In 1964, The Beatles released their classic album Beatles for Sale. 43 years later that statement is as true today as it ever was.
In separate news stories it is being reported the childhood home of drummer Ringo Starr will not be demolished as was previously planned and the handwritten lyrics of George Harrison's classic “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” are on the auction block.
The Liverpool City Council had planned to tear down the former Starkey home along with approximately 400 others as part of a planned redevelopment project. Ringo and his family called this particular dwelling home for a mere three months, leading the council to determine the home had no significant historical value.
Those plans have been put on hold and now negotiations are ongoing to preserve the home to be part of a museum.
Tearning down old buildings to put up shitty condos or another strip mall might not be the most romantic thing in the world, but turning a house baby Ringo spent three months living in into a museum seems a radical way to thwart the plans.
The handwritten lyrics to Harrison's most famous Beatles songwriting contribution are expected to fetch more than $500,000 when the as-yet-identified owner puts the item up for auction January 15. Beatles fans might be interested to know this particular draft of the lyrics include some that did not make it into the song released on The Beatles (aka “The White Album). Also scrawled on the page is the phrase “The Band leader said he ain't playin' no more.” Those words might have been directed at either John Lennon or Paul McCartney as band tensions were at an all-time high during the long sessions for “The White Album.”
It was during this time Lennon started bringing Yoko Ono into the studio- which would make anybody tense. Far be it from me to tell anybody how to spend their half mill, but I think I'd rather just buy a copy of the album and be done with it. Maybe I am missing something- well, missing something besides a half million dollars.
Article comments
1 - Mat Brewster
The day I have half a million bucks to blow on pop memorabilia is the day I quite my job and never leave the couch again.
2 - Gordon Hauptfleisch
Three months? Not to slight Ringo, but I once drove by Beach Boys Brian, Carl and Dennis' boyhood home in Hawthorne, Calif. (a town I used to live in) where they lived at least 15-20 years--it was being torn down because a corner of it was in the route for a new freeway being constructed. True, it was a non-descript post-war stucco house, but it was Hawthorne's only claim to fame, and it seems to me that should've somehow been salvageable by moving the freeway over ten feet or so. Too late now.
3 - Concerned scouser
Hi
Thought i'd let anyone interested know that they are still trying their hardest to tear down all these houses (including Ringo's).
I've lived here all my life & have become so sick of all the propaganda that I am starting a site called In My Liverpool Home about it, to try & get the local people who live in the affected houses (not outsiders telling everyone it's wanted) to have our voices heard.
4 - jim
The concept of Beatlemania is hard to comprehend if you were not alive or were too young, or simply missed it. It was one of those things that you say, "you had to be there". No amount of words can even begin to show the impact of The Beatles. As musicians, the Beatles proved that rock & roll could embrace a limitless variety of harmonies, structures, and sounds; virtually every rock experiment has some precedent on Beatles records. As a unit the Beatles were a synergistic combination: Paul McCartney's melodic bass lines, Ringo Starr's slaphappy no-rolls drumming, George Harrison's rockabilly-style guitar leads, John Lennon's assertive rhythm guitar ?" and their four fervent voices. As personalities, they defined and incarnated Sixties style: smart, idealistic, playful, irreverent, eclectic. Their music, from the not-so-simple love songs they started with to their later perfectionistic studio extravaganzas, set new standards for both commercial and artistic success in pop.
5 - Christie
This is a great idea. The concept of Beatlemania is hard to comprehend if you were not alive or were too young, or simply missed it. It was one of those things that you say, "you had to be there". No amount of words can even begin to show the impact of The Beatles. Thank you.