Iggy Azalea on equalling The Beatles chart record: 'I'd rather be The Rolling Stones'

June 10, 2014 12:44

Rapper recently scored both the Number One and Number Two spots in the Billboard Hot 100

Iggy Azalea has responded to those who criticise her authenticity while also dismissing the way she recently matched a US chart record previously held by The Beatles.

The Australian artist has received repeated criticism of her Americanised rap voice in reviews but says that she does not feel the need to pay notice to her roots when making music.

"We get so caught up, especially in rap, with what's authentic, and I wish people would think more about what the fuck that even means," she told Billboard. "One critic was like, 'Why didn't you talk about more Australian things?' I don't understand why I'm supposed to write a song about living in the outback and riding a kangaroo to be authentic."

Elsewhere in the interview, Azalea says that the fact she recently matched The Beatles US chart record, scoring both the Number One and Number Two spots in the Billboard Hot 100, "doesn't mean anything". Distancing herself from the record, she said: "I'd rather be The Rolling Stones."

Iggy Azalea made news last week when she criticised Lorde's appearace at Nirvana's Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame induction, arguing that her appearance wasn't appropriate as she was not a peer of Kurt Cobain.

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Metallica's James Hetfield covers The Beatles' 'In My Life' at acoustic fundraiser - watch

May 16, 2014 19:16

The show also saw the frontman playing stripped back versions of two classic Metallica tracks

Metallica's James Hetfield covered The Beatles' 'ln My Life' at an acoustic fundraising event in San Francisco last night (May 15).

The frontman sang the track at the Acoustic-4-a-Cure event at The Fillmore for the Pediatric Cancer Program at the UCSF Benioff Children's Hospital, reports Rolling Stone.

Click above to watch fan-shot footage of the performance. Hetfield also sang stripped back versions of Metallica songs 'Nothing Else Matters' and 'Until It Sleeps' as well as appearing with Green Day's Billie Joe Armstrong and Joe Satriani to play Green Day's 'Boulevard of Broken Dreams' and Bob Seger's 'Turn the Page', which you can see below.

Hetfield also played an acoustic set with the rest of Metallica in Los Angeles earlier this week in tribute to Ozzy Osbourne at a charity gig for the MusiCares MAP Fund, which helps musicians recover from addiction. The four-song show at Club Nokia began with Hetfield playing 'Stairway To Heaven' followed by Rare Earth's 1971 hit 'I Just Want to Celebrate'. The band's set also included Deep's 'When a Blind Man Cries' as well as The Beatles' 'In My Life'. They closed the set with a reading of Ozzy Osbourne's 'Diary Of A Madman'.

Metallica will headline next month's Glastonbury Festival.

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Beatles' secretary, "Good Ol' Freda," breaks silence in film

A visitor looks at a guitar signed by The Beatles at an exhibition in Buenos Aires, October 4, 2011.

Credit: Reuters/Enrique Marcarian

By Corrie MacLaggan

AUSTIN, Texas | Sat Mar 9, 2013 9:23pm EST

AUSTIN, Texas (Reuters) - For Freda Kelly, secretary to the Beatles and head of the band's fan club, work sometimes involved trailing the Fab Four to the barber shop, sweeping their locks from the floor and mailing strands of hair to adoring female fans.

Kelly, one of the Beatles' longest-serving employees, worked for the British band for more than a decade but had never shared her stories publicly until now.

She breaks her silence in a new documentary, "Good Ol' Freda," which had its world premiere on Saturday on the second day of the South by Southwest Film Festival in Austin.

"It's such a classic Cinderella story: Girl picks the job of a lifetime," director Ryan White told Reuters.

The tale is sure to delight fans of the Beatles, but White seeks to tell a story that transcends that audience, a story about an amazing decade in an otherwise ordinary life.

The film features four Beatles songs, which required the permission of many people, including the two surviving Beatles. It also includes never-before-seen photos of the band.

The documentary's title comes from the Beatles' 1963 Christmas recording, in which George Harrison thanks their secretary in Liverpool, and they all yell, "Good Ol' Freda!"

A mutual friend and a family connection to the 1960s' Liverpool music scene brought Kelly to the attention of White, who took the opportunity to tell her story.

The Los Angeles filmmaker, 31, who co-directed and produced the 2010 soccer documentary "Pelada," grew up knowing Kelly as a family friend who was a secretary. In fact, she is still a secretary, for a Liverpool law firm.

"I didn't know that she had a crazy back story," White said, adding he only discovered it when a friend put them in touch two years ago.

Kelly, now in her late 60s, says in the film that she wanted to record her stories for her 2-year-old grandson - stories that in many cases she never got around to telling her family.

Kelly, described by White as shy and humble, insists in the documentary that no one would be interested in hearing her story.

'I WAS A FAN MYSELF'

The loyal secretary, who was 17 when she started working for the band, has no intention of dishing dirt about her former famous employers, so White focused instead on her compelling personal narrative and interactions with the Beatles.

Kelly arranged bookings, cut paychecks and stayed up all night responding to fan mail. At the height of Beatlemania, the band received 2,000 to 3,000 letters a day, she said.

The Beatles - Harrison, Paul McCartney, John Lennon and Ringo Starr - became the most famous pop band in history. They entered the Guinness Book of World Records in 2001 as the world's best-selling group, with more than 1 billion records sold.

"The amount of personal attention and true affection that she served the Beatles' fans with - teenage girls, mostly - will probably go unmatched throughout music history," White said.

Kelly was briefly fired by Lennon after she arrived late before a show because she had been having drinks with an opening band. The secretary convinced Lennon to get down on his knee and beg her to stay.

"Freda was like part of the family," Starr says in the film as the closing credits roll.

Kelly closed down the Beatles' fan club offices after the band broke up in 1970, taking with her boxes of autographs, photos and memorabilia. She did not sell them, instead giving them away to fans over the years, White said.

Kelly, who attended Saturday's premiere and answered questions from audience members, says in the film that she did anything she could for club members.

"I was one of them," Kelly says. "I was a fan myself."

(Editing by Peter Cooney)

View the original article here

Rejected Beatles audition tape appears at auction

By Mike Collett-White

LONDON | Fri Nov 23, 2012 12:47pm EST

LONDON (Reuters) - The Beatles audition tape rejected by a record label executive in arguably the biggest blunder in pop history has resurfaced and will go on sale at a London auction next week.

Ted Owen of The Fame Bureau, an auction house specializing in pop memorabilia, said the 10-song tape was recorded on New Year's Day, 1962, at label Decca's studios in north London.

Paul McCartney, John Lennon, George Harrison and Pete Best - who would later be replaced on drums by Ringo Starr - performed up to 15 songs at the session, 10 of which appear on the tape to be sold on November 27.

The band members had been driven from Liverpool to London the night before, and, despite getting lost on the way managed to get to the studios in time for the infamous session paid for by their manager Brian Epstein.

Decca's senior A&R (artists and repertoire) representative Dick Rowe, who later became known as "the man who turned down the Beatles", decided against signing them in favor of Brian Poole & The Tremeloes who also auditioned that day.

"Guitar groups are on their way out, Mr. Epstein," he is widely quoted as saying.

Rowe did, however, sign the Rolling Stones, who went on to become one of the biggest acts in British rock, and experts dispute whether it was him or a more junior colleague who passed the Beatles over.

There are bootleg versions of the session in existence, but the "safety master", or back-up tape, on offer at auction is unique, Owen said.

"The most important thing about this is the quality," he told Reuters. "There are bootlegs out there, horrible bootlegs -- some are at the wrong speed, others are crackily and taken from a cassette off an acetate (disc).

"This quality we have never heard."

Despite its rarity, the tape has been estimated to fetch 18-20,000 pounds ($29-32,000), which Owen said had been set by the owner and was a "sensible" starting point.

He added that only a handful of collectors were likely to bid for the piece of pop history, and, given that the Beatles own the copyright through their company, a commercial record release based on the tape was extremely unlikely.

Marked as the "Silver Beatles", which the "Fab Four" were briefly called, the tape comes with a hand-written track list and black-and-white photograph of the musicians posing in leather jackets that would be been used for the record sleeve.

Also on offer at the Popular Culture auction is a guitar used by Jimi Hendrix to play the bulk of his breakthrough set at the Monterey festival in California in 1967. The black Fender Stratocaster is expected to fetch 120-180,000 pounds.

(Reporting by Mike Collett-White, editing by Paul Casciato)

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Beach Boys Beat the Beatles for Billboard 200 Record

by Gary Trust  |   June 14, 2012 4:15 EDT

Fifty years into their career, the Beach Boys are still making waves on Billboard charts.

This week, they best the Beatles for a Billboard 200 album chart record.

As their reunion set, "That's Why God Made the Radio" (their first album of all-new material since 1992), bursts onto the chart at No. 3, the Beach Boys break a record by expanding their span of Billboard 200 top 10s to 49 years and one week. They first graced the top 10 with "Surfin' U.S.A." the week of June 15, 1963.

The Beach Boys' stretch between their first week in the Billboard 200 top 10 to their most recent is now the longest among groups, passing the Beatles, whose top 10 span covers 47 years, seven months and three weeks. The Fab Four first entered the top bracket when "Meet the Beatles" rocketed 92-3 on the Feb. 8, 1964, chart at the blastoff of Beatlemania. The group most recently appeared in the top 10 with "1" the week of Oct. 1, 2011.

The Rolling Stones are pushed to third among groups with the longest top 10 span on the Billboard 200. Their 45-year, six-month top 10 span ranges from the week of Dec. 12, 1964 ("12 x 5"), through June 12, 2010 ("Exile on Main St.")

Among all acts, Frank Sinatra boasts the longest top 10 span on the Billboard 200: 52 years, two months and one week. Sinatra first entered the top tier with "Songs for Swingin' Lovers!" the week of April 7, 1956, and last ranked in the region on June 14, 2008, with "Nothing But the Best."

The Billboard 200 launched as a weekly chart in the pages of Billboard magazine the week of March 24, 1956.

Beach Boys Talk Reunion Tour: No Holograms 'Yet'

Upon its arrival, "Radio" becomes the Beach Boys' highest-charting album since 1965's "Summer Days (And Summer Nights!!)," which reached No. 2. The new release is their 14th top 10 and first since 1976's "15 Big Ones." The Beach Boys have topped the Billboard 200 with two titles: 1964's "Beach Boys Concert" (for four weeks) and 1974's "Endless Summer" (one).

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Early Beatles letter seeking drummer makes $55,000

LONDON | Wed Nov 16, 2011 8:25am EST

LONDON (Reuters) - A handwritten letter from Paul McCartney on August 12, 1960 inviting an unnamed drummer to audition for a place in the Beatles has sold at Christie's for 34,850 pounds ($55,000).

The document was discovered folded up in a book purchased at a car boot sale in Liverpool, birthplace of the Fab Four.

It had been expected to fetch 7-9,000 pounds at a rock and pop memorabilia sale at Christie's in London late on Tuesday.

Shortly after the letter was written, the newly formed Beatles travelled to Hamburg, Germany, to play a series of gigs as they set out on the road to superstardom.

According to online Beatles timelines, drummer Pete Best joined the Beatles on August 12. He was thrown out of the band two years later and replaced by Ringo Starr.

The auctioneer said the letter was one of the earliest examples of the band being referred to as the Beatles.

It was also important to pop historians because it suggested McCartney was seeking an alternative to Best until the last minute and knew more about the details of the Hamburg trip than previously thought.

The top lot of the sale, fetching 97,250 pounds, was a hand-written sign reading "BED PEACE" displayed during one of John Lennon and Yoko Ono's famous "bed-ins" for peace in 1969.

Overall the auction fetched around 480,000 pounds.

(Reporting by Mike Collett-White, editing by Paul Casciato)

View the original article here

Early Beatles letter seeking drummer makes $55,000 (Reuters)

LONDON (Reuters) – A handwritten letter from Paul McCartney on August 12, 1960 inviting an unnamed drummer to audition for a place in the Beatles has sold at Christie's for 34,850 pounds ($55,000).

The document was discovered folded up in a book purchased at a car boot sale in Liverpool, birthplace of the Fab Four.

It had been expected to fetch 7-9,000 pounds at a rock and pop memorabilia sale at Christie's in London late on Tuesday.

Shortly after the letter was written, the newly formed Beatles travelled to Hamburg, Germany, to play a series of gigs as they set out on the road to superstardom.

According to online Beatles timelines, drummer Pete Best joined the Beatles on August 12. He was thrown out of the band two years later and replaced by Ringo Starr.

The auctioneer said the letter was one of the earliest examples of the band being referred to as the Beatles.

It was also important to pop historians because it suggested McCartney was seeking an alternative to Best until the last minute and knew more about the details of the Hamburg trip than previously thought.

The top lot of the sale, fetching 97,250 pounds, was a hand-written sign reading "BED PEACE" displayed during one of John Lennon and Yoko Ono's famous "bed-ins" for peace in 1969.

Overall the auction fetched around 480,000 pounds.

(Reporting by Mike Collett-White, editing by Paul Casciato)

View the original article here

Review: Wilco's "Whole Love" has shades of Beatles (Reuters)

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – Wilco's eighth album, "The Whole Love," could almost be called "The Whole Enchilada," so thoroughly does it summarize the disparate sides the beloved band has developed over the last 16 years.

If you relished the experimental "Hotel Yankee Foxtrot" -- the 2001 breakthrough that made them the darlings of the rock intelligentsia and even got them classified as America's own Radiohead -- then you'll love the seven-minute opening cut.

A headphones must, "Art of Almost" opens with a gurgle of indeterminate electronic noise and time signature-defying drum pattern before eventually ramping up into a frantic guitar-freakout climax.

But don't get too attached to that mind-blower, because nothing else on the album sounds remotely like it. Jeff Tweedy is nothing if not the master of the artful fake-out.

Much of the rest of "The Whole Love" skews closer to the group's roots-rock beginnings, including some delicate, finger-picking tracks that fit right into the Americana genre Wilco seemed determined to shun for a while. It's as if Tweedy deliberately wanted to throw anyone who might come looking for that stuff off the scent by placing the most potentially alienating, anti-acoustic epic right at the beginning.

Somewhere between his country-rock and electronica inclinations, you suspect Tweedy must be more of a Beatles buff than previously imagined. That's partly because of the "White Album"-style unpredictability. And it's partly because the wispy, piano-driven, bitter "Sunloathe" is so Lennon-esque, in comparison to the upbeat distinctly old-fashioned "Capitol City," which sounds like Paul Westerberg doing Paul McCartney doing the '30s.

Anyone scared off by Wilco's relatively avant-garde phase in the early '00s may want to face their phobias and check out the new album's relatively straightforward guitar rockers. "Dawned on Me" starts off sounding like a slowed down version of Supergrass' power-pop classic "Alright" before developing its own melodic strengths. The deceptively sunny-sounding, death-themed "Born Alone" could be the best Shins outtake we've never heard.

Amid all the stylistic expansion and free-association lyrics, Tweedy isn't afraid to break your heart with a handful of back-porch ballads.

With a bare overlay of sad steel guitar and an eventual string section, "Black Moon" is ever bit as haunting as you'd hope from that promising title. He adopts a falsetto to skip merrily through the wounded title cut, where, having been newly "set free," Tweedy nonetheless vows to "still love you to death/And I won't ever forget how." Acoustic as it is, the tune somehow ends with some "Penny Lane"-worthy outro flourishes.

The closer, "One Sunday Morning," is epic only in length -- just over 12 minutes -- but utterly simple in style. Tweedy's verses have a son mourning and celebrating the dead father who taught him intolerance. (Is the song's shunned son gay? It seems a strong possibility, though Tweedy isn't about to get that direct.) The lyrical piano that fills out the instrumental closing minutes couldn't be farther than the percolating synthesizer beeps that open the album.

It's a quiet stunner, and not because Wilco is pushing any particular envelopes in the moment, other than maybe emotional ones.

After leaping around between styles through most of their catalog, Wilco now seem comfortable having it all. "Kid A-mericana," anyone?

View the original article here

Review: Wilco's "Whole Love" has shades of Beatles

Jeff Tweedy (C), John Stirratt (R) and Nels Cline (L) of Wilco perform ''Broken Arrow'' at the 2010 MusiCares Person of the Year tribute honoring recording artist Neil Young in Los Angeles January 29, 2010.

Credit: Reuters/Mario Anzuoni

By Chris Willman

Tue Sep 27, 2011 4:42pm EDT

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) - Wilco's eighth album, "The Whole Love," could almost be called "The Whole Enchilada," so thoroughly does it summarize the disparate sides the beloved band has developed over the last 16 years.

If you relished the experimental "Hotel Yankee Foxtrot" -- the 2001 breakthrough that made them the darlings of the rock intelligentsia and even got them classified as America's own Radiohead -- then you'll love the seven-minute opening cut.

A headphones must, "Art of Almost" opens with a gurgle of indeterminate electronic noise and time signature-defying drum pattern before eventually ramping up into a frantic guitar-freakout climax.

But don't get too attached to that mind-blower, because nothing else on the album sounds remotely like it. Jeff Tweedy is nothing if not the master of the artful fake-out.

Much of the rest of "The Whole Love" skews closer to the group's roots-rock beginnings, including some delicate, finger-picking tracks that fit right into the Americana genre Wilco seemed determined to shun for a while. It's as if Tweedy deliberately wanted to throw anyone who might come looking for that stuff off the scent by placing the most potentially alienating, anti-acoustic epic right at the beginning.

Somewhere between his country-rock and electronica inclinations, you suspect Tweedy must be more of a Beatles buff than previously imagined. That's partly because of the "White Album"-style unpredictability. And it's partly because the wispy, piano-driven, bitter "Sunloathe" is so Lennon-esque, in comparison to the upbeat distinctly old-fashioned "Capitol City," which sounds like Paul Westerberg doing Paul McCartney doing the '30s.

Anyone scared off by Wilco's relatively avant-garde phase in the early '00s may want to face their phobias and check out the new album's relatively straightforward guitar rockers. "Dawned on Me" starts off sounding like a slowed down version of Supergrass' power-pop classic "Alright" before developing its own melodic strengths. The deceptively sunny-sounding, death-themed "Born Alone" could be the best Shins outtake we've never heard.

Amid all the stylistic expansion and free-association lyrics, Tweedy isn't afraid to break your heart with a handful of back-porch ballads.

With a bare overlay of sad steel guitar and an eventual string section, "Black Moon" is ever bit as haunting as you'd hope from that promising title. He adopts a falsetto to skip merrily through the wounded title cut, where, having been newly "set free," Tweedy nonetheless vows to "still love you to death/And I won't ever forget how." Acoustic as it is, the tune somehow ends with some "Penny Lane"-worthy outro flourishes.

The closer, "One Sunday Morning," is epic only in length -- just over 12 minutes -- but utterly simple in style. Tweedy's verses have a son mourning and celebrating the dead father who taught him intolerance. (Is the song's shunned son gay? It seems a strong possibility, though Tweedy isn't about to get that direct.) The lyrical piano that fills out the instrumental closing minutes couldn't be farther than the percolating synthesizer beeps that open the album.

It's a quiet stunner, and not because Wilco is pushing any particular envelopes in the moment, other than maybe emotional ones.

After leaping around between styles through most of their catalog, Wilco now seem comfortable having it all. "Kid A-mericana," anyone?

View the original article here