** was removed at the insistence of Parlophone Records. EMI requested that the image of Mahatma Ghandi be removed fearing his presence on the cover would offend the Indian Market. Legendary actress Mae West initially refused, but relented after the Beatles sent her a personal letter. Additionally, an image of Leo Gorcey was omitted because he had requested a fee for the use of his likeness. (For a complete list of exactly who is on the cover, please visit: http://math.mercyhurst.edu/~griff/sgtpepper/people.html)

Moreover, these two Beatles’ albums exemplify the power of a great album cover (and in the Beatles case, great music). The albums also bring to the forefront the power that record companies have and the restraints that they can utilize to control the overall album cover package. With this in mind, let’s explore some banned and controversial album covers.

One of the most notorious and controversial albums of all time is “Two Virgins,” which was released in 1968 by “John Lennon and Yoko Ono.” On the front cover was a full frontal picture of both, completely nude, and on the back was a **** picture from the behind. Paul McCartney had tried to convince Lennon not to release the cover because of the controversy it would certainly create. In some jurisdictions, the albums were impounded as obscenity and distributors were forced to sell the release in plain brown wrap wrappers. Incidentally, even with this provocative and disturbing cover, the album was not a best seller, as it lacked significant content (it was full of bird noises, tape loops, misplayed organ snippets and other assorted sound effects).

In that same year, “Jimi Hendrix” released “Electric Ladyland,” which featured him with a harem of ***** women. The album created massive controversy and was ultimately banned in the U.S. But, it seems that the re-done artwork for the U.K. version did not arrive in time, so Jimi and the girls are available in the U.K. version. The cover was not banned in Europe and import copies of the album have always been the most sought after imported record in the U.S. The album was reissued in the U.S. with a picture of Jimi’s face (minus his ladies of course).

In 1969, the super group “Blind Faith” (members Eric Clapton, Ginger Baker and Steve Winwood) released their lone album together, appropriately entitled, “Blind Faith.” What wasn’t appropriate was photographer Bob Seidemann’s picture of a ******* pre-pubescent girl holding a silver space ship. The album was then reissued with an alternate cover which showed a photograph of the band. According to Seidemann, her fee for the picture was a “young horse” which was purchased for her by Blind Faith’s band manager Robert Stigwood.

In part two of our series, we will again explore some famous and controversial album cover art.



Kelly

Robert Paterson asked:


This little article is to tell you about the “Is Paul McCartney dead?” debate that took place back in the 1960s.

Around the late 60s, after the Beatles had stopped touring as a band, a rumour started going around that Paul McCartney had died, possibly from a drug overdose, and that the man you saw in the pictures and film news footage was a look-alike. One version of the story claimed the man was Paul’s brother, or his twin brother.

There were various opinions as to why the death of Paul should have been hushed up, if it were true. Whatever these reasons might be, many people claimed to have found hidden clues which served as evidence to back up the story. There were many of these clues on the Sergeant Pepper Album, but also elsewhere.

Here are some clues from Sergeant Pepper. On the front cover is a flower bed with the band standing behind it, along with pictures of famous people from history. One of the clusters of flowers is in the shape of a guitar. The shape is that of the unusual “violin bass” that Paul always played on gigs, and it is in the left-handed position (Paul is famously left-handed.) The idea being that the flowers look like those on a grave.

The Sergeant Pepper album was one of the first to be packaged in the “gatefold” format, meaning that the cover opened like a book or a gate, showing a wide angle inside picture. On this picture, you can clearly see that Paul is wearing on his upper arm a black badge carrying the letters O.P.D. These letters are apparently used in hospitals and elsewhere to stand for “Officially Pronounced Dead.”

On the back cover picture, Paul is shown facing away from the viewer while the other members face the camera. On the cover of the Abbey Road album, Paul is the only band member to have bare feet. Some people saw bare feet as symbolic of death.

Some claimed to have found audio evidence in certain song tracks, notably in “Revolution 9″ and “Helter Skelter” from the White Album by using electronic filtering techniques. The famous run-out groove on Sergeant Pepper was said to contain a secret message when played backwards, and the same was said about certain sections of “Revolution 9.” The Beatles were known to enjoy experimenting with reverse over-dubbing, as in, for example, the George Harrison guitar solo in “I’m Only Sleeping” from Revolver, so it was natural that people would try to look for less obvious examples.

Well, the rumour eventually blew over, as do all rumours once they have run out of new evidence to support them. One possible explanation is that the whole thing was some private joke or hoax started by the band themselves, just for fun. Or perhaps it was giving a more artistic message. Because before all this happened, the Beatles had announced that they had tried the drug LSD, and Paul described the experience he had as being very profound. He claimed that he had come face to face with God while under the influence of the drug. This could be viewed as a type of “died and went to heaven then came back to tell the tale” experience. In those circumstances, it might well be artistically viable to hint at the death of the old self and a birth of the new.

The Beatles themselves were never forthcoming with explanations whenever the media questioned them about these speculations. This was quite right, artists should not need to explain their artistic creation, if it is complete it can stand alone by itself.

The most probable explanation is that all these “clues” were just coincidences which people seized on and tried to make something out of them which was not really there. It is a familiar media trick nowadays, but it was not so common at that time.

Author’s Note: This article was first published by me on Qassia. You are invited to visit my page there at http://zencath.qassia.com/



Adrian