Beatles News
A life-size statue of John Lennon displayed on Liverpool's Penny Lane could fetch up to £100,000 at auction.
The bronze sculpture, created by the late artist Laura Lian, has stood outside St Barnabas Church since August 2022. After it is sold it will be replaced by a replica.
Penny Lane was made famous by the Beatles' 1967 song of the same name.
Omega Auctions will offer the statue on 29 September, with an estimate of between £70,000 and £100,000.
Standing almost 6ft (1.8m) tall, the John Lennon Peace Statue depicts the musician leaning against a peace symbol bearing the word "Imagine".
It is cast in bronze with a green patina and mounted on a bronze and steel base.
Artwork on a building which depicts a young Paul McCartney standing on the left holding an acoustic guitar, alongside a young John Lennon seated on the right playing an electric guitar. Words at the bottom read 'PENNY LANE LIVERPOOL'.
John Lennon and Paul McCartney would often meet at the bus terminus near Penny Lane
Dan Muscatelli-Hampson, a director at Omega Auctions, said few modern landmarks associated with the Beatles in Liverpool had become "so instantly recognisable in such a short space of time".
"Thousands of Beatles fans from around the world have stood next to John and had their photograph taken with this statue on Penny Lane," he said.
The statue was installed with the support of the Penny Lane Development Trust, a community organisation based in the area.
Its original stay was intended to last six months, but it has remained at the site. In December 2022, the sculpture was damaged and its bronze glasses were stolen.
The statue was previously displayed at Glastonbury, Liverpool's St George's Hall, London and Amsterdam. Geograph/Philip Halling John Lennon statue cast in bronze with a green patina and mounted on a bronze and steel base.Geograph/Philip Halling
The statue will be replaced by a replica, the auction house says
Lian, who died in 2024, said she created the work "to inspire the new generation and to reignite John and Yoko's peace mission".
Penny Lane was immortalised in the Beatles' 1967 single of the same name, released as a double A-side with Strawberry Fields Forever.
Source: bbc.com/BBC News
The Beatles’ business empire is about to get a new chapter.
Universal Music Group and Apple Corps have unveiled a new exclusive, long-term global partnership that will expand how The Beatles’ brand is managed and presented to fans around the world. The agreement will bring together Apple Corps’ stewardship of the Beatles’ legacy with UMG’s global expertise in music, merchandising, retail and fan experiences.
It’s a far cry from the way the Beatles’ licensing business began.
In early 1964, as Beatlemania landed in America, Beatles manager Brian Epstein was facing a problem almost no music manager had ever encountered before. U.S. companies wanted to put the Beatles’ name and image on everything they could sell.
The Beatles answer questions for newsmen and journalists in New York after their arrival for their first tour of America. Left to right: Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, George Harrison and John Lennon. 7th February 1964.
There were offers for electric and acoustic guitars, dolls, wigs, T-shirts, clocks, games, jewelry and countless other products. Overwhelmed, Epstein told his lawyer David Jacobs to find someone who could take over the Beatles’ increasingly lucrative merchandising business.
Jacobs turned to an entrepreneur named Nicky Byrne. Byrne agreed to handle the business through two companies: Stramsact in Britain and Seltaeb — “Beatles” spelled backward — in the United States.
In return, Byrne proposed that his company would receive 90 percent of the money, leaving just 10 percent for NEMS and the Beatles.
Source: guitarplayer.com/Christopher Scapelliti
Paul McCartney returns with a major new studio album in 2026. According to a label announcement and subsequent coverage, his solo record The Boys of Dungeon Lane was released on May 29, 2026 through Capitol Records after several years of work between touring legs.
New album The Boys of Dungeon Lane
On March 26, 2026 McCartney’s official site confirmed that The Boys of Dungeon Lane would arrive on May 29, describing it as his first new solo album in more than five years and highlighting its focus on rarely shared memories and newly written love songs. The label statement on his website notes that the sessions took place in short, efficient bursts between global tour dates, alternating between Los Angeles and his home studio in East Sussex.
Coverage in the British press underscores the introspective character of the record. One detailed report explains that the 14-track album has been presented as a collection of rare and candid insights into McCartney’s past, alongside new love songs, and situates it as a late-period work where detailed sonic memories and reflective storytelling take center stage. The Guardian’s album announcement linked this tone to the way McCartney revisits personal episodes and long relationships in his lyrics.
Source: ad-hoc-news.de/Rafael Müller
Sean Ono Lennon, the child of John Lennon and Yoko Ono, welcomed his first child into the world.
Ono Lennon, 50, and his longtime partner Charlotte Kemp Muhl, 39, announced the birth of their baby boy Tuesday evening, sharing photos of their new family on social media.
“Okay so…Charlotte and I would like to announce that we have indeed created a Human Bean!” Sean wrote on Instagram Tuesday evening. “His name is, Aurelius! Thank you!”
Sean also shared a photo of himself holding Aurelius, who was wrapped in a white blanket, as well as a photo of Kemp Muhl with their son in a hospital bed. “Baby Momma!” he captioned the latter.
Kemp Muhl, a musician and model, also shared photos from the early days of parenthood, including images of herself carrying Aurelius in a baby harness while walking in the water, holding a small crab and looking after their sleeping newborn.
“We made a human! Am convinced DNA is agentic alien quaternary code,” she wrote.
“The sleep deprivation only adds to the surrealism…Burping technique tips welcome. Been playing him Aphex Twin and Stravinsky. Meconium is crazy,” she added.
Julian Lennon, John Lennon’s eldest son with his first wife Cynthia, reacted to the news on Instagram with four heart emojis — to which Sean responded “Uncle Jules!”
Source: pagesix.com/Adam Silverstein
Cameras rolled on Sunday, Aug. 30, for BBC's six-part drama Hamburg Days in Liverpool's city center, according to a report from The Daily Mail. The cast plays The Beatles during their formative stint in Germany. Production kicked off while Sam Mendes' competing four-film Beatles venture kept shooting in London.
Rhys Mannion, Harvey Brett, Ellis Murphy, Louis Landau, and Patrick Gilmore portray John Lennon, George Harrison, Paul McCartney, Stuart Sutcliffe, and Pete Best. On Friday, Aug. 28, crews filmed at Lord Nelson Street near Lime Street Station. Mannion appeared in character hailing a taxi outside the station.
The series depicts the band's time in Hamburg's St. Pauli district during the early 1960s, when they honed the sound and stage presence that catapulted them to worldwide fame. The group began playing together in Liverpool and Hamburg in 1960. Pete Best served as the main drummer.
Jamie Carragher, one of the writers behind Succession, penned the series. Christian Schwochow, who directed episodes of The Crown, serves as showrunner and co-director alongside Laura Lackmann.
Source: 963kklz.com/Anne Erickson
A remarkable reconstruction of The Beatles’ June 11, 1968 “Blackbird” rehearsal session brings together surviving film and audio from across decades of archival releases, offering an unusually intimate look at Paul McCartney working through one of the most enduring songs from ‘The Beatles,’ better known as the White Album.
The footage captures McCartney inside EMI Studios during the period when the band were deep into sessions for the sprawling double album. “Blackbird” itself was recorded on June 11, 1968 and later appeared on the White Album when it was released that November. The official Beatles site lists the song as a McCartney composition credited to Lennon-McCartney, with George Martin producing.
What makes this reconstruction particularly compelling is the amount of material that has gradually surfaced. The version shared online incorporates clips from the original Apple promotional film and its outtakes alongside footage used in ‘Get Back,’ ‘Now and Then – The Last Beatles Song,’ ‘The White Album’ mini-documentary, ‘McCartney 3, 2, 1,’ ‘If These Walls Could Sing’ and later editions of ‘The Beatles Anthology.’ Material newly included in the 2025 ‘Anthology’ project added roughly another 90 seconds to the reconstructed session.
Source: thatericalper.com/Eric Alper
That blurry-sounding guitar line that leads the Beatles' "Think for Yourself" from 1965's Rubber Soul? That's actually no guitar at all.
It's a bass part, played by Paul McCartney and fed through a device called a fuzz box, which creates a kind of grainy, distorted effect. (There's a regular bass part, too.)
And as with many Beatles tracks, it broke new ground — "Think for Yourself," written by George Harrison, marked the first time this device was used on purpose with a bass.
'Don't Worry' and 'Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah'
Four years prior in 1961, a similar sound was created in Marty Robbins' "Don't Worry," a huge No. 1 hit on the country chart. But in that case, the fuzzy bass sound was essentially made on accident, the result of some kind of technical malfunction that Robbins' ultimately decided to keep on the track.
A year after that, producer Phil Spector helped Bob B. Soxx & the Blue Jeans achieve something similar on their cover of "Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah." According to Harrison, who worked with Spector on a number of occasions after the Beatles split up, it was a makeshift thing.
"When Phil Spector was making 'Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah,' the engineer who's set up the track overloaded the microphone on the guitar player and it became very distorted," he said for Anthology. "Phil Spector said, 'Leave it like that, it's great.'"
Source: ultimateclassicrock.com/Allison Rapp
Casual Beatles fans might completely overlook Beatles For Sale, the Fab Four’s fourth LP. Released in 1964, it found the band going back to cover songs to fill out the running order. This was after they’d included nothing but originals on A Hard Day’s Night, their other 1964 album.
The originals that they did manage to release on that record often get pushed aside by those discussing the group’s work. But we’re here to tell you that these four somewhat overlooked songs from Beatles For Sale deserve your attention.
“Baby’s In Black”
Any song that gave John Lennon and Paul McCartney an excuse to do some close harmony singing has a great head start. On “Baby’s In Black”, which the two men wrote together, they do their finest Everly Brothers impersonation on the microphone. Both men are pushed to the edges of their respective ranges, making for a thrilling listening experience. At any moment, you half-expect one of them to falter, but they never do. The lyrics for the song are fascinating as well. The idea of the girl that the narrator wants dressing in mourning colors adds a bit of unexpected darkness to the proceedings. No matter what he tries, he can’t replace the lingering memory of her ex.
Source: americansongwriter.com/Jim Beviglia
Samira Ahmed, US: Your brilliant A Hard Days Night that examines the impact of the Beatles’ effervescent first film. Can you talk a little about what compelled you to write this book with this specific focus?
Samira Ahmed, UK: My head has been full of the Beatles since I was 11 and discovered them through their films, which my big brother taped off BBC TV in 1979 onto our Betamax video. In 2023 I discovered the earliest complete concert recording of the band made by a student at a private boys’ boarding school—Stowe—in 1963. And the way I told the story on my Radio 4 show Front Row of that concert—its mix of class politics, social change, and the role of TV and audio technology—really connected with listeners, who weren’t necessarily Beatles fans. Who isn’t fascinated by the 60s?
So I thought this film deserves that kind of all-round viewing. Once you start looking you see there are black and Asian teenagers in the audience, the adult women around the Beatles capture how fast women’s careers and freedoms are developing. How the film makes Britain look like the most exciting place to be in the world. Plus how delightful to realize that the film was created by immigrants—mainly American born director Richard Lester. So all these ideas are fizzing through the book.
Source: lithub.com/Samira Ahmed
In 2006, the BBC’s Radio 2 Music Club asked more than 220,000 people to choose the “Best No. 1 Album of All Time.” Their pick was Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, The Beatles’ groundbreaking 1967 album that had already become one of the most celebrated records of its era.
The poll was a testament to how well The Beatles’ music had endured. Four of the band’s albums made the top 10, while Sgt. Pepper landed at No. 1 nearly 40 years after its release.
That kind of lasting adoration traces back to how ambitious the album was from the start. By the time Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band arrived in 1967, The Beatles were already among the biggest bands in the world. Albums such as Revolver and A Hard Day’s Night had established them as musical innovators, but their eighth studio album gave them a chance to take that experimentation even further.
The Beatles had stopped touring the previous year, giving them the freedom to make music that didn’t have to be easily reproduced onstage. That gave them room to explore reversed recordings, tape manipulation and distortion in the studio.
With Sgt. Pepper, the band moved beyond their rock-and-roll roots and embraced a more psychedelic sound. Songs like “Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds” and “Within You Without You” brought in surreal imagery, spirituality and mysticism.
Part of what made the album stand out was its concept. The Beatles imagined themselves as the fictional Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, giving them an alter ego that let them take the music in a different direction.
Soure: parade.com/Isabella Torregiani
