Beatles News

While creative differences, the strain of stardom and John Lennon's girlfriend Yoko Ono have all been blamed for the Fab Four's break-up, the documents reveal the numerous convoluted legal battles that also weighed on the band.

The documents, which were discovered in a cupboard where they had been stored since the 1970s, include copies of The Beatles advisor's minutes of meetings, legal writs and a copy of the band's 1967 Original Deed of Partnership.

They show that after manager Brian Epstein died in 1967, the band realised that money was unaccounted for and that they were being pursued by tax authorities.

Another damaging legal battle erupted when Paul McCartney opposed the decision by other band members to hire Allen Klein as their new manager.

The uncovered stash of files document the subsequent 1970 High Court battle launched by McCartney against the band in London, which exposed Klein's mismanagement.

"It would be almost impossible to exaggerate the actual complexity of the various legal arrangements which have been entered into by Messrs. Lennon, McCartney, Harrison, and Starkey (Ringo Starr)," said notes on one document.

Other legal difficulties besetting the band included details

John Lennon and Yoko Ono were not just a power couple because of their undeniable impact on music history. The couple were also dedicated activists and key players in the anti-war movement during the Vietnam War. And this did not sit too well with the political powers at the time.

Their only son, Sean Ono Lennon, recently sat with PEOPLE to debut the reissue of his father’s album Mind Games, along with a multimedia box set that includes song remixes, reproductions of art pieces made by Lennon and Ono, posters, postcards, and much more. But Ono Lennon also took the time to share important details about his iconic parents’ relationship, including the trying moments where President Nixon wanted them deported.  John Lennon and Yoko Ono had the State Department on edge.

Lennon and Ono used their honeymoon to stage a “bed-in” protest in the Netherlands. They also recorded their iconic anti-war anthem “Give Peace a Chance” during a similar protest held in Montreal. This, among other anti-war gems like “Merry Xmas (The War is Over)”, was evidently powerful enough to have then-President Nixon threatened, especially as both Lennon and Ono were relentless in their activi details

John Lennon never pretended to have all the answers. While he put himself in the limelight at times for his political views, it was generally in the guise of someone who was posing opinions and beliefs that questioned the status quo, not as someone with definitive solutions.

He also displayed inquisitiveness when it came to his own life. From his 1971 album Imagine, the song “How?” finds him practically paralyzed by questions about his potential path forward that he can’t seem to answer.

If you just listened to the sound alone of John Lennon’s first two solo albums, you might think he’d undergone a drastic change in attitude in the year that separated their releases. But the different musical tone of the records had more to do with what Lennon wanted out of those two records.

John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band, which he released in 1970, was extremely stark from a musical standpoint. He recorded most of the songs with a trio, and he often screamed out the lyrics. This was in response to the “primal scream” therapy he was undergoing at the time.

By contrast, Imagine, released in 1971, arrived sounding much lusher and more produced. The record was also full of sw details

Paul McCartney has given fans insight into how he wrote many of his most famous songs. He said he wrote The Beatles’ “Yesterday” because of magic and a dream. The cute Beatle felt the tune could not be explained in purely natural terms.

Paul McCartney had no idea how he came up with the tune for The Beatles’ ‘Yesterday’

The Beatles wrote many songs that were innovative and inspired new genres of music. “Yesterday,” on the other hand, was pretty old-fashioned. It could have been a hit for Frank Sinatra in the 1940s or Elvis Presley in the 1950s — or for Michael Steven Bublé or Meghan Trainor today. It’s beloved not because it was novel but because it was such a well-written example of a traditional pop ballad.

Paul discussed the origin of “Yesterday.” “‘Yesterday’ came to me in a dream, but at this time it wasn’t just my mom saying a phrase,” he said. “This was a whole tune that was in my head. I had no idea where it came from.

“Best I can think is that my computer [in my head] through the years loaded all these things and finally printed out this song in a dream kind of thing,& details

A tribute show will honour a music icon from one of the biggest bands in history.

The George Harrison Project, a live music tribute to the Beatles' guitarist, will perform at The Muni Theatre in Colne on March 1, 2025.

The show features some of Harrison's most popular hits from his time with the Beatles, his solo career, and his stint with the Traveling Wilburys.

Alongside John Lennon, Paul McCartney, and Ringo Starr, Harrison was an integral part of the best-selling music act of all time with 600 million units sold worldwide.

After the Beatles disbanded, he formed the Traveling Wilburys, a supergroup featuring Bob Dylan, Jeff Lynne, Roy Orbison, and Tom Petty.

Harrison, who died in 2001, also enjoyed a successful solo career, releasing 12 studio albums, including Living In The Material World, Cloud Nine, Brainwashed, and the classic triple album All Things Must Pass.

The 2025 tour of the George Harrison Project aims to authentically recreate some of his best-loved hits.

The show is packed with favourite songs such as All Things Must Pass, While My Guitar Gently Weeps, Here Comes The Sun, Taxman, My Sweet Lord, and many more.

Source: Tabitha Wilson/< details

The Beatles beefed with each other quite a bit through music. It’s not entirely surprising, either. When you’ve been with the same people in a band for the better part of a decade, it only makes sense to get a little bit toxic about your grievances through song. Without further ado, let’s look at four songs that The Beatles wrote about each other!
1. “How Do You Sleep?” by John Lennon

This is probably the most famous Beatles-related diss track out there. John Lennon wrote this song as a response to a few tracks on Paul McCartney’s solo album, Ram, which Lennon believed were digs at him.

Lennon does not hold back at all with “How Do You Sleep?” Some of the lyrics go beyond tame, poetic jabs at his former bandmate. “You live with straights who tell you, you was king / Jump when your momma tell you anything / The only thing you done was yesterday / And since you’re gone you’re just another day” is aparticularly brutal line.
2. “Sue Me, Sue You Blues” by George Harrison

When McCartney broke off from The Beatles, quite a few legal battles were fought. The first few years after The Beatles called it q details

It’s like the light came on, after total darkness,” is how author Joe Queenan remembers the arrival of Beatlemania in America at the dawn of 1964. He’s not alone in citing the coming of the Fab Four as the true beginning of the 1960s, of the modern era, of a transformative period driven in no small part by the music, words and actions of four young lads from Liverpool. But if you were a teenager in America when “I Want to Hold Your Hand” arrived on Boxing Day 1963, then it’s personal. And if you caught any of the concerts on their first US tour in February 1964, or watched their performances on TV’s The Ed Sullivan Show, or stood outside Manhattan’s Plaza Hotel hoping for an autograph, it’s likely you’ve never forgotten their impact.

That first US tour and the special relationship between The Beatles and America are explored in depth by the new documentary Beatles ’64. “The trip was a dream come true for [them],” says the movie’s producer, Margaret Bodde. “They’d always loved American music, and now they were coming to the home of everything they’d dreamed about.”

But America was going through some issues. details

Likely most people have seen iconic footage of the Beatles performing on “The Ed Sullivan Show.” But how many have seen Paul McCartney during that same U.S. trip feeding seagulls off his hotel balcony?

That moment — as well as George Harrison and John Lennon goofing around by exchanging their jackets — are part of the Disney+ documentary “Beatles ’64,” an intimate look at the English band’s first trip to America that uses rare and newly restored footage. It streams Friday.

“It’s so fun to be the fly on the wall in those really intimate moments,” says Margaret Bodde, who produced alongside Martin Scorsese. “It’s just this incredible gift of time and technology to be able to see it now with the decades of time stripped away so that you really feel like you’re there.”

“Beatles ’64” leans into footage of the 14-day trip filmed by documentarians Albert and David Maysles, who left behind 11 hours of the Fab Four goofing around in New York’s Plaza hotel or traveling. It was restored by Park Road Post in New Zealand.

“It’s beautiful, although it’s black and white and it&rsqu details

 In the mid-1960s, America found itself in the grip of a public health crisis.

“The British Beatles broke out here in New York [like] an epidemic of the German measles,” announced a breathless American TV newsreader. “Unlike measles, Beatles strike teenagers almost exclusively but the symptoms are the same – fever and an itching rash that produces contortions on behalf of the victims.”

It was February 1964 and The Beatles had touched down in the States for the first time. The band’s 14-day trip kickstarted American Beatlemania and the subsequent British invasion of bands including the Rolling Stones and the Dave Clark Five. The Fab Four’s appearance on CBS’s The Ed Sullivan Show on Sunday, February 9 broke TV records with a staggering 73 million viewers – more than 40 per cent of the entire US population.

Hysteria swept Manhattan. Around 50,000 fans applied for the 728 places at the Broadway theatre where Ed Sullivan was recorded. The band were pursued everywhere by screaming fans, kept – with limited success – at bay by cordons of arm-linked policemen. Banners appeared saying “Ringo for President”. A national obsession ha details

 Sean Ono Lennon has shared an insight into the relationship between his parents John Lennon and Yoko Ono.

In an interview with PEOPLE Magazine, Lennon spoke about his father ahead of the box set release of ‘Mind Games’, the fourth album by the Beatle first released in 1973.

Sean, who was born in 1975, oversaw the production of the ‘Mind Games’ boxset, and he calls the era during which the album was made as “really terrifying” for both his parents.

This fraught period led to a temporary separation between John and Yoko – however, Sean disagrees with fans who call ‘Mind Games’ a breakup album.

“My mother is this giant mountain in the distance,” he explained to PEOPLE, referring to the ‘Mind Games’ album art, “and dad is this diminutive little man receding into nowhere.”

He added: “His entire life and art was infused with his relationship with my mom,” emphasizing that ‘Mind Games’ is “mostly love songs about her”.

“My dad declared to the world that ‘John and Yoko’ were one word. I think he always had his heart set on her. H details

John Lennon was a beloved musician, but that doesn’t mean he didn’t attract a few enemies here and there. There are several artists that entered into feuds with Lennon–though he may not have been an active member in them. Find three such feuds, below.

1. Joni Mitchell

John Lennon felt that Joni Mitchell was a product of an “overeducation.” Mitchell has long been known for her visceral tracks that speak to the human condition. While that practice is what she’s made her name on, Lennon felt it was too good to be true.

“I played him something,” Mitchell once said, referencing her first time meeting Lennon. “[He said] ‘Oh, it’s all a product of over-education. You want a hit, don’t you? Put some fiddles on it!’”

That comment was enough to sour the Beatle in Mitchell’s eyes. Her reverence for him (that we can only assume she had at least a portion of before this incident) was forever sullied.
2. Elvis Presley

All of the Beatles loved Elvis Presley. Like all burgeoning rock stars of their era, they found Presley to be a deity of the genre. You’d be hard-pressed to find a rock n’ roller who details

A handwritten letter that John Lennon wrote to Eric Clapton inviting him to be part of a new supergroup is to be offered at auction next month.

The eight-page letter sees Lennon express his heartfelt admiration for Clapton and his music, as he outlines his vision for a musical project that he hoped would have a “revolutionary” effect on live performances.

Dated September 29, 1971, the signed draft — which features several corrections and deletions — sees Lennon outline his plans for a “nucleus group” that would include musician and producer Klaus Voormann, drummer Jim Keltner, pianist Nicky Hopkins and producer and songwriter Phil Spector, all of whom had previously worked with the Beatles.

Lennon told Clapton he believed the prospective group, which would also be joined by his wife, Yoko Ono, would “bring back the balls in rock ‘n’ roll.”

The letter is expected to fetch up to €150,000 (around $158,000) when it goes up for auction on December 5. International Autograph Auctions Europe SL, which is holding the online sale, described it in a media statement as “one of the rarest forms of Lennon’s personal communications av details

The Beatles‘ George Harrison released his third studio album, the triple album All Things Must Pass, which would go on to spend seven weeks on top of the Billboard Album chart.

The record, co-produced by Phil Spector, was Harrison’s first full-length album following the breakup of The Beatles and featured guest appearances by Harrison’s Beatles bandmate Ringo Starr, as well as Eric Clapton, Billy Preston and others.

All Things Must Pass contained the #1 single “My Sweet Lord,” which made Harrison the first former member of The Beatles to score a solo #1 in the U.S. The track, which was released as a double A-side single with “Isn’t It a Pity,” also went to #1 in several other countries, including the U.K. and Australia.

A commercial success for Harrison, the record has been certified seven-times Platinum by the RIAA.

Source: Jill Lances/1430wcmy.com

Many rightly recognize All Things Must Pass as George Harrison’s solo masterpiece.

But Harrison followed it in 1973 with Living in the Material World, which details his personal and spiritual struggles. The recording differs from the dense and ambitious production of All Things Must Pass with its stripped-back and earthy performances of Harrison contemplating a higher power.

Mostly self-produced, Harrison also returned to the sitar, which he’d abandoned for years. Apart from the religious pronouncements, Harrison’s life had descended into an abyss of sex and drugs. Legal issues surrounding The Beatles and mismanaged funds raised from his Concert for Bangladesh left him in despair. So he turned his despair into yet another great work.

Though it was a commercial success upon release, Living in the Material World was quickly forgotten. And its 50th anniversary arrived last year without recognition. But Dhani and Olivia Harrison have overseen the release of a newly mixed and expanded version of the album, shining a light on an overlooked masterpiece.

Here are three classics from Harrison’s equally timeless Living in the Material World.
“Give Me Love (Give Me Peace o details

Fans were left in shock after Paul McCartney snuck into the Beatles '64 documentary premiere at Hudson Square Theater in New York City on Sunday. The musician, 82, looked relaxed as he settled into a random seat in the middle of the venue alongside his wife Nancy, 65, and behind comedian Chris Rock.

While the crowd around him remained calm, Paul was seen waving to a few fans before watching the new film which is produced by famed filmmaker Martin Scorsese, 82. It was announced that Paul was in attendance right before the screening started, but the majority of the crowd saw him as they were taking their seats. Overwhelmed by Paul's appearance, the fan wrote: 'trying to watch the new beatles documentary and HE SHOWS UP'.

She added in the caption: 'and if i said i cried during the first ten minutes…'  Fans were left in shock after Paul McCartney snuck into the Beatles '64 documentary premiere in NYC on Sunday alongside his wife Nancy

Other fans couldn't believe he had snuck into the theatre as they took to the comments to share their surprise. They penned: 'Nah but imagine watching the beatles documentary and PAUL MCCARTNEY sits next to you'; 'omfg y’all are breathing the same air'; 'No ma details