The Words and Music

AR T of The Beatles

A creative mind cannot help but manifest its creativity in many ways. The Beatles were one of the greatest bands of all time because of the limitless creativity of its four members. In this e-book I will explore the various ways each member of The Beatles has exercised his creativity away from music.

Always an avid pop art and postcard collector, Ringo Starr began experimenting with computer art in the late nineties. He says it gave him something to do while he was touring and staying in hotels on the road. All of Ringo’s art proceeds go to benefit the Lotus US Foundation Charity.

George Harrison first dabbled in filmmaking by producing a film of the Concert for Bangladesh, which he organized in 1971. Theatrical proceeds as well as sales of the DVDs and CDs of the concert continue to benefit the George Harrison Fund for UNICEF. He later set up a British film production company called Handmade Films with business partner Denis O’Brien. It was originally formed to produce the Monty Python film Life of Brian, and is still producing films today.

In 1982 Paul McCartney, a longtime fine art collector, decided to begin to paint. He has since been a very prolific artist and has published a book of his paintings. Paul has also been involved in drawing characters for animated shorts and says that it has been his dream since the sixties to do an animated feature film. Proceeds for Paul McCartney’s art sales are currently going to New York’s Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center and Britain’s Garland Appeal for Breast Cancer Research. In the past proceeds from his work have been donated to various children’s charities and art education.

Art was John Lennon’s first love. He began drawing long before he had a guitar, then attended the Liverpool Art Institute for three years (1957-60) before the Beatles became a full-time occupation. At the time of his death, John had saved and preserved several hundred drawings that he considered important, including pictures he drew for his son, Sean. I had the great opportunity to view an exhibit of John & Yoko’s work at the Peace Museum in Chicago (of which Yoko is a board member) in 1984. In 1986 Yoko Ono, acting for the John Lennon Estate, began releasing some of the most meaningful drawings for limited editions and merchandising, with the goal of re-establishing John Lennon as an important artist of his time. All of Lennon’s drawings were in black and white: many have had color added to them by Yoko for merchandising purposes. A part of all proceeds are donated to Feed the Children and various smaller children’s charities around the world.

“I’ve actually been painting for the last, well, since about 1990 really, but that was with acrylic . . . But this is just purely computer . . . it started on tour, when I was on tour with nothing better to do, sitting in all those different hotel rooms and (I) got the computer out and found this program, a painting program, and that’s how it started. I started actually just doing sort of design, you know, and then I did the first set with the mouse. It’s very hard to draw with the mouse. And then I got a drawing pad, you know, a slate . . . an electronic one.”

“They’re called my people actually. They’re all heads.”

—Ringo Starr

Is It Time

Hold Me Whot 50

Oky DokyRingo with Face and Flowers

Help Night Boy OOO Man Two

Ringo Rama(mixed media)

Three Faces

Hat Man

No, No, No

New Two OK

Zak

Chef Alamode Krayzee

Yer Baby

As East Pakistan struggled to become the separate state of Bangladesh during the Bangladesh Liberation War, the tremendous political and military turmoil and the 1971 Bangladesh atrocities led to a massive refugee problem in India. This problem was compounded by the 1970 Bhola cyclone, bringing torrential rains causing devastating floods and threatening a humanitarian disaster. Bengali musician Ravi Shankar consulted his friend George Harrison on providing help to the situation. Within 6 weeks George had persuaded his friends to join him in a large concert at Madison Square Garden. The film, released in 1972, and re-issued in 2005 on DVD with new material, combined images from both shows with George Harrison’s preference of the performances of the songs.

The opening of the film features footage from a press conference to announce the concert with Harrison and Shankar. Harrison is asked by a reporter: “With all the enormous problems in the world, how did you happen to choose this one to do something about?” “Because I was asked by a friend if I would help, you know, that’s all,” was George’s reply.

Producer George Harrison with Bob Dylan

Monty Python’s The Life of Brian would not have been made without George Harrison, who set up Handmade Films to help fund it after the subject matter scared off the original backers, EMI Films, and particularly the infamous Lord Bernard Delfont. Terry Gilliam later said, “They pulled out on the Thursday. The crew was supposed to be leaving on the Saturday. Disastrous. It was because they read the script... finally.”

As a result, the very last words in the film are: “We’ll never make our money back on this one, Bernard”, teasing Delfont for his lack of faith in the project.

Executive Producer George Harrison shown with John Cleese in a cameo appearance in The Life of Brian.

Some of the other films executive-produced by George Harrison...

Unspoken Words

“ I don’t think there is any great heroic act in going in slavishly every day and saying, ‘I must do this.’ So what I find is that I do it when I am inspired. And that’s how I can combine it with music. Some days the inspiration is a musical one and other days it has just got to be painting.”

— Paul McCartney

Paul posing in front of Big Heart, a brightly coloured painting of a heart he created in 1999, after meeting Heather Mills.

Father Figure

Egypt Station

Boxer Lips

“I’d been itching to apply paint to a surface, and I decided life begins at 40, so let’s do something’’ — Paul McCartney

“A couple of people who have looked at mybook singled this one out, a couple of women

who said that is the picture they would like, and Iam not sure why but I like it. This is Linda relax-ing in my room at home where I have the piano,and she is sitting on the couch and she was in

yellow. So I made everything yellow. The pianoisn’t really yellow, but I just thought it would be

nice. Her hair was yellow, her blouse was yellow,so I made them all yellow. So it became a veryyellow picture. It didn’t need brown or any of

their real colors. This is interesting because thislittle stool here, this little piece here, was Rene

Magritte’s. That was in a sale of the contents ofhis studio, and in this little thing here are hischarcoals and his drawing pens and pencils

exactly as he left them, including his spectacles.Maybe it was the atmosphere they liked. It’s very

peaceful. I enjoyed making it. It is a very typicalpose of Linda’s: the legs — this foot is slightly

strange, but I like it — this shoe.”

Yellow Linda With Piano

The Queen getting a joke 1991

John’s room 1990

Bowie spewing 1990

Sherlock Lennon, mid-1960’s

Biggest Fan. Power to the People

“If art were to redeem man, it could do so only by saving him from the seriousness of life, and restoring him to an unexpected boyishness.”

—John Lennon

“Bag One” was a series of fourteen drawings given to Yoko Ono as a wedding gift in 1969. A London gallery that showed the “Bag One” lithographs, including Lennon’s suggestive drawings of himself with Yoko, was raided and charged with obscenity in 1970.

“Bed-In For Peace,” 1969.

“Every now and then, I discover a drawing in the pages of a book that he was reading, kind of like a quick ad-lib.

“I have no idea how many drawings there are. I’ve never done a definite catalog. Sketching was like John’s security blanket. The guitar was as well. He was always strumming, but when he wasn’t playing the guitar, he was drawing. Guitar and pen.” — Yoko Ono Lennon

Baby Grand, 1974

In Greenwich Village in 1972.

Steel and Glass

You are Here, 1969.

All images contained in this e-book are available on the following public websites:

http://www.gallery-319.com/starr.htmlhttp://www.limelightagency.com/ringo_starr/eng_press/nbc.htmlhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concert_For_Bangladeshhttp://www.imdb.com/name/nm0365600/#producerhttp://www.handmadeplc.com/http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Handmade_Filmshttp://www.maccafan.net/Library/Paintings/Paintings.htmhttp://www.geocities.com/carolemmalovepaul/painter/Painter.html?x=132&y=80http://www.maccafan.net/Library/Paintings/Paintings.htmhttp://www.lennonart.com/http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/07/arts/design/07lenn.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

This e-book is solely intended for use in LSC 431 at the University of Illinois at Springfield. All pages contain an invisible watermark prohibiting printing or copying in any way.