October 24, 2010

Video: The Beatles - "Act Naturally" - Live


Here The Beatles perform "Act Naturally" live. The song is from their 1965 album Help! (UK version). In the U.S., it was released as the B-side of "Yesterday," and not released on a U.S. album until Yesterday and Today, which was released on June 20, 1966.

"Act Naturally" was written by Johnny Russell and Voni Morrison. It was originally recorded by Buck Owens and the Buckaroos, who had a number 1 hit on the Billboard Country Singles chart in 1963. This was Owens' first chart-topper.

In 1989, Ringo Starr and Buck Owens recorded a duet version together. It peaked at #27 and spent 11 weeks on the Billboard country chart in the summer of 1989.

October 14, 2010

Video: The Beatles - "Something"


This is a promo video for George Harrison's excellent contribution to Abbey Road, "Something". The video features Beatle wives Pattie Boyd Harrison, Linda Eastman McCartney, Maureen Cox Starkey, and Yoko Ono Lennon.

In Pattie Boyd's 2007 autobiography, Wonderful Tonight, she claims that Harrison wrote the song for her, writing: "He told me, in a matter-of-fact way, that he had written it for me." In a 1996 interview though, George contradicts this when he said: "Well no, I didn't [write it about her]. I just wrote it, and then somebody put together a video. And what they did was they went out and got some footage of me and Pattie, Paul and Linda, Ringo and Maureen, it was at that time, and John and Yoko and they just made up a little video to go with it. So then, everybody presumed I wrote it about Pattie, but actually, when I wrote it, I was thinking of Ray Charles." So there you go.

Frank Sinatra called "Something" "the greatest love song ever written," and said it "was his all-time favorite Lennon/McCartney song." Although great enough to be written by Lennon and/or McCartney, it was, of course, a George Harrison composition.