Beatles News

Even before the infamous Beatles breakup, the Fab Four had to navigate interpersonal dynamics that often bred contempt and competitiveness, particularly between the two principal songwriters, Paul McCartney and John Lennon. The prolific duo had plenty of respect for one another, much of which was established by becoming so close so quickly at such a young age. But they weren’t always forthcoming with their praise of the other—at least Lennon wasn’t.

In a 2018 interview with 60 Minutes, McCartney confirmed that he and Lennon had a competitive relationship when it came to their songwriting. If one musician came up with a particularly good track, the other would take it as motivation to write a better one. They were less interested in doling out compliments to the other, as made clear by McCartney’s memory that Lennon only complimented him once.

The idea of Lennon only openly admiring McCartney’s work once during their tenure as bandmates seems ludicrous in hindsight, given the knowledge we have of McCartney’s tremendous cultural impact. Nevertheless, Lennon played his cards close to the chest—except when it came to “Here, There And Everywhere”. John Lennon details

Over the course of their impressive 10-year run, the Beatles released 12 studio albums (13 if you include 1967's Magical Mystery Tour in the core canon). The Fab Four's catalog improved with each new release, and one particular entry in their discography, considered by some to be their magnum opus, took the world by storm on this day 57 years ago.
'Abbey Road' by the Beatles Was Released on Sept. 26, 1969

The Beatles released Abbey Road on Sept. 26, 1969. The four-piece rock outfit's 11th studio album was actually recorded after their final record, Let It Be, but released before it. On Oct. 6, the band unleashed a double A-side single featuring "Something" and "Come Together" to promote it.

While the atmosphere was less tense than the Let It Be recording sessions, the group still had their fair share of disagreements, clashing over the album's presentation and Yoko Ono's presence in the studio. However, Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr looked back on the process with fondness, and John Lennon had positive things to say about Abbey Road as a whole.

Infusing musical styles such as rock, pop, blues, and progressive rock, Abbey Road boasts two of George Harrison's best contributions: "Something" and "Here details

Jane Asher’s love story with Paul McCartney is set to play out on screen in the forthcoming Beatles biopics – however, the actor won’t be queuing up to see it in cinemas.

Asher, 80, has revealed in a new interview that she has no plans to watch Lucy Boynton’s portrayal of her in Sam Mendes’s four films about the Beatles.

The Bafta nominee began dating McCartney in 1963, with the pair’s romance inspiring numerous songs for the group, including “And I Love Her” and “I’m Looking Through You”. They announced their engagement in 1967 but called it off a year later amid rumours of McCartney’s infidelity.

In Mendes’s forthcoming series The Beatles – A Four-Film Cinematic Event, which is due for release in 2028, McCartney is being played by Hamnet’s Paul Mescal, while Bohemian Rhapsody’s Lucy Boynton is portraying Asher.

In a new interview, Asher said that the filmmakers “approached me about it, of course, but I said my usual”, referring to how she no longer speaks about her relationship with McCartney.

When asked how she felt about Boynton playing her, she told The Telegraph: “Well, details

When John Lennon was asked about the song "Wait" in 1970, he couldn't recall writing it. "That must be one of Paul's," he said then.

Paul McCartney did, however, recall. It was mainly his composition, though it was credited to the usual "Lennon-McCartney." His story was that it was written in early 1965 when the Beatles were in the Bahamas shooting Help! the film. Shortly before that, the band had connected with Brandon deWilde, a child actor whose career had blossomed into big sitcom roles (Jamie) and an Academy nomination (for his role in 1953's Shane) as an adult.

"Brandon De Wilde was an actor, a James Dean type," George Harrison recalled in Anthology. "He liked the Beatles' music and he heard we were going to film in the Bahamas, so he came over from the States with a big bag of reefer. We smoked on the plane, all the way to the Bahamas. It was a charter flight, with all the film people – the actors and the crew – and we thought, 'No, nobody will notice.' We had Mal [Evans, the Beatles' road manager] smoking cigars to drown out the smell."  Brandon deWilde, Witness to 'Wait'

It was deWilde that McCartney, apparently, wrote the song "Wait" in front of.

"He was a nice guy details

This year marked what would have been the 100th birthday of George Martin.

Martin, who died in 2016 aged 90, was the man who signed The Beatles and also the producer for the vast majority of their music during their remarkable eight years together. Who is the Fifth Beatle? George Martin, Brian Epstein, Pete Best and more

In the wake of the wave of Beatlemania, Martin also helmed a number of orchestral covers albums featuring Beatles hits.

These have long remained out of print, never being available on CD or streaming, but three of these records are finally being released next month on new formats and vinyl too.

All of them have been recut from the original tapes by Giles Martin, George's son who has inherited his role when it comes to the remastering and remixing of Beatles releases in recent years.

The albums are Off the Beatle Track (1964) and Help! (1965), in addition to ..and I Love Her (1966), which includes Beatles numbers alongside hits by The Rolling Stones, Petula Clark and other stars of the moment.

The albums will be released on November 6, and are trailed by 'Can't By Me Love' from Off the Beatle Track.

"These records came at a time when orchestral music h details

Boston photographer Roger Farrington was flown to New York to document Lennon and Ono’s return to the recording studio in 1980. Now, he’s sharing the images in a new book.  An unusual call sent a Boston photographer to New York to photograph John Lennon and Yoko Ono. Forty-six years later, he’s sharing the photos.

In August 1980, after a five-year hiatus from recording and releasing music, Lennon and Ono returned to the recording studio in New York to begin work on what would become Double Fantasy, Lennon’s final album.

On the day of their return, Boston photographer Roger Farrington received a call asking him to photograph the couple’s first recording session in five years. He was soon on a flight to New York.

Farrington spent the day photographing Lennon and Ono. The resulting images capture a rare, behind-the-scenes look at the couple months before Lennon’s death in December 1980.

Now, 46 years later, Farrington has published never-before-seen images from that day in a new book together with Beatles historian Kenneth Womack, giving fans a closer look at Lennon and Ono’s return to the studio.

Farrington will share his stories behind th details

The Beatles not only wrote wonderful songs, but they also constantly innovated in terms of how they recorded them. Listening back to their catalog now, however, it’s fascinating to hear instruments that have long since fallen out of fashion adorning certain tracks of theirs.

These four songs are among the most beloved in the Fab Four catalog. And they all contain a key part from an instrument that’s a bit on the old-fashioned side, at least from our perspective today.
“We Can Work It Out”

Paul McCartney wrote the verses of “We Can Work It Out”. It’s one of several songs that he penned about his relationship with Jane Asher, his girlfriend throughout much of the 60s. John Lennon added the middle eight, his somewhat pessimistic outlook contradicting McCartney’s hopefulness. In terms of the music, it whooshes about behind McCartney’s main melody without calling too much attention to itself. But in the middle eight, which takes on a different rhythm from the rest of the track, you can hear a wheezing, accordion-like sound. That’s a harmonium, an organ-like keyboard with a pumping element that you don’t hear all that often today.
“Straw details

The Beatles weren't exactly a cult band as 1965 ended.  Their albums and singles dominated the pop charts. They played in front of more than 55,000 fans at Shea Stadium. They even conquered the big screen. Twice.

But Dec. 3, 1965, proved to be a seminal moment for the Fab Four – the release of Rubber Soul, the album where "the Beatles became the Beatles."

Widely considered one of the most influential albums ever made, it's hard to believe Rubber Soul was something of a rush job. The Beatles went into the studio in October 1965 to crank out an album in time for the holiday season. Despite the tight deadline, however, The Beatles decided to make their most audacious record yet.

"By the time of Rubber Soul, they were ready for new musical directions," said George Martin, The Beatles' long-time producer. "In the early days, they were very influenced by American rhythm and blues … and then, as time went on, other influences became apparent: classical influences and modern music."

Said drummer Ringo Starr: "We were all open to anything. You could walk in with an elephant, as long as it was going to make a musical note."  While filming the movie Help! in April of 1965, g details

Then he describes that, as the meditator “reduces the thoughts below mental-thinking level,” he will eventually arrive “at a very subtle level which is beyond all relative experience” (there, at the quiet bottom of the ocean he’s sketched).

“This,” he writes, “we will call Transcendental Consciousness.

“As most of us haven’t experienced this state before,” he writes, “the first few times, you don’t even know that you have reached this state, because it isn’t a relative experience, and there’s nothing to compare it to, but from the very beginning—you will start to feel very relaxed, and start to get more energy—happiness and intelligence because the ‘pure state of consciousness’ is the reservoir of energy, happiness, and intelligence—and it is the place where we have got it all from in the past, but then it was unconsciously, and the meditation is a way of tapping this great natural source of energy, and consciously arriving at this level.”

Around the time George passed away, in 2001, I was making my first inroads into meditation, discovering all the wonders therein, and I found in details

There aren't that many accounts of John Lennon and Paul McCartney not agreeing on who wrote which parts of their songs. In fact, to a certain degree, it didn't matter — that's why the "Lennon-McCartney" songwriting name was established, since oftentimes it was hard to tell where one man's contribution ended and the other's began.

But for however synchronized Lennon and McCartney were, the reality is that two separate brains were at work when it came to their songwriting, and it did ultimately matter to each of them how those contributions were remembered.  "In My Life" from the Beatles' 1965 album Rubber Soul is a clear example of this.  One thing Lennon and McCartney did not disagree on was that "In My Life" originated with Lennon.

"'In My Life' started out as a bus journey from my house on 250 [sic] Menlove Avenue to town, mentioning every place I could remember," Lennon recalled to David Sheff in 1980. "And it was ridiculous. This is before even 'Penny Lane' was written and I had Penny Lane, Strawberry Fields, Tram Sheds – Tram Sheds are the depot just outside of Penny Lane – and it was the most boring sort of 'What I Did On My Holidays Bus Trip' song and it wasn't workin details

During a 1963 visit to St. Louis, George Harrison found a record he couldn't stop thinking about. He even imagined the Beatles recording it. But despite his enthusiasm, the song never made its way into the band's repertoire. Harrison would eventually get another chance with it — 24 years later.  It all stemmed from an early 1960s vacation.

“In 1963, the year before the Beatles first came to America, I took a trip to St. Louis to visit my sister, who was living there at the time,” Harrison wrote in The Beatles Anthology. “The whole Beatlemania thing had really begun in the U.K., and we’d had three or four hit singles.

“So while visiting my sister, I went around to all the music shops looking for new singles and especially albums that were really hard to find in Liverpool. And that’s where I finally found the James Ray album, If You’re Gonna Make a Fool of Somebody.”

In particular, the song that grabbed his attention most was “Got My Mind Set on You,” and Harrison thought it had the makings of a Beatles recording — despite one significant drawback.  All the latest guitar news, interviews, lessons, reviews, deal details

The Beatles owed a debt to R&B music, one of the genres that exerted the biggest influence on their music as they formulated their sound. It’s only fitting then that the group’s members repaid the debt with some of the songs they wrote, both with the band and after its breakup, that were covered by R&B artists.

We compiled a list of four of these cover versions. The Fab Four deserve credit for writing these outstanding tracks. And the artists also should be lauded for the way they reinvented the songs.
“Got To Get You Into My Life” by Earth, Wind & Fire

The Beatles never released “Got To Get You Into My Life” as a single, although the horn-drenched number certainly sounded like one. Paul McCartney wrote it as a clandestine ode to marijuana. The music was indebted to the Motown sound of the era. Earth, Wind & Fire recorded it on the soundtrack of the much-maligned Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band film that was released in 1978. They bravely reimagined the arrangement, turning the hook into a kind of jazzy scat. Al McKay brings some heft with a sizzling guitar solo, while Maurice White tears through the vocals of the verses. Released at the height details

“The Beatles – A Four-Film Cinematic Event” stars Barry Keoghan, Joseph Quinn and Harris Dickinson were spotted filming the iconic opening of the “A Hard Day’s Night” movie for the forthcoming film, per images via TMZ.

Directed by Richard Lester, the 1964 film followed the crew over two days as the band struggled to keep themselves and Paul McCartney’s mischievous grandfather in check while preparing for a live TV performance. One of the most notable moments — and the scene apparently being filmed — was a sequence of shots showing the three bandmembers running away from swarms of adoring fans.

Last month, the cast (plus Paul Mescal) were seen recreating the “Abbey Road” album cover for the multi-part biopic. Mescal stars as Paul McCartney, Quinn plays George Harrison, Barry Keoghan portrays Ringo Starr and Harris Dickinson plays John Lennon.

Each of the four films will focus on a different member of the band. “Each man has his own story, but together they are legendary,” reads the official logline.

In addition to the main bandmembners, other cast members include Saoirse Ronan as Linda McCartney, James Norton as Brian Ep details