Beatles News
Sir Paul McCartney needs no introduction as a former member of the Beatles, one of the most revered bands in music history, and as a successful solo artist in his own right. After nearly seven decades in the music industry, McCartney is still admired for his vocals, songwriting, and proficiency on multiple musical instruments by fans worldwide. It would therefore seem unlikely that the nineteen-time Grammy Award winner and veteran artist would have any issues performing, but according to McCartney, there is one song he struggles to play live because of a particular tragedy and his deep emotional connection to it. Why Paul McCartney Can't Perform "Here Today" Without Getting Emotional.
Eventually, McCartney's grief inspired him to pen the song "Here Today," which was written in 1981 but released the following year. During the same interview, McCartney recalled what the writing session was like or "Here Today", "I found a room and just sat on the wooden floor in a corner with my guitar and just started to play the opening chords to 'Here Today.'" One particular song lyric, McCartney explained, was the most profound for him: "'The night we cried,' that was to do with a time when we were in Key West, down in Florida...We got drunk and started to get kind of emotional...On the way to that, there was a lot of soul-searching. We told each other a few truths, you know, 'Well, I love you,' 'I love you man,' 'I love that you said that,' and we opened up." Due to the emotional nature of the song, McCartney has since revealed that it's difficult for him to play live without getting worked up, so he seldom plays it during live performances.
McCartney also once revealed that The Beach Boys' song, "God Only Knows", greatly impacted him. He told BBC Radio 1 in 2007, “‘God Only Knows’ is one of the few songs that reduces me to tears every time I hear it. It’s really just a love song, but it’s brilliantly done. It shows the genius of Brian. I’ve actually performed it with him, and I’m afraid to say that during the sound check I broke down.” McCartney continued, referencing his 2002 performance of "God Only Knows" with Wilson, “I got to sing it with Brian once when we did a benefit [show] together. I was okay at the actual performance; I held it together. But at the rehearsal, at the soundcheck, I lost it, because it’s very emotional, this song, I find it… ‘Oh my god, I’m singing with Brian,’ it just got me, I couldn’t. So all it is, it’s little vibrations reaching your music, it’s only little vibrations, little words, and little things. There is this powerful effect, you know.”
Source: Karly B./collider.com
The recent Beatles Anthology updated series means there are no more secret recordings. Producer Giles Martin says no more secret Beatles tracks will ever be released.
The producer has spent a number of years going through the Fab Four’s archives for the Disney Plus revived Beatles’ Anthology series and remixed albums and tracks but he doesn’t believe there is anything new left to uncover.
According to The Sun newspaper, he said: “I don’t think there’s anything. I always say that then something turns up. “But I don’t think there’s anything. It’s incredible how much interest there still is over Beatles stuff.
“You do hear new things on this Anthology box set. There’s that first round of Helter Skelter, which for me is great because it’s really raw. It’s proper in your face music. “And then people go, ‘Well, how come we haven’t released the 20-minute long version of Helter Skelter?’ I think we’re done.”
Giles’ father, Sir George Martin – who died in 2016 – was known as “the fifth Beatle” for his work with the band and Giles has enjoyed going through his father’s work.
He said: “The Beatles are so powerful that it’s what people want to know about. “It’s really nice. I love my dad. We were incredibly close.
“Their music and what they did really makes people feel better about themselves. So to work on this material and to be close to my dad is a great thing.”
Giles curated the new Anthology 4 album and remastered the entire collection for the 2025 re-release of The Beatles’ Anthology series.
He is also working with director Sam Mendes on the four upcoming Beatles movies, which will each focus on a different member of the band; John Lennon, Sir Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Sir Ringo Starr.
Source: startsat60.com
The star of new movie Avatar: Fire and Ash mentioned the Fab Four more than once when she was given the Colbert Questionnaire on a recent episode of The Late Show With Stephen Colbert.
And, like everyone, she had a favorite. Hers was John Lennon — who, along with Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr, formed the British rock band that famously invaded America — before he was shot and killed outside his New York City apartment building on Dec. 8, 1980, at just 40.
She confessed to Colbert, who asked whether she's ever asked for a celebrity's autograph, that she'd once written Lennon a special message.
"I wrote a several-page letter on lavender stationery with purple ink,' Weaver said. "'Dear John.' It was like five pages front and back. And I folded it up. I put an envelope, and I dropped it off at this restaurant that I heard he went to."
She couldn't recall what she's written, but she didn't seem to want to.
"I hope they threw it away," Weaver said.
In the same interview, the three-time Oscar nominated star was asked about the first concert that she attended, which was of course the Beatles.
Weaver, who's 76, thought she might have been 12 when she saw the act at the Hollywood Bowl in 1961. Colbert reminded her, however, that the act landed stateside in 1964. What Weaver had no trouble recalling was the volume of the crowd.
"Girls screaming all around me," she said. "You couldn't hear [the Beatles] at all."
Her momentous night was captured in Ron Howard's documentary about the group, The Beatles: Eight Days a Week - The Touring Years. she noted. And Colbert showed a photo of Weaver, yes, trying to hear the "She Loves You" singers.
"The Hollywood Bowl went through all its archives, and I suddenly get an email about 10 years ago saying, 'We think this is you.' And there I am," Weaver said. "My hair is huge because I put it on beer cans all day, straightened it, and I'm wearing my one nice dress."
She admitted to letting out quiet screams every now and then because of the peer pressure she felt. On her way out of the concert, as Weaver walked in the street with someone she'd befriended at the concert, she had what just might have been the best moment of the experience.
A limo carrying the artists themselves rode by, and she got a wave from both Lennon and McCartney.
"I don't remember what the other two did, because we were so excited that we'd come close, like 10 feet away as the car went by," Weaver recalled. "Honestly, I think we both went home and just lay on our backs and looked at the ceiling for 24 hours."
At one point, Weaver did explain why Lennon had been her chosen favorite. "I read in a fan magazine that he used to work at the airport for VIPs," she said. "He made a plate of sandwiches and, just before he sent them out, he'd put his shoe in them and then put it back together and put it on the platter. I thought that was so cool."
Source: Raechal Shewfelt/ew.com
Ringo Starr is preparing to extend his late career love affair with country music, confirming that a new studio album is in development and pencilled in for release sometime in early 2026. The untitled project will again explore country and Americana territory and reunites the former Beatle with producer T Bone Burnett, the creative partnership that reshaped Starr’s recording direction with 2025’s Look Up.
Starr has completed his core recording work and is now navigating schedules around final production and label timelines. While no release date has been locked, February or March remains the most likely window, positioning the album as a direct continuation of the creative momentum that began last year.
The new record will once again see Starr working closely with Burnett, a producer whose résumé spans roots music, film soundtracks and heritage American songwriting. Burnett’s influence on Look Up was widely credited with giving Starr a grounded, authentic sound that aligned naturally with his long-standing affection for country music. That same sensibility is expected to guide the 2026 album.
Starr has also returned to songwriting with longtime collaborator Bruce Sugar, co-writing two new tracks for the project. Sugar has been a key behind-the-scenes figure in Starr’s studio output for more than a decade, helping translate ideas into finished recordings while preserving Starr’s unmistakable voice and rhythmic instincts.
Source: Paul Cashmere/noise11.com
On this day (January 2) in 1971, George Harrison topped the Billboard 200 with All Things Must Pass. The triple-album marked his first release since The Beatles officially parted ways in April 1970. Musicians on the album include Eric Clapton, Ringo Starr, Alan White, Pete Drake, and many more.
Harrison began working on All Things Must Pass at EMI Studios the month after The Beatles officially broke up. Co-produced by Harrison and Phil Spector, sessions for the album stretched into October. Finally, after months of work, Harrison released the three-LP collection on November 27.
Upon its initial release, All Things Must Pass consisted of three LPs. The first two contained the album’s 18 official tracks, many of which were passed over for inclusion on previous Beatles albums. The third LP contained a collection of five live studio jams.
George Harrison Won the Race to the Top of the Singles Chart.
Paul McCartney was the first member of the Fab Four to score a No. 1 album after the band broke up. His album, McCartney, reached the top of the Billboard 200 on May 23, 1970, and stayed there for three weeks. Interestingly, Let It Be dethroned McCartney’s solo release.
Harrison, on the other hand, was the first former Beatle to score a No. 1 single. His song “My Sweet Lord” reached the top of the Hot 100 the day after Christmas 1970. It retained the top spot for four consecutive weeks. The single was still at the top when All Things Must Pass reached No. 1.
While “My Sweet Lord” was Harrison’s debut single as a solo artist, All Things Must Pass was not his first solo LP. He released two solo albums during his final years with The Beatles. First, he released Wonderwall Music in 1968. The next year, he released Electric Sound the next year. Neither of those albums saw much chart success.
All Things Must Pass topped charts in Australia, Canada, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
Source: Clayton Edwards/americansongwriter.com
Amidst the cold studios and rising tensions of January 1969, the Fab Four managed to set aside their differences to record one last chart-topping legacy.
On the morning of January 2, 1969, four men walked into the drafty, cavernous Twickenham Film Studios in London. To any onlooker, they were the biggest stars on the planet. To themselves, they were a band on the brink of collapse. This was the beginning of what was intended to be a "return to roots" project for The Beatles, originally titled “Get Back”. It would eventually become their final released album, “Let It Be”.
The atmosphere that first morning was far from the polished magic fans heard on their records. The studio was freezing, the lighting was harsh, and the group was being trailed by film cameras capturing every rehearsal, every argument, and every yawn. Paul McCartney, acting as the de facto director of the group, wanted to strip away the complex studio tricks of their previous albums. His goal was simple: The Beatles playing live, together in a room, with no overdubs.
But the reality was complicated. After years of being the most famous people on earth, the individual Beatles were drifting apart. John Lennon was increasingly focused on his life with Yoko Ono, who sat by his side throughout the sessions. George Harrison was frustrated, feeling his songwriting was being sidelined by the dominant partnership of Lennon and McCartney. Ringo Starr, ever the professional, sat behind his drum kit, watching the friction build.
The tensions were caught in real-time. In footage that would later be famously restored for the 2021 docuseries “The Beatles: Get Back”, viewers see the moments of creative spark buried under layers of exhaustion. There is a famous scene where George and Paul argue over a guitar part, a moment that encapsulated the growing pains of a band that had outgrown its own frame. A few days into the sessions, George Harrison actually quit the band, walking out and telling the others, "See you ‘round the clubs."
It took a change of scenery and a new face to save the project. The band moved from the cold film studio to their own Apple Studios in the basement of their headquarters on Savile Row. They also invited keyboardist Billy Preston to join them. Preston’s presence acted as a "musical diplomat"; the band members were on their best behavior with a guest in the room, and his soulful electric piano gave the tracks the lift they needed.
Despite the internal heavy lifting, the music that emerged was legendary. During these weeks of January, songs like "Get Back," "Across the Universe," "The Long and Winding Road," and the title track, "Let It Be," took shape. The sessions culminated in the famous "Rooftop Concert" on January 30, 1969. Clad in heavy coats against the winter wind, The Beatles played their last public performance on top of their office building, bringing central London to a standstill until the police eventually shut them down.
Source: muskokaradio.com
Name a music industry record, and chances are the Beatles hold it. With the release of their 1963 debut album Please Please Me, a quartet of shaggy-haired musicians from Liverpool forever altered the listening experience of rock music enthusiasts. Comprised of George Harrison, John Lennon, Paul McCartney, and Ringo Star, the Beatles remain the best-selling artists of all time more than five decades after their split. That’s perhaps what makes the events that occurred in North London on this day in 1962 all the more mystifying in hindsight.
Paul McCartney and John Lennon Differed on the Beatles’ Failed Decca Audition
“Guitar groups are on their way out, Mr. Epstein.” While former Decca Records head Dick Rowe denied ever uttering these words on Jan. 1, 1962, they have continued to endure in Fab Four lore as an example of monumentally poor judgment.
The way Rowe told it, he gave Decca A&R representative Mike Smith a choice between the Beatles and another “guitar group,” Brian Poole and the Tremeloes. Smith chose the latter mainly for logistical reasons—their hometown of Dagenham was closer to the West Hampstead studio than Liverpool.
Nonetheless, it was a pretty crushing blow for manager Brian Epstein and the Beatles, who had been working overtime to secure a record deal for the band. By this point, Columbia, His Master’s Voice, and other labels had already shot them down.
Along with original drummer Pete Best, Harrison, Lennon, and McCartney began their trek to London on New Year’s Eve 1961, with then-road manager Neil Aspinall behind the wheel. Aspinall got lost, resulting in a 10-hour trip.
The Beatles would go on to perform 15 songs, including “Searchin’”, “Three Cool Cats”, “The Sheik of Araby”, “Like Dreamers Do” and “Hello Little Girl.”
Beatles “Three Fantastic Cats” π·πΏπΌπΈ . π· . π· From the “Decca Audition” recording A cover of The Coasters with George Harrison’s lead vocals A well-known pre-debut sound source, one of the songs included on the official compilation “Anthology π· ” George’s singing voice at the age of π·πΎ at the time.
For his part, Paul McCartney could see their point after listening to the tapes. We weren’t that good, though there were some quite interesting and original things,” the iconic bassist has said. His primary songwriting partner, Lennon, disagreed. “I wouldn’t have turned us down on that. I think it sounded OK,” he said, adding, “I think Decca expected us to be all polished. We were just doing a demo. They should have seen our potential.”
Disheartened, an otherwise undeterred Epstein requested the audition tapes from Decca and continued his quest. And three months later, producer George Martin eventually signed the Beatles to EMI’s Parlophone Label.
Source: Erinn Callahan/americansongwriter.com
The actress who plays Ringo Starr’s first wife in a forthcoming biopic has admitted that she couldn’t name all four members of The Beatles. Mia McKenna-Bruce, 28, also said she was unfamiliar with most of the band’s songs until she was cast as Maureen Starkey.
Sam Mendes is directing four Beatles biopics, each focusing on a different member of the band, to be released in 2028.
McKenna-Bruce’s casting was announced while she was filming an adaptation of Agatha Christie’s The Seven Dials Mystery with Martin Freeman. The actress revealed that Freeman teased her over her lack of Beatles knowledge. “We sang Eleanor Rigby and Yellow Submarine at school, but it wasn’t my jam,” she told Tatler.
“On Seven Dials, Martin Freeman was asking me to name all the Beatles. I didn’t know. Then he’d ask me: ‘What band was Mick Jagger in?’ I was like, ‘I have no idea, Martin’, and he was like, ‘Aargh!’
“Yet now, I’m like: ‘Oh my God, the Beatles are underrated! This is good! It’s music I’d sit and listen to on the train.’”
The Beatles films will star Paul Mescal as Paul McCartney, Harris Dickinson as John Lennon, Joseph Quinn as George Harrison and Barry Keoghan as Ringo Starr.
Maureen was a teenage hairdresser and Beatles fan when she met Starr at Liverpool’s Cavern Club. They began dating in 1962 and hastily married in February 1965 after discovering that Maureen was pregnant. They went on to have three children including Zak Starkey, now a famous drummer in his own right.
The marriage was strained by infidelity on both sides, including Maureen’s affair with George Harrison. She and Starr divorced in 1975 and she later married Isaac Tigrett, one of the founders of the Hard Rock Cafe. Starr married Barbara Bach, the Bond actress, in 1981.
When Maureen died from leukaemia in 1994, Starr was among the family members at her bedside.
McKenna-Bruce said: “I haven’t met Ringo but apparently, to this day, when he talks about Maureen he gets this brightness behind his eyes. “Ringo went through so much – all of the Beatles did – and Maureen really grounded him, so it’s important to me to keep her as human and warm as possible.” She will appear in the biopics alongside Saoirse Ronan as Linda Eastman, Anna Sawai as Yoko Ono and Aimee Lou Wood as Pattie Boyd.
Source: Anita Singh/telegraph.co.uk
By 1974, George Harrison had recorded countless number 1 albums, sold out tours across the globe, and he had enough of being in the biggest band in the world, The Beatles. The lead single from his fifth studio album, Dark Horse, “Ding Dong, Ding Dong,” has long divided fans, with half enjoying the New Year’s optimistic festivities and the other half disregarding it as a novelty piece. Where critics saw emptiness, Harrison shared a sentiment that had been dear to him for years. When we put the song in a wider context instead of jumping to easy, harsh conclusions, it becomes far more interesting and impactful than one might think on the surface.
Criticism of George Harrison’s Single Rang Out Loud
“Ding Dong, Ding Dong” was the lead single from George Harrison’s fifth solo studio album, Dark Horse, which was released in 1974. Harrison wrote the song to be a sing-along classic to enjoy festivities, and crucially to embrace the future by letting go of the past in welcoming the new year. Critics and fellow musicians alike have speculated that Harrison wanted to follow in the successful footsteps of the British glam rock Christmas tunes of 1973 and 1974 by Wizzard and Slade, but never quite met neither the chart space nor public respect that they did.
Some critics, however, deem the plainness of “Ding Dong, Ding Dong” to be elementary and effortless. The BBC’s John Peel called the tune "repetitive and dull,” and Bob Woffingden of the New Musical Express rather sharply noted that “There’s nothing more disappointing than finding one's teenage heroes crumbling ineluctably into middle-aged mediocrity.” Perhaps the worst of all was Chris Irwin of Melody Maker labeling Harrison’s NYE track as a “Glorified nursery rhyme.” Harrison admitted that "Ding Dong, Ding Dong" was written quickly, but perhaps not as much as critics thought:
“It took me three minutes, except it took me four years of looking at the thing which was written on the wall at my home, ‘Ring out the old, ring in the new. Ring out the false, ring in the truth,’ before I realized it was a hit song. It makes me laugh because it’s so simple.”
George Harrison Was Fighting Fatigue, Freedom, and Expectations
Source: Fiona MacPherson-Amador/collider.com
It was a moment of horrible deja vu for music fans around the world — a mentally unwell man had attacked one of the Beatles, leaving him for dead.
It's a headline that could have been from December 8, 1980, but it was also sadly true of this day, December 30, 1999, when George Harrison was stabbed in his home.
Unlike his former bandmate John Lennon, Harrison survived the attack by a knife-wielding attacker, though Harrison's friends and family speculated it ultimately hastened his death from lung cancer less than two years later.
But like the fatal attack on Lennon outside the Dakota Building in New York, the stabbing of Harrison was another case of someone with mental health issues slipping through the cracks and not getting the help they needed before doing something horrible to a much-loved musician.
A troubled man struggling
About a month before he broke into Harrison's home and stabbed the former Beatle, Michael Abram was in a psychiatric ward in Merseyside, the English county centred around Liverpool.
The 33-year-old father of two had been grappling with addiction and undiagnosed schizophrenia for the previous decade, according to reporting from the BBC and The Guardian at the time and police had taken him to a Merseyside hospital in November 1999.
Abram's mother Lydia told the BBC the health system had failed her son and was "totally and completely useless".
After leaving hospital, Abram returned to the 10th floor flat where he lived alone in Liverpool, sitting "on an up-turned plant pot" in his "sparsely-furnished rooms", listening to The Beatles, John Lennon, U2 and Bob Marley, a court later heard.
His neighbours watched him walk to the chemist each week to collect his methadone, singing Beatles songs as he went.
All the while, Abram was sinking further and further into his delusions.
The hearings held in the wake of Harrison's stabbing heard Abram had witnessed a total eclipse on August 11, 1999, which led him to believe he was St Michael and on a mission from God to kill Harrison, who Abram believed to be the "phantom menace" that was possessing him.
"He thought George Harrison was the alien from hell," psychiatrist Phillip Joseph told the court.
"He thought the Beatles were witches flying on broomsticks from hell."
a policeman walks past an ornate gate
A policeman stands guard outside Harrison's home after the stabbing. (Reuters)
The attack
Harrison lived at Friar Park, a Victorian mansion built in 1889 that he'd purchased in 1970, at Henley-on-Thames, west of London, some 300 kilometres south-east of Abram's Liverpool home.
On December 29, Abram arrived at a nearby local church and asked the vicar: "Where does the squire live?"
It wasn't the first time Abram had travelled from Liverpool to Henley-on-Thames and asked about Harrison.
But this time, things were different. He had with him a metre-long cord and a knife. Abram loitered around the property, and sang in the nearby town square, apparently "hoping to provoke an uprising against the star", Morris wrote.
At about 3:30am, Abram scaled the walls around Friar Park, evaded security, and used part of a statue George Harrison's wife, Olivia, had made to break a window and gain entry to the mansion.
Olivia heard the noise and woke her husband, who went in search of the sound, pulling on a jacket and a pair of boots over his pyjamas.
According to detailed court reporting at the time for The Guardian, Olivia rang staff and police as Harrison spotted Abrams in the main hall.
Abrams began screaming up at Harrison, who was above him on the landing, and in an attempt to distract the attacker, Harrison began shouting "Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna" back at him.
The intruder advanced up the stairs and Harrison, thinking about his wife, son and mother-in-law in the house, lunged at Abrams, trying to grab the knife from him.
"We fell to the floor," Harrison told the court. "I was fending off blows with my hands. He was on top of me and stabbing down at my upper body." Olivia arrived and attacked Abrams with a small brass poker, causing Abrams to attack her too.
"There was blood on the walls and on the carpet," she told the court.
Source: Matt Neal/abc.net.au
