Beatles News

We’re rewriting history again today as we revisit a year when one band completely took over and overshadowed many classic songs that deserved better. Today we put those songs where they belong at #1. Including The Drifters Under the Boardwalk, a song that was recorded just a day after an iconic band’s lead singer passed away. Their singer was gone, but they still had a session planned, so an outsider walked in and sang a perfect vocal that gave them their most famous hit. Plus the Innocent Classic by the Zombies, She’s Not There, that got banned nationwide 37 years after it peaked on the charts for offensive lyrics, but everyone’s still trying to figure out what was offensive about it, including the band who’s here to comment. Plus the creepy song Last Kiss that was inspired by a fatal car crash, but it got even creepier after the song became a hit, and life imitated art when the band got into a fan carwreck that would destroy their group. Plus, I tracked down the mysterious girl behind the classic Beach Boys car song Fun Fun Fun, who got in trouble for driving her dad’s T-Bird. And lastly the biggest band in the world The Beatles took over the charts for one fateful week they made up 7 of th details

Thirty years after Sir Paul McCartney helped open the Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts (LIPA) in a former Liverpool school, the institution has reached a milestone that blends history with a new beginning. At its 2026 graduation ceremony, LIPA conferred its first LIPA degrees and celebrated more than 400 graduating students from 28 countries. The event, held on 21 July at the Liverpool Experience Campus, also honoured leading figures from film, theatre, music and arts management, with McCartney present as the institute’s Founding Patron. Read more details about it, as per LIPA's website, here:

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TOI World Desk / TIMESOFINDIA.COM

Both men agreed that John wrote just one line of “I Saw Her Standing There”, changing Paul’s “she’d never been a beauty queen” to “you know what I mean”, but contentious disputes over some of The Beatles’ biggest hits have been highlighted in several post-split interviews. These include “Help!” (John claimed full authorship, Paul countered it was “70-30”), “Ticket To Ride” (John said Paul only contributed “the way Ringo played the drums,” Paul said “give him 60 per cent of it”), “In My Life” (John said Paul composed the middle-eight, Paul said he did the entire melody), “Eleanor Rigby” (John claimed 70 per cent of the lyrics, Paul said it was more like “half a line.”)

Paul takes over (1967)
Brian Epstein’s unexpected death saw Paul attempt to wrest control of the group’s managerial affairs, starting by conceiving and directing the Magical Mystery Tour film. At the time, John remained passive and happy to play along, but later, when it had been savaged by critics, he expressed mixed feelings, describing the project as “chaotic and unfocussed.” I details

“The Third Eye: Early Photographs,” a new book featuring hundreds of personal photographs taken by George Harrison during his years with the Beatles, has arrived just in time for holiday gifting season.

Released Oct. 6 by Random House, the 352-page hardcover offers a rare look at Beatlemania from inside the band, featuring more than 250 photographs and 8mm film stills captured by Harrison between 1963 and 1970. Many of the images have never been published before, making it a can’t-go-wrong gift for even the most avid Fab Four collectors in your life this holiday season.

Rather than revisiting the band’s history through the familiar lens of press photographers, “The Third Eye” documents John Lennon, Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr and Harrison through the eyes of one of their own. Armed with his Pentax camera, Harrison photographed his bandmates during their whirlwind rise to international fame — including their first trip to the U.S and motorcades through Australia to shopping excursions in Paris and travels through India and Tahiti.

The result is a refreshingly candid collection of photos of one of the most extensively photographed bands in history, with intimate po details

Mal Evans worked alongside the biggest pop group in the world, but his greatest thrill came when he accompanied the Beatles to meet his musical hero, Elvis Presley.

As the Beatles’ road manager, Evans had a front-row seat as the Liverpool quartet became global superstars. He began working with them as a roadie and bodyguard in August 1963, eventually becoming a trusted insider who accompanied the band on tour and in the studio. He even helped Paul McCartney develop the idea of an alter ego for the group while the two were on holiday in 1966 — a concept that would help give rise to the Beatles’ landmark album Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.

Evans had planned to write a book about his adventures with the group and received permission from all four Beatles to do so. Sadly, he never completed it. He died in 1976, aged 40, after police shot him during a confrontation at his home. Distraught over his impending divorce, Evans had waved an airgun at officers. His death is widely understood as a possible case of suicide by cop.

Beatle Paul McCartney with Beatles road manager Mal Evans, shown on his arrival in India February 20, 1968, to join the other Beatles at Maharishi Mahesh Yog details

Though the songwriting partnership of John Lennon and Paul McCartney will go down in history as one of the greatest musical collaborations, there’s a grey area for some songs.

Songs that are registered as a Lennon-McCartney credit aren’t all that they seem, with some songs written more heavily by one songwriter than the other. Though most of The Beatles‘ songs would feature the credit, songs like Strawberry Fields Forever and Yesterday were written primarily by Lennon and McCartney separately. But there are other songs in the band’s discography that were given the joint songwriting tag despite there being little to no overlap in the writing process. Speaking of this overlap with Playboy Magazine shortly before his death, Lennon shared another song that had been swept up in the collaborative tag.

Playboy Magazine asked: “When you talk about working together on a single lyric like We Can Work It Out, it suggests that you and Paul worked a lot more closely than you’ve admitted in the past. Haven’t you said that you wrote most of your songs separately, despite putting both of your names on them?”

Lennon replied: “Yeah, I was lying. It was when I felt rese details

George Harrison’s songs were typically spiritual, folk-leaning, and harmony-driven. But that’s not the whole story of the former Beatle’s solo career. His sound is as varied as his other Beatles bandmates’. He tried on experimental synth sounds and funky anthems. Harrison left no bounds on the work he delivered during his life, and these three songs below show that perfectly.
“It’s What You Value”

“It’s What You Value” is a little funkier than Harrison’s typical fare. It’s a bright, upbeat anthem that adds something unexpected to the mix. It’s not worlds away from his top hits, but it’s different enough to shock some surface-level fans.

“But I’ve found it’s all up to what you value / Down to where you are / It all swings on the pain you’ve gone through / Getting where you are,” Harrison sings over a surprisingly commercial instrumental. This song feels a little too straight for Harrison’s conventions, yet he proved he could lean that way and get away with it.
“Between The Devil And The Deep Blue Sea”

This classic jazz cover was released on Harrison’s posthumo details

Over the past few decades, the folks in charge of The Beatles’ marketing, with input from the band members themselves, have made it a point to play up the togetherness of the Fab Four. But there’s no denying the rancor occasionally enveloped the group. This was especially true around the time their breakup was announced.

For one example, Paul McCartney penned a letter with a cease-and-desist vibe in April 1970. That missive was directed at The Beatles’ manager.  Spring 1970 featured a series of incidents where Paul McCartney clashed with his Beatle brethren. He famously screamed Ringo Starr out of his house in a dispute about the release date of the McCartney album. And on April 10, 1970, he gave his “self-interview” that essentially declared the breakup of The Beatles.

In actuality, the break had occurred more than six months earlier. That’s when John Lennon announced he was leaving at a band meeting. But Macca made it official. His stunt angered his bandmates. They’d wanted to hold off on the news until a slew of Fab Four-related releases, including the Let It Be album, hit the stores.

That Let It Be album was also the source of anger and frustration details

At this point, Paul McCartney squarely falls into the category of “living legend.” At 84, he's still going strong, releasing new music, and entertaining audiences the world over.

Even if it weren't for his hugely successful solo career, he would, of course, have earned his place in the history books as part of the Beatles alone. That band has arguably influenced more musicians across the last six decades than any other, with seminal albums such as Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band permanently changing the face of popular music.
The unexpected Beatles track Paul McCartney loves

In an interview in 2020, the man himself picked out some of his favorite Beatles tracks, and among some expected choices, one selection caught many by surprise. “You Know My Name (Look Up the Number)” is a lesser-known Fab Four song that was originally released as the B-side to “Let It Be.” It's a decidedly oddball song that veers from primal, mantra-like rock to tongue-in-cheek vaudeville style with strong comic overtones. McCartney described it as “…a zany, zany little B-side that nobody knows, but we had so much fun making it."

The A-side, “Let It Be,” was a m details

Paul McCartney wrote his iconic Bond song, “Live and Let Die,” without having seen the script.

In his book The Lyrics, McCartney spoke about writing the iconic rock song on instinct, with very little knowledge about the plot.

“Writing a Bond song is a bit of an accolade, and I always had a sneaking ambition to do it,” he shared. “Ron told me the film was called Live and Let Die. The screenplay wasn’t finished at that point, so I got the Ian Fleming book, and it’s a real page-turner.”

The music icon was originally approached to make music for the 1971 film Diamonds Are Forever. While McCartney had no idea what the Roger Moore film was about, he had an idea for the Bond theme.

“I didn’t want the song to be, ‘You’ve got a gun. Now go kill people. Live and let die.’ That’s just not me,” he shared. “I wanted it to be, ‘Let it go. Don’t worry about it. When you’ve got problems, just live and let die.’ Once I had that thought in my head, the song almost wrote itself,” the Beatle explained.

McCartney and Wings recorded “Live and Let Die! at the end of the sessions fo details

It’s no secret that The Beatles weren’t seeing eye to eye by the end of their tenure. That tension was especially a shame in the collaborative partnership between John Lennon and Paul McCartney. Though they still shared ideas even as they fell out, it wasn’t like their early years, when the Lennon-McCartney credit more accurately reflected the writing process.

One example of how their working relationship changed came when Lennon was working out “Come Together.” This classic hit features all four Beatles, but it wasn’t without pushback. Lennon reportedly dismissed McCartney from his typical duties on this track.

“Come Together” is one of the most beloved songs on Abbey Road. By the time this album came out, the band was all but done. Despite breaking at the seams, this album proved a stellar body of work. It wasn’t thrown together, even though the band wasn’t in the best headspace while working on it.

“Here come old flat-top, he come grooving up slowly / He got ju-ju eyeball, he one holy roller / He got hair down to his knee / Got to be a joker, he just do what he please,” the off-kilter lyrics to “Come Together” read. Fo details

Just like the Beatles influenced countless musical contemporaries, the Fab Four drew inspiration from many of the other talented artists of the era. One of those legendary peers was Bob Dylan, particularly in the case of George Harrison's songwriting (which makes sense, considering the pair would later become bandmates in the Traveling Wilburys).

In fact, a song Dylan stayed up all night writing during the recording of his 1966 album Blonde on Blonde inspired Harrison to write a classic track which appeared on the so-called White Album.

The Dylan song in question? "Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands."

Sean Wilentz (author of Bob Dylan in America) shared firsthand accounts of the night "Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands" was written in a 2007 essay for the Oxford American.

"I saw Dylan sitting out in the studio at the piano, writing all night long by himself. Dark glasses on," recalled Kris Kristofferson (who was working as a studio janitor at the time). With the aid of Coca-Cola and chocolate bars, Dylan stayed up until four o'clock in the morning working on the lyrics, which have been said to be about his first wife, Sara Lownds.

It wasn't the lyrics of "Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands" that H details

Ringo Starr is often ignored or underappreciated, but his influence on The Beatles' sound is larger than a lot of people realize. Much like George Harrison, when the band first started, he stayed away from songwriting, since John Lennon and Paul McCartney had a monopoly over it. Harrison quickly started writing his own songs, but Starr was a late bloomer, but eventually, he also decided to try.

As all Beatles fans know, it was almost a rule to have Ringo Starr take the lead vocal on a song. There were very few albums that don't include a cover of a Beatles original sung by the drummer. And today, we're ranking all of them, from the early covers, to Starr-penned hits.
11 "Good Night" (1968)
10 "I Wanna Be Your Man" (1963)
9 "Matchbox" (1964)
8 "Honey Don’t" (1964)

Clearly, Ringo Starr's voice was great for Carl Perkins' covers. Another iconic track that Starr sang lead on for the band was "Honey Don't," a short and upbeat rockabilly track that Lennon used to sing before Starr joined, but that the drummer was clearly a better fit for. In addition to the album version included on Beatles for Sale, Starr also sang it for the On Air – Live at the BBC Volume 2 compilation, and he sounds details

No one can blame Paul McCartney for being a bit trepidatious about starting another band venture after breaking up with the world’s biggest outfit. That kind of heartbreak must have stung every time he got on stage, at least for a little while. Nevertheless, McCartney built a second life as frontman of another band, Wings. They may not have earned the recognizability or the cultural cachet of The Beatles, but they were successful in their own right; even if McCartney couldn’t always see that.

According to the rock legend, one of his peers, David Bowie, helped put things into perspective for him. The avant-garde star made 

Wings always had a big burden to overcome. The Beatles’ success was unprecedented. Fans expected a lot from McCartney’s follow-up, and that pressure certainly weighed on him. ”Anything Wings did had to be viewed in the light of The Beatles,” McCartney once said.

Under that constant lens, McCartney struggled to block out the noise. Even though Wings did well for themselves, they didn’t go toe-to-toe with The Beatles, and that sullied any hope of reveling in that success.

“The interesting thing is that, looking back on some of t details

There has never been a band with more influence over popular music than The Beatles. It is an inarguable fact. They incorporated countless genres into their work, pushing the boundaries and exponentially expanding what was possible for music. Over their decade-long career as a group (can you believe it was only ten years?) they produced a vast variety of music that literally changed the world.

5 “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” (1967)

Starting off on a wonderfully strange note: “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.” As iconic as it is perplexing, the otherworldly track is the third on Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band – hands down the most psychedelic album in The Beatles' catalog. The song was inspired by a drawing Lennon’s nursery-aged son, Julian, brought home from school one day. It is also often posited that the first letter of each noun in the title, which spell out “LSD” when put together, is an obvious drug reference. Lennon refuted this theory emphatically. That being said, it was no secret that The Beatles’ music was influenced by hallucinogens during this time.

4 “In My Life” (1965)

John Lennon called “ details