Pre-show relaxing

 

Elvis in Las Vegas

 This is  group of people including Ringo & Maureen, Peter Brown, Denis O'Dell and Ken Mansfield who went to see Elvis in concert in Las Vegas in January 1970.   Elivs called out Ringo in the audience during the show.  

Santa Cruz Island

 

May 3, 1991 

All This And McCartney Too (1976)

 All This and McCartney Too

By Perry Stewart

Fort Worth Star-Telegram

May 4, 1976

    There were bubbles in the air last evening at the convention center, but that wasn't Lawrence Welk on stage. It was Mr. and Mrs. Paul McCartney, residents of the United Kingdom. Lately, on a tour of the United States with some of their friends. The bubbles, along with smoke bombs and green laser beams, were part of the pyrotechnic trappings of the Wings of America tour which McCartney and his group, Wings, inaugurated here last night. 

    The special effects may have been superfluous in view of the thunderous audience response to McCartney's non-stop two-hour concert. The packed house of 14,000 gave him a standing, stomping ovation, which lasted two minutes and was rewarded with a pair of lively encores.

     Fatigued but still switched on, Paul and Linda McCartney held cramped court backstage for a gaggle of journalists from as far away as Australia and as near as the Metroplex. The ex-Beatle and his American-born wife don't bother with the nuances of geography. It's all "Howdy Texas" to them. (Guitar Man, Denny Laine, should take a cue. He turned to the Fort Worth crowd early in the concert and called out, 'How ya doin' Dallas?)

     Musically however, the McCartneys know full well that they are in Buddy Holly country. "Yeah. Lubbock, all right!" Linda growled in a good-natured parody of a husky-voiced interviewer.  Her husband, looking scandalously youthful, despite the fact that he'll hit his 34th birthday later on this tour, joined the conversation at the mention of Holly, the '50s rock idol and early Beatles influence. 

    Did McCartney know he was in Buddy Holly country? "Do I know it?" The singer asked, eyes wide in courtesy, "Of course! He's my boy."

     The Fort Worth audience, a probable cross-section of McCartney fandom, contained many 30s-ish patrons who had followed his music since the early 1960s, but there were more in the crowd who were about the age McCartney was when he hooked up in Liverpool with John Lennon, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr. 

    "Doesn't bother me," he cracked later with a trace of the Liverpudlian cadence in his speech. "I don't feel old. I have a daughter who's 13, and I still don't feel old."

     Paul and Linda stood arm in arm against the armada of reporters, publicists, and record company types. Spotting an old girlfriend, the unflappable Linda, began to fish in her purse with her free hand. She finally fished out some snapshots of a horse. "Isn't he a beauty?" She cooed, "Pure Appaloosa, a stallion. We bought him the other day in a place called Hurst."

     The McCartneys and their entourage had been in the area for several days now in a rented house in a place called Dallas, so they could drive over unchauffered and unhasseled for the rehearsals. They were to part today for Houston, the next stop on the tour.

Cigar Box guitar

 April 30, 1971 

We Might Play Again --- Lennon (1971)

Klaus Voormann taken by John Lennon in 1971 

 

We Might Play Again --- Lennon

By Don Short

Daily Mirror

May 1, 1971

    Will the Beatles make a comeback as live performers without Paul?  It's a possibility, according to John Lennon --but not under the name of the Beatles.

     We were meeting during an interlude in the headline-making drama in Majorca over Yoko's seven-year-old daughter Kyoko. We were quietly chatting in their hotel about the Beatles and their music when John broached the idea.  "Now what's this about Klaus Voormann joining the Beatles?" He asked, referring to my story the other week that the German guitarist was enlisting in their ranks in place of Paul.  Said John, "There aren't any Beatles anymore. They've been disbanded. But if you'd said that George, Ringo, and John had an idea they might do a live show or two, then Klaus would be our man to play with us.

     "It's just an idea. We can't say whether or not it will happen or not. Sometimes we get the urge to have another go, and then we think, 'we've done it all before, and what do we want to suffer it again for?' So for the moment, Klaus backs us on our individual sessions."

     "Some old Apple friends," I say, "are growing more optimistic that there would be a reconciliation between him and Paul now that the legal conflicts are being resolved."

     "You never know," winked John. "If he walked through into this room now, we would still be good friends, although I doubt if I could forgive him on one or two things." Whatever the outcome, there is little likelihood that Lennon and McCartney will ever write together again. The musical gap between them continues to widen. Paul pens the romantic sonnet and John goes deeper into rock and roll. 

    "I can't get back to writing fairy tales anymore," said John bluntly. "I have got to live with the realities of life as it is today and reflect them in my music. Besides, we are all happy doing what we are. Look at good old Ringo. He's hooped one in the charts, and George is happy doing a Elvis and the Plastic Ono isn't wanting..."

     Of the Lennon legend, John said he couldn't help being the blabbermouth, the one who's done the frontal starkers bit and is sometimes known to sit it out in a plastic bag.

     "That's John Lennon being John Lennon," he explains. Not as though the Beatle was anything like that on this occasion. He was in a smart brown suit and clean-shaven and was as conventional as Mr. Suburbia. What's more, he looked remarkably youthful, like a picture of his early Beatle days. 

    John and Yoko still hope for children of their own. "Yoko keeps dropping 'em," says John, referring to his wife's two miscarriages. Says Yoko, "We're going to keep on trying, and in the next two to three years, we just hope we will be lucky." Said John, "If not, we'll adopt. We'll adopt all sorts of children, Jews and Arabs, blacks and whites and polka dot kids too. If there's any going around and going."

The NME Award winning Beatles

 

May 1, 1966

Just a little dance band

 

May 2, 1961 - Hamburg 

Veggie Burger

 

April 30, 1991 

Mother and daughter

 Heather and Linda McCartney at a birthday party for Denny Laine.  I have shared this photo in black and white in the past and there was a lot of discussion about if that is really Heather.  So I am going to share the back of this photo with you as well.   Denny's birthday is October 29.  When I turn the back of the photo upside down, it looks like it is stamped to have been printed "Nov 76."  While the date written is 1976-1977 -- it had to have been taken at Denny's birthday party in 1976 which makes Heather 13 going on 14 in December.