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John Lennon was always the radical one in The Beatles, but it wasn’t until he left that his politics exploded. These are his 10 greatest rebel songs.

The advent of John Lennon’s solo career in 1969 coincided with his immersion in the anti-war movement, human rights issues and various other radical causes. Though his opposition to US involvement in Vietnam brought him into conflict with the authorities, leading to a protracted deportation case and FBI surveillance that posited Lennon as a national threat. Inevitably, his music reflected his polemical stance, popularising the message with user-friendly anthems like Give Peace A Chance, Power To The People and others. “Now I understand what you have to do,” Lennon declared. “Put your political message across with a little honey.”

10. Attica State (1972)

First performed at the John Sinclair Freedom Rally at the University of Michigan in December 1971, this bitter condemnation of the American judicial system was sparked by the Attica State prison riots that had erupted two months earlier, leaving 43 people dead. Lennon’s plea for better living conditions also carries a wider remit: “Come together, join the movem details

On the 50th anniversary of the iconic album, the engineers of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, Geoff Emerick and Richard Lush will be fixing a hole in the hearts of Beatles fans everywhere with a once in a lifetime Q&A event and exhibition named The Masters of Sgt. Pepper.

Presented by Planetshakers in Southbank, not only will the event dish the untold deets about the iconic album from a producer’s perspective, it will also be celebrated with performances by Leo Sayer and Davey Lane from You Am I.

The event promises a panel of Beatles royalty disclosing all the behind the scenes details as well as a limited edition merch sale.

Lush has been immersed in London’s music scene ever since starting his recording career at EMI’s Abbey Road Studios in the 1960’s. He learnt from masters of the music industry Sir George Martin, Phil Spector, Phil Ramone and Mickie Most before recording some of the world’s biggest artists: The Beatles, Cliff Richard, Paul McCartney & Wings, John Lennon and The London Symphony Orchestra.

For the Beatles, Lush was a significant backbone to their musical success, working on more than a hundred sessions. After joining EMI as a j details

If you ask those who know me pretty well, they will tell you my favorite Beatle was John Lennon. This is incorrect. My wife will tell you true: it’s George Harrison. Lennon is widely credited as the band’s conscience in the face of Paul McCartney’s more instinctively capitalist pop music impulses, and this is just one more way that Harrison’s songwriting contributions have been disregarded over the years. His post-Beatlemania solo work was often criticized for its preachiness, but if one goes back to his Beatles material, Harrison never pretended to be more pop star than preacher.

There was a great tribute paid to his entire body of work in 2014, the George Fest charity concert organized by his son, Dhani Harrison. A standout track toward the end of the first disc is “Savoy Truffle”, which I confess to not having heard before. It’s one of the deeper cuts from the Beatles catalogue, not completely obscure but hardly Top 40 material. As the holiday spirit takes over and I begin to devote many minutes to consideration of pies, eggnogs and sweets generally, I feel myself turning toward “Savoy Truffle” as the best possible type of wintry instruction.

Harrison wrot details

It was while Gillian McCain and I were working on sixty-nine: An Oral History, our new book on the 60s music scene, that we got the idea to create chapters where we hadn't done any of the interviews ourselves. Rather, the material came from a variety of secondary sources that we edited together, such as interviews from magazines like Rolling Stone and books like Peter Fonda's Don't Tell Dad. Not many chapters were created this way—just two or three—and since LSD played a major role in the music scene, we chose for one of our "experimental" chapters in the book to use this bricolage style to detail the first time the Beatles willingly experimented with acid on their own. Some quotes have been edited for length and clarity.

The Beatles took their first acid trip by accident. In the spring of 1965, John Lennon and George Harrison, along with their wives Cynthia Lennon and Patti Boyd, were having dinner over their dentist's house when they were first "dosed" with LSD.

Dentist John Riley and his girlfriend, Cyndy Bury, had just served the group a great meal, and urged their distinguished guests to stay for coffee, which they reluctantly did...

Riley wanted to be the first person to turn on the Bea details

At first, photographer Harry Benson said no to taking pictures of The Beatles.

It was 1964 and the Scottish-born photojournalist wanted to travel to Uganda for a story about its newfound independence, not take pictures of some British rock-and-roll band on its way up, which his editor had asked him to cover.

“I knew who The Beatles were, but they hadn’t had their big breakthrough yet,” Benson, now 87, tells PEOPLE.

His trip to Africa was not to be. At 11 p.m., the night before Benson was set to fly there, his editor at The Daily Express in London called him and told him that indeed, the big boss was sending him to Paris the next morning to photograph the band.

Any reservations Benson had faded the minute he heard The Beatles sing All My Loving in Paris, where they were performing just before they headed to the United States for the first time.

“I thought, ‘S—. I’m on the right story! This is the right story!’ The following day they were number one, two and three in America. They became a phenomenon.”

So did Benson. With his laid-back, self-deprecating manner and knack for consistently capturing the perfect moment on film, Benso details

This group of Scots are members of a unique club of their own, having seen John, Paul, George and Ringo live before the group quit touring forever in 1966.

BEATLEMANIA swept the globe over half a century ago as the Fab Four became the biggest band on the planet. But a group of Scots are members of a unique club of their own, having seen John, Paul, George and Ringo live before the group quit touring forever in 1966.

One even invented the phrase Bealtemania for the chart-toppers that was used to describe their frenzied followers. Chief Features Writer MATT BENDORIS tracks down the Scots who feature in a new Beatles’ book of fans’ memories.

FORMER music promoter Andi Lothian booked The Beatles for just £40 – just weeks before they shot to No1 around the world.

The Glasgow-born musician had booked the band for the Museum Hall in Bridge of Allan, Stirlingshire, on January 5, 1963 – before they enjoyed their first major hit Please, Please Me the following month. But only rowdy, drunk farmers came to the historic show with one yob throwing a coin which chipped the guitar of a 20-year-old Paul McCartney.

He says: “I remember the whole evening so clearly. When details

Photographer Mary McCartney revealed she wants to team up with Liverpool FC – but she is still trying to persuade the club. Mary, the daughter of Beatles superstar Sir Paul McCartney , said she is fascinated by the rituals of footballers. Her first solo exhibition was a photographic study behind the scenes of the Royal Ballet and she said she would like to do something similar with Liverpool.

She said: “I really want to go and get embedded with a football team, I really want to go to Liverpool but they won’t let me.

“Like I did with the Royal Ballet, I’ve been writing to Liverpool FC but they are not having me yet but I’m going to keep trying.

“It’s a difficult thing to agree to allow someone in, they have to focus and you can’t just go in. I understand why they are reluctant but I think they should just let me do it. “It’s the devotion and the commitment, it’s the physicality and dedicating a bit portion of your life to something.”

If she does not succeed with the Reds she said she would be willing to look elsewhere, possibly in the direction of Everton, Sir Paul’s preferred team.

She said: “I think details

Al Brodax, a television producer who delivered an enduring psychedelic classic when he turned the Beatles song “Yellow Submarine” into an animated film in 1968, died on Thursday in Danbury, Conn. He was 90.

The death was confirmed by his daughter, Jessica Harris.

In the 1960s, Mr. Brodax (pronounced BROH-dax) ran the motion picture and television division of King Features Syndicate, where he produced hundreds of “Popeye” cartoons for television.

Quick to see the cartoon potential of the Beatles, he sold their manager, Brian Epstein, on the idea of an animated series. “The Beatles” ran on Saturday mornings on ABC from 1965 to 1969 (in reruns for the last two years), attracting huge audiences.

When “Yellow Submarine” climbed the charts in 1966, Mr. Brodax sensed that lightning might strike twice. He approached Mr. Epstein again, this time with some trepidation; the Beatles did not like “The Beatles.”

But there was an opening. The group owed United Artists one more film after “A Hard Day’s Night” and “Help!,” but had lost interest in acting. An animated film, Mr. Brodax argued, would require virtually n details

The piano used by John Lennon to compose ‘Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds’ and play one of the most famous final chords in music history is set to sell for £1.45million.

British piano makers John Broadwood and Sons made the upright instrument in 1872 but it wasn’t until 100 years later that it’s current value was created. Lennon bought the piano in the 1960s and used it prolifically between 1964 and 1968 while living at Kenwood, his mock-Tudor mansion in Weybridge, Surrey, where he had his own studio. He conceived and orchestrated hits ‘Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds’, ‘Good Morning, Good Morning’ and ‘Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite!’ from the instrument. And the dramatic E-major chord heard for 40 seconds at the end of ‘A Day in the Life’, the last track on the Sgt Pepper album was played by Lennon on this piano.

The famous chord was played simultaneously on separate pianos by Lennon, McCartney and Starr. Rolling Stone magazine ranked the track as the greatest Beatles song of all time. After his divorce from wife Cynthia, Lennon moved to Tittenhurst Park, Berkshire, with Yoko Ono and took the piano with him. By 1971 the couple were li details

"I play a little guitar, write a few tunes, make a few movies, but none of that's really me," George Harrison once said. "The real me is something else." Harrison was many things – including a master of understatement. But he was right to point out that his true character remains elusive. He was one of the most famous men in the world, but he loathed superstardom. He preached piety and simple pleasures, yet he lived in a 120-room mansion and collected ultra high-end cars. His studious facade belayed a brilliant sense of humor, which led him to produce some of the greatest comedies of all time. The songs he wrote focused on both the glory of God and the petty annoyances of day-to-day life.

While undoubtedly proud of the band that vaulted him into immortality, he was loath to measure himself by their success. "The Beatles exist apart from myself," he once said. "I am not really Beatle George. Beatle George is like a suit or shirt that I once wore on occasion, and until the end of my life people may see that shirt and mistake it for me." It's been 15 years since Harrison's death, so today we honor the man with 10 tales that shine a light on his life outside the mop-topped artifice of the Fab Four.

1. He visit details

When most people think of The Beatles and New Orleans, they think of 1964 and the Fab Four's one and only concert in the Crescent City, which took place before a swooning crowd -- kept at bay by a swarm of uniformed, tackle-happy NOPD officers -- at City Park Stadium. But just more than 10 years after that brief but eternal half-hour set, the city came tantalizingly close to hosting another Beatles milestone, in the form of a reunion of none other than John Lennon and Paul McCartney.

That meeting, for which much of the music world had been hoping since the legendary band's 1970 dissolution, never actually happened, of course. But the story behind that near-miss, that almost-history, that elusive happily-ever-after is nicely laid out in author Richard White's book "Come Together: Lennon & McCartney in the Seventies" ($18.95, paperback, Overlook Omnibus). It's a fascinating tale, and one that can be counted on to leave fans of music and of New Orleans wondering wistfully about what could have been.

As the title suggests, White's densely written and painstakingly researched book focuses on Lennon and McCartney's often acrimonious post-Beatles period, which he covers in the sort of detail -- with frequent but st details

George Harrison might have been “the quiet Beatle,” but over the course of his career with The Fab Four and later on in his solo career, the guitarist wrote a myriad of timeless hits that would boost his status as one of the most prolific rock stars of all time. As a 15-year old, the Liverpool-born Harrison became a member of the Quarrymen (who would later become The Beatles), despite John Lennon thinking that he was too young.

Having to compete with the the power-writing duo that was Lennon and Paul McCartney, Harrison was able to slip a song or two of his own onto almost every Beatles album during the group’s existence; no easy feat, by any stretch of the imagination. Some of those songs included “Taxman,” (1966’s Revolver) “Within You Without You” (1967’s Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band), “Here Comes The Sun” and “Something” (both from 1969’s Abbey Road) and many more.

Even more impressive may have been his solo work, as the period following The Beatles proved Harrison to be a truly great singer-songwriter in his own right, now being out of the shadow of his former bandmates. 1968 would see him be the first Beatle details

It’s been 15 years since cancer took the life of singer-songwriter George Harrison, the former lead guitarist of the Beatles who would go on to become a successful solo star, and a symbol of spirituality and higher awareness amongst mainstream rockers of his generation. That latter part of his legacy often gets overshadowed by the former; the phenomenon of that group is a well-documented double-edged sword, but nowhere is it more obvious than in the case of “The Quiet One” who famously hated the experience of being in one of the most scrutinized and overhyped musical acts in history.

And in Harrison’s case, being a Beatle made him undoubtedly rich and famous, but he was creatively stifled by the group’s dynamic and the fame that came along with it. And he never got to showcase his all-around skill set within the context of that band.

“I wasn't Lennon or I wasn't McCartney. I was me,” Harrison told BBC-1 interviewer David Wigg in 1969. “And the only reason I started to write songs was because I thought, well if they can write them, I can write them. You know, 'cuz really, everybody can write songs if they want to. If they have a desire to and if they have sort of so details

In September 1974 George Harrison’s record label, Dark Horse Records, released its first two singles. The first was Ravi Shankar’s ‘I Am Missing You’. Produced and arranged by Harrison, it is a rare Shankar composition in a Western pop style. The other single to come out that same day was Splinter’s ‘Costafine Town’, which went top 10 in Australia and South Africa and made the UK top twenty.

Two years later, with his contractual obligations to other labels at an end, and with the winding down of Apple Records, George signed to his own label. In the intervening years there had been other Dark Horse Records releases by Stairsteps, Jiva, Henry McCullough (following his departure from Wings), and a band called Attitudes. First brought together on Harrison’s 1975 album Extra Texture (Read All About It), Attitudes included keyboard player David Foster, who also played on George’s debut for Dark Horse, Thirty Three & 1/3.

George’s seventh solo studio album was recorded at his home, Friar Park, between the end of May and mid September 1976, and was released two months later on 19th November. Shortly after beginning to make this record, George contracted hep details

In the early evening of Thursday, November 24, 1966, four young men — the oldest 26, the youngest 23 — arrived at a north London recording studio to start work on a song one of them had written in Spain weeks before.

Cars ferried three of them from Georgian and mock Tudor mansions in Surrey — London’s so-called stockbroker belt — while the fourth journeyed from just around the St John’s Wood corner.

These wartime boys of Liverpool’s working classes had come a long way. On that same day in 1962 their primitive debut single was heading towards No 17 on the British charts before its modest run lost momentum. That same night they completed a two-hour set at the Royal Lido Ballroom in Prestatyn, north Wales, earning £30, but the cook threw in a plate of jam sandwiches.

By the time John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr assembled at Abbey Road’s Studio Two at 7.30pm, they were the four most famous young men on the planet.

What the Beatles had done in that room in the intervening period changed popular music, and then popular culture, reshaping the century in ways that reverberate still. When things were tough for the band, as t details