Get your fix of celebrity news, photos and inspiring stories with People magazine. Each issue has the inside scoop on today’s hottest celebrities, exclusive photos of your favorite stars and inspiring stories about real-life heroes.
1969 A YEAR in the Life IN 1969 THE BEATLES CREATED TWO LANDMARK ALBUMS, AND MUSIC FANS REVELED AT WOODSTOCK Before the year 1969 was out, humans proved you could put a man on the moon. You could gather half a million people together in the name of peace and music. But you could not, for neither love nor money, keep together four young men who were outgrowing the band that had changed the culture forever. The last year of the 1960s was as busy for the Beatles as it was tumultuous. Within 12 months they would record two albums: Abbey Road and Let It Be, with an accompanying film of the same name that documented the genius present in the studio. Individually John Lennon, Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr and…
‘THE MAIN DOWNFALL IS THAT WE WERE LESS BUSINESSMEN AND MORE HEADS…. WE GOT A MAN IN [KLEIN] WHO STARTED TO SAY, “COME ON, SIGN IT ALL OVER TO ME,” WHICH WAS THE FATAL MISTAKE’—McCARTNEY, TO ROLLING STONE IN 1974 ‘WE WENT THROUGH WEEKS OF ALL SAYING, “WHY DON’T WE CALL IT BILLY’S LEFT FOOT?” AND THINGS LIKE THAT. AND THEN PAUL JUST SAID, “WHY DON’T WE CALL IT ABBEY ROAD?”’—RINGO STARR…
“SORRY GIRLS, HE’S MARRIED.” When the Beatles played the Ed Sullivan Show back in 1964, producers helpfully put the name of each band member on the screen under a close-up of his face. And along with John Lennon’s name, they included that disappointing bit of news: He was off the market. Five years later Ringo had married, George had wed, John had divorced and would remarry. Now with Paul, the last bachelor Beatle (who also happened to be the one who set the most hearts throbbing), heading to the altar, the band’s press office knew what it had to do and alerted the mournful fandom. As a result, reported The Washington Post, “a wild scene” erupted outside Paul McCartney and Linda Eastman’s March 12, 1969, wedding at the Marylebone Registry…
“YOU COULD GO A BIT faster, Ringo!” “Okay, George!” That Beatles banter was caught on tape during an April 14, 1969, recording session. But George Harrison was on holiday, and Ringo Starr was at Twickenham Film Studios that day shooting The Magic Christian. The voices impersonating the two absent members belonged to John Lennon, at work that day with only his long-time songwriting partner Paul McCartney. That they were in good spirits while they were recording “The Ballad of John and Yoko,” Lennon’s rock and roll reportage on his recent wedding, was something of an achievement. A year earlier he and McCartney had almost come to blows over Yoko Ono’s presence in the studio during the making of The White Album. According to the record’s sound engineer Geoff Emerick, “Either…
IN MARCH 1969, AS JOHN and Yoko were staging honeymoon bed-ins, Paul and Linda were celebrating their own newly minted union in the Greek Isles, and George Harrison and his wife, Pattie, were getting hauled into court one day on pot charges, Ringo Starr was out on a film location, tromping through a muddy field with comedy-hero-turned-costar-and-friend Peter Sellers. The two would share top billing in The Magic Christian, a black comedy in which Ringo plays a homeless waif adopted by the richest man in the world. The film would fizzle despite a glittering cast that included screen heavyweights Richard Attenborough, Laurence Harvey and Christopher Lee, Raquel Welch and Yul Brynner. But in the swinging London of 1969, a Beatle’s star power outshone all the rest. And reporters purportedly there…
GEORGE HARRISON ARRIVED at London’s Twickenham Film Studios, where the Beatles were gathering on Jan. 2, 1969, to begin filming themselves recording a new album. He had a batch of new songs written during an extended vacation in the States, and he was eager for his bandmates to hear them. After years of experimentation with the sitar, Harrison had rediscovered his love for guitar-based American music. “I had just been hanging out with Bob Dylan and the Band, having a great time,” recalled Harrison in 1995. During the sojourn, his wife, Pattie Boyd, joined him for Thanksgiving with Dylan and his family. Harrison stayed on and cowrote with Dylan and communed with Levon Helm and the Band. All the Beatles seemed ready for a return to their roots and tentatively…
