Beatles News
WhenJohn Lennon wrote "Give Peace a Chance," the anti-war song was a cry for one thing only: "All we are saying is give peace a chance," the track echoed throughout its nearly five-minute runtime. Recorded 57 years ago today on June 1, 1969, it was released on July 4 in the U.K. and July 7 in the U.S., and became a historic peace anthem—without ever hitting No. 1 on the charts.
Despite never reaching the top spot on the Billboard Hot 100, the song peaked at No. 14, enjoying a nine-week tenure on the chart overall. It spent four weeks within the Top 20 and six weeks in the Top 40, records show.
Credited to the Plastic Ono Band, the track itself was created in the moment during one of Lennon's and wife, Yoko Ono's, famous "bed-in" protests, sparking a movement during the anti-Vietnam War era of the late 1960s/early 1970s.
"Lennon and Ono were well-known members of the anti-war movement. They even created the method of protest known as a “bed-in,” involving occupying a hotel room for a week at a time as they did on their honeymoon in Amsterdam. This song was actually recorded during one of their “bed-ins” in Montreal," according to Genius.
While the Montreal bed-in was in progress, the Beatles band member got the idea after inviting celebrities and media representatives into the hotel room to discuss the political climate. It is reported that Lennon kept repeating the phrase "give peace a chance" in various interviews, sparking what became the tune, which was recorded live by producer André Perry, per Song Facts. "Using four microphones and a portable 4-track cassette recorder he borrowed from a local studio," the song came together, featuring a chorus of contributors including Petula Clark, Allen Ginsberg, and Timothy Leary.
Source: yahoo.com/Yasmine Coleman
Paul McCartney has revealed to NME that he is unsure if he will ever retire from recording and touring.
The Beatles legend released his latest solo album ‘The Boys Of Dungeon Lane’ last week (May 29), a poignantly nostalgic record that sees McCartney reflect on his years growing up in Liverpool. It includes a duet with Ringo Starr on ‘Home To Us’, as well as the tearjerker lead single ’Days We Left Behind’.
Ahead of the album’s release, McCartney sat down with NME to look forwards and back on his extraordinary career, and we asked him whether he can imagine ever walking away from being an active musician.
“I don’t know. I never know, y’know?” he replied. “I remember when I was 50 years old, my manager at the time said, ‘Well, are you thinking of retiring?’ I went, ‘Uh, I don’t think so.’ But he obviously thought, 50… which, I get it, because we thought 30 was really old [when] we were 20. So 30 was like that’d be unseemly, but it came, and it went, and people were still playing, and audiences like the music.”
He went on to explain that he is conscious of the fact that there are increasingly few opportunities for fans to hear the music from his era in person. “If the music is from that period, they don’t get to hear it live any other way, so you’ve got to hear Neil Young live to get the whole feel of Neil – the Neil feel. Same with a lot of bands – the Stones, The Eagles. There’s nothing like it.”
McCartney also said that he continues to be inspired by the process of songwriting itself.
Source: nme.com/Max Pilley
Ringo Starr is not slowing down.
The 85-year-old drum legend, who is adored by hundreds of millions of music lovers for his work in The Beatles, just released the brand new album “Long Long Road.”
It’s his second T-Bone Burnett country music album in as many years, following “Look Up” in early 2025.
Starr, who has more than 20 solo studio albums to his credit, also can found on his fellow Fab Four buddy Paul McCartney’s “The Boys of Dungeon Lane” record, which just hit stores last week.
The two Beatles greats team up for their first-ever vocal duet on “Home to Us,” which was released as the second single (following the equally nostalgic “Days We Left Behind”) off McCartney’s album.
Starr is also still heavily involved with His All-Starr Band — the current lineup of which features Steve Lukather (the brilliant guitarist and better-than-decent singer from Toto), Colin Hay (the fun frontman of Men at Work), Warren Ham (another Toto talent who shines on saxophone and vocals), Hamish Stuart (bassit/guitarist/vocalist from Average White Band), Gregg Bissonette (who has drummed for everyone from David Lee Roth to Pat Boone) and Buck Johnson (keyboardist who has worked with Aerosmith and Hollywood Vampires).
I recently had to chance to chat with the Beatles icon, who was just finishing up rehearsals for the concert tour by Ringo Starr and His All-Starr Band. That trek includes several stops in the Golden State — June 5 at Thunder Valley Casino in Lincoln, June 6 at Vina Robles Ampitheatre in Paso Robles, June 11 at San Jose Civic and June 14 at The Greek Theatre in Los Angeles.
Here’s our interview.
Q: Hey, Ringo, buddy. So cool to finally get the chance to speak with you. How are you doing?
A: I’m doing good, thank you. What’s happening, man?
Q: Just been looking forward to my chat with you. How are rehearsals going?
A: Rehearsals went great. We only do two days, a couple of hours a day, to get back into it.
Q: I was peering over your discography and, if my math is correct, you’ve now released 22 full-length solo albums. That’s an impressive tally for a guy who was really embarking on a second career, having already carved out his legend in stone with the Beatles. What’s kept you so motivated to record solo albums over the years?
Source: hanfordsentinel.com/Jim Harrington The Mercury News
From its garish artwork to the strange mismatch of covers and originals, Rock ’n’ Roll Music is the unloved outlier of the band’s catalogue
In June 1976, the American monthly Phonograph Record Magazine printed a long piece on the parlous state of pop. “Music has been plagued by both the lack of striking inventiveness and visible leadership,” it declared, “and the record-buying public is seeking a cure”. That cure would involve looking a decade or more backwards, with a double-LP compilation of old Beatles material called Rock ’n’ Roll Music. A “million-dollar promotional campaign” would “recreate Beatlemania”, and so the moribund music industry would be saved.
Meanwhile, in the very same issue, the debut album of punk pioneers the Ramones was being praised (“you have to love anything this moronic – the Ramones have managed to turn this style of heavy metal into something that might just be commercial”) and the Sex Pistols’ legendary 100 Club gig was being very favourably reviewed (“they’ll be so popular they’ll hate themselves”). Sometimes the way forward is begging for your attention and you still can’t see it.
Looked at half a century later, Rock ’n’ Roll Music is that rarest of rare Beatles beasts – the unloved outlier. Ignacio Gomez’s artwork is, if not an outright disaster, then certainly an oddity. The front cover shows a hyper-stylised drawing of the band – looking not at all “rock ’n’ roll” – beneath a neon-effect rendering of the title, while the inside is a curdled mess of 1950s clichés (a hamburger, a jukebox, Marilyn Monroe, a glass of Coca-Cola). The music is a collection of the band’s famous rock ’n’ roll covers (Chuck Berry, Carl Perkins, Little Richard) and some of their own “heavier” material (Get Back, Hey Bulldog, Back In the USSR).
Source: telegraph.co.uk/Rob Fitzpatrick
Paul McCartney is back with a new solo album, “The Boys of Dungeon Lane,” and in doing the press rounds behind the release, he’s opening up about the losses of Beatles bandmates John Lennon and George Harrison.
McCartney’s new solo release takes inspiration from his childhood and the early days with the Beatles, and it even features a duet with Beatles drummer Ringo Starr on the song “Home to Us.”
Speaking with The Guardian, McCartney talked about what gives him comfort in the absence of friends and fellow musicians Lennon and Harrison. “My collaborator was probably one of the best writers of the century, so, yeah, you’re going to miss him,” he said in the interview. “But that’s life. You lose people.”
More entertainment news: Rolling Stones Producer Hypes Upcoming Album as ‘Unbelievable’.
He also remembered what Beatles producer George Martin said to him about aging. “The terrible thing about it is all your mates start popping off,” Martin said. “Now I’m probably at that age, and I’m very conscious of that, having lost John and George – two big touchstones for anything we’re talking about [in this interview],” he also said. “So, yeah, you do miss them.”
McCartney added: “I start to get very sad, and I have to think, ‘Wow, wait a minute, everyone misses them.’ It’s not just me. So that makes me feel a bit better. I think, ‘Well, sod it, it’s life, and it’s what we’ve got.'”
Source: yahoo.com/Anne Erickson
Paul McCartney, like any passionate fan of the Beatles, finds it difficult to choose his favorite album from the iconic rock band.
The legendary musician, 83, is Willie Geist’s latest Sunday Sitdown guest. Together, the two discussed McCartney’s decades-long career in the music industry, both with the band and as a solo artist. During their chat, Willie asked McCartney if he could name one album in the band’s discography that represents the Beatles at their “best.”
“That’s always a very difficult question, you know?” McCartney replied. “My mind went to ‘Rubber Soul,’ because I think that was a change in what we’d been doing.”
He said the 1965 album, their sixth, was a little more “advanced.” But, of course, he couldn’t highlight just one album in the band’s extensive catalogue. “Then I’d have to say ‘Sgt. Pepper’ was, like, a crazy different experience,” he continued, referring to their 1967 album, “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.”
He had one more album to add that is many fans’ favorite. “And then I would probably finish up with ‘Abbey Road,’” he said.
McCartney, who released his 12th studio album, “The Boys of Dungeon Lane,” on May 29, still reflects on his time in the band and their monumental success. He recalled the Beatles making their American debut on the “The Ed Sullivan Show” in 1964.
Source: today.com/Ariana Brockington
The numbers increasingly add up for Ringo Starr, whose sold-out Friday night San Diego performance at Humphreys Concerts by the Bay was the second date on the 2026 spring tour by this two-time Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductee and his six-man All-Starr Band.
Ringo Starr, with new San Diego and L.A. concerts set, talks candidly: ‘I’m giving away all the secrets here!’ he says
Their 21-song repertoire ranged from “Matchbox,” the Carl Perkins-penned 1956 rockabilly rave-up that opened the evening, to the concert-closing double-punch of The Beatles’ 1967 classic, “With a Little Help From My Friends,” and the sing-along chorus of John Lennon’s sadly still-timely 1969 anti-war anthem, “Give Peace a Chance.”
In between came an array of favorites from the songbooks of Starr and The Beatles, including “It Don’t Come Easy” and “I Wanna Be Your Man,” plus hits by Toto, Average White Band and Men At Work. Three of those bands’ key members — Toto guitarist-vocalist Steve Lukather, former Average White Bands bassist/singer Hamish Stewart and Men At Work singer-guitarist Colin Hay — are All-Starr Band veterans. Each clearly relishes still sharing the stage with a rock legend who, improbably, is now 85-going-on-just-17.
Starr was featured on drums or vocals (and sometimes both simultaneously) on all but one selection in the 103-minute concert. Still as boyishly slim as Mick Jagger, three years his junior, he was consistently compelling whether singing center stage or drumming in unison with Gregg Bissonette.
Source: sandiegouniontribune.com/George Varga
They were best friends since they were teenagers. Together they wrote some of the greatest songs the world has ever known. In 1971, they tried to destroy each other, one record at a time.
By the time Paul McCartney released Ram in May 1971, The Beatles had been done for just over a year. Those wounds were still very fresh. The lawyers had moved in and buried inside that new album was a line John Lennon just couldn't ignore.
"Too many people preaching practices / Don't let them tell you what you wanna be."
Those lyrics were a shot aimed directly at Lennon and his wife, Yoko Ono, at their protests, their activism and the whole new life they'd built together. The insult was subtle enough to deny, yet sharp enough to hurt.
Lennon wasn't in the mood to ignore it or let it go. "It starts off with 'too many people going underground. That was your first mistake. You took your lucky break and broke it in two,'" Lennon said later. "Now, if that doesn't mean what it says, I don't know what."
So Lennon sat down and wrote back his reply.
"How Do You Sleep?" came out swinging. Lennon was hurt and went after everything, calling McCartney's solo work "muzak," suggesting the only song he wrote worth remembering was “Yesterday”, questioning how anyone, especially a star of that caliber, could live with themselves after falling so far. With George Harrison on slide guitar, Klaus Voorman on bass and the cameras rolling, Lennon recorded one of the most brutal take down songs one musician has ever aimed at another.
Source: yahoo.com.Deborah Cruz
There was a time during the Beatles’ rise to fame that Paul McCartney thought he had found the one place he could roam without being spotted.
During an interview on The Zane Lowe Show to discuss his deeply nostalgic new album, The Boys of Dungeon Lane, the 83-year-old musician shared memories of navigating the early days of Beatlemania alongside John Lennon, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr. When looking back at that “very intense period of time” in the Sixties when the band shot to the top of the charts worldwide, Lowe asked McCartney how he managed to “remain relatable” and enjoy his life under the spotlight.
“I remember once in the early days of the Beatles, we were kind of recognized most places, but me and Ringo went on holiday with our girlfriends then to Greece and nobody knew us,” McCartney said, recalling thinking at the time: “This is great. Wow, we must come back here more often. Even when we get really famous, we can always come to Greece and they’re never going to know us.” He added, “But, of course, that didn’t work.” Soon, their music — and faces — reached Greece and beyond.
“I realized, ‘Oh, I’m going to be famous all my life, if I’m lucky,’ I thought, ‘Okay, big decision time.’ Now, you either stop and you just sort of think that was lovely. I had a great time with the music, and you do something else more anonymous or you carry on,” McCartney said. To handle the Beatles’ inescapable celebrity, the musician developed a “strategy.”
McCartney credited his family in Liverpool and being able to stay grounded thanks to the lessons they taught him growing up. “They are the kind of people who put people at ease,” he said, adding that he learned how to do the same by being around them.
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The Boys of Dungeon Lane released on Friday and Rolling Stone praised the record as MCartney’s latest “solo masterpiece.” “Overall, there’s the sense of a legend looking back on a life well spent,” Simon Vozick-Levinson writes in his review of the record. “This isn’t necessarily a new theme for McCartney, who’s been singing about what he once called his ever-present past for years now.” He adds: “the autumnal vibe is more pronounced than ever.
Source: rollingstone.com/Charisma Madarang
Fans of The Beatles may be aware of George Harrison's solo career, in which he quickly established himself as a successful artist in his own right. Shortly before and following the iconic group's breakup, the musician released a whopping 12 albums under his own name, with many of them enjoying critical acclaim, even more than five decades later.
In 1970, the Beatles' lead guitarist released All Things Must Pass, his third solo album and the first after the breakup of the legendary Liverpool four-piece. The record featured "My Sweet Lord," a song that has now taken the top spot on Grunge's list as the biggest No. 1 hit of 1970.
The track is arguably Harrison's most famous song after it left him in the middle of a huge music scandal that has gone down in history. In 1971, less than a year after the release of "My Sweet Lord," Harrison was accused of plagiarizing The Chiffons' 1963 song "He's So Fine."
Bright Tunes Music, the owners of "He's So Fine," sued the former member of The Fab Four, and the legal battle was dragged out for decades after his former manager, Allen Klein, purchased Bright Tunes and subsequently became the one to be suing his previous client.
Source: yahoo.com/Emma Kershaw
