Beatles News

Growing up as the son of Beatles legend Ringo Starr wasn't the easiest for drummer Zak Starkey.

The ex-Oasis drummer, 59 - who was recently sacked from The Who - said he struggled to get the approval from his father when performing in front of him.

Zak admitted the rock 'n' roll legend, 84, would often brutally slate his drumming skills and say 'the most cutting f****** s***'.

Speaking to The Sun about their relationship, Zak reflected: 'My dad never opened the doors for me. 'He’d watch me and say the most cutting f****** s***. But he is the greatest rock ’n’ roll drummer in the world. He’s better now than he was then.'

From A-list scandals and red carpet mishaps to exclusive pictures and viral moments, subscribe to the Daily Mail's showbiz newsletter to stay in the loop.  Growing up as the son of Beatles legend Ringo Starr, 84, wasn't the easiest for drummer Zak Starkey, 59 (pictured together in 2016)

The ex-Oasis drummer - who was recently sacked from The Who - said he struggled to get the approval from his father when performing in front of him. Zak also insisted there is 'no grudge' with his former The Who bandmates after he was sacked last month.

In early June 1969, the Beatles scored what would be their last No. 1 song (which also happened to be one of their most controversial) before their split later that year. Interestingly, only two of the Fab Four are on the track, signaling the fractures that would dismantle the band as a whole months later.

Paul McCartney recalled John Lennon being in an “impatient” mood when the latter Beatle brought the song to his bandmate. “I was happy to help,” McCartney would later say. Based on the song’s chart performance, everyone else was happy to hear it. 

By the time (some of) the Beatles got into the studio at Abbey Road to start recording “The Ballad of John and Yoko,” they were already on the verge of splitting up for good. As the title would suggest, John Lennon was well into his relationship with Yoko Ono, having recently married her two months prior to the recording session in March 1969. Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr were also branching out individually. In fact, the bandmates’ separation was the impetus for only Lennon and McCartney recording the track in the first place.

“By the time we came to record Abbey Road and Let It B details

John Lennon is considered by many to be a poet. But the Beatle revealed his more prosaic side in a letter penned in 1962 to his future wife Cynthia Powell, in which he declared: “I wish I was on the way to your flat with the Sunday papers and chocies and a throbber.”

The intimate missive, which includes a complaint about his bandmate Paul McCartney’s snoring, is now being sold at auction by Christie’s with a £30,000 to £40,000 estimate.

Written over five nights after concerts during their Hamburg residency in April 1962, Lennon, then aged 21, wrote: “I love love love you and I’m missing you like mad … I wish I was on the way to your flat with the Sunday papers and chocies and a throbber.

“I wonder why all the newspapers wrote about Stu … I haven’t seen Astrid since the day we arrived I’ve thought of going to see her but I would be so awkward.

“Paul’s leaping about on my head (he’s in a bunk on top of me and he’s snoring) … Shurrup Mcarntey [sic]!”

Source: theguardian.com/Jamie Grierson

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She's Leaving Home was one of the most spellbinding moments on the Beatles’ 1967 magnum opus Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. A heartstring-tugging document of coming of age angst, its sweeping orchestral arrangement supported a lyric that was inspired by a very real story.

The Paul McCartney-penned narrative gently expanded on a young girl’s decision to leave her stuffy, conservative parents’ home and - at Wednesday morning at 5 o’clock (as the day begins) - sneaks out to join the man (from the motor trade) that she was going to start her new life with.

Marrying sentiment with rebellion, She's Leaving Home balances a sympathetic, and nostalgic, longing for the past with the increasing rejection of conservatism then rife within 1960s youth culture.

This was characterised by its parent-perspective chorus lyric - sung in typically spine-tingling fashion by John Lennon.

We're not the first to say it, and we won't be the last, but it's wonderful stuff all round.  But the unlikely, fateful layers behind its origin deepen its magic…

Firstly, there's that newspaper story that McCartney based his lyric on. Within the February 27th 1967 edition of the details

On This Day, June 11, 2002…

Beatles legend Paul McCartney married his second wife, Heather Mills, a former model and activist, whose leg was amputated in 1993 after she was run over by a police motorcycle in London.

The couple wed at Castle Leslie in the village of Glaslough in County Monaghan, Ireland, with the celebration attended by several celebrities, including McCartney’s Beatles bandmate Ringo Starr.

The wedding took place four years after the death of McCartney’s first wife, Linda McCartney, from cancer.

McCartney and Mills welcomed their first and only child together, daughter Beatrice, in 2003, and three years later announced they had separated, with their acrimonious divorce finalized in 2008.

McCartney went on to marry a third time, to New Yorker Nancy Shevell, in 2011. They are still married to this day.

Source: everettpost.com/ABC News

History is rarely kind to the third voice in a group that changed the world. But George Harrison didn’t just leave The Beatles in 1970 — he arrived.

And arrive he did with All Things Must Pass, a sprawling, audacious triple album that served as both a catharsis and a declaration. Central to that project was My Sweet Lord, a track that remains — five decades on — a towering moment in solo Beatles history. A spiritual lament disguised as a pop song. A cross-cultural anthem that dared to blend gospel exultation with Eastern devotion. A transcendent piece of music that, as it happened, may not have been entirely original.

Harrison wrote My Sweet Lord in Copenhagen in December 1969 during a creative burst on tour with Delaney & Bonnie. Surrounded by fellow believers in music’s power — Billy Preston, Eric Clapton — Harrison began piecing together a track that was less “boy meets girl” and more “soul meets divinity.” Its DNA was gospel, its mantra was Krishna. The chords were Preston’s, the “hallelujahs” came from Delaney Bramlett. Harrison brought the sincerity. “I don’t feel guilty or bad about it,” he would late details

Brimming with an overflow of material, The Beatles uncorked The White Album in 1968. Technically titled The Beatles, it was the first and only double album that they’d release in their career.

The White Album offers just about every type of music imaginable over the course of its four sides. It also offers some fantastic factoids and trivial information about its making, including these five juicy tidbits. 

The Beatles started writing many of the songs for The White Album while on retreat in India in 1968, learning meditation at the foot of the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. As such, several songs were thinly veiled depictions of actual events from the camp and the people involved in them. “Dear Prudence” referenced Prudence Farrow (sister of actress Mia) and her refusal to come out of her tent. “The Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill” was a jibe at a gung-ho hunter within the entourage. And “Sexy Sadie” was originally titled “Maharishi”. The song reflected how John Lennon ultimately felt let down by the “Giggling Guru”. 

Many, including certain Beatles themselves, have pointed to the White Album sessions as the beginning of the end for t details

During the pandemic, Ian Leslie wrote a Substack essay called “64 Reasons to Celebrate Paul McCartney,” arguing that despite his accomplishments, the ex-Beatle was underrated. But he didn’t delve much into McCartney’s relationship with John Lennon, writing, “I’m trying to keep this essay-length and that subject, inexhaustibly fascinating, is a book in itself.”

Inspired by this, Leslie went and wrote that book: “John & Paul: A Love Story in Songs.” Despite a seemingly endless parade of Beatles books, Leslie offers a fresh take, telling the story of the band through the duo’s relationship and the story of their relationship through the songs they were singing.

 In a video interview from London, Leslie said most previous tomes recount the facts of the story without doing the music justice – “which is what this is all about and you can’t understand them without understanding the music” – or failed to explore the pair’s relationship “with depth or emotional intelligence.”

He was initially hesitant to pitch a book, since he wasn’t a music writer. Still, as a journalist, he’d written details

The Beatles are often hailed as geniuses of pop, but John Lennon shrugged off grandiose claims about his talent.

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The Beatles were legends in their own lifetime.

Countless books were written about the band in the decade they were together. Many more have been written in the 55 years since the breakup.

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Arguably the best is Hunter Davies's The Beatles: The Authorised Biography.

The only authorised account of the band written while they were a going concern, Davies published the book in 1968 having spent 18 months with the group, speaking extensively with the band themselves as well as thei friends, family and associates.

While the book is the origin of many of the now-canonical stories about The Beatles, it's written with a rare mix of respect and distance that, together with its contemporaneous nature, sets it apart from most other biographies.

So many Beatles bios focus on the musical genius of the Fab Four, painting the group – and especially John Lennon and Paul McCartney &n details

For the most part, the Beatles had a keen sense of which member should take on lead vocals. Most of their catalog feels right and just–every member playing to their strengths. However, there are a few songs that could’ve done well with a switcharoo. Below, find three Beatles songs that arguably beg for a different frontman.

“When I’m Sixty Four”

While “When I’m Sixty Four” screams “Paul McCartney”, it would have an entirely different tone if Ringo Starr were to have been the lead vocalist. From McCartney’s point-of-view, this Beatles song is a syrupy-sweet mark of devotion. Like many of his best tracks, “When I’m Sixty Four” sees McCartney wear his heart on his sleeve when he sings, Will you still need me, will you still feed me / When I’m sixty-four? If this song had been given to Starr, it would’ve been a light-hearted tune, akin to “Yellow Submarine”. It would’ve been given a shot of humor–one that would’ve likely helped this song in its heyday. Many, like John Lennon, felt this tune was a little too schmaltzy for the Beatles. Starr’s irreverent take would’ve helped to cut details

Everyone knows John, Paul, George, and Ringo — the Beatles who rocked the world. But behind every great band is a squad of secret weapons, the unsung legends who kept the magic alive. Meet the “Fifth Beatles”: the managers, musicians, and mates who played crucial roles in the Fab Four’s rise to superstardom. From early bandmates to behind-the-scenes masterminds, their stories are just as fascinating as the music itself.

Stuart Sutcliffe
The Beatles’ original bassist and close friend of John Lennon, Sutcliffe was as much a visual architect of the band’s early image as he was a musician. His moptop hairstyle set the style for the band, even if his playing was less than polished. Sadly, he left the band early and passed away young.

Pete Best
Drummer before Ringo, Pete Best toured and played with the Beatles during their crucial Hamburg and Liverpool days. Despite being replaced just before their big break, Best’s role in the band’s development is undeniable, earning him a solid claim to the title.

Chas Newby
A temporary bassist who filled in briefly after the band returned from Germany, Newby played a handful of shows before returning to univers details

The Museum of Contemporary Art of Montenegro (MSUCG) announced the opening of the exhibition Yoko Ono called “Unfinished”, scheduled for Thursday, June 19th at 20 p.m., in the exhibition spaces of the Petrović Palace and the Perjanički dom in Kruševac, Podgorica. The exhibition curators are Maša Vlaović, Gunar B. Kvaran and Connor Monahan.

Yoko Ono is one of the key figures of avant-garde and conceptual art of the 20th and 21st centuries. Her work knows no boundaries; it moves fluidly between experiment, performance, poetry, music and film, while her tireless social and political activism, especially in the field of women's rights and peace initiatives, forms the core of her work.

Her art breaks down traditional boundaries between artistic disciplines and rejects the passive role of the audience, inviting each individual to become an active participant, co-creator, and agent of change.
A wide spectrum of creativity

From her early “instructional works” from the 1950s, through performances and films that call for collective action, to contemporary installations, Yoko Ono builds an authentic artistic language in which the personal and the universal, the poetic and details

The Beatles' fans were left stunned by the revelation that John Lennon and Paul McCartney almost reunited for an album post Fab Four's split.  The legendary songwriting duo had entertained the notion of collaborating on a fresh record in the 1970s.

Wings, spearheaded by McCartney following his departure from the Beatles, was busy crafting a new album at the same time Lennon mulled over an impromptu studio reunion with his former writing partner partner.  Had he attended the studio with McCartney it would have been an occasion which would have marked their first joint effort since The Beatles disbanded.

However, the stars never aligned, and Lennon and McCartney never shared the recording studio again. Fans have only recently discovered how close the pair came to working together once more.

If Lennon had joined McCartney at the recording sessions, his involvement would have likely been some of the tracks of 'Venus and Mars', Wings' milestone album now celebrating 50 years since its release.  A fan shared on the r/PaulMcCartney subreddit: "On this day in 1975, Wings released 'Venus and Mars'. As the follow-up to 'Band on the Run', the album continued Wings' run of commercial success.

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Kiss have firmly left their stamp on the world of glam rock, but they carved out their sound thanks to the music legends that came before them. In fact, Gene Simmons insists that rock and roll wouldn’t be the same today without The Beatles.

Speaking on The School Of Greatness, the Kiss bassist named The Beatles as some of the greatest musicians and songwriters in musical history. “The Beatles are above and beyond anything that anybody’s seen in music over, oh, 200 years?” he says. “Easily. Not since the Renaissance.”

As proof of the band’s genius, he points to how unlikely it was for a group of lads from Liverpool to succeed in the industry. “You have to understand, they only existed for seven years and they came from a place that was a pool filled with liver – Liverpool – where nothing ever happened,” he explains. “High unemployment rate, no experience, no resume, no nothing!”

Despite the circumstances, The Beatles were able to toy with music in a way few had before them. “‘I wanna hold your hand’, ‘She loves you, yeah, yeah, yeah,’” he sings as evidence. “That last chord, that minor n details

The sheer magnitude of the Beatles’ fame makes it easy to forget that when they first reached the peak of their stardom in the mid-1960s, they were just a group of ragtag, young 20-somethings who happened to land a big break. When the future Fab Four first met, they were even younger teens. For most of us, the idea of forging an entire career (and, more generally, a life) with the people we hung out with in high school. Yet, that’s how the Beatles, one of the biggest rock bands of all time, got their start.

Indeed, before they were topping the charts and touring the world, the band’s primary songwriters, John Lennon and Paul McCartney, were busy trying to see what kind of trouble they could get into at their childhood homes.

And like the resourceful lads they were, they certainly found it. Paul McCartney Describes “Teenage Fool Antics” With John Lennon

The Beatles saw and did more exciting and wilder things during their short tenure as a band than most people will experience in their whole lifetimes. But before they got their big break in the early 1960s, they weren’t that different from any other aspiring young male musician. They taught each other chords, made up sil details