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    Rare Beatles Audition Tape Surfaces in a Vancouver Record Shop

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    The recording appears to be from the band’s 1962 audition for Decca Records, which notably rejected the group.The tape sat unremarkably on a shelf behind the counter, collecting dust for five, maybe 10 years — so much time that Rob Frith says he lost track.Frith, 69, could not seem to recall how it had found its way to Neptoon Records, his store in Vancouver, British Columbia, which in its 44 years has become a repository for tens of thousands of vinyl records and other musical relics.The label on the cardboard box said it was a Beatles demo tape, but, having heard enough bootleg recordings over the decades, Frith was skeptical until he enlisted a disc jockey friend, Larry Hennessey, to load it onto his vintage tape player a few weeks ago.It was just before midnight on March 11 when they pushed play on the mystery tape. From the opening guitar riff and the intonation of a 21-year-old John Lennon, Frith said he could not believe his ears as he listened to the Beatles performing a cover of the Motown hit “Money (That’s What I Want).”“Right away, we’re all kind of looking at each other,” Frith said. “It seems like the Beatles are in the room. That’s how clear it is.”Frith said the tape appeared to be a professionally edited recording of the Beatles’ New Year’s Day 1962 audition for Decca Records in London, a session that notably ended with the band’s rejection.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in Movies

      Beatles Movies Cast Revealed, Including Paul Mescal and Barry Keoghan

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      The director Sam Mendes announced the stars of his four-film series, each told from the perspective of a different Beatle, set to be released in 2028. There has been no shortage of movies about the Beatles. But the director Sam Mendes is embarking on a project that stands apart for its ambition — four films, each from a different band member’s perspective — and now we know who will be playing the Fab Four.The films will star Paul Mescal as Paul McCartney, Harris Dickinson as John Lennon, Joseph Quinn as George Harrison and Barry Keoghan as Ringo Starr, according to Mr. Mendes’s production company.The four films, which will tell the story of one of the world’s most influential and adored bands, will be released together in April 2028, “creating the first bingeable theatrical experience,” the company wrote. In announcing the films last year, Mr. Mendes, the British director best known for films like “American Beauty” (1999) and “Revolutionary Road” (2008), said he was “honored to be telling the story of the greatest rock band of all time, and excited to challenge the notion of what constitutes a trip to the movies.”He announced the cast at the CinemaCon convention in Las Vegas on Monday, according to The Hollywood Reporter. While the Beatles have been big-screen subjects before — including in Danny Boyle’s “Yesterday” (2019) and Sam Taylor-Johnson’s “Nowhere Boy” (2009) — this is the first time that the members of the band and their estates have granted full life story and music rights for a scripted film, according to Sony Pictures.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      The Power of ‘Two’: An Anniversary Playlist

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      Celebrate two years of this newsletter with songs by Dolly Parton, Stacey Q, Mitski and more.Dolly PartonCharlie Riedel/Associated PressDear listeners,Surprise: There’s a birthday party in your inbox! Today we’re celebrating two years of The Amplifier, with — what else? — a themed playlist.On March 21, 2023, I sent out the first installment of this newsletter, introducing myself with 11 songs that explain my musical perspective and asking readers to submit some of their own favorite tracks. In the time since, I’ve sent out nearly 200 playlists, shared thousands of songs and received countless submissions when I’ve asked Amplifier readers to generate their own soundtracks. The community we’ve created together is vibrant and reciprocal: I may have discovered as much new music through your recommendations as you have through mine.Today’s playlist honors the Amplifier’s second birthday with eight tracks that feature the word “two” in the title. In keeping with The New York Times style guide, I stuck with songs that spell out the word “two,” so my apologies to Sinead O’Connor’s “Nothing Compares 2 U” and Beyoncé’s “II Hands II Heaven,” among plenty of other greats that didn’t make the cut. But you will hear classics from the Beatles, Dolly Parton and Bruce Springsteen, as well as more recent and lesser-known tracks from indie singer-songwriters like Mitski and Flock of Dimes.This anniversary is also ushering in a new chapter for this newsletter. Starting next week, I’ll be taking a few months off to finish the manuscript of a book I’ve been working on. I’ll miss making these playlist and corresponding with you all, but I’m incredibly excited to get one step closer to a lifelong goal of publishing my first book. Once I’m back, I’ll update you on my progress — and probably share my writing playlist with you, too.While I’m out, I have a wonderful lineup of guest writers who will be sending out their own newsletters and playlists each Tuesday, and I’m thrilled for you to see (and hear) what they have in store.Thanks to each and every one of you who has read this newsletter, sampled our playlists and reached out to give us feedback. As always, happy listening.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Joey Molland of the Power-Pop Band Badfinger Dies at 77

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      He was the last remaining core member of a group that was both propelled and pigeonholed in the 1970s by its close association with the Beatles.Joey Molland, a guitarist and songwriter who was the last surviving member of Badfinger, one of the first acts signed to the Beatles’ Apple Records and a power-pop force in the early 1970s on the strength of hits like “Day After Day” and “No Matter What,” died on March 1 in St. Louis Park, Minn. He was 77.His partner, Mary Joyce, said he died in a hospital from complications of diabetes.Mr. Molland joined Badfinger — originally called the Iveys — in 1969. The band had been signed the year before as a marquee act for Apple Records, the much-publicized label formed by the Beatles in 1968 as part of the parent company Apple Corps.“Badfinger gave me the opportunity to do everything a musician could want,” Mr. Molland said in a 2020 interview with Guitar World magazine. “I got to make records. I heard my music on the radio, and I toured all over. I couldn’t believe the luck we were having. For a time, everything was great.”Apple Corps was a high-minded, if financially dubious, initiative to tap the Beatles’ millions to fund unknown talents in music, film and electronics. It was created so that, as John Lennon said at the news conference announcing the venture, “people who just want to make a film about anything don’t have to go on their knees in somebody’s office — probably yours.”This experiment in “Western Communism,” as Paul McCartney called it, involved no shortage of misfires. (The company’s retail shop, known as the Apple Boutique, hemorrhaged 200,000 pounds — the equivalent of millions in today’s dollars — in a little more than a year.) But Badfinger was a gamble that worked, and its members enjoyed their new status as rock stars.Badfinger in about 1970. From left: Pete Ham, Tommy Evans, Mike Gibbins and Mr. Molland.via Getty ImagesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in Movies

      ‘Beatles ’64’ Review: They Wanted to Hold Their Hands

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      This documentary, directed by David Tedeschi, comes up with a solid compendium of the band’s arcana from their first trip to the United States, when fans went wild.Few cultural events of the 20th century have withstood as much scrutiny as the Beatles’ first trip to the United States, but the documentary “Beatles ’64,” directed by David Tedeschi, a frequent collaborator of Martin Scorsese’s, comes up with a solid compendium of Beatlemania arcana.Tedeschi (“The 50 Year Argument”) revisits the excitement surrounding the Fab Four’s arrival through the eyes of early fans. Among the more unlikely Beatles enthusiasts who appear is the filmmaker David Lynch, who attended the band’s 1964 concert at Washington Coliseum and remembers music that could inspire “tears of happiness.”The writer Jamie Bernstein recalls a childhood crush on George Harrison. Her ardor surely helped convince her father, the composer and conductor Leonard Bernstein, to weigh in on the merits of rock ’n’ roll: “I think this music has something terribly important to tell us adults,” he says in an archival clip. The musician Smokey Robinson describes being “elated” when the Beatles covered “You’ve Really Got a Hold on Me,” even though, he says, he didn’t know about it until the record came out. “There are a billion songs on earth, man,” he says. “To just have somebody like the Beatles, who are great songwriters themselves — out of that billion songs, to take one of my songs and record it? I can’t beat that as a songwriter.”The present-day footage can seem self-reflexive to the point of parody: Paul McCartney gives the documentary team a tour of the Brooklyn Museum’s Paul McCartney exhibition. Ringo Starr is shown hanging out with Scorsese, a producer on this documentary and the director of a previous one on Harrison.But with respect to Harrison’s status as the quiet Beatle, the quiet star of “Beatles ’64” is superb footage by the brothers Albert and David Maysles, to whom the film is dedicated, and who trailed the Beatles during those two weeks. (They made their own 1964 documentary, “What’s Happening! The Beatles in the U.S.A.,” out of the material.) Watching the band in the Plaza Hotel and fans in the streets, hoping to catch a glimpse of their idols, you can’t help but get swept up in a 60-year-old fervor.Beatles ’64Not rated. Running time: 1 hour 46 minutes. Watch on Disney+. More

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      Grammys Snubs and Surprises: Charli XCX, André 3000, the Beatles and More

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      A look at the nominations’ unexpected and intriguing story lines, including the role of an absent Drake, the validation of André 3000’s flute music and overlooked gems.The names headlining this year’s Grammy Award nominations make a lot of sense: Beyoncé, Kendrick Lamar, Billie Eilish and Taylor Swift are perennial favorites with imperial reach. Sabrina Carpenter and Chappell Roan have stormed the mainstream. Shaboozey and Charli XCX made themselves inescapable.While there was once a time when it was easy to argue that the Grammys were out of touch, barely attempting to be an accurate representation of popular music in a given year, the major acts of 2024 are all accounted for. Shedding some of its fusty baggage under the Recording Academy chief executive Harvey Mason Jr. and a slate of new industry voters, the awards show has brought itself more or less in line with the Billboard charts, radio and streaming services, centering the celebrities of the moment.Still, it’s the Grammy Awards — not everyone can be happy. So after poring over the 94 categories that make up the 67th annual class of nominees, The New York Times’s pop music team — the reporter Joe Coscarelli, the chief pop music critic Jon Pareles, the pop music critics Jon Caramanica and Lindsay Zoladz and the Culture editor Elena Bergeron — were left with a few lingering questions: Is Beyoncé’s cross-genre domination really warranted? What are the Beatles doing here? And have the Grammys gotten too safe?We broke down the richest — and most baffling — story lines, snubs and surprises.Sabrina Carpenter’s success on the charts was mirrored in her Grammy nods: six of them.Emma Mcintyre/Getty Images for CoachellaA Mirror to the MainstreamJOE COSCARELLI I must admit, I’m almost sad at how predictable the Big Four categories — album, record and song of the year, plus best new artist — are these days, and this year in particular. Back in my day — not that long ago! — Beck was beating Beyoncé to close the night. And sure, you still have your occasional upsets by Jon Batiste (album of the year, 2022) or Bonnie Raitt (song of the year, 2023). But the odds of a truly destabilizing major win in February feel quite long now, likely by design.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Beyoncé and Young Women Pop Sensations Lead 2025 Grammy Nominations

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      Charli XCX, Billie Eilish, Chappell Roan and Sabrina Carpenter will compete in the biggest categories, along with Taylor Swift and Kendrick Lamar.Beyoncé and Taylor Swift will face off in all top categories at the 67th annual Grammy Awards, leading a pack of nominees that also features buzzy young female stars who have dominated the pop charts over the past year.With 11 nods, Beyoncé has more citations than any other artist this year, for “Cowboy Carter,” her gumbo of country, R&B and acoustic pop that spurred conversations about the Black roots of many American genres, including country.The other top nominees, with seven apiece, are Billie Eilish, a onetime teenage disrupter who is now a Grammy and Oscar darling; Kendrick Lamar, the rapper laureate, whose nominations stem from a no-holds-barred battle of words with Drake; Post Malone, a pop shape-shifter gone country (and who appeared on both Beyoncé and Swift’s latest albums); and Charli XCX, the British singer-songwriter and meme master whose digital-nostalgic iconography was borrowed by the Kamala Harris campaign.Swift has six nominations, as do Sabrina Carpenter and Chappell Roan — two of this year’s fresh pop sensations, each receiving their first Grammy nods.The awards ceremony is set for Feb. 2 in Los Angeles.The biggest contest this year, at least in terms of celebrity wattage, is Beyoncé vs. Swift. Both are juggernauts in the culture and at the Grammys. With 32 career trophies, Beyoncé, 43, has already won more awards than any other artist, and is now also the most-nominated person, with 99. Yet she has never taken album of the year, despite four previous nods.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      A Lesson From John Lennon

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      The ecstasy and agony of an original Beatles fan.It started in April 1963, when friends of my parents returned to New Jersey from a trip abroad with a present for me. It was something a record shop clerk in London had recommended as the perfect thing for a 13-year-old girl.I prepared myself to act surprised and grateful, even if I didn’t like it. But when I opened it, I gasped. The four young men on the album cover were the cutest guys I had ever seen.This album, “Please Please Me,” was not available in the United States. And the group, the Beatles, was unknown here. I loved them immediately.My classmates thought my new obsession was weird, except for one girl, Sharon, who was open to new things. In the months before the first stirrings of Beatlemania in America, Sharon and I spent the after-school hours listening to the album and gazing at the cover. We could never decide which Beatle was our favorite, because our opinions changed by the day.One afternoon I noticed a sticker on the inside of the cardboard sleeve with the address for the Beatles Fan Club. I mailed a letter to 13 Monmouth Street, London, and began waiting.That summer I spent eight homesick weeks at a sleep-away camp in Maine. With every letter home, I asked if I had gotten a reply from the Beatles. With every letter back, there was a no.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Mitzi McCall, Comedian Who Confronted Beatlemania and Lost, Dies at 93

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      She and her husband had the bad luck to make their “Ed Sullivan Show” debut the same night as the Beatles. They bombed. But their careers would recover.In the decades after they made their first appearance on “The Ed Sullivan Show,” on Feb. 9, 1964, the comedy team of Mitzi McCall and her husband, Charlie Brill, had a successful career. They performed in nightclubs and on television; both individually and together, they acted on television, in films and onstage.But that single appearance remained an indelible memory for the couple: It was also the night the Beatles made their American TV debut, and that was all that the screaming young fans in the audience cared about. Their nearly three-and-a-half minutes in the national spotlight came moments before the Beatles returned for their second set. They bombed — in front of 73 million viewers.“We just about wanted to kill ourselves,” Ms. McCall told The Washington Post in 2004.“I think it’s hysterical,” Mr. Brill said in a phone interview. “We laid the biggest egg of all time.”Ms. McCall died on Aug. 8 in a hospital in Burbank, Calif. She was 93. Her death was confirmed by Mr. Brill.When their manager, Mace Neufeld, told Ms. McCall and Mr. Brill that they were going to appear on “The Ed Sullivan Show” — a Sunday night staple that at the time was often a steppingstone to stardom — it seemed like the type of break a young act needed. And when Mr. Neufeld told them that they would be on the bill with the Beatles, Ms. McCall later recalled, “We weren’t really sure who they were.”Ms. McCall and Mr. Brill in a 1967 publicity photo. They performed together until the mid-1980s.via Brill familyWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More