Latest news with #JohnLennon
Forbes
18 hours ago
- Politics
- Forbes
Contra John Lennon In 1980, The Chinese Are Eating. Let's Celebrate It
NEW YORK - CIRCA 1973: Former Beatle John Lennon poses for a photo circa 1973 in New York City, New ... More York. (Photo by) John Lennon recorded 'Nobody Told Me' on August 7, 1980. In the song he famously told listeners 'They're starving back in China so finish what you got.' It was recently reported that since the 1980s, 800 million Chinese have risen out of poverty. Stop and think about that, particularly in relation to Lennon's lyrics. While today there are 5,500 McDonald's in China, in 1980 there were none. The first China-based store opened in October of 1990. The Chinese are eating. While communism is the ideology of desperation, and per Lennon, starvation, its antithesis is the stuff of abundance. McDonald's everywhere you look abundance. Because China used to be communist, food used to be scarce. That food isn't scarce now tells us China is no longer communist. Really, what else could rising acquisitiveness (including a particular fondness for American plenty) signal? Unless the Chinese people are superhuman such that they're uniquely capable of overcoming collectivism, it must be said that collectivism long ago ceased to define the Chinese experience. This is a useful distinction to make as politicians and pundits in the U.S. continue to attack Chinese businesses for having the temerity to operate like – yes – profit-motivated American businesses. For the longest time Americans yearned for China to leave communism behind, only for the country to do just that. Evidence supporting the claim that China has tossed communism in the proverbial dustbin can be found in the growing number of businesses that have originated in China, only to expand globally. Think SHEIN, Temu, Baidu, Alibaba, MYbank, TikTok, and countless others not mentioned along with even more on the way. What we're seeing in China is proof of what we Americans have long believed: when people are free, they prosper. The previous truth is almost trite it's so simple, but true it is. The Chinese weren't formerly desperately poor and starving because they lacked talent or drive, but because an unnatural, anti-human ideology was foisted on them in cruel fashion. Thankfully once again China is no longer communist. No doubt its ruling political party is the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), but the name no longer fits the ideology. Though the CCP oversees China, it now oversees a market economy. Yes, the CCP is no longer communist. Things have changed because views do. Americans know this well. A Republican Party long associated with free trade and reverence for business increasingly embraces tariffs while attacking the best and brightest of U.S. commerce. The change in the Republican party not infrequently reveals itself in its support for the political harassment of businesses with Chinese origins that are prospering in the U.S. The explanation used for the persecution of Chinese businesses is their 'mandated allegiance to the Chinese Communist Party.' It's just a veiled excuse for protectionism, one that glosses over the happy fact that the Chinese Communist Party is no longer communist. See the 800 million who've escaped poverty since Lennon recorded 'Nobody Told Me.' Lennon's words have a dated quality to them precisely because the Chinese are eating. And they're eating because China is no longer communist. Let's celebrate this truth, rather than harassing and banning the businesses that confirm it.
Forbes
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Forbes
The Beatles Return To The Charts With A Beloved Classic
The Beatles' Abbey Road climbs to No. 16 on the Vinyl Albums chart and reappears on Top Album Sales ... More in the U.S. thanks to a major sales jump. The Beatles at the press launch for their new album 'Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band', held at Brian Epstein's house at 24 Chapel Street, London, 19th May 1967. Left to right: George Harrison (1943 - 2001), Ringo Starr, John Lennon (1940 - 1980) and Paul McCartney. (Photo by) In the United Kingdom — where The Beatles got off to a fantastic start before taking over the world — the group's presence can always be felt on the charts via a handful of compilations. Those collections have become the focus for millions of listeners, especially on streaming platforms, which largely keep those titles alive. In the United States, things are a bit different. Fans of The Beatles often gravitate toward traditional albums, and more often than not, it's Abbey Road that comes out on top. Thanks to a sizable sales bump, the masterpiece is a hit once again in America. Abbey Road Lives on Multiple Billboard Charts Abbey Road can currently be found on two Billboard charts in the U.S. The set rises highest on the Vinyl Albums tally, the list of the bestselling full-lengths and EPs offered on wax. On that ranking, the classic jumps from No. 25 to No. 16. If Abbey Road can hold onto a spot on the list for a little more than two months – which seems almost certain at this point – it will reach 500 weeks as one of the top-selling vinyl releases in the country. Abbey Road Becomes a Bestseller Again in America Over on the Top Album Sales chart, Abbey Road returns, helping the group double its wins this frame. The bestselling project breaks back onto the list of the most-purchased releases in the U.S. at No. 45. Luminate reports that during the past tracking period, Abbey Road sold about 2,850 copies. That's up more than 31% from the previous frame, when it sold around 700 fewer copies. Abbey Road Has Already Reached No. 1 In the past, Abbey Road has reached No. 1 on both the Top Album Sales and Vinyl Albums charts. The project has dominated the vinyl-only tally for 10 nonconsecutive stints, while it's led the all-encompassing sales roster for just one of the more than 300 frames it has appeared.
RNZ News
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- RNZ News
Feature interview - Did Yoko Ono break up The Beatles?
We know her name, but the story of Yoko Ono has been largely ignored or told only as a footnote in the story of John Lennon and The Beatles. Music journalist David Sheff was the last person to interview Lennon and Ono just before Lennon was murdered in 1980. He's maintained a friendship with Ono over all these years. She's now 92, and Sheff's new book 'Yoko: A Biography' spans her life as the child of wealthy parents in pre-war Tokyo to the avant-garde art world. Jesse asks David the question, did she break up The Beatles. To embed this content on your own webpage, cut and paste the following: See terms of use.
Irish Times
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- Irish Times
The bond between John Lennon and Paul McCartney: ‘For sure they loved each other... they found a way to share that love with the world'
In 2020, in the enforced stillness of a pandemic lockdown, Ian Leslie sat down to write a long, impassioned defence of Paul McCartney . The resulting 10,000-word essay, published on his Substack, the Ruffian, contended that McCartney is an underrated musical and cultural force. Leslie did not expect much reaction 'for a piece arguing that Paul McCartney was good at music', but it went viral, drawing praise from Beatles scholars and fans around the world. For Leslie, a self-described Gen X Beatles fan who fell in love with the band through his parents' LPs, that essay was the beginning of something much bigger. 'Because the piece was praised by people who knew a lot about The Beatles, I thought, maybe I've effectively just given myself licence to write about them … but I didn't think it was an option, because I didn't have that background and, obviously, there are a lot of books about The Beatles, as I am constantly being reminded,' he says. Encouraged by the positive response to his essay, he began to think, 'Wow, maybe I could do that.' Leslie's viral essay led to John & Paul: A Love Story in Songs, a brilliant book exploring the creative partnership at the heart of The Beatles. Their bandmates, George Harrison and Ringo Starr , feature too, of course, but what differentiates John & Paul from all those other Beatles books is Leslie's focus on the intense, often volatile and ultimately transformative relationship between Lennon and McCartney. READ MORE At the heart of the book is the idea that these two musical geniuses didn't just write songs together but also communicated through them. 'They discovered, as teenagers, that the song could be a vessel for everything they couldn't say out loud,' Leslie says from his home in England. 'It was a kind of emotional panic room.' They were two boys from Liverpool who had both lost their mothers young, a bond that created a private gravitational pull between them. 'You've got these two emotionally intense teenagers, at the most intense stage of a young man's life, and they find this magical outlet, this way to connect, not just with the world but with each other.' It's this emotional dynamic that Leslie believes is often flattened in typical Beatles biographies; he has read most, if not all, of them. 'The music was their language,' Leslie says. 'It's how they argued, supported each other, competed and connected. Even after the band split they were still talking to each other, just through songs written apart.' Leslie was about seven years old when he discovered The Beatles. He was rifling through his parents' record collection when he found Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band and a compilation album that featured a photograph of the band taking part in a Japanese tea ceremony. 'They just seemed very mysterious and glamorous to me – they have done ever since – and that was the beginning of it.' [ Seeing but not quite hearing The Beatles in Hammersmith, 1964 Opens in new window ] Leslie's background is in advertising, but his previous books, Born Liars, Curious and How to Disagree, are about human behaviour and psychology. He is known for taking a familiar aspect of human nature and uncovering fresh angles. No surprise, then, that he wanted to take a well-trodden story such as that of Lennon and McCartney and reappraise it. 'That central relationship in the group is the thing that absolutely is like the molten core of The Beatles, and the thing that really fascinated me,' he says. The Beatles: Paul McCartney, George Harrison, John Lennon and Ringo Starr taking a dip. Photograph: John Loengard/TimeAs a writer on psychology Leslie brings a fresh perspective to the friendship. 'There is more than one reason that we get Lennon and McCartney so wrong, but one is that we have trouble thinking about intimate male friendships,' he writes. 'We're used to the idea of men being good friends, or fierce competitors, or sometimes both. We're thrown by a relationship that isn't sexual but is romantic, a friendship that may have an erotic or physical component to it, but doesn't involve sex.' In each chapter Leslie takes a deep dive into a song to more fully understand the Lennon-McCartney bond. Each of the 23 songs in the book, from Come Go with Me, the song Lennon sang at their fateful 1957 church-fete meeting in Woolton village, to Here Today, the song McCartney wrote after Lennon was murdered, in 1980, become emotional landmarks. When Leslie writes about a work as ubiquitous as She Loves You, he somehow manages to restore the shock of how new it once sounded. Reading the book, you find yourself stopping to listen to each song – and, with Leslie's insights, hearing them in a different way. 'I knew pretty much from the beginning that's what I wanted to do,' he says. 'I don't think you can separate the music from the relationship, and these were guys who lived and thought and felt and communicated through songs. They learned to do that as teenagers in each other's bedrooms and front parlours, and that becomes their primary channel of communication about the things they care about most.' Although Leslie's book veers away from indulging the polarising narrative around the two friends, he admits that he has always been 'a Paul person'. 'He was the one who fascinated me. I felt he'd been treated unfairly in terms of his reputation,' Leslie says. For me, as a fellow Paul person, one of the successes of the book is that it draws me more towards Lennon. Leslie is pleased about this. 'I wanted to be careful that I wasn't biased. I'm glad that it kind of sent you to John. I mean, partly, that's what happened to me as well, because I set out with that kind of approach, to say, 'Look, these two guys basically created each other.' Paul McCartney and John Lennon at the Finsbury Park Astoria, London, in December 1963. Photograph: Val Wilmer/Redferns 'It's ridiculous to talk about John versus Paul, right? You couldn't have one without the other musically, creatively speaking, and even in terms of personality. So as I was researching and writing the book I was sort of opening my own mind to how extraordinary John was.' John & Paul, Leslie explains, was a balancing act. It needed to be accessible to people who didn't know much about their back story, 'which is a lot of people, especially young people'. At the same time, 'the material had to feel fresh even if you know all about The Beatles'. He was working on three levels. 'One is what happened. It's important to me that we tell the story of The Beatles and not just assume people know it,' Leslie says. 'The second level is the John-and-Paul relationship. And the third thing is the music, and how does the music change and develop? They all have to be interwoven, so you can see how they're all playing off against each other. That was basically the challenge of writing it.' What the book powerfully communicates is the sheer unlikeliness of what Lennon and McCartney created. Leslie returns often to the mystery of their personal and musical partnership. How did two working-class young men, in a postwar industrial city, end up making the greatest popular music of the 20th century? How did both of them turn out to be world-class songwriters and singers? 'It's almost a kind of magical meeting, the two of them coming together at that time,' Leslie says. 'Sometimes you worry that if you're enchanted by something the magic will go, because it'll just become a series of facts and information. And actually, in this case, it's kind of the opposite. I think, in terms of The Beatles and John and Paul's relationship, the more you learn about it, the more detail you accumulate, the more mysterious and enchanting it gets. And I wanted to convey a little bit about that in the book.' When you're writing a story that's so familiar to so many, 'it can feel like the author knows exactly how and why all of this happened … so now and again I sort of step outside the frame and go, 'I don't know how this happened',' Leslie says. This incredibly vitriolic song is not the kind of song you write about somebody that you're exhausted by, or that you're bored by, that you just can't be bothered with It's why John & Paul begins with Lennon and McCartney's first meeting, on a hot summer's day, 12 years after the end of the second World War and a decade before Sgt Pepper. 'I wanted to capture that. John's there at the fete, playing bad skiffle, when he first meets Paul, and 10 years later they're making a psychedelic masterpiece that revolutionises music. It's hard to believe ... I still don't understand it,' Leslie says. He suspects some kind of 'hidden hand' in this. He mentions Rick Rubin's well-ventilated theory that The Beatles were the best proof available of the existence of God. 'The more you look into the story of The Beatles, that's how I feel about it. I can't explain this.' The book is particularly revealing about the acrimony that developed between the two friends in later years, and how their relationship ebbed and flowed after The Beatles split, when Lennon was with Yoko Ono in the United States and McCartney had settled into family life with his wife Linda. 'Most relationships or marriages end because the partners essentially get bored or exhausted by each other. The fire goes out altogether. That's why a lot of long-running groups split up eventually,' Leslie says. That didn't happen with The Beatles 'because they essentially split up prematurely, when they were making the best music of their career. This never happens'. 'You split up because you're not very good or you're making mediocre music, the spark is gone and you're a bit bored and so on. They never did that. They split up and they have this terrible argument when they're still doing incredible stuff.' Lennon's song How Do You Sleep?, which is full of cruel digs at McCartney, features in the book for good reason. 'This incredibly vitriolic song is not the kind of song you write about somebody that you're exhausted by, or that you're bored by, that you just can't be bothered with. It's a song you write when you really want somebody's attention, because you have very, very strong feelings about them,' Leslie says. The Beatles in 1976: Ringo Starr, John Lennon, George Harrison and Paul McCartney. Photograph: Getty Images Arguably, they were still being inspired by each other when Lennon was fatally shot outside the Dakota, his apartment building in New York, and Leslie is insightful about the emotional fallout for McCartney of his best friend's death. In the book he describes McCartney's appearance on Desert Island Discs years later, visibly struggling not to cry as one of his chosen songs, Lennon's Beautiful Boy, is played. What does Leslie think Lennon would be up to now, had he lived? 'The thing about John Lennon is that he's never really what you want him to be, which is why he's so cool and fascinating and interesting. I don't think he'd ever settle into your nice, sweet grandad mode. I think he would have been on Twitter, you know, saying the most terrible things.' Did he have revelations about McCartney and Lennon as a fan himself while writing the book? 'Absolutely. It's such complex music, even when it sounds very simple, that you can always go back to it and hear different things. And, yes, that happened to me, but it was also the mission of the book to take something very familiar that we take for granted and ask people to think about it again,' Leslie says. 'We think we know The Beatles. We think we know John and Paul. I wanted to reastonish people with what they did and who they were. And, of course, the music is absolutely essential to that. I want people to hear I Want to Hold Your Hand and go, 'Oh my God,' or She Loves You and go, 'This is actually incredible. It's not just this song, it's a masterpiece,' you know.' Not even Lennon and McCartney, the mercurial protagonists themselves, could decode the full mystery of their bond. In one of the final quotes in the book, from 1981, McCartney remarks that they 'never got to the bottom of each other's souls'. [ 'A festering wound': The true story of the Beatles break-up Opens in new window ] As Leslie puts it, 'What we can say for sure is that they loved each other and that through music they found a way to share this love with the world – and in doing so they made the world an immeasurably better place.' John & Paul: A Love Story in Songs is published by Faber & Faber. Ian Leslie is in conversation with Tom Dunne and Paul Howard at the Pavilion Theatre , Dún Laoghaire, Co Dublin, on Wednesday, July 9th
New York Post
19-06-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Post
‘Everybody Loves Raymond' creator reveals John Lennon was best man at Peter Boyle's wedding
All you need is love. 'Everybody Loves Raymond' creator Phil Rosenthal recently revealed that John Lennon served as the best man at actor Peter Boyle's 1977 wedding. Rosenthal, 65, shared the surprising news while celebrating 30 years of 'Everybody Loves Raymond' at the Paley Center in New York City on Monday. 11 John Lennon served as the best man at 'Everybody Loves Raymond' star Peter Boyle's 1977 wedding. CBS via Getty Images 11 Creator Phil Rosenthal shared the surprising news on Monday during an 'Everybody Loves Raymond' 30-year reunion in NYC. Getty Images Ray Romano (Ray Barone), Patricia Heaton (Debra Barone) and Maggie Wheeler (Linda Gruenfelder) were also in attendance. Boyle, who portrayed Romano's on-screen father, Frank Barone, in all nine seasons of the CBS sitcom from 1996 to 2005, died from multiple myeloma in 2006 at the age of 71. 'Two interesting things about Peter Boyle,' Rosenthal said while remembering the late actor. 'He studied to be a monk when he was younger. I asked him, 'Why'd you give it up?' And he says, 'There weren't enough girls there.'' 11 'Two interesting things about Peter Boyle,' Rosenthal began during a discussion about the late actor. Getty Images 11 'You know who the best man at his wedding was? John Lennon,' Rosenthal revealed. 'He was cool, Peter Boyle.' Bettmann Archive 'And the other thing is, I wonder if you know this. You know who the best man at his wedding was? John Lennon,' Rosenthal added. 'He was cool, Peter Boyle.' Boyle met his wife, Loraine Alterman, in 1974 on the set of Mel Brooks' 'Young Frankenstein.' Alterman was working as a reporter for Rolling Stone magazine at the time, and Boyle, who was starring in the film as Frankenstein's monster, allegedly asked her out while still wearing his costume and makeup. 11 Boyle married his wife, former Rolling Stone reporter Loraine Alterman, in 1977. FilmMagic 11 Alterman was good friends with Lennon's wife, Yoko Ono, which was how Boyle and the Beatles star connected. Ron Galella Collection via Getty Images 'He actually was out of makeup when we met, but let him have it his way,' Alterman clarified during an interview with The New York Times in 2001. The pair began dating, and they married in 1977. Alterman, who also worked as a music critic for Rolling Stone, was friends with Lennon's wife, Yoko Ono. It was through Ono that Boyle became close to the Beatles star. 11 'At the last minute, I asked John to stand in as my best man. And he said yes,' Boyle said in 2005. 'The rest is history.' WireImage 11 'He is John Lennon,' Boyler added one year before his death. 'And everything he does is memorable.' Redferns 'My wife and I had a very low-key wedding,' Boyle told Philadelphia magazine just one year before his death. 'At the last minute, I asked John to stand in as my best man. And he said yes. The rest is history.' 'He is John Lennon,' the actor added, noting that Lennon did not perform at the wedding. 'And everything he does is memorable.' Three years after Boyle and Alterman's wedding, Lennon was tragically shot and killed by Mark David Chapman outside his residence at The Dakota in NYC on Dec. 8, 1980. The 'Imagine' singer was 40 years old. 11 Lennon was shot and killed by Mark David Chapman outside his residence at The Dakota in NYC on Dec. 8, 1980. Getty Images Meanwhile, Rosenthal revealed that he would never reboot 'Everybody Loves Raymond' during the show's 30-year reunion in NYC on Monday. He explained that it would be 'impossible' without Boyle and Doris Roberts. Roberts portrayed Marie Barone on the show and passed away from natural causes in 2016 at the age of 90. 'I'll be honest with you, I'm a student of TV, and I've seen the shows that try to come back and do reboots. They're never as good,' Rosenthal told People shortly before the reunion event kicked off. 'So I'm happy with the memory.' 11 Boyle passed away in 2006 at the age of 71. His 'Everybody Loves Raymond' wife, Doris Roberts, passed away in 2016 at the age of 90. CBS via Getty Images 11 Rosenthal revealed that he would never reboot 'Everybody Loves Raymond' because it would be 'impossible' with Boyle and Roberts. Getty Images 'It's not the show that I miss doing,' he added. 'We did it. We did 210 episodes. That's a lot of anything. We decided to stop when we felt like it was enough. We weren't canceled. We stopped for a reason. What I miss are my friends. That's what I miss. All the people who made the show with us.' Brad Garrett, who played Romano's older brother, Robert Barone, on the beloved sitcom, said something similar when asked about an 'Everybody Loves Raymond' reboot earlier this month. 'There won't be,' Garrett said at the premiere of Disney Pixar's 'Elio' in Los Angeles on June 10. 'And I'm just saying that because that's something that Ray and Phil [Rosenthal] have always said.' 'There is no show without the parents. They were the catalyst, and to do anything that would resemble that wouldn't be right to the audiences or the loyal fan base,' he added. 'And it was about those two families, and you can't get around that.'
