It wasn’t the same scene that greeted him and his fellow Beatles at JFK Airport in 1964, but Paul McCartney still had quite a reception when he and his family touched down in Nashville on June 6, 1974. The music superstar told a crowd of about 50 fans and members of the press that he’d come to Nashville for his three Rs — rehearsing, relating and riding. During his famous six-week stay on a farm just outside of Lebanon, McCartney’s activities would spill over into writing and recording. He crashed the Grand Ole Opry, ventured into Printer’s Alley and laid down a few country-flavored tunes with a group of peerless local players including Chet Atkins.

Some 36 years later, McCartney is finally returning to play his first concert in Nashville on Monday, July 26. The Tennessean photographed and interviewed the McCartneys several times during their stay here in the ’70s, and on the eve of his sold-out show at Bridgestone Arena, we’ve gone into our archives for snapshots of an unforgettable moment in Nashville’s musical history.

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After a couple of post from Larry Kane’s book “Ticket to Ride“… I decided to take a peak at some of the less known of The Beatles.. and where else can you see those but in The Beatles Unseen book by Mark Hayward

The best thing about this book, if you’re a real die hard fan of the fab four, is that obviously this book contains hundreds and hundreds of photos of the boys from fans everywhere. These photos was sold in auctions (and I must say, it probably costs fortunes!).

Another good thing about it is that it’s not a standard book that you read from cover to cover… You don’t even have to read it if you want to.. you can just stare at the pictures.. but in my case, I just flip it wherever (whenever time frame of the Beatles I want to be) and I read along..

And now, for tonight… here are some Beatles quotes from the interview The Beatles made in a press conference in Adelaide…. Page 122-123 of the book, “The Touring Days”

Reporter: Well fellas, tell me, what did you think of the Adelaide reception?
John Lennon: Oh, it was great@ The best ever.
Reporter: Was it like I’d mentioned to you on the plane it would be?
John Lennon: Yeah, it was better!
Reporter: Was it like you’d ever had before?
George Harrison: No, much better.
John Lennon: We’d never done one of those “drives” as well. It was marvelous.
Reporter: How would it compare with the ones in the United States when you arrived there?
Paul McCartney: This was bigger. There was more people there.
Reporter: Do you think it was very well conducted?
John Lennon: Yes. Everybody was well behaved.
Reporter: Did you get a fright at all outside the Town hall?
John Lennon: Not fright. Shock, you know, because there was so many.
George Harrison: I had a feeling we might’ve got shot, ‘cosw it’s the first time we’d been sitting inthe back of a car waving, you know.

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The first even on the Beatles in San Francisco when they arrived on February 7, 1964 was a press conference. Here are some of the less known interview question and answers:

Q: How was your trip?
John Lennon: It was like a plane trip, you know.

Q: How often do you get haircuts?
John Lennon: Uh, about once every three weeks.

Q: Who is your tailer?
Paul McCartney: A fella called Millings.

Q: What did you have to eat today?
John Lennon: Corn flakes with jelly beans and chips

Q: Is your hair real?
Paul McCartney: Is yours?

Read more about the tour in Larry Kane’s Book:

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“I knew Marianne Faithfull so it was natural that I would be asked to write a song at some point. I did write a song but it was not a very good one. It was called ‘Etcetera’ and it’s a bad song. I think it’s a good job that it’s died a death in some tape bin. Even then I seem to remember thinking it wasn’t very good. There was always the temptation to keep your better songs for yourself and then give your next-best songs to other established people, so when it was someone like Marianne, who at that time was a newcomer, those people would tend to end up with fairly dreadful offerings of mine. I suppose, thinking back on it, after ‘As Tears Go By’ maybe they were looking for more sort of a ‘Yesterday’, something more poignant, more baroque. I probably thought, well, this is really all I’ve got at the moment. I’ll send it round and hope it’s all okay, and maybe they’ll put a baroque thing on it and that’ll make it okay. She probably did ‘Yesterday’ because they figured, ‘Well at least it’s better than “Etcetera”‘.”

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Paul McCartney Set For First Concerts at New York’s Citi Field, yep boys and girls, Sir Paul McCartney is set to perform a concert in the Big Apple! This is the news I read from the Rolling Stones… (I should loiter there more often, juicy news!)

Here’s what we read:

The Beatles made history when they performed the first-ever concert at Shea Stadium on August 15, 1965, and now Paul McCartney will break in the New York Mets’ newest home on July 17th and 18th. Tickets for the first-ever shows at Citi Field in Queens go on sale June 15th at 10 a.m.

“I am really excited about playing Citi Field,” McCartney said in a statement. “The Beatles were the first to play at Shea Stadium and along with Billy Joel, I was the last to sing at the old Shea. So to be the first to play this stadium is incredible. I am really looking forward to a buzzing show.”

The pair of gigs will be McCartney’s first in the States since his headlining set at Coachella in May, where he played a host of Beatles classics, broke out material from his Fireman project and paid tribute to George Harrison and John Lennon (read the full report). The last time he took the stage in New York (at David Lynch’s April 4th meditation benefit Change Begins Within), he briefly reunited with Ringo Starr, who sang “With a Little Help From My Friends.” The mini-reunion was completed during the encore, when Starr took his seat behind the drum kit for a group performance of “I Saw Her Standing There.”

McCartney also performed “I Saw Her Standing There” when he helped Billy Joel say farewell to Shea Stadium in July 2008, at the last-ever concert at the Mets’ home since 1964. McCartney closed out that show before a capacity crowd of 55,000 by taking over Joel’s piano for a stirring rendition of “Let It Be.” The seating capacity at the new stadium is 42,000.

On Monday, McCartney was on hand in Los Angeles to unveil The Beatles: Rock Band, the first video game featuring the Fab Four’s music.

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