This February marks the 60th anniversary of The Beatles first visit to America. While fans will reminisce about their experiences witnessing Beatlemania from the outside looking in, there’s one person who has recently documented his experience from the inside looking out – none other than Paul McCartney!
McCartney’s Eyes of the Storm exhibit which opened in London in 2023 is now making its way to the US. It’s first stop in the States is in Norfolk, Virginia at the Chrysler Museum of Art. In May 2024, it then travels to the Brooklyn Museum of Art in New York.
Confessions of a Rock ‘n’ Roll Name Dropper: My Life Leading Up to John Lennon’s Last Interview, released December 8, 2023, is Laurie Kaye’s 219-page memoir about her career in radio and the many rock stars she interviewed. The central focus of the book is her extraordinary experience interviewing John Lennon on December 8, 1980, hours before he was shot and killed. Referring to it as the “best day of her life and also the worst”, it has taken her decades to decide to write out her memories.
At over 500 pages, the new book, Living the Beatles Legend: The Untold Story of Mal Evans, will take months and even years for Beatles fans to digest. We finally have the missing puzzle piece to the Beatles story. Here was a man — The Beatles’ long-time roadie, personal assistant, and devoted friend — that witnessed practically every moment in the Beatles’ career. As a result, Evans became a true insider and eyewitness to history, and some say, The Sixth Beatle!
Author Ken Womack took on a ginormous task to organize and compile Mal Evans’ personal diaries, manuscripts and memorabilia. In fact, the second volume of this Mal Evans project will be released in 2024, which is a book that will contain Mal’s diaries, manuscripts, more photos and other artifacts from his time working for The Beatles. Meanwhile, the biography in this first volume, which includes numerous unseen photos and correspondence, combines Mal’s unpublished archives with hundreds of new interviews to fill in any gaps.
“Now And Then” is the last Beatles song – written and sung by John Lennon, developed and worked on by Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr, and now finally finished by Paul and Ringo over four decades later.
Note: This article was originally published in March 2007 on Daytrippin’s website.
[Text Copyright 2007 by Dayrippin’;Photos copyright by Julia Baird]
My discussion with Julia Baird occurred on Tuesday, March 20, 2007, just as her new book, Imagine This: Growing Up with My Brother John Lennon was released in the UK. Having gotten a copy and devouring it with rapt interest, I’m grateful at the opportunity to interview her for Daytrippin’.
Background
Julia Baird was John Lennon’s half-sister, and her story about their childhood is riveting as she discloses for the first time, the family secrets that were kept hidden so many years. The shocking truth as to why John went to live with his Aunt Mimi instead of their mother, Julia Lennon, was never revealed until the mid-1990s. The confusion about John’s childhood caused him emotional distress throughout his life, and it was a theme in his music many times.
In recent years Julia’s tireless research and persistent questions of family members and neighbors finally began to pay off. She learned of the concocted stories that were devised by Aunt Mimi when John became famous, to sacrifice Julia Lennon’s character and conceal her own wrongdoings. These misconceptions formed the basis of public opinion and have appeared in every biography about the Beatles since then. Julia Baird sets out to reverse this deception and honor the memory of the mother that she and John shared.
Probably the biggest falsehood that has been spread is that Julia handed John over to her sister, Mimi, to raise him, in 1946 when Julia’s life was rough. She was cast as a frivolous woman who also willingly gave away her baby daughter, Victoria, in 1945 when she’d had a wartime affair with a Welsh sailor while her husband, Alf Lennon was away at sea.
Daytrippin' Beatles Magazine 