Paul McCartney, Yoko Ono Pay Tribute to Cynthia Lennon

Paul McCartney, Yoko Ono Pay Tribute to Cynthia Lennon

Paul McCartney and Yoko Ono both paid tribute to Cynthia Lennon today.
Lennon, who was married the Beatles great John Lennon from 1962 to 1968, died today at her home in Spain. She was 75.

"The news of Cynthia’s passing is very sad. She was a lovely lady who I’ve known since our early days together in Liverpool," McCartney said in a statement to ABC News. "She was a good mother to Julian and will be missed by us all, but I will always have great memories of our times together."

Ono added, I’m very saddened by Cynthia’s death. She was a great person and a wonderful mother to Julian. She had such a strong zest for life and I felt proud how we two women stood firm in the Beatles family. Please join me in sending love and support to Julian at this very sad time."

The British native "passed away today at her home in Mallorca, Spain, following a short but brave battle with cancer," a representative told ABC News in a statement. "Her son Julian Lennon was at her bedside throughout. The family are thankful for your prayers. Please respect their privacy at this difficult time."

As stated in the announcement, Cynthia and John had one child together -- Julian, 51.

Cynthia met the legendary musician while the two were both studying at the Liverpool College of Art in the late 1950's. Lennon eventually married Yoko Ono in 1969 after the couple's split.

 After Lennon was murdered in 1980, Cynthia and Ono both spoke to "60 Minutes" about the singer.

"He's made his mistakes, on the front pages of newspapers, all over the world," Cynthia Lennon said. "But he bared his soul for everybody else to see."

When asked what led to the famed split, Cynthia said, "I think we both changed. It was natural that we both change. But I did not want to go down the road John was going ... I had nothing to escape. I wasn't looking for anything else. I wasn't searching in my mind for new experiences on a mental state."

Cynthia Lennon was married three more times after the 1968 split, most recently being widowed in 2013 when her husband Noel Charles died.

She is survived by her son Julian, who posted an “In Loving Memory” video on YouTube that starts with the lyrics, “You gave your life for me. You gave your life for love.” The video is coupled with intimate pictures of the Lennon family from the 1960’s.
Cr.ABC News

Paul McCartney Offers an Intimate Valentine’s Day Gift

Paul McCartney during a Valentine’s Day concert at Irving Plaza

A holiday, a song title and a free night before a TV appearance were pretext enough for Paul McCartney to book a sudden show on Saturday night at Irving Plaza; its capacity, about 1,000, is an order of magnitude smaller than the arenas he usually headlines. The audience, he said joshingly, was “so close you can see my dental work.” On Sunday, Mr. McCartney was scheduled to perform on “Saturday Night Live’s” 40th-anniversary prime-time special. But Saturday was also Valentine’s Day, and Mr. McCartney announced, “Tonight it’s all about love.”

Midway through the set, he came to “the point of this evening.” He dedicated “My Valentine,” a minor-key ballad from his 2012 album “Kisses on the Bottom,” to his wife, Nancy Shevell, and red confetti petals showered down on the sold-out crowd. “That’s the big spectacular production number of this evening,” he said afterward.

The concert, about 100 minutes long, was mostly an abridged version of the set Mr. McCartney performed last year on his world tour of arenas. He slipped in a few 1950s oldies he clearly admires: the Crickets’ “It’s So Easy” and, even better, Carl Perkins’s “Matchbox,” which gave him a chance to belt the blues and show off some pointed, rockabilly-rooted lead guitar.


Although Kanye West, Mr. McCartney’s recent collaborator, is also performing on the “Saturday Night Live” special, he didn’t share the stage with Mr. McCartney as he did at the Grammy Awards. It might have been jarring; this audience was not a hip-hop crowd, and it sang along loudest on Beatles songs from the 1960s. The Irving Plaza show was Mr. McCartney’s domain. He drew on every decade of his long career — including a few recent songs, like “Save Us” and “New” from his 2013 album “New” — and he casually moved from instrument to instrument, though he never got around to the drums.

The set was filled — as is Mr. McCartney’s huge songwriting catalog — with love songs that fuse musical ingenuity with pure, guileless romance: “I know this love of mine will never die/And I love her.” By now, Mr. McCartney’s graceful melodies are a shared cultural heritage. Among his gifts, as songwriter and singer, is the ability to make songs like “And I Love Her” come across — even in their umpteenth performance — as sweetly sincere yet never saccharine.

Mr. McCartney’s cleverness shows up in songs like “Another Day,” which shifts between rocker and waltz; he followed it with “We Can Work It Out,” which does the same trick. Unlike most ballad auteurs, Mr. McCartney is also a rocker, schooled on rockabilly and Little Richard, ready to rasp whether it was in “Matchbox,” in the Beatles’ brilliant Beach Boys parody “Back in the U.S.S.R.” or over the gnarled guitar riff of his “Let Me Roll It,” which segued into an instrumental of Jimi Hendrix’s “Foxey Lady.”

In the club, Mr. McCartney and his band weren’t intent on being as polished as they might be in a studio or stadium. They let Abe Laboriel Jr.’s drum flourishes erupt; they plowed ahead when Mr. McCartney’s voice grew ragged in “Jet.” The songs, so familiar but still eagerly awaited, lived up to decades of memories; there was no question about everyone joining in on “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da” or “Hey Jude.” The encore, the grand finale of “Abbey Road,” summed up much of Mr. McCartney’s songwriting in its quick-changing suite: ballad, rocker, anthem, benediction. “In the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make,” he declared. It was, after all, Valentine’s Day.

Cr. New York Times

Paul McCartney and Kanye West

Kanye West fans ask: Who's Paul McCartney?

The unlikely duo's new music collaboration may raise questions for those West fans who are not familiar with the former Beatle, and for some pranksters eager to rile Fab Four fans.

 The New Year's Eve release of "Only One," the first song collaboration by rock legend Paul McCartney and hip-hop superstar Kanye West, certainly caught fans of the rock legend and hip-hop superstar by surprise.

This holds especially true, perhaps, for West fans who may have no idea who former Beatle and veteran solo star McCartney is -- or what he's done in a career that now covers more than six decades.

"Who is Paul McCartney?" tweeted one West fan.

Another tweeted: "I don't know who Paul McCartney is, but Kanye is going to give this man a career w/ this new song!!"

It is possible, of course, that these posts were written by people who know very well who McCartney is and wanted to have some fun at the expense of his fans.

Or, as one fan tweeted with mock-outrage: "Who tf is paul mccartney???!??! this is why i love kanye for shining light on unknown artists."

Along those lines, another tweet referenced The Beatles alone: "Why did people used (to) listen to bugs?"

Excellent question!

The response from McCartney fans was swift and decisive, if perhaps not remotely good-humored.

"Losing hope in humanity by the minute," tweeted one McCartney fan. "RT if you know who Paul McCartney is #TheBeatles."

Another was clearly angered, tweeting: "If you don't know who #PaulMcCartney is, you don't deserve your ears."

Van Gogh, long deceased, was not available for comment.

Better, still, was this tweet: 'The downfall of America’s youth has officially concluded with people not knowing who Paul McCartney is."

We suspect that some West fans genuinely are not familiar with The Beatles or McCartney, who performed an epic concert at San Diego's Petco Park in September. But it also appears some Twitteratti members are poking fun at McCartney fans to get a rise out of them. It also suggests that sarcasm does not work well in 140, inflection-free characters on the Internet.

On the other hand, then more time devoted to this Kanye/Sir Paul"controversy" -- whether real, contrived or both -- the less time spent on "Only One" itself.

The ballad, while not as sappy as "Ebony and Ivory," McCartney's 1982 collaboration with Stevie Wonder, is not McCartney's finest moment. He plays keyboards and appears to provide barely audible backing vocals for West, who croons via Auto-tune, the pitch-correcting device long favored by vocally challenged performers.

There's no doubting the sincerity of West's heartfelt lyrics about his late mother, Dr. Donda West, and his young daughter. Its sentimentality is as pronounced as the fact that West should have let someone else sing his lyrics instead. McCartney wisely refrains from trading vocals with West, since doing so would likely be embarrassing for both of them.

Meanwhile, we can only wonder (on behalf of some younger West fans): Who, or what, was Wings?

Cr. The San Diego Union-Tribune  News