Beatles Music

George Harrison wrote "Something," arguably one of the greatest love songs in music history, about his first wife, Pattie Boyd, but their marriage didn't stand the same test of time as his lyrics and melody: The pair divorced after Boyd left Harrison, a Beatle, for Eric Clapton, a guitar god.  And that wasn't even the only love triangle to plague the couple's marriage. According to Boyd, Harrison cheated on her with his bandmate Ringo Starr's then-wife Maureen Starkey (no, really!). That's a lot of drama for a man known as the "quiet Beatle."

Keep reading to learn more about Harrisons wives, including who he was married to at the time of his death in 2001.  Harrison was married two times: first to Pattie Boyd, from 1966 to 1974, then to Olivia Harrison, from 1978 until the time of his death in 2001. How did George Harrison and Pattie Boyd meet?

Boyd was 19 and just starting her modeling career when she got a small part as a school-aged Beatles fan in the 1964 film A Hard Day’s Night. Harrison was immediately smitten with the young woman and asked her to dinner, but she politely declined because she was seeing someone else at the time. A week later, newly single and back on set for details

Have you met the Beatles? The odds are you have, whether you grew up with them, sought them out, or were never formally introduced. You may know the name, at least, even without having heard the numbers, as one knows Shakespeare’s without having read or seen a play, or even knowing he wrote them.

The Fab Four — phenomenal in their time, phenomenal after. Though they made their split official in 1970 after coming apart in bits and pieces, they have never gone away. As long as John Lennon lived, there was always the possibility of the band getting back together — in a classic “Saturday Night Live” bit, Lorne Michaels offered them $3,000 to reunite on the show — and his death, and the global consciousness of loss, launched an era of revived Beatles awareness, of finding new things to do with the old music, protecting the legacy and promoting the brand.

With the band’s recorded catalog lately being remixed, remastered and rereleased, in special editions with extra tracks, it was only logical that Apple would get around to the movies. Peter Jackson’s “Get Back,” his six-hour AI-enhanced cut of footage shot during the making of the album “Let It Be,&rdq details

Yoko Ono is spending her final years in reflective seclusion, far from the spotlight she once craved, with sources telling OK! she now believes she has changed the world and now wants the peace of watching it from a distance.

The avant-garde artist, musician and activist – who stalked John Lennon before they met – has retreated from public life decades after rising to global fame in the 1960s and meeting Lennon, whom she married in 1969.

Their personal and creative partnership, forged after they met at Ono's London art exhibit in 1966, reshaped cultural and political activism in the early 1970s as the couple settled in New York City. The pair welcomed their son Sean in 1975, made boldly experimental music, and became fixtures of anti-war and civil rights campaigns.

But Ono's world changed irreversibly on December 8, 1980, when Lennon was shot and killed outside their Upper West Side home as she stood nearby.

Yoko Ono said she missed her husband's 'tenderness' after he was shot. Ono later said about his assassination by unhinged fan Mark David Chapman: "What I miss most about John is his incredible tenderness and his belief in me ... love can sometimes be h---. You could abuse eac details

The newly refurbished version of “The Beatles Anthology” has been rolling out on Disney+ over a period of days this week, with a newly commissioned Episode 9 premiering on the service Friday night. It gives the epic 1995 docuseries more than just a new edit and a fresh set of paint: it gives it an all-new finale that feels sweeter than the way the original project faded out with the gradual breakup of the most popular band of all time. And fans aren’t likely to mind the extra hour’s worth of either added context or additional sentiment.

With the new episode about to premiere, its director, Oliver Murray, told Variety about his intentions for this fresh finale. He’s the same man whom Apple Corps drafted to a short movie about the “final Beatles single,” “Now and Then,” when that was unveiled two years ago. Even though he was not yet a teenager when the original “Beatles Anthology” first aired in prime time 30 years ago, Murray was considered the right candidate to draw together footage that was shot at the time with Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr. The three ex-Beatles became active Beatles once again at that point in drafting old John Lenn details

Before The Beatles came around, singles ruled the roost in terms of rock and roll importance. The band started to change that. Their ability was such that even their non-singles rivaled or surpassed the quality of their contemporaries’ biggest hits.

Because these four songs are so popular, you might think they were huge smashes. But The Beatles never even released them as singles.
“In My Life”

In the first half of their recording career, The Beatles, for the most part, released singles in the United Kingdom that didn’t appear on their albums. In turn, they usually reserved the albums for songs that wouldn’t get a single release. This wasn’t a hard and fast rule. But it did mostly account for brilliant songs like “In My Life” only getting exposure via LP. The song could easily have been another No. 1 for the group, as it’s one of the most beautiful, affecting ballads ever written. Of course, it wasn’t long before people who heard it realized its brilliance. It has received a ton of cover versions over the years as well. But none of them match the unaffected lead vocal of John Lennon on the original.
“A Day In The Life”

When details

The Beatles’ Anthology 4 dropped on November 21, adding another volume of outtakes and rarities to the three Anthology albums released in the 1990s. Now, as the Anthology docu-series returns to screens this week — along with a revealing new Episode 9 — it’s worth remembering that the group churned out a core catalog of 213 songs between 1962 and 1970.

That’s a lot of tracks in just eight years. And, as you might imagine, the Beatles themselves weren’t fans of everything they produced.

That goes double for John Lennon. In the latter years of his career, the most critical Beatle took a particularly dim view of many songs in the group’s catalog, including his own.

His most withering condemnations were saved for the songs he stamped out in cookie-cutter form or peeled off as nonsensical filler. "It's Only Love" is an example of the former, a Help! track he called “abysmal”, while the latter includes Abbey Road's "Mean Mr. Mustard," a bit of light-hearted fluff he denounced as “a piece of garbage.”

And then there's the song Lennon called his “ details

Part of the magic of John Lennon and Paul McCartney’s songwriting partnership was their ability to blend the former’s avant-garde experimentation with the latter’s commercial sensibilities, and few singles demonstrate this ability—for better or worse—as the 1967 A-side “Hello, Goodbye” and its B-side, “I Am the Walrus”.

Unsurprisingly to anyone with even a vague knowledge of The Beatles, McCartney penned “Hello, Goodbye”, and Lennon wrote “I Am the Walrus”. Both songs are indicative of who each musician was as a songwriter. McCartney explored Gemini-esque themes of duality amidst a pop background, Lennon composed an LSD-fueled ode to Lewis Carroll poetry with nonsense syllables and shocking imagery.

Also unsurprising is the fact that Lennon wanted “I Am the Walrus” to be the A-side to the single. Ultimately, McCartney and George Martin won the debate, and Lennon’s psychedelic ode to the “egg man” was relegated to the B-side. McCartney and Martin were correct in their assumption that “Hello, Goodbye” would perform better on the charts worldwide, though “I Am the Walrus” beat out its details

The early notion of the Beatles as “four lads that shook the world” has been subject to many shifts in emphasis over the decades. They have been valorised, vilified, mythologised, misunderstood and even ignored. The release this month of the new Beatles Anthology – an expansion of the original mid-1990s compilation with CD, vinyl reissues and the documentary series streaming on Disney+ – is testament not just to their enduring appeal but also to how the constant reframing of their story reveals as much about our changing tastes. The 2025 edition arrives as a full-scale revisitation of the original project, bringing with it a remastered, expanded documentary series and a substantial reissue campaign.

What is more likely to reshape the way we see the band, though, is the addition of a brand-new ninth episode to the original TV series, built from recently excavated footage of Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr working together in 1994–95. Far more intimate and informal than the original broadcast, this material captures the three surviving Beatles rehearsing, reflecting and simply spending time as old friends rather than cultural monuments, albeit still with the “kid brother details

In late November 1968, over Thanksgiving weekend, George Harrison went to Bob Dylan‘s home in Bearsville in Woodstock, New York, for a few sessions. At the time, Dylan was going through a period of low confidence, following his motorcycle accident two years earlier, shortly after the release of Blonde on Blonde, and had retreated from touring until 1974, when he went out again with the Band.

“Bob Dylan had gone through the thing of breaking his neck in a motorcycle accident and being out of commission for a time,” recalled Harrison in his 1982 memoir I, Me, Mine. “He’d got himself back together and had finished ‘Nashville Skyline’ shortly before I arrived there. I was hanging out at his house, with him, Sarah and his kids. He seemed very nervous, and I felt a little uncomfortable—it seemed strange, especially as he was in his own home.”

During this period, Dylan also recorded The Basement Tapes with the Band, along with his eighth album, John Wesley Harding (1967), followed by Nashville Skyline in ’69. Though Dylan had already been linked to another Beatle, John Lennon, he also developed a close friendship with Harrison during their Thanksgiving session details

Since 1960, the Beatles—four fabulous lads from Liverpool, England—have remained the greatest rock and roll band in the history of music. How John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr managed to make music together remains a mythical truth over half-a-century later. From Please Please Me to Abbey Road (or Let It Be, commercially), the quartet have influenced thousands—likey millions—of people to pick up an instrument and start writing songs. Without the Beatles, the DNA of modern music as we know it would look unrecognizable.

We first ranked the 50 best Beatles songs nearly a decade ago, and in 2023 we remade the list and took out 20 entries. Now, because opinions change like the day, and because the band is always present and relevant in the zeitgeist, we’re giving the ranking another upgrade. Maybe in two years I’ll bump it up to 100 entries. The popularity of albums and tracks are firmly in flux, and our ranking sets out to illustrate that. I didn’t want this list to look like an obligation. Instead, I hope you can feel the genuine love we have for this band in the order we’ve presented. So, we’ve pulled together a blend of the usual suspects a details

Steven Soderbergh directs a documentary using John Lennon's last radio interview.  The film emphasizes Lennon and Ono's openness and relevance of their discussion.  Lennon was tragically killed hours after the upbeat interview session.

Just before his life was cut short on December 8, 1980, John Lennon spent the day giving a remarkably open radio interview. Now, director Steven Soderbergh is bringing that conversation to life in a new documentary that explores Lennon’s final hours in his own words.

Soderbergh spoke with Variety about the upcoming film, which centers on the interview Lennon and his wife Yoko Ono recorded that fateful afternoon on RKO Radio.

“I’m excited about it… The job is to obviously present it in such a way that it enhances the interview and doesn’t distract from it,” he said. “I’m just hoping to create a film that gets as many people as possible to hear what John and Yoko had to say on that afternoon before he was killed.”

The Oscar-winning director said he was struck by how Lennon and Ono “were both so free in their discussions.”

“I was surprised at how open and excited they details

In the middle of the celebration at TD Coliseum in Hamilton, playing the longest list of greatest hits any artist has ever had, Paul McCartney paused to talk about Blackbird.

That’s the song he wrote after being inspired by the civil rights movement in the United States in the 1960s. On Friday night, in front of a sold out crowd, he told the story of how the Beatles were asked to play a show in Jacksonville, Fla., in 1964.

The promoter said the show was segregated. Black people on one side and white people on the other. The Beatles refused, McCartney recalled, saying "well that's stupid... and he must have realized there was a bit of money involved so he integrated the show. It was the first one."

McCartney led the grateful crowd on his magical history tour starting in Liverpool and their first number one hit single, From Me To You, with stops at the first song the Beatles ever recorded, In Spite of All the Danger and the first song they played for legendary producer Sir George Martin, Love Me Do.

He paid tribute to his Beatles bandmates, John Lennon, George Harrison and Ringo Starr. He played 1982's Here Today that let him say how much he loved and missed Lennon, easier than saying it in p details

Back in the mid-1990s, The Beatles released an eight-part Anthology series featuring John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr telling their own story outside of the traditional narrator and talking heads structure.

The series was accompanied by three volumes featuring the Fab Four’s albums, complete with all sorts of extras, and an official Anthology book.

Following the recent re-release of all three with extended content is Anthology 4, a special addition featuring “13 previously unreleased demos and session recordings and other rare recordings.

"It also includes new mixes of The Beatles’ Anthology-associated hit singles: the GRAMMY-winning Free As A Bird and Real Love, given new life by their original producer, Jeff Lynne, using de-mixed John Lennon vocals.”

Released today, the 36-track Anthology 4 can be listened to below on Spotify or purchased as a CD & Vinyl here. But that's not all.

The original Beatles Anthology documentary series is set to hit Disney+ with a three-episode premiere on November 26.

Restored by Peter Jackson's team, a brand-new ninth episode has been created for this new presentation, too. Beatles fans rejoice! details

Some mental images are inextricable from The Beatles’ legacy, not the least of which include John Lennon holding down rhythm guitar, Ringo Starr smiling and head-wagging behind the kit, Paul McCartney plunking out bass lines on his Hofner viola bass, and George Harrison playing lead guitar. But all that could have looked remarkably different—perhaps excluding Harrison altogether—if it wasn’t for one particularly bad bout of nerves at a show.

Bass players are often also guitar players, and McCartney is no exception. Songs like “Blackbird” and “Yesterday” proved that Sir Paul could work his way around a fretboard years before he would establish Wings, the band in which he played the most guitar. And as one of The Beatles’ principal songwriters, it stands to reason that McCartney might have ended up on lead guitar. At least, that’s what they were planning on in their earliest days of playing out.

As McCartney recalled in a 2025 edition of Anthology, he had a guitar solo on deck during his first gig with The Quarry Men. The young musician planned to take the lead on “Guitar Boogie”, but when the time came for his feature, McCartney’s hands details

Harry Lloyd, the British actor best known for playing Viserys Targaryen in the first season “Game of Thrones,” is set to portray George Martin in the upcoming four-part Beatles biopic by director Sam Mendes.

Lloyd joins Paul Mescal as Paul McCartney, Harrison Dickinson as John Lennon and Barry Keoghan as Ringo Starr and Joseph Quinn as George Harrison in Sony Pictures‘ “The Beatles — A Four-Film Cinematic Event,” due for release in 2028.

The casting is being revealed by Martin’s son, Giles Martin, in a pre-recorded interview going out on the Ryan Tubridy Show on Virgin Radio U.K later on Friday. “He’s really good. He’s very committed,” he said. Variety has since confirmed the casting with the production.

A classically trained musician, Martin was commonly referred to as the “fifth Beatle” for his extensive involvement in each of the band’s original albums. He wrote most of the orchestral and string arrangements and also played piano or keyboards on a number of their tracks. Once described as “the world’s most famous record producer,” across a 60-year career Martin produced 30 number one hit singles in U. details

There are few albums in the history of music, let alone The Beatles’ discography, that hold as much cultural significance as Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. It was the beginning of the band’s new studio-bound experimentation, particularly for Paul McCartney, who reveled in the opportunity to illuminate The Beatles’ kaleidoscopic psychedelia. However, it also faced a dimming opinion from John Lennon. Despite Sgt. Pepper’s being arguably the most mythical prevalent album by The Beatles, Lennon had complicated thoughts that some of the record’s results were “garbage.” Lennon felt creatively detached from the artistry of the record when McCartney took control, and felt the music on records like The White Album was “far superior.”  What Led The Beatles to Create 'Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band'

McCartney wrote over half of the album’s material, and with that, his creative control over the actual recordings was also increased. McCartney confirmed this by sharing in the ‘90s that “If records had a director within a band, I sort of directed Pepper.” But not every band member was exactly thrilled with the new directi details

Beatles fans everywhere, the wait is over: exactly 30 years after the original release, The Beatles Anthology, the story of the Beatles as told by the Beatles themselves, is back. Friday 21 November is the day of the enriched record release of the Anthology 4 volume on behalf of Universal Music, while from Wednesday 26 November on Disney+ (on three dates: 26, 27 and 28 November, with three episodes available per day) the documentary series is released, completed by a ninth, previously unreleased episode. And already this is a sign of the times: 30 years ago the three double Cd were of course Emi and the series by the American broadcaster Abc. But All things must pass, as Uncle George sings in Anthology 3, everything passes in this world, except a very few things. Like the Beatles and the passion of those who love them. In the name of this passion, we previewed the four volumes of the new The Beatles Anthology Collections and watched the ninth instalment of the doc. Here's what we got out of it.

The box

The first adjective worth spending is 'sumptuous'. The alternative is between the 8-CD version (four doubles) or the 12-vinyl version (four triples). The latter finally does justice to the original concept of the details

John Lennon credited Black artists, especially Chuck Berry, as The Beatles’ biggest musical influences.  Lennon highlighted Liverpool's exposure to Black music, unlike much of Britain and Europe.  "Berry is the greatest influence on earth," Lennon declared, naming Berry, Bo Diddley, and Little Richard.

It’s no surprise that The Beatles drew inspiration from musical legends before them, from the Everly Brothers to Elvis Presley. But as talented as the Fab Four were, even John Lennon couldn’t deny the impact of one artist — the one he crowned the “greatest influence on earth.”  For Lennon, hearing blues, R&B, and early rock ’n’ roll, music rooted in African American culture, was one of the most transformative experiences of his life. Of course, second only to meeting his wife, Yoko Ono.

While visiting JET’s new Chicago offices in 1972, Lennon looked back on his Liverpool childhood and the iconic musicians who influenced the path of his music.

“Liverpool is a seaport city and many Blacks live there. The ugly scars of an earlier, racist-colonial period in England still mar the ports. Slave rings are still anchored t details

If you’re a massive fan of The Beatles, you’ve undoubtedly perused the numerous documentaries on the Fab Four. Disney will release a restored and expanded documentary series, The Beatles Anthology, on November 26. 

To celebrate its 30th anniversary, The Beatles Anthology has been restored and will be released with previously unseen footage of the Fab Four.  The docu-series premieres on Disney+ with the first three episodes on November 26, 2025.
Beatlemania continues to take hold of the world with The Beatles – A Four-Film Cinematic Event, a four-part movie series starring Paul Mescal (as Sir Paul McCartney), Barry Keoghan (as Ringo Starr), Joseph Quinn (as George Harrison), and Harris Dickinson (as John Lennon).

What is The Beatles Anthology?

Disney has released the trailer for the upcoming restored docu-series, which will premiere on November 26 with the first three episodes. Then, the next three will release on November 27, and the final three on November 28.

Originally broadcast in 1995, The Beatles Anthology features John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr discussing their time in the band, from their early days in Liverpool through details

During their reign, The Beatles were the No. 1 band in the world. You can argue that fact until you’re blue in the face, but that is the reality, and the numbers prove it. In the roughly eight years they were together, The Beatles had 20 No. 1 hits and 19 No. 1 albums. Needless to say, they dominated the charts, and consequently, they kicked these three iconic songs from No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100.

Both of these songs are certainly among the greatest of all time. Without context, determining which song knocked the other out of the No. 1 spot is a coin toss. In 1970, Simon & Garfunkel’s “Bridge Over Troubled Water” peaked at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 for six consecutive weeks. However, when “Let It Be” was released, that changed.

A month after the release of “Let It Be”, The Beatles booted Simon & Garfunkel’s “Bridge Over Troubled Water” from the top spot. Subsequently, the iconic Beatles single stayed at the No. 1 spot for two weeks. It was the band’s penultimate No. 1 hit on the chart.
“Paperback Writer” & “Paint It Black” by The Rolling Stones

In 1966, the Rolling Stones’ earl details

Other than the occasional track, like the 1972 single “Give Ireland Back to the Irish,” Paul McCartney isn’t generally associated with topical songs. But he’s changing his tune, so to speak, as part of a new protest by musicians against copyright theft by AI companies.

Originally released this past February, the album Is This What We Want? consisted entirety of background noise taped at recording studios, but no actual voices, songs, or instruments. The project was designed to draw attention to the way AI companies could exploit recorded music, along with other art forms, as the basis for projects, thanks to a proposed change in U.K. copyright law. According to a statement from the album organizers at the time, the record’s use of silence was meant to symbolize “the impact we expect the government’s proposals would have on musicians’ livelihoods.”

For the album’s upcoming vinyl release on Dec. 8, McCartney contributed his own blank slate: “Bonus Track,” which spans 2 minutes and 45 seconds long of silence.

Speaking to the BBC earlier this year, McCartney discussed his concerns about AI infiltrating his business. “You get young details

The mid-1970s were a tumultuous time for George Harrison, marking a period he called a “bit of a bender” as he spread himself thin on multiple music projects, partook in plenty of drugs and alcohol, and watched his relationships falter (or fail completely). Interestingly, his former bandmate, John Lennon, was going through a similar phase during what would become known as Lennon’s “lost weekend.” Several years had passed since The Beatles split, and the comedown was proving to be rather difficult.

For Harrison, this translated into some rather lackluster and divisive music, including a track he released on November 18, 1974. The ex-Beatle released two singles in the States: “Dark Horse” as the A-side and “I Don’t Care Anymore” as the B-side. The latter track had clear country and skiffle influences, harkening back to Harrison’s early days with The Beatles in Liverpool. But aside from this rootsy homage, the song did little to impress critics. Most seized the opportunity to reference the song title, claiming that the performance and lyrical content showed Harrison really didn’t care. If he didn’t, they wondered, why should they?

“ details

“I was just too frightened – it was too big a moment with everyone looking at the guitar player. I couldn’t do it”: Paul McCartney was meant to be the Beatles’ lead guitarist – then stage fright led him to George Harrison.

Picture “The Beatles” in your mind – what do you see? There's the logo, four mop-top lads in suits, screaming girls mobbing airport runways... and Paul McCartney plucking away at his Hofner violin bass guitar.  Obviously, though, generational talent that he is, McCartney is and always has been a mean guitarist as well. Even before the world's most famous rock group went their separate ways, McCartney had already put to vinyl an enviable catalog of six-string greatness.

PAUL McCARTNEY: A great thing about Liverpool, Newcastle, Glasgow and the provinces, is that they all have places with famous names, and the first gig with The Quarry Men was on Broadway – in Liverpool. (We made our first record in a little demo studio in Kensington, Liverpool.)

For my first gig, I was given a guitar solo on Guitar Boogie. I could play it easily in rehearsal so they elected that I should do it as my solo. Things were going fine, but wh details

The Beatles had already announced their breakup to the world by the time Let It Be was released in 1970. They left behind a somewhat star-crossed project that had been hanging around for more than a year after its initial sessions before its release.

The chaos going on behind the scenes wasn’t able to overwhelm what the Fab Four accomplished from a musical sense. Here are five stories behind the songs on Let It Be that you might not know.  The “Two” are Paul and Linda.

When you listen to the song “Two Of Us” without any context behind its making, you might assume that it’s about the relationship between Paul McCartney and John Lennon. After all, the pair sing in close, two-part harmony in the song in a way that they hadn’t done in years. And the lyrics speak with nostalgia about warm memories and great times spent together. But McCartney, who wrote the track, was actually referring to the getaways he took with wife Linda whenever The Beatles’ drama seemed overwhelming.
Faster, then Slower

“Across The Universe” was the song that The Beatles couldn’t get right, despite the inherent beauty of the John Lennon composition. They f details

Disney+ debuted an all-new trailer and key art for its upcoming release of The Beatles Anthology. Episodes 1-3 of the series launch on November 26, followed by Episodes 4-6 on November 27 and Episodes 7-9 on November 28.

The Beatles Anthology, Apple Corps’ landmark, UK-produced documentary series exploring the life and times of the most influential and beloved band of all time, as told by The Beatles themselves, will make its streaming debut exclusively on Disney+ beginning November 26. Beautifully restored and expanded from eight to nine episodes, the series offers an unprecedented and intimate view of The Beatles’ legendary trajectory and inner workings.

John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr take us along for the ride as they revisit the highs and lows and twists and turns of The Beatles’ long and winding eight years as a band. The series spans the band’s gritty, hungry early days, to the phenomenon of Beatlemania and global superstardom. The series’ new ninth episode features illuminating and previously unreleased footage of Paul, George and Ringo during the creation of the original 1990s Anthology series and music project. The Beatles Anthology was origin details