The Beatles photographed by Henry Grossman in 1967.

John Lennon Skateboarding

Nassau, Bahamas (1965)

Photos by Henry Grossman

GEORGE IN 1965. (Picture by Henry Grossman during Help)

The Beatles, done by famous artists

John and Julian Lennon with George Harrison at Kenwood in 1965 (photo by Henry Grossman); George and Julian backstage at the Natural Law Party concert on April 6, 1992 (photo by Richard Young); more from Kenwood in 1965 (photos by Henry Grossman).

Happy 60th birthday to Julian Lennon!

“Paul [McCartney] was around more as an uncle, but in retrospect the most kind, gentle and open and observant of everybody was George. The sad thing was that we were becoming closer when he passed away. We hung out together from time to time in my 20s.” - Julian Lennon, The Times, via The Advertiser, November 12, 2011

“George — George was always a sweetheart to me. I loved him dearly. I miss him dearly.” - Julian Lennon, Connect The World, CNN, September 20, 2013

“Julian happens to be very talented. He’s really good. He’s got a lot of good tunes. He’s only just started to try and do lyrics. Apart from physically looking like John a bit, with glasses and long hair, he really isn’t anything like John. He’s more like his mother [Cynthia]. He’s a much gentler, softer person.” - George Harrison, Good Morning Australia, April 1982 (x)

Ted 🤝 Georgie = making sure their sons don’t learn their favorite Beatle is dead ❤️

The Beatles playing soccer ⚽️, or football as they'd call it in their neighborhood 😉 while filming "Magical Mystery Tour". In Ringo's garden in Surrey and also in what I think is an airfield of some sort.

Bonus: Looks like John decided to stay out of the game and just play the cello instead.

Another bonus: Paul, Henry McCullough and even Martha playing ⚽️ in the early 70's

HOW DID IT TAKE HENRY GROSSMAN DYING FOR ME TO SEE THIS PHOTO?????

Lennstarr for the win!

Paul later offered an analytical view of [Henry] McCullough’s and [Danny] Seiwell’s departures, but his analysis showed that he had not quite internalized the lesson of the band’s disintegration; in fact, he remained in denial about the musical issues behind McCullough’s and Seiwell’s resignations.

“When I came out of the Beatles, I got slated for being a bit too heavy with the other guys in the band,” he said. “It was a bit as if I was taking over as the manager. I thought with the new band, I’ll give them total freedom, so no one can accuse me of that again . . . and you can’t do that either. You started to have people saying, ‘Hey man, c’mon, produce us.’ No one would take up the baton, the role. So I came back to that. “The whole of ‘Wings Mark I’ was to see if that could be done. But there was too much indecision, and I wasn’t willing enough to take the thing by the scruff of the neck and say, ‘Look, I think we’ve gotta organize the solos you’re gonna play.’ It was a bit like we’re gonna be the Grateful Dead and we’re just gonna play what comes up. But to do that you’ve gotta know each other for a long time.”

[…]

Henry was surprised when Paul telephoned, but he agreed to a meeting at MPL. They smoked a couple of joints and downed half a bottle of whisky, while Paul asked Henry what he was up to and told him some tales of Lagos. “Look,” Paul said, “I know we’ve had our differences, but I really appreciate the time you’ve been with the band, and I want you to have this.” He handed Henry a check for £5,000 ($12,000) and a flight case full of guitar strings.

McCullough was touched by the gesture, but he was bemused by Paul’s indifference to whether the fracturing of Wings suggested problems with his approach to running a band. “Two of the band members in Wings walked out in the same week for different reasons, and he never asked why,” Henry mused. “You can take from that what you want.”

— The McCartney Legacy, Volume 1: 1969 – 1973 by Allan Kozinn and Adrian Sinclair (2022)

Yoko and I meeting Henry Kissinger to talk about peace. We said to stop fighting and killing each other, he suggested that to achieve world peace we commit war crimes, bomb civilians, overthrow democratically elected leaders and kill everyone. That way we will achieve peace because when everyone’s dead they can’t fight each other. RIP.

Thoughts on the 2024 Oscars

Just the other day I posted my Best Movies of 2023 list, so you pretty much know what I was rooting for! But here are some thoughts on tonight's awards, telecast and winners:

Best Director: Christopher Nolan - he deserved this award, but he easily should've won for Memento, The Dark Knight, Inception or Dunkirk too.

Best Actress: Emma Stone - really Academy? Lilly Gladstone should've won for Killers of the Flower Moon. That was a performance where she leaned into the silences and it was all in the eyes. While Emma Stone gave a powerhouse performance in Poor Things (an uneven movie IMHO) it was more of a showy "hey, look at me" performance. It's hard to compare both performances since they were so different but Gladstone should've won (and made history).

Best Supporting Actor: Robert Downey Jr. - Congrats to the first SNL cast member (he was in the 1985-86 season) to win an Acting Oscar. So cool to see the supporting actor from Weird Science, Back to School and A Scanner Darkly win! He probably should've won for Tropic Thunder, but he is worthy of this award for this performance!

Best Supporting Actress: Da'Vine Joy Randolph - I named The Holdovers my Best Movie of 2023 so I'm thrilled they did the right thing and at least rewarded Randolph!

Best Documentary Feature Film: 20 Days in Mariupol - I named this my Best Documentary of 2023. Big Congrats to GBH, Frontline and everyone involved with this powerful doc!

Best Animated Short Film: War Is Over - In my recent guide to the Oscar Nominated Short Films I predicted this. But big congrats to co-writer / executive producer Sean Ono Lennon. The son of John Lennon and Yoko Ono oversaw the short animated film inspired by John and Yoko's "Happy Xmas (War is Over)". I met Mr. Sean Ono Lennon when he did an in-store performance at Other Music in NYC in 2010. In Feb. 2015, I named his band Ghost of the Saber Tooth Tiger's album Midnight Sun my #1 Album of 2014. Then both The GOASTT and their leader Sean Lennon retweeted it and thanked me! I've also gotten to cover his band The Claypool Lennon Delirium here as well.

Best Live Action Short Film: The Wonderful World of Henry Sugar - another short film I predicted would win. Wes Anderson has been nominated in a lot of other categories, but it's nice to see him finally win, even if he should've won for Bottle Rocket or Rushmore!

Very cool to see Slash doing a guitar solo during "I'm Just Ken". Yes the Barbie song lost to Billie Eilish and Finneas O'Connell's "What Was I Made For" also from that film, but how cool was it to see the GNR guitarist ripping it up at the Oscars?!

AI PICTURES PRESENTS: LENNON IN WORLD ART. PART I

IMAGINE what John Lennon would have looked like from the perspective of the great masters of different eras. Created by: An AI system with a little help (photoshop) from Rita Gafi.

Artists: Sandro Botticelli, Hieronymus Bosch, Leonardo da Vinci, Albrecht Durer, Ukiyo-e, Rembrandt, Paul Cezanne, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Henri Rousseau.

In memoriam: Henry Grossman, the photographer who captured these (and many other) images in the 1960s, and in 1974.

The story behind photos 1-4 (3 & 4 are screenshots from CBS This Morning, 2013): "We were having breakfast in Nassau. George came in; he was still in his pajamas, had just awakened. I wasn't taking pictures at breakfast, or not intending to, and he looked so totally undefended, and different from any time I'd seen him that I said, 'George, I gotta take a picture.'" - Henry Grossman, CBS This Morning, March 23, 2013 (x)

“Despite their youth, the Beatles had depths that impressed Grossman. ‘I have a 25-minute audiotape of George and me talking about philosophy,’ he says. ‘He was so far ahead of what I knew then and know even now, my God. This was an old soul. Someone who knew and had thought about everything.’” - Brandeis Magazine, Spring 2013

“Harrison had personally invited his old friend Grossman to shoot the Dark Horse tour [in 1974]. ‘I knocked on the door of the rehearsal studio in Los Angeles,’ Grossman remembers. ‘When George opened the door, he gave me a big hug. We were like brothers at that point.’” - Harrison (2002)

“Since George’s death, Olivia Harrison has come by to have coffee with Grossman and look at photos of her late husband. ‘We’re in touch,’ he says. ‘I speak with her every once in a while.’” - Brandeis Magazine, Spring 2013 (x)

According to retired Arts College Lecturer Reg Cox, “Stuart was a lovely lad, he lived at No 9 when my wife, Ina, and I lived at number 11. Stuart would borrow our sweeping brush to clean his flat when his mother was coming to visit” Stuart’s parents lived at 37 Aigburth Drive in Sefton Park, which is now The Blenheim Hotel. Reg went on to say “Stuart upset his Belgium Landlady Mrs Plant, when he painted all the furniture black and white, some people say that Stuart was evicted from 9 Percy Street, he wasn’t, he just left to share a flat with his friends” “We had great parties in Percy Street” recalls Reg “It was very Bohemian and the cellars of the houses were inter-linked so we could go from number 11 to number 9 without having to go out into the street. The Liverpool Art set attended the parties, Fritz Spiegel, Adrian Henry and Roger McGough, to be honest I can’t remember if Paul and George were ever at any of the parties, remember they were not famous, but I know John did, he always wanted to be the centre of attention.”

Stuart was mentioned by name in the original lyrics of “In My Life”, this was changed when E.MI. Executives were worried about Stuart’s family being upset and possibly suing.* John changed the lyric to: With lovers and friends, I still can recall Some are dead and some are living In my life, I've loved them all

(Article by Phillip Coppell for ClickLiverpool)

*If anyone has more information/sources on this claim, I’d appreciate it! It’s too specific to just be a warped version of Pete Shotton’s story.

Pattie Boyd, George Harrison, Cynthia Lennon, John Lennon, Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr and Maureen Starkey arriving at Heathrow Airport from Salzburg, Austria. Photo by Henry Grossman from his book 'Places I Remember - My Time With The Beatles'. March 22, 1965🌸🌹🌻🎸

Via @maureencoxfans on Instagram🌸🌹🌻