THE BEATLES

Aesthetic Moodboards ➣ John Lennon

Aesthetic Moodboards ➣ Paul McCartney

HAPPY BIRTHDAY RINGO STARR!

Happy Birthday Stuart Sutcliffe | 1940 - 1962

“He was imaginative, ultra-intelligent, and he was open to everything, not just painting or pop but to every media and every experience possible.” Eduardo Paolozzi

“Stuart was cool. He was great-looking and had a great vibe about him, and was a very friendly bloke. I liked Stuart a lot; he was always very gentle. John had a slight superiority complex at times, but Stuart didn’t discriminate against Paul and me because we weren’t from the art school.” George Harrison

“Even today, [The Beatles] still miss him,” Hunter Davies, 1968

“He was a beautiful person with a beautiful heart. A brilliant talent who loved his life, his friends, his work and didn’t get enough time to show everybody how much he loved them.” Pauline Sutcliffe

“His face was just absolutely beautiful. I can still see his face all the time, and you know the way his eyes were shining and he was so enthusiastic about life and the knowledge of life, and that was very very attractive.” Astrid Kirchherr

WALLS AND BRIDGES

“Written amidst a turbulent, chaotic period in his personal life, John Lennon’s 1974 album Walls and Bridges is his most misunderstood – and arguably finest – solo LP.”

“How very different he sounded on Walls and Bridges, exposing the demons which hanged him mercilessly. Lennon could comfort himself musically in the reliable hands of reliable session players Klaus Voorman, Jim Keltner, Jesse Ed Davis and Ken Ascher, knowing they could capture the backing he needed to duet with Elton John. A jaunty number, ‘Whatever Gets You Thru The Night’was the product of Beatle progenitor and studier laughing, stomping and clapping their way to the top of the US Charts. Lennon would join his namesake John at Thanksgiving performance at Madison Square Garden that November, Lennon’s last major concert at that. For all his new-found muse, the treasures of fame were lost on Lennon, a year where he watched Paul McCartney become an Oscar nominee and stadium highlight. Pencilled by many as the darkest Beatle, Lennon’s greatest work was his most truthful and it was only through the depravity of his darkest secrets that he re-capture that spark that so many envied. Born in confessional agony, Lennon strums the opening chords ‘Nobody Loves You (When You’re Down and Out)’ cascading the desolate whims he’d fancifully throw to the bellowing horns which blasted the audience. As it ended on an aphorism, Lennon proffered the sadly prophetic “everyone loves you when you’re six feet underground” with causality and silence. No quip, no glib remark, only a doleful whistle to comfort his listeners. In all his primal agony, Lennon had never shown such pain with such dignity. An epochal moment, it might be the finest song Lennon ever wrote.” New Sounds writer, Eoghan Lyng “The Walls And Bridges sessions were the most professional I have been on. He was there every day, 12 o’clock to 10 o’clock, go home, off the weekends, eight weeks, done. John knew what he wanted, he knew how to get what he was going after. He was going after a noise and he knew how to get it. And for the most part, he got it. What he explained, we used to get.” Jimmy Iovine, Overdub Engineer on Walls and Bridges The LP’s inner sleeve was enclosed inside another card container featuring more photographs of Lennon, and an eight-page booklet completed the package. The booklet contained song lyrics, five more artworks from the 1950s, and an extract from the book Irish Families, Their Names, Arms And Origins by Edward Maclysaght which detailed the history of the name Lennon. The booklet also featured credits for the album, and two quotations: ‘”Possession is nine-tenths of the problem” – Dr. Winston O’Boogie’; and ‘On the 23rd August 1974 at 9 o’clock I saw a U.F.O. – J.L.’