Beatles News

A few days after John Lennon died, in December 1980, the NME’s editor at the time, Neil Spencer, sat down and tried to encapsulate the man’s genius, influence and complexity. By necessity, the resulting obituary turned out to be a lengthy and emotional meditation. “It was not merely that his songs provided the soundtrack for our lives that made Lennon the voice of his generation,” wrote Spencer, “but that they so often seemed to crystallise the mood of the times, and to do so with an honesty that was apparent in the way the man lived out his life.

“That is one reason why his loss has hit the world so hard. Like most of us he was often selfish and unpleasant, but he was never miserly with himself or his soul, at least not in the latter part of his life. He gave. He shared. And now he’s gone, we too seem diminished. The part of us that responded to the man’s essential goodness, his dignity, his openness, and his optimism will be that much more difficult to locate without him around.”

“To say he is destined to be judged as one of the great men of his age is not mere emotionalism or fan adulation,” continued Spencer and, 36 years down the line, that j details

She may want to hold his hand. But Paul McCartney was occupied by his walking stick as he took a hike with wife Nancy Shevell on Monday. The 74-year-old rocker was full of life as he enjoyed the greenery of TreePeople Park in Beverly Hills. 

The Beatles legend looked fit in Nike trainers, blue shorts and a dark grey tee, topping the outfit off in a straw fedora. 

He picked himself up a practical accessory en route in an impressively honed walking stick. His 56-year-old wife meanwhile showed off her fab figure in a pair of tight yoga pants and long'sleeved top, trumping her hubby in a larger floppy sun hat.

McCartney is taking a well-deserved breather between gigs, having rocked Desert Trip on Saturday, and preparing to do the same again this weekend. He headlined Day Two of the first-ever 'Oldchella' music festival in Indio, California, and he certainly delivered. The 74-year-old singer turned back time as he blended tunes from his Beatles days, his years as Wings frontman to his current status as solo entertainer. 

While he arrived on stage a fashionably 30 minutes late, not one person in the 75,000 crowd held it against him as he launched straight into A Hard Day's Night. The rem details

Paul McCartney and Neil Young shared the bill at the Desert Trip music festival in Indio, Calif. Saturday, and they also shared the stage during McCartney's set. Young joined the former Beatle to perform A Day in the Life, which morphed into John Lennon's Give Peace a Chance.

The audience flashed peace signs as they sang along. Young played lead guitar to duet with McCartney on Why Don't We Do It In the Road? "Thank you, Neil," McCartney, 74, said when his friend left the stage. "I love that boy!"

McCartney's headlining 2 1/2-hour set was full of love. He paid tribute to his late wife and his current spouse during the performance, along with George Harrison, Jimi Hendrix and the Rolling Stones. He sang Maybe I'm Amazed for the late Linda McCartney, and dedicated My Valentine to his wife, Nancy, ahead of their fifth wedding anniversary Sunday.

He brought out a ukulele to perform Harrison's Something, but stopped the song almost as soon as he started. "I'm out of tune," McCartney said, alone on stage. "I'm going to get another one." A stagehand brought him another ukulele and McCartney began again. "At least it proves we're live, right?" he cracked.

Backed by a five-piece band, he played a few bars details

As the keeper of his flame, Yoko Ono led the relighting of The Imagine Peace Tower, a tall shimmering tower of light to John Lennon’s music near Reykjavik, Iceland to observe his 76th birthday last Oct. 9.

With music from the Söngfjelagið Choir and speeches by Yoko and Dagur Eggertsson, mayor of Reykjavik, it was lit from one hour after sunset until sunrise fed live in capital cities on Periscope.

Visible until Dec. 8, John’s death anniversary, The Tower is an outdoor art work-turned-memorial to John as conceived by his widow. Its light comes from 15 searchlights with prisms that act as mirrors continually changes with Iceland’s prevailing weather conditions.

Symbolizing John and Yoko’s continuing campaign for world peace, the light projects from a white stone monument inscribed by the words “Imagine Peace” translated in 24 languages. These words, and the name of The Tower, are a reference to Imagine, John’s peace campaign song released in 1971.

The Tower reflects the column of light vertically into the sky from a 10-meter wide wishing well. Buried underneath it are one million plus written wishes that Yoko collected through the years in her art details

Malavika Sangghvi pens a letter to the late John Lennon.

Dear John, It's been so long since you were taken so brutally away from us thirty-six years ago and yet your music, images and words are so palpably with us that it feels like you never left at all.

Again and again, as I watch your images and hear your songs, I find myself mesmerised by you, the caustic, cerebral Beatle, the one who so strikingly evolved, from a moppet-headed cherubic lad to the almost ascetic-looking, gaunt-cheeked apostle of peace and love.

Right from the start, you had always been my favorite, the one who'd won my heart with his words and wit, the one who sketched and drew and turned out books full of wordplay and puns, the one who said and did all the coolest things, the one way ahead of his time.

Of course, as part of the Lennon-McCartney team that wrote such a staggering amount of hits for the world's most successful band, it is difficult to say how much of the collective charisma of your band mates added to your charm and success, but even when you all dressed in identikit dark drainpipe suits and sported the same hair cuts, you were hard to miss.

Your irreverence, spontaneity and mischievous grin in your you details

Jackson Heights residents will have the opportunity to “Come Together” to celebrate John Lennon this weekend.

The John Lennon Educational Tour Bus is coming to the 78th Street Play Street Plaza on Saturday from 12 to 6 p.m. to provide a block party full of music, participatory art exhibits and activities for all ages.

The event is free and open to the public, and will be hosted by 95.5 WPLJ’s Ralphie Aversa. It will also feature music from DJ Tommy Sunshine, as well as performances by Brooklyn-based musician Sophie Auster, Merasi: Master Musicians of Rajasthan, recording artists Majix (formerly Love Jones Girlz), and local band Wyland. There will also be demonstrations and giveaways throughout the day.

The Lennon Bus is nearing the end of its month long tour through the City in honor of John Lennon’s birthday on October 9. The bus is a non-profit state-of-the-art mobile recording facility, and during the tour New Yorkers are able to create music, videos, poetry and art based on the theme “Come Together.”

The art created throughout the tour will focus on the stories of New York immigrants as part of the Cultural Immigrant Initiative through the NYC Council and D details

It's the time of year when leaves are changing, it's getting darker earlier, and just about everything appears to have a pumpkin-flavored version in stores.

It's also the time of year when I tend to pull out some Julian Lennon albums.

I don't quite know why it is, but records "Valotte" (his first, released Oct. 15, 1984) and "Help Yourself" (his fourth, released Aug. 20, 1991) are perfect fall soundtracks for me. I own all of Julian's albums (and I've got Sean Lennon's music, too; John's kids are both musically gifted), and I enjoy them all. "The Secret Value of Daydreaming," "Mr. Jordan," "Photograph Smile" and "Everything Changes" all are worthy records and suit different moods.

But here I am, smelling burning leaves and feeling that prickly hint of winter wind and it gets me to thinking of songs like "Valotte," "Space," "Well I Don't Know," "Too Late for Goodbyes" and "Lonely" (all from "Valotte"), and "Rebel King," "Saltwater," "Help Yourself," "Other Side of Town" and "Take Me Home" (all from "Help Yourself").

Part of it no doubt goes back to junior high and high school. I got "Valotte" as a Christmas present around eighth grade, and I bought "Help Yourself" probably around my freshman year details

“The Lennon Report” is a brisk, low-budget drama that re-creates the events of Dec. 8, 1980, as experienced by the police, doctors and reporters involved. The assassination of John Lennon was an earthquake — the whole country stopped and mourned for days — but the epicenter was New York City, where Lennon lived and where Mark David Chapman committed the murder.

Honestly, I can’t tell for sure how younger people will react to this film. After all, it is almost impossible, and it should be impossible, to truly mourn tragedies that took place before you were born. To do so would be akin to rejecting the world, when the business of each generation is to embrace the world and move life forward.

But the public tragedies that take place during our own lives can be lasting and unshakeable, and for many of a certain age, the death of John Lennon is not something we’ve ever quite gotten over. Every Beatles song brings an undertone of mourning. Every film or newsreel brings an underlying pain.

So I can’t tell if this movie is for everybody, or rather just for people old enough to remember John Lennon as a living person. In any case, it’s a satisfying drama that invert details

Forty years ago, Paul McCartney and Denny Laine toured America as part of Wings, bringing classic songs such as "Band On The Run" and "Jet" to life. On Sunday night, Laine and his own band will bring those songs to audiences once again, performing the album in its entirety at the Iron Horse Music Hall.

"The show is the 'Band On The Run' album plus another nine numbers that I'm associated with outside the album" said Laine, who wrote his first hit song, "Go Now," with the Moody Blues in 1964 and co-wrote Wings hit "Mull of Kintyre" with McCartney in 1977. "There will a couple 'Moodys' in there, some other Wings material from other albums and sometimes I'll put acoustic songs in the middle and play what comes to mind," he said.

Laine said that being the 40th anniversary of the band's "Wings Over America" tour – coupled with feedback he received from various clubs – it felt appropriate to bring the album's music to life once again – but a creative twist courtesy of Laine, who together with McCartney, recorded the entire album themselves.

"The thing about 'Band On The Run' was that it was just Paul and I," said Laine, citing the group's six-week recording session in Lagos, Nigeria just one details

Yoko Ono is on her way to Iceland to relight the Imagine Peace Tower, which is located on the island of Viðey in Reykjavík, in memory of her late husband John Lennon, on the occasion of his 76th birthday on 9 October.

On the same day Yoko will present The Lennon Ono Grant For Peace Award at Harpa Music and Conference Hall in Reykjavík. The award has been handed out every two years since 2002 and is presented to individuals who symbolize the continuing campaign for world peace. This year’s recipients are Chinese artist and activist Ai Weiwei (1957), British-Indian artist Anish Kapoo (1954), Hungarian composer, performance artist and actor Katalin Ladik (1942) and Danish-Icelandic artist Ólafur Elíasson (1967).

Previously the award has been given to Lady Gaga, Pussy Riot, Jann S. Wenner, co-founder of Rolling Stone Magazine and Jón Gnarr, comedian and former mayor of Reykjavík to name just a few.

Imagine Peace Tower is an artwork created by Yoko Ono and dedicated to the universal struggle for peace, as embodied by her late husband John Lennon. The name is a reference to Lennon's song "Imagine".

The tower is located on a Viðey island on Kollafj details

She debuted her Spring/Summer 2017 couture collection at Paris Fashion Week to rapturous applause on Monday. And Stella McCartney chose to celebrate her success later that day with her number one fans - her family. The 45-year-old designer looked completely relaxed and carefree as she headed home from her show with hubby Alasdhair Willis and daughter Reiley, 6, in a coat and culottes combo as chic as her own catwalk designs.

The designer proved her worth at the world's most prestigious fashion season, as she headed home from her display in a chic grey coat. 

The jacket was of an oversized style, featuring a sleek zip which ran all the way down the front and quirky contrasting knitted sleeves. Adding her trademark fashionable edge, the mother-of-four paired the coat with a pair of trendy tan culottes, which stylishly fell to just above the ankle. 

The icon added a pair of black patent heels and a luxurious oxblood handbag to her look, displaying her fashionable prowess as she took a break after the much-anticipated show. It's clear that a good sense of style runs in the family, with her husband Alasdhair and youngest child Reiley also looking equally as glam. Her hubby of thirteen years cut a ve details

Howard Stern will celebrate the 50th anniversary of Revolver, his favorite Beatles album, with an all-star episode featuring over a dozen artists covering the 1966 LP's tracks. "Revolver to me is the best album the Beatles ever did; there was nothing like it when that album came out," Stern said of the album on his show.

Earlier in the week, Stern broadcast 15-second snippets of his Revolver tribute, which features Cheap Trick tackling "She Said She Said," James Taylor performing "Here, There and Everywhere" and Nathaniel Rateliff & The Night Sweats covering "Got to Get You Into My Life."

Dinosaur Jr's J Mascis ("Doctor Robert"), Gov't Mule ("And Your Bird Can Sing"), Jewel ("Eleanor Rigby"), Grouplove ("For No One") and Living Colour ("Tomorrow Never Knows") are also among the artists that take part in "Howard Stern's Tribute to the Beatles' Revolver," scheduled to premiere on SiriusXM's Howard 101 on October 7th.

Grace Potter, the Milk Carton Kids, Joe Bonamassa, O.A.R., Rachael Yamagata, Madisen Ward and the Mama Bear round out the episode's lineup. According to Billboard, the recordings for Stern's Revolver tribute were made in various locations. Some acts, like O.A.R. and Living Colour, laid dow details

There has never been a mega-festival quite like Desert Trip. There are just six acts and only one stage. No art installations, no dance tent, no bands you never heard of serenading you in the distance while you stand in line at the beer garden. Just a half-dozen rock & roll legends — The Stones, Bob Dylan, Neil Young, Paul McCartney, Roger Waters and The Who — doing what they've all been doing for over 50 years.

There is, of course, a morbid corollary to the "over 50 years" part of the Desert Trip equation. Not counting each act's small army of (relatively) younger backing musicians, the average age of the performers is 72. In 10 years' time, or less, they will nearly all be retired. And more than a few, to indelicately state the obvious, will probably be dead.

If 2016 has taught us anything, it's that the generation that popularized rock & roll won't be around playing it much longer. In one bleak four-month span leading up to Desert Trip's May 3 lineup announcement, we lost David Bowie, Glenn Frey, Lemmy Kilmister, Paul Kantner, Keith Emerson, Maurice White, George Martin and Prince. No wonder there was such a feeding frenzy over Desert Trip tickets — against that macabre backdrop, it details

Being a Beatle was the best — except for when it wasn't. Ron Howard’s new documentary Eight Days a Week: The Touring Years (now on Hulu; expands to additional theaters Friday; out Nov. 18 on Blu-ray/DVD) captures the exhilarating highs of Beatlemania, while being fairly frank about the mortifying lows.

A few of the latter that were shared with USA TODAY:

1: Strangers were constantly in their hair. Literally.

“There were always people like this as we went into the gate,” says Ringo Starr, crooking his fingers through a pretend chain-link fence. In Wales, “I remember it so well,” one determined fan resolutely grabbed hold of the drummer’s shaggy locks. The crowds in Washington were even bolder. At a reception at the British ambassador’s house in 1964, a woman wielding a pair of scissors famously helped herself to a lock of Starr’s hair. “And we thought, ‘No, no, NO,’ " says Paul McCartney. “We thought it would be quite a cool crowd,” he adds. “But they weren’t cool at all.”

2: Sonically, Shea Stadium was one of the most frustrating venues of their career. So they played there again the next summer. details

It’s amazing the scorn for the Beatles solo work that the release of the new Live at The Hollywood Bowl has unleashed on the web. Okay, so the sum of the parts was undoubtedly better than the individual voices. But once the band broke up, the break was irrevocable. No matter how much anyone wished or still wishes, The Beatles were finished. No one’s ever said it better than George Martin in the original back cover liner for the original LP issue of the Hollywood Bowl record:

"Those who clamour for a Beatle reunion cannot see that it can never be the same again.”

So John, Paul, George and Ringo moved on, into solo careers, that despite some of the dismissive maligning now sloshing around on websites–often in the comments after reviews of the new Hollywood Bowl release–had more than a few highlights. To my ears, the masterpieces of the solo careers are obvious.

In John’s case, the raw intimacy of the Plastic Ono Band and the sweet tunefulness of Imagine are his solo masterworks. George Harrison’s initial solo release All Things Must Pass despite containing a record of jams that no one ever listened to among the three LPs that made up the set is still a fabulous col details