It's been 45 years since John Lennon was shot and killed outside his New York City apartment, but Beatles bandmate Paul McCartney still checks in on his widow, Yoko Ono, a source tells Closer.

"It's no secret Paul and Yoko weren't fans of each other all those years ago, but they have a great understanding of each other these days and a genuine friendship," reveals the source. "Growing older has mellowed them both and time has healed a lot of the wounds."

McCartney, 84, opened up about his reconciliation with Ono, 93, to Rolling Stone in 2013. "I thought, 'If John loved her, there's got to be something. He's not stupid,'" he recalled. "It's like, what are you going to do? Are you going to hold a grudge you never really had?"

"Paul has also gone out of his way to defend Yoko in recent years and that's been very appreciated by her," adds the source. "They have both suffered a lot of loss over the years and they are able to give each some comfort, sharing old memories and stories and reminiscing about the times they shared with John."

McCartney famously fell out with Lennon when the Beatles broke up in 1970, but the pair were able to patch things up in the years prior to the "Imagine" singer's murder details

Sir Paul McCartney, 84, has lived a life that's full of music, from listening to his father James play dancehall songs on the piano as a child, to joining a skiffle group with John Lennon as a teenager, to becoming the biggest band of all time with The Beatles. Then, he forged a solo career as a member of Wings and under his own name that has yielded more number-one hits than any other songwriter.

McCartney's music has been a cornerstone of pop culture for over 60 years, but what are the songs that formed his musical taste? Paul recently revealed the ten songs that have "soundtracked my life" to the BBC's Vernon Kay on his show Tracks Of My Years, which premieres on May 25 on BBC Sounds and iPlayer.

The full episode has since aired, revealing the stories behind each of Paul's 10 song choices.

Paul McCartney reveals 10 songs that soundtracked his life:

10. John Lennon – "Imagine"
09. The Beach Boys – "God Only Knows"
08. Bob Dylan – "Tambourine Man"
07. Prince – "Kiss"
06. The Human League – "Don't You Want Me"
05. The Kinks – "You Really Got Me"
04. Elvis -… pic.twitter.com/rUQyERDQnA

Counting down his top 10 p details

The Beatles reshaped the course of popular music during their iconic run together. Decades after their split, they remain one of the most celebrated bands in history.

Billboard ranked The Beatles No. 1 on its list of the 50 greatest rock bands of all time. The Rolling Stones came in at No. 2, followed by Led Zeppelin at No. 3.

The publication credited the Fab Four’s seven-year run. That stretch produced 20 Hot 100 No. 1 hits and 12 classic albums. According to Billboard, rock as we know it may not exist without the band’s influence.

On August 20, 1969, Paul McCartney, John Lennon, George Harrison and Ringo Starr gathered in a recording studio for the last time. They met inside EMI Studios at 3 Abbey Road in London. No new music was actually recorded that day.

According to Ultimate Classic Rock, the band spent the day’s first part mixing “I Want You (She’s So Heavy).” The session lasted three and a half hours. The details came from Mark Lewisohn’s official Abbey Road session notes. Lennon reportedly wanted the song to end abruptly rather than fade out.

The edit was made in a silent pause, right after the lyric “She’s so…&rdq details

Paul Mescal as Paul McCartney singing in the Cavern Club. 

There are a bunch of paparazzi photos circulating the internet of the four actors playing The Beatles in Sam Mendes' The Beatles – A Four-Film Cinematic Event, which is still quite a way away from hitting movie screens in 2028. The movies have been filming for a few months now (and are expected to be filming for quite a few more), and recently the faux Fab Four–Harris Dickinson as John Lennon, Paul Mescal as Paul McCartney, Joseph Quinn as George Harrison, and Barry Keoghan as Ringo Starr were snapped by photogs while filming the iconic Abbey Road cover photoshoot. The internet's response to how they look has been harsh.

Harris Dickinson as John Lennon, singing into a microphone with long hair and glasses. 'They Look Absolutely Ridiculous'

The cover of Abbey Road is one of the most iconic album covers of all time, so of course it had to be a part of the movie. In the photo, the four Beatles are crossing the street at a zebra crossing. Lennon is leading the way with a bushy beard and wearing a white suit; Starr follows him in a black suit. Then comes McCartney in a grey suit and no shoes, and trailing behind is Harrison in al details

A 1969 song by The Beatles never reached No. 1 or even charted as a single when it was first released, but it has now been recognized among the greatest classic rock songs that never topped the charts.

In a July 15, 2026 ranking, Collider placed "Here Comes the Sun" at No. 2 on its list of "The 10 Greatest Classic Rock Songs That Were Never No. 1 Hits, Ranked." The song was written and sung by George Harrison and appeared on The Beatles' 1969 album Abbey Road.

The reason behind its unusual chart history is simple. During its original release period, "Here Comes the Sun" was intended as an album track rather than a single. Because The Beatles did not release "Here Comes the Sun" as a single in 1969, it did not have the opportunity to compete for a position on the singles chart at the time, per Collider.

However, that did not stop it from becoming one of the best-known songs in The Beatles' catalog. Collider's ranking puts the Harrison composition ahead of many other famous rock songs that also missed the top spot.

"Here Comes the Sun" came during a difficult period for Harrison and The Beatles.

Source: yahoo.com/Madz Dizon

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Ringo Starr showed off his eye-catching long locks as he enjoyed dinner with his Bond Girl wife Barbara Bach in Malibu on Tuesday.

The Beatles icon, 86, was worlds away from his look as a member of the iconic boyband as he headed to Tra di No with his wife of 45 years and a group of friends.

The outing came 64 years to the day after Ringo became a member of The Beatles, with himself, John Lennon, George Harrison and Paul McCartney forming the famous foursome, that would go on to be one of the most iconic bands of all time.

Barbara, 79, a former Bond Girl who starred in The Spy Who Loved Me, was arm-in-arm with her husband as she arrived at the restaurant dressed in a cream jacket and purple trousers.

The couple married in 1981 after meeting on the set of Caveman the year before, and divide their time between homes in London, Los Angeles and Monte Carlo.

Barbara had already found fame as KGB agent Anya Amasova – not too subtly referred to as Agent Triple X – in the tenth James Bond movie which centred on a plan by a megalomaniac to destroy the world and create a new one under the sea.

Source: dailymail.com/Laura Fox

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During the Beatles’ early hit-making years, John Lennon and Paul McCartney took most of the plaudits for their songwriting. George Harrison was slower to find his voice as a writer, and when he wrote his first solo composition for the Beatles, he was sick in bed. Even then, he wasn’t convinced what he had written could even be considered a song.

By the time the Beatles landed in Bournemouth, on England’s south coast, for a six-show residency at the Gaumont in August 1963, their debut album, Please Please Me, was already fueling the first ripples of Beatlemania. Harrison had come away from those sessions without a songwriting credit, despite handling lead vocals on “Chains” and “Do You Want to Know a Secret.”

Harrison had already co-written songs with fellow Beatles, including “In Spite of All the Danger” with Paul McCartney and “Cry for a Shadow” with John Lennon, but “Don’t Bother Me” was different. This was his first Beatles song written entirely by himself.

George Harrison of English rock and pop group The Beatles plays his 1963 Rickenbacker 360/12 guitar on stage during rehearsals for the ABC Television music televisi details

Anna Sawai fumbled her first audition. She was 11, living in Tokyo after her family bounced from New Zealand to Hong Kong to the Philippines. Her mother, Kaoru, found a listing for a stage production of Annie in Tokyo just one month after they arrived. She bombed. But she filled the next year with dance and singing lessons, working tirelessly with her mother. And she nailed her second audition, going on to play the title role in a live Nippon Television broadcast. "It was my first experience where I learned, if you want something, you really have to put your head in the game. You have to go straight through and commit to it," Sawai, 34, tells me during a video call from her home in Tokyo.

Hard work never scared Sawai. Her early roles demanded a lot from her. In 2009, she joined her first Hollywood production, James McTeigue's Ninja Assassin, as a ninja, a physically strenuous role. She knew at the time that she wanted to pursue acting, but her team, which she says was better positioned in the music industry, had other plans. She fell into the J-pop world, joining a buzzy girl group called Faky, which prevented her from acting until her contract was lifted. Nearly a decade later, in 2018, she finally left the group and l details

While Beatles fans dreamed of the group reuniting in the 1970s, David Bowie once revealed that he nearly managed to get John Lennon and Paul McCartney back together in 1974 to form a supergroup with him.

It was the year Bowie moved to New York City, just three years after Lennon himself had emigrated there. Shortly after Bowie’s arrival, he met Lennon at a party hosted by Elizabeth Taylor. Of all the Beatles, Lennon was his favorite.

“He was one of the major influences on my musical life,” Bowie said in an interview recorded in the 1980s. “I mean, I just thought he was the very best of what could be done with rock and roll, and also ideas.

Although he was nervous when the two met privately, they quickly formed a bond that led to Lennon visiting Bowie one night, with McCartney in tow.

As Bowie explained to Marc Riley on BBC Radio 6 Music, he was lodging at the time at the Pierre Hotel.

“I’d taken over a suite virtually for months and months,” he said. “I was kind of living there.”

Bowie explained that he was obsessed with the newly released Sony video recorder and would spend hours making his own films. “Fortunately, I was details

On this day, 64 years ago, a 22-year-old drummer from Liverpool stepped onto the stage with three other young musicians. Just like that, the rock and roll music industry had changed forever.

When The Beatles formed in 1960, the original group consisted of John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, Stuart Sutcliffe and Pete Best. In 1961, Sutcliffe stepped away as their bassist to focus on a full-time career in painting.

Best was the group’s original drummer, but the bandmates had grown frustrated over his inability to improve. The group’s manager at the time, Brian Epstein, dismissed Best on Aug. 16, 1962.

Needless to say, The Beatles’ search for a new drummer would be quick. Two days later, Lennon found a potential replacement for Best and invited him to play at an Aug. 18 show.

On Aug. 18, 1962, Ringo Starr joined The Beatles on stage to perform at the Horticultural Society dance, per Oldies 93. The event was held inside the Hulme Hall in Port Sunlight, a village in the Metropolitan Borough of Wirral, England.

A large portion of The Beatles’ passionate fanbase initially opposed the band’s decision to swap Best for Starr. Nonetheless, the group stayed com details

In late 1969, Paul McCartney was reeling from the impending breakup of the Beatles, RadarOnline.com can reveal.

John Lennon had left the group, and while they'd kept it quiet, McCartney packed up his family and retreated to a remote Scottish farmhouse.

Paul McCartney retreated to Scotland with his family after John Lennon left the Beatles in 1969.  "He is not wanting to get out of bed and drinking way too much once he did get out of bed," said biographer Allan Kozinn.

"He's completely depressed. He had been in the Beatles his whole adult life. It was the only job he knew."

Suddenly, Kozinn said, "Paul had a lot of self-doubt."It was the darkest time in Paul's life to that point. "I didn't know what to do at all," the iconic singer recalled. "How could anything I do be as good as the Beatles?" As he sunk into sadness, "that left [wife] Linda with the job of trying to bring him back to life," said Kozinn, coauthor of the book The McCartney Legacy: Volume 1: 1969-73.

"Linda's got these two kids, and they're in the middle of Scotland in a ramshackle farmhouse, and she's trying to hold it all together."

Source: radaronline.com/Aaron Johnson

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A Liverpool man has told how, as a 17-year-old lorry driver, he unknowingly transported John Lennon and The Quarrymen on the back of his wagon during the July 6, 1957, procession in Woolton - leading to music history being made.

Douglas Chadwick, 86, was a teenager with a driving licence, a vehicle, and a love of the local area when he was asked to provide a wagon for the annual Rose Queen procession summer fete organised by St Peter's Church on Church Road in Woolton.

He had expected to be carrying children and members of the community, but instead, a last-minute decision by the church's vicar saw a megastar in the making climb aboard.

‌Douglas, from Halewood, told the ECHO: "I turned up with the vehicle early, and the vicar, Price Jones, had a face down to the ground.

"He said, 'I've over-ordered. I haven't got anybody to put on the back of your wagon’, and my face fell. Then he suddenly said, 'I've got a skiffle group playing in the afternoon’. I said, 'Well, who are they?' And he said, 'Well, they call themselves The Quarrymen’.”

It was then decided that the young musicians would be put on the back of Douglas'. wagon. At the time, he had "no inkling" how s details

By the end of the 1960s, many rockers were turning away from blithe love songs in favor of something far more consequential. Political and social activism became the call of the day. Songs got an existential tinge. But there were a few artists still holding on to the notion that the best medicine for hard times was unfiltered, earnest love. Paul McCartney was a strong proponent of that message in his songs, much to the chagrin of some of his former bandmates.

In the mid-1970s, McCartney and his second band, Wings, decided to push back against the notion that love songs were, in some way, immature. In return, they earned one of their biggest hits. They proved the song’s sentiment: love is eternal and will always bring listeners together.

John Lennon, in particular, took issue with the fact that Paul McCartney was known to write playful songs, often about love. His time with The Beatles saw him write such “silly” songs as “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da”. There’s also the darkly tinged “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer”. That affinity only grew once he got out of Lennon’s discerning eye and started a solo career.

Source: americansongwriter.com/Alex Hopper

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The Fab Four are back on Abbey Road ... well, sort of.

Harris Dickinson, Paul Mescal, Joseph Quinn and Barry Keoghan were spotted recreating The Beatles' legendary Abbey Road album cover, giving fans a first look at the actors stepping into the shoes of the iconic band.

Dickinson is portraying John Lennon, Mescal is playing Paul McCartney, Quinn is George Harrison and Keoghan is Ringo Starr in the highly anticipated Beatles film project.

The four actors were seen walking across the famous London street in a recreation of the instantly recognizable 1969 album artwork ... complete with the lineup and styling that made the original image one of the most famous photos in music history.

The scene is part of the upcoming Beatles biopic series, which is being made as four interconnected films, with each actor portraying one member of the band from his character's perspective.

The Abbey Road recreation is already giving Beatles fans plenty to talk about, especially with the striking resemblance between the actors and their real-life counterparts.

Source: tmz.com/

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In 1966, the Beatles, fed up with Beatlemania, decided to retire from touring. Their concerts had become so loud with screaming Beatles fans that they were unable to hear each other play, and their music was suffering, so taking a step back from live shows was the best decision. It allowed them to go back to the studio with a different mindset, to experiment without worrying about how the songs would sound live. Which is why they were able to record "Strawberry Fields Forever" in a way that was completely revolutionary for its time. What John Lennon had in mind for this song was complicated, and it required producer George Martin to get creative, splicing two recordings together to get a sound they couldn't have gotten otherwise.

"Strawberry Fields Forever" was a very nostalgic track. It came out as a single for their iconic 1967 album, "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band", and Paul McCartney's "Penny Lane" was the flip side of that single, which is another song about their hometown, Liverpool. "Strawberry Fields Forever" was undoubtedly the most experimental one of the two, partly due to the way it was recorded, and it was the first single by the Beatles in four years not to reach No. 1 in the United Kingdom. At the details

The Beatles have a plethora of hits in their catalog, many of them written by the legendary Lennon-McCartney songwriting team. But their tunesmith talents weren’t limited to the band, as both John Lennon and Paul McCartney played a role in the careers of other artists.

One notable example came when Lennon collaborated with David Bowie on the song “Fame,” nearly five years after The Beatles broke up.

Released in 1975 as the second single from Bowie’s Young Americans album, “Fame” went on to become his first U.S. chart-topper, reaching No. 1 on the all-genre Billboard Hot 100 and topping the Canadian Singles chart.

“Fame” also became one of the year’s most successful singles, landing at No. 7 on Billboard’s 1975 Year-End Hot 100 list. “Fame” is also one of Bowie’s songs to make the prestigious list of “The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’s 500 Songs that Shaped Rock and Roll.”

Lennon and Bowie share co-writing credits on “Fame” with frequent Bowie collaborator and guitarist Carlos Alomar. The song came together during a one-day jam session at Electric Lady Studios in New York City in the winter of details

You have probably walked past a gallery wall in a friend’s home or a restaurant and thought it looked effortlessly cool, as if every frame had simply found its rightful spot on the wall over the years. Maybe you have even tried to recreate one yourself, only to end up with a cluster of mismatched prints that felt more chaotic than curated. The truth is, that seemingly casual arrangement is anything but accidental. It is a decorating technique with roots stretching back centuries, and one legendary musician’s dining room proves it still works beautifully in 2026. A centuries-old tradition hiding in plain sight.

Gallery walls feel like a distinctly modern interior trend, the kind of thing that floods social media feeds every spring. But the concept actually dates back to the 1670s, when it served as the official display format for the Académie des Beaux-Arts in France. Artworks were hung from floor to ceiling in tightly packed arrangements, turning entire walls into immersive visual experiences.

So when we admire a well-composed cluster of frames in a contemporary dining room, we are really looking at a tradition that is more than 350 years old. The styles of art and photography on those wa details

George Harrison first laid his hands on a sitar on the set of the film Help! That moment kicked off a lifelong love affair with Indian music for Harrison, who helped bring the instrument and its intricate, angular sound to the mainstream in the West after featuring it on the Beatles song “Norwegian Wood.”

Harrison went on to go to India to study with the sitarist Ravi Shankar in 1966. During his time with Shankar, Harrison developed a deeper interest in Indian philosophy. It was around then that Shankar handed him a book that would change his life. That same book also played a major role in popularizing Vedic philosophy for countless seekers around the world.
George Harrison and Autobiography of a Yogi

Shankar later recalled the moment he handed the tome to Harrison. “I gave him his first copy of Autobiography of a Yogi,” Shankar said, “and that was where his interest in Vedic culture and Indian-ness began. To me, he was something like a son.”

Source: Eden Gordon/mentalfloss.com

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You know that old adage about a tree falling in the woods not making a sound if there’s no one to hear it? Well, along similar lines, what would happen if a former Beatle released an album that hardly anyone even knew existed?

That might be a slight exaggeration about the exposure level of George Harrison’s 1982 album Gone Troppo. But it was still a shockingly obscure album coming from a member of the greatest band in rock and roll history.

George Harrison went for the brass ring immediately after The Beatles broke up. His 1970 triple album All Things Must Pass set the bar for all solo records from members of the Fab Four to come. Throughout the first half of the 70s, Harrison remained quite active while recording, touring, producing, and staying in the white-hot spotlight.

He soon realized it wasn’t where he wanted to be. His marriage had crumbled, his vocal cords took a beating, and Harrison generally looked and sounded worse for the wear. In the second half of the 70s, he dramatically limited his exposure level from what it had been like in the first half.

The death of John Lennon at the hands of a gunman only strengthened Harrison’s resolve to stay out of the public ey details

No matter how much you might like to, it’s impossible to force someone to care about something as much as you do, and that’s especially true when you’re in a band. This was a lesson Paul McCartney and George Harrison were experiencing in real time during the making of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. Both men felt disillusioned and disgruntled, but for opposite reasons.

In a 1990 interview, McCartney threw his ex-bandmate under the bus with accusations of flippant—and sometimes all-around absent—behavior during the recording process for Sgt. Pepper. “During the making of Sgt. Pepper, George hadn’t shown for most of the album, which was unusual, as we normally showed for our recording sessions.” McCartney said that the album didn’t interest Harrison, adding, “I think he was building a swimming pool.”
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McCartney’s brow furrowed as he mentioned the summertime project he believed was taking up most of Harrison’s time, as if to further emphasize how much less important something like that would be in the face of the next Beatles album. McCartney said that although he made the choice not to say a details

One day during The Beatles’ 1968 visit to Rishikesh in India to study Transcendental Meditation, John Lennon and Paul McCartney attended a lecture about nature. It inspired Lennon and McCartney to each write a song.

The lecture was given by the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, the guru in whose ashram they were staying and whose teachings had so influenced George Harrison in particular.

The ashram was positioned on top of a 150-ft high cliff, amid lush riverbank forest in the foothills of the Himalayas, overlooking the sacred River Ganges.

Afterwards, McCartney duly penned Mother Nature’s Son, which appeared on the 1968 album The Beatles, or as it became better known, ‘The White Album’. Lennon, meanwhile, wrote a song called Child Of Nature, and both his and McCartney’s compositions were demoed at Harrison’s house in Esher, Surrey on their return to the UK.

Source: musicradar.com/Neil Crossley

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Among Bea­t­les con­nois­seurs, it’s fair game to claim any­thing from Rub­ber Soul to Abbey Road as one’s favorite album. But even with­in that span of the cat­a­log, a hier­ar­chy of acclaim exists, and that hier­ar­chy has been rearranged over the decades. The ecsta­t­ic recep­tion of Sgt. Pepper’s Lone­ly Hearts Club Band last­ed at least a decade. By the turn of the nine­teen-eight­ies, its imme­di­ate pre­de­ces­sor Revolver had joined it at the top spot of crit­i­cal regard; twen­ty years after that, Abbey Road had dis­placed Sgt. Pep­per. Now, a full 60 years after it first came out, Revolver is the sin­gle Bea­t­les album held in the high­est esteem — which, nat­u­ral­ly, makes it a seri­ous con­tender for the great­est album ever record­ed.

In his new video above, music YouTu­ber David Hart­ley explains what makes Revolver so beloved by recount­ing the his­to­ry of its pro­duc­tion. As in his pre­vi­ous Bea­t­les videos, he draws on the library of stu­dio out­takes that make details

Hindsight makes it seem like The Beatles were a nonstop success in their early days. But it took them a while to make the leap across the pond. Though they had mounting success back home in England, record labels and record shops struggled to settle into the idea of The Fab Four. That is, until one song completely turned their heads. Learn more about the song that made America fall in love with The Beatles below.

Prior to The Beatles’ now-famous entrance into the American rock scene, they were a fledgling English band with a couple of top-selling songs. Both “Please Please Me” and “She Loves You” did well in their home market. But not even a favor called in from George Martin could get those songs on shelves in America.

“I would send them to my friends in America at Capitol Records, and say ‘This group is fantastic, you’ve got to issue them and sell them in the States,’” Martin once said in the notes of The Anthology Collection. “Each time the head of Capitol Records would turn it down and deny it, and say ‘Sorry, we know our market better than you do. We don’t think they’re any good.”’

This put a blockade on details

By the time the Beatles broke up in late 1969, they had recorded and released more than 200 songs — most of them originals — and left dozens more in the vault. While the bulk of those unissued tracks ranged from rough demos to jams, several were completed recordings that they rejected for one reason or another.

Among them was the first song written for drummer Ringo Starr: “If You’ve Got Trouble.” Composed by John Lennon for inclusion on 1965’s Help!, the tune was a heavy riff-rocker built on a modified three-chord blues progression.

From the start of the Beatles’ recording career, Starr was given a vocal spot on each of their albums (except for 1964’s A Hard Day’s Night) in order to please his fan base. Because he wasn’t a songwriter in the group’s early years, he sang either covers — “Boys,” on 1963’s Please Please Me, and “Honey Don’t” on 1964’s Beatles for Sale — or Lennon and McCartney cast-offs like “I Wanna Be Your Man,” from 1963’s With the Beatles.

“If You’ve Got Trouble” falls into the second category. According to Ray Coleman, the former ed details