GIMME SOME TRUTH

JOHN LENNON
SONGWRITER: JOHN LENNON
COUNTRY: U. K.
ALBUM: IMAGINE
LABEL: APPLE RECORDS
GENRE: ROCK
YEAR: 1971
 
         John Winston Ono Lennon[nb 1] (born John Winston Lennon; 9 October 1940 – 8 December 1980) was an English singer, songwriter, musician and peace activist who achieved worldwide fame as the founder, co-lead vocalist, and rhythm guitarist of the Beatles. His songwriting partnership with Paul McCartney remains the most successful in history. In 1969, he started the Plastic Ono Band with his second wife, Yoko Ono. After the Beatles disbanded in 1970, Lennon continued a career as a solo artist and as Ono's collaborator.
          Born in Liverpool, Lennon became involved in the skiffle craze as a teenager. In 1956, he formed his first band, the Quarrymen, which evolved into the Beatles in 1960. He was initially the group's de facto leader, a role gradually ceded to McCartney. Lennon was characterised for the rebellious nature and acerbic wit in his music, writing, drawings, on film and in interviews. In the mid-1960s, he had two books published: In His Own Write and A Spaniard in the Works, both collections of nonsense writings and line drawings. Starting with 1967's "All You Need Is Love", his songs were adopted as anthems by the anti-war movement and the larger counterculture.
         From 1968 to 1972, Lennon produced more than a dozen records with Ono, including a trilogy of avant-garde albums, his first solo LP John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band, and the international top 10 singles "Give Peace a Chance", "Instant Karma!", "Imagine" and "Happy Xmas (War Is Over)". In 1969, he held the two week-long anti-war demonstration Bed-Ins for Peace. After moving to New York City in 1971, his criticism of the Vietnam War resulted in a three-year attempt by the Nixon administration to deport him. In 1975, Lennon disengaged from the music business to raise his infant son Sean and, in 1980, returned with the Ono collaboration Double Fantasy. He was shot and killed in the archway of his Manhattan apartment building by a Beatles fan, Mark David Chapman, three weeks after the album's release.
         As a performer, writer or co-writer, Lennon had 25 number one singles in the Billboard Hot 100 chart. Double Fantasy, his best-selling album, won the 1981 Grammy Award for Album of the Year. In 1982, Lennon was honoured with the Brit Award for Outstanding Contribution to Music. In 2002, Lennon was voted eighth in a BBC poll of the 100 Greatest Britons. Rolling Stone ranked him the fifth-greatest singer and thirty-eighth greatest artist of all time. He was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame (in 1997) and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (twice, as a member of the Beatles in 1988 and as a solo artist in 1994).
       "Gimme Some Truth" (originally spelled "Give Me Some Truth") is a protest song written and performed by John Lennon. It was first released on his 1971 album Imagine. "Gimme Some Truth" contains various political references emerging from the time it was written, during the latter years of the Vietnam War. Co-produced by Phil Spector, the recording includes a slide guitar solo played by George Harrison, Lennon's former bandmate in the Beatles.
        In 1982, "Gimme Some Truth" was issued as the B-side of "Love" on a posthumous single. The song provided the title track for the 2000 documentary film Gimme Some Truth: The Making of John Lennon's Imagine Album.

I'm sick and tired of hearing things
From uptight, short-sighted, narrow-minded hypocritics
All I want is the truth
Just gimme some truth
I've had enough of reading things
By neurotic, psychotic, pig-headed politicians
All I want is the truth
Just gimme some truth
 
No short-haired, yellow-bellied, son of tricky dicky
Is gonna mother hubbard soft soap me
With just a pocketful of hope
Money for dope
Money for rope
 
No short-haired, yellow-bellied, son of tricky dicky
Is gonna mother hubbard soft soap me
With just a pocketful of soap
Money for dope
Money for rope
 
I'm sick to death of seeing things
From tight-lipped, condescending, mama's little chauvinists
All I want is the truth
Just gimme some truth now
 
I've had enough of watching scenes
Of schizophrenic, ego-centric, paranoiac, prima-donnas
All I want is the truth now
Just gimme some truth
 
No short-haired, yellow-bellied, son of tricky dicky
Is gonna mother hubbard soft soap me
With just a pocketful of soap
It's money for dope
Money for rope
 
Ah, I'm sick and tired of hearing things
From uptight, short-sighted, narrow-minded hypocrites
All I want is the truth now
Just gimme some truth now
 
I've had enough of reading things
By neurotic, psychotic, pig-headed politicians
All I want is the truth now
Just gimme some truth now
 
All I want is the truth now
Just gimme some truth now
All I want is the truth
Just gimme some truth
All I want is the truth
Just gimme some truth.

JUNK

PAUL MCCARTNEY
SONGWRITER: PAUL MCCARTNEY
COUNTRY: U. K.
ALBUM: PAUL MCCARTNEY ARCHIVE COLLECTION
LABEL: PAUL MCCARTNEY CATALOG
GENRE: ROCK
YEAR: 1970
 
       Sir James Paul McCartney CH MBE (born 18 June 1942) is an English singer, songwriter, musician, and record and film producer who gained worldwide fame as co-lead vocalist and bassist for the Beatles. His songwriting partnership with John Lennon remains the most successful in history. After the group disbanded in 1970, he pursued a solo career and formed the band Wings with his first wife, Linda, and Denny Laine.
         A self-taught musician, McCartney is proficient on bass, guitar, keyboards, and drums. He is known for his melodic approach to bass-playing (mainly playing with a plectrum), his versatile and wide tenor vocal range (spanning over four octaves), and his eclecticism (exploring styles ranging from pre-rock and roll pop to classical and electronica). McCartney began his career as a member of the Quarrymen in 1957, which evolved into the Beatles in 1960. Starting with the 1967 album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, he gradually became the Beatles' de facto leader, providing the creative impetus for most of their music and film projects. His Beatles songs "And I Love Her" (1964), "Yesterday" (1965), "Eleanor Rigby" (1966) and "Blackbird" (1968) rank among the most covered songs in history.
         In 1970, McCartney debuted as a solo artist with the álbum McCartney. Throughout the 1970s, he led Wings, one of the most successful bands of the decade, with more than a dozen international top 10 singles and albums. McCartney resumed his solo career in 1980. Since 1989, he has toured consistently as a solo artist. In 1993, he formed the music duo the Fireman with Youth of Killing Joke. Beyond music, he has taken part in projects to promote international charities related to such subjects as animal rights, seal hunting, land mines, vegetarianism, poverty, and music education.
    McCartney is one of the most successful composers and performers of all time. He has written or co-written 32 songs that have reached Nº. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100, and as of 2009, had sales of 25.5million RIAA-certified units in the United States. His honours include two inductions into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (as a member of the Beatles in 1988 and as a solo artist in 1999), 18 Grammy Awards, an appointment as a Member of the Order of the British Empire in 1965, and a knighthood in 1997 for services to music. As of 2020, he is also one of the wealthiest musicians in the world, with an estimated fortune of £800 million.
      The Paul McCartney Archive Collection is an ongoing project to remaster and reissue Paul McCartney's solo catalogue, including various albums released with Wings. These editions feature deluxe packaging and bonus rare tracks. Thus far, there have been fourteen releases since the project began in 2010 (seven solo albums, six Wings albums, and one new Wings live album of previously unreleased material). They are overseen by Paul McCartney himself and remastered at Abbey Road Studios. Albums reissued in this project are visually marked by a white stripe along the left side of the album cover that reads "Paul McCartney Archive Collection" and a copy of Paul McCartney's signature.
         The albums are typically released in a variety of formats: a "standard" edition that contains the original album digitally remastered on one CD; a "special" edition which contains additional discs of bonus tracks; and a "deluxe" edition which comes with extra features like bonus CDs or DVDs of unreleased material packaged in a hard-bound book. Some releases contain booklets, rare photos, interviews, artwork, promotional video clips, or documentaries. The "special" editions of the albums were also released as double LPs on 180 gram "audiophile vinyl", with the original album on one record and bonus material on the second. The records also came with a download card for MP3 versions of all tracks included. The special editions of the albums are available on streaming services worldwide.
     The project has also inspired a fan-driven project, called the "Ultimate Archive Collection", which has collected a greater number of McCartney and Wings albums, including bootlegs and unofficial albums. This was created as a response to the dissatisfaction among some fans at the slow rate of releases, as well as the perceived low number of bonus tracks included with each album.

Motor cars, handle bars
Bicycles for two
Broken hearted jubilee
 
Parachutes, soldier boots
Sleeping bags for two
Sentimental jamboree
 
Buy buy
Says the sign in the shop window
Why why
Says the junk in the yard
 
Candlesticks, building bricks
Something old and new
Memories for you and me
 
Buy buy
Says the sign in the shop window
Why why
Says the junk in the yard.

ISN'T IT A PITY

GEORGE HARRISON
SONGWRITER: GEORGE HARRISON
COUNTRY: U. K.
ALBUM: ALL THINGS MUST PASS
LABEL: APPLE RECORD
GENRE: FOLK ROCK
YEAR: 1970
 
         George Harrison[nb 1] MBE (25 February 1943 – 29 November 2001) was an English musician, singer, songwriter, and music and film producer who achieved international fame as the lead guitarist of the Beatles. Sometimes called "the quiet Beatle", Harrison embraced Indian culture and helped broaden the scope of popular music through his incorporation of Indian instrumentation and Hindu-aligned spirituality in the Beatles' work. Although the majority of the band's songs were written by John Lennon and Paul McCartney, most Beatles albums from 1965 onwards contained at least two Harrison compositions. His songs for the group include "Taxman", "Within You Without You", "While My Guitar Gently Weeps", "Here Comes the Sun" and "Something".
         Harrison's earliest musical influences included George Formby and Django Reinhardt; Carl Perkins, Chet Atkins and Chuck Berry were subsequent influences. By 1965, he had begun to lead the Beatles into folk rock through his interest in Bob Dylan and the Byrds, and towards Indian classical music through his use of the sitar on "Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)". Having initiated the band's embracing of Transcendental Meditation in 1967, he subsequently developed an association with the Hare Krishna movement. After the band's break-up in 1970, Harrison released the triple album All Things Must Pass, a critically acclaimed work that produced his most successful hit single, "My Sweet Lord", and introduced his signature sound as a solo artist, the slide guitar. He also organised the 1971 Concert for Bangladesh with Indian musician Ravi Shankar, a precursor to later benefit concerts such as Live Aid. In his role as a music and film producer, Harrison produced acts signed to the Beatles' Apple record label before founding Dark Horse Records in 1974 and co-founding HandMade Films in 1978.
          Harrison released several best-selling singles and albums as a solo performer. In 1988, he co-founded the platinum-selling supergroup the Traveling Wilburys. A prolific recording artist, he was featured as a guest guitarist on tracks by Badfinger, Ronnie Wood and Billy Preston, and collaborated on songs and music with Dylan, Eric Clapton, Ringo Starr and Tom Petty, among others. Rolling Stone magazine ranked him number 11 in their list of the "100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time". He is a two-time Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee – as a member of the Beatles in 1988, and posthumously for his solo career in 2004.
        "Isn't It a Pity" is a song by English musician George Harrison from his 1970 solo album All Things Must Pass. It appears in two variations there: one the well-known, seven-minute version; the other a reprise, titled "Isn't It a Pity (Version Two)". Harrison wrote the song in 1966, but it was rejected for inclusion on releases by the Beatles. In many countries around the world, the song was also issued on a double A-side single with "My Sweet Lord". In America, Billboard magazine listed it with "My Sweet Lord" when the single topped the Hot 100 chart, while in Canada, "Isn't It a Pity" reached number 1 as the preferred side.
           An anthemic ballad and one of Harrison's most celebrated compositions, "Isn't It a Pity" has been described as the emotional and musical centrepiece of All Things Must Pass and "a poignant reflection on The Beatles' coarse ending". Co-produced by Phil Spector, the recording employs multiple keyboard players, rhythm guitarists and percussionists, as well as orchestration by arranger John Barham. In its extended fadeout, the song references the closing refrain of the Beatles' 1968 hit "Hey Jude". Other musicians on the recording include Ringo Starr, Billy Preston, Gary Wright and the band Badfinger, while the reprise version features Eric Clapton on lead guitar.
      The song appeared as the closing track on Harrison's career-spanning compilation Let It Roll (2009), and a live version, from his 1991 tour with Clapton, was included on Live in Japan (1992). Clapton and Preston performed the song together at the Concert for George tribute in November 2002. "Isn't It a Pity" has been covered by numerous artists, including Nina Simone, Dana, Matt Monro, Galaxie 500, Cowboy Junkies and Annie Lennox.
Isn't it a pity
Now, isn't it a shame
How we break each other's hearts
And cause each other pain
How we take each other's love
Without thinking anymore
Forgetting to give back
Isn't it a pity
 
Some things take so long
But how do I explain
When not too many people
Can see we're all the same
And because of all their tears
Their eyes can't hope to see
The beauty that surrounds them
Isn't it a pity
 
Isn't it a pity
Isn't is a shame
How we break each other's hearts
And cause each other pain
How we take each other's love
Without thinking anymore
Forgetting to give back
Isn't it a pity
 
Forgetting to give back
Isn't it a pity
Forgetting to give back
Now, isn't it a pity
 
What a pity
What a pity, pity, pity
What a pity
What a pity, pity, pity.

YAKETY SAX

BOOTS RANDOLPH; CHET ATKINS & FLOYD CRAMER
SONGWRITERS: BOOTS RANDOLPH & JAMES RICH
COUNTRY: U. S. A.
ALBUM: CHET, FLOYD & BOOTS
LABEL: RCA CAMDEN
GENRE: INSTRUMENTAL
YEAR: 1971
 
        Chet, Floyd & Boots is a studio album by American guitarist Chet Atkins, pianist Floyd Cramer and saxophone player Boots Randolph. Boots had a novelty hit with Yakety Sax which Chet covered, playing the saxophone lead on guitar, as Yakety Axe - which also became a hit. Cramer was a regular session musician at the Nashville studios, playing with a multitude of artists including Elvis Presley and Brenda Lee, helping to define the "Nashville Sound" that Atkins had also helped develop. The trio briefly toured together.
        Chet, Floyd & Boots was originally released on RCA's budget label, Camden. It was also released on the Pickwick label and re-released on CD in 1992 by Special Music.