Beatles News
Lennon embedded subtle hints about leaving the Beatles in songs like “Glass Onion.”
He said, “I had to either be married to them [the band] or Yoko, and I chose Yoko.”
McCartney later stated Yoko was not to blame; the group was already breaking up.
Long before the Beatles’ official split in 1970, John Lennon was dropping subtle clues that he was ready to walk away.
In “Glass Onion” from the 1968 White Album, Lennon references a number of the Fab Four’s recent hits. The lyrics drop nods to Beatles classics like “Strawberry Fields Forever,” “Lady Madonna,” “Fool on the Hill” and “Fixing a Hole.”
Lennon also revisits the Magical Mystery Tour classic “I Am the Walrus,” with the line, “I told you about the walrus and me, man. You know that we’re as close as can be, man. Well, here’s another clue for you all. The walrus was Paul.”
In discussing the song, Lennon noted that he intentionally made the references confusing, challenging listeners to dig deeper for hidden meaning in the track.
“I threw the line in—’the Walrus was Paul’—just to confuse everybody a bit more. It could have been ‘the fox terrier is Paul,'” he once said.
“I mean, it’s just a bit of poetry. I was having a laugh because there’d been so much gobbledygook about Pepper—play it backwards and you stand on your head and all that.”
However, in one of his last interviews with David Sheff, Lennon revealed, “The line was put in partly because I was feeling guilty because I was with Yoko, and I was leaving Paul. I was trying … I don’t know. It’s a very perverse way of saying to Paul, you know, ‘Here, have this crumb, this illusion, this, this stroke, because I’m leaving.”
Over the years, fans and music historians have speculated endlessly about what caused the Beatles to break up — was it money, creative differences or relationships?
Lennon addressed the question directly in a 1971 interview with Rolling Stone, “I had to either be married to them [the band] or Yoko, and I chose Yoko.”
Paul McCartney offered a different perspective decades later. In a 2012 interview with British broadcaster David Frost, McCartney said that Yoko Ono “certainly didn’t break the group up, the group was breaking up.”
He adds that without her introducing Lennon to the avant-garde, songs like “Imagine” might never have existed.
“I don’t think he would have done that without Yoko, so I don’t think you can blame her for anything,” McCartney said.
“When Yoko came along, part of her attraction was her avant garde side, her view of things, so she showed him another way to be, which was very attractive to him. So it was time for John to leave, he was definitely going to leave [one way or another].”
Source: Isabella Torregiani/parade.com
The Beatles may have broken up in 1970, but the band continues to live on and 2025 was no exception. Fans of the band got a new look at their 1990s Anthology project with reissues of the documentary series, music and book.
-Disney+ debuted a restored and remastered version of the Anthology documentary series, which aired on ABC in 1995, with the eight-part series expanded to nine episodes. In addition, the music was reissued as The Anthology Collection, a box set featuring the first three Anthology albums, along with a new fourth edition, featuring 13 previously unreleased recordings. Anthology 4 was also released as a standalone.
-A 25th anniversary edition of The Beatles Anthology book, featuring more than 1,300 photos, documents, artwork and memorabilia, was also released.
-This year also brought casting news for Sam Mendes‘ four Beatles films, The Beatles – A Four-Film Cinematic Event, due out in April 2028. The project, in which each film will be told from the point of view of a different band member, will star Harris Dickinson as John Lennon, Paul Mescal as Paul McCartney, Barry Keoghan as Ringo Starr and Joseph Quinn as George Harrison.
Among this year’s other Beatles highlights:
-Ringo released a new country album, Look Up, and as part of the promotion for his Grand Ole Opry debut. He also headlined two nights at Nashville’s Ryman Auditorium, joined by some famous friends, with the shows turned into a special that aired on CBS.
-The Beatles won another Grammy, taking home best rock performance for “Now and Then.” In addition, Lennon’s son Sean Ono Lennon won the Grammy for best boxed or special limited edition package for his work on the reissue of his late father’s Mind Games album.
-McCartney surprised fans in New York City by headlining three shows at the 575-person-capacity Bowery Ballroom. The shows were a lead-up to his performance on the SNL 50 anniversary special.
-A new documentary about Lennon and wife Yoko Ono, One to One: John & Yoko, directed by Oscar-winning filmmaker Kevin Macdonald, opened in theaters in April.
-Original Beatles drummer Pete Best announced his retirement from music.
-The Lennon documentary Borrowed Time: Lennon’s Last Decade, from director Alan G. Parker, debuted in London in May. The film eventually opened in the U.S. in December.
-McCartney returned to the stage in the band’s hometown of Liverpool, joining Bruce Springsteen for The Boss’ show at Anfield Stadium. They played two songs together, The Beatles’ classic “Can’t Buy Me Love” and a cover of the Leiber & Stoller tune “Kansas City,” which The Beatles recorded in 1964.
Source: lakesmedianetwork.com
In the latest installment of his “You Gave Me the Answer” Q&A feature, Paul McCartney reflects on his eventful 2025 while also looking ahead to what he has in store for 2026.
As part of the feature, a fan named Sam asked the Beatles legend what he’s looking forward to the most in 2026.
“My new album!” McCartney declared. “We’re just starting to think about how to put that together.”
Sir Paul also revealed that he’s looking forward to the wide release of the Morgan Neville-directed documentary Man on the Run, “and all the activity that comes along with that.”
As previously reported, Man on the Run focuses on McCartney’s life and career following The Beatles’ breakup. The documentary focuses on Paul’s years with his post-Fab Four band Wings. Man on the Run will get its TV premiere on Amazon’s Prime Video streaming service on February 25, 2026.
The 83-year-old rock legend also said he’s excited about his long-in-the-works animated film High in the Clouds finally getting finished.
“High in the Clouds … is being made and we’ve finished up all the recordings of the vocalists in the last couple of days,” he noted. “In animation you have to do the dialogue and songs first so they can draw to it, it doesn’t work the other way round. We’re well on the way with that which is getting exciting.”
High in the Clouds is based on a 2005 children’s adventure book of the same name that McCartney co-wrote. The movie will feature the voices of McCartney, Ringo Starr, Celine Dion, Lionel Richie, Idris Elba, Jimmy Fallon, Hannah Waddingham, Himesh Patel, and other stars.
McCartney’s Favorite 2025 Highlights
The curators of McCartney’s website asked Paul what has been his “professional highlight of 2025.” McCartney pointed out, “The great thing is there’s so much suddenly happening. It’s like a log jam, loads of things have just come in.”
Among these, Paul listed his memoir, Wings: The Story of a Band on the Run, and its companion WINGS compilation. Both projects were released in November 2025.
McCartney said his favorite overall highlight of 2025 was probably the latest leg of his Got Back Tour. The 21-date North American outing kicked off on September 26 concert in Santa Barbara, California, and wound down with a November 24-25 stand in Chicago.
“The … tour was spectacular: the audiences were so warm and receptive,” Paul noted. He added, “[I]t was so successful and enjoyable for everyone involved.”
McCartney also explained that he especially enjoyed some of the more intimate shows he played in 2025. These included his three surprise clubs shows in January at the Bowery Ballroom in New York City; the Santa Barbara concert, and his November 6 performance in Nashville.
Source: Matt Friedlander/americansongwriter.com
Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band' is considered The Beatles' masterpiece. "With A Little Help From My Friends" originally had a line Ringo refused to sing. Ringo objected to it, fearing real audience reactions.
The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band is often regarded as the best album of all time. The album, released in May 1967, saw the band—John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr—take Beatlemania in a new direction, with a new influx of sonic styles and experimentation.
But it almost didn’t have one of its most important moments, all because of one line.
The line was in “With A Little Help From My Friends,” which Lennon and McCartney wrote together. “I remember giggling with John as we wrote the lines, ‘What do you see when you turn out the light? I can’t tell you but I know it’s mine,'” McCartney said in Barry Miles’s biography, Many Years From Now, per Far Out Magazine. But after Ringo scanned the first draft of the lyrics, he made a demand.
“The song ‘With A Little Help From My Friends’ was written specifically for me, but they had one line that I wouldn’t sing,” Starr said in The Beatles Anthology, the 1995 docuseries that was recently added to Disney+. And what line did Ringo refuse to sing? “It was, ‘What would you do if I sang out of tune?’ Would you stand up and throw tomatoes at me?'”
The Beatles began working on Sgt. Pepper’s in December 1966, months after wrapping up their final tour. Though they never formally announced that they were retiring from the road, the intense Beatlemania they experienced that year made them decide they’d be a studio-only band.
Starr clearly suspected that the band would eventually play live again, and he didn’t want to give the audience any ideas by singing a line about flying produce.
“I said, ‘There’s not a chance in hell am I going to sing this line,’ because we still had lots of really deep memories of the kids throwing jelly beans and toys on stage,” Starr said in Anthology (h/t Far Out), “and I thought that if we ever did get out there again, I was not going to be bombarded with tomatoes.”
Anyone who has ever heard “With A Little Help From My Friends” (or heard Joe Cocker’s version open up an episode of The Wonder Years) knows that the line goes “What would you do if I sang out of tune? Would you stand up and walk out on me?” Lennon and McCartney changed the line, resulting in a much better song—one that has endured in the decades since.
Source: Jason Brow/parade.com
Sean Ono Lennon opened up about why he's carrying on the legacy of his parents John Lennon, Yoko Ono and The Beatles
Sean said he is worried that people will forget his father and his music. Sean said he thinks he 'owes' it to his parents to do the work of protecting their legacy
Sean, 50, opened up about the legacy of dad John Lennon, mom Yoko Ono and The Beatles in a Dec. 21 interview with CBS Sunday Morning. With Yoko, 92, in her later years, Sean said he’s “technically” taken over her role as custodian of his dad’s legacy.
“But obviously the world is also the custodian of his legacy, I would say,” he added. “I'm just doing my best to help make sure that the younger generation doesn't forget about The Beatles and John and Yoko. That's how I look at it." The interviewer asked if he thought it was “even possible” that people could forget. “I do, actually," Sean admitted. "And I never did before."
The Beatles in 1967. From left: John Lennon, Ringo Starr, Paul McCartney and George Harrison.
John, alongside Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr and the late George Harrison found worldwide fame as The Beatles in the 1960s. John went solo in 1970, shortly after marrying Yoko, an artist in 1969. He released music solo and with Yoko until his murder at age 40 in 1980.
"My parents gave me so much that I think it's the least I can do to try and support their legacy in my lifetime,” Sean said. I feel like I just owe it to them. It's a personal thing." He described his parents’ legacy as “peace and love,” adding, "But it's not just peace and love. It's an attitude towards activism that is done with humor and love."
"I think the Beatles' music, and John and Yoko's legacy, is something important for the world to kind of cherish and be reminded of. So, that's how I see my job,” he said.
He added that he felt “a lot of pressure” to take over his mom’s role as maintainer of his dad’s legacy because “she set a high standard for the way that she dealt with my dad's music, and the Beatles stuff. She's always been very singular.”
John Lennon in Ann Arbor, Michigan in December 1971.
One of Sean’s ways of honoring his parents’ legacy involved their 1971 song "Happy Xmas (War Is Over),” originally a protest song against United States involvement in the Vietnam War that has become a holiday standard. He explained, "I wanted to see if I could get that feeling of maybe it sounds like you're hearing it again for the first time, or at least in a new context, in a way that you'd pay attention, as opposed to, 'Oh, there it is on the radio again.'"
He and former Pixar animator Dave Mullins made a short animated film titled War Is Over! that featured two soldiers playing chess on opposite sides of a war. Released in 2023, it won the Oscar for Best Animated Short Film in 2024.
John and Yoko’s story is also told in a new HBO documentary One to One, about the couple’s first year in New York and their 1972 Madison Square Garden concert, their only full-length concert together.
“It's my origin story, actually," Sean told CBS. "If you think about it, they came to New York, and that's the only reason I exist." Sean was born in Manhattan in 1975. He said some of the home video footage and recordings he had never seen before. “It's like getting more moments to spend with my dad. So actually, for me on a personal level, it just really means a lot,” he said.
Source: Victoria Edel/people.com
John Lennon appeared "open" and "excited" during his final interview on the day of his tragic death.
The Beatles legend was shot and killed aged 40 outside the Dakota building in New York City on December 8, 1980, by Mark David Chapman. John sustained four gunshot wounds - two to the back and two to the shoulder - at point-blank range. He was declared dead upon arrival at the hospital.
Director Steven Soderbergh has shared insights about John's last day, which involved a recording session, a photo shoot and participating in a radio interview. The interview took place with RKO Radio and featured John alongside his wife Yoko Ono.
Steven is revisiting the radio conversation in a new documentary and disclosed that John and Yoko were "both so free in their discussions" while covering topics ranging from politics to music and their future plans. "I was surprised at how open and excited they were to talk," Steven confessed to Variety.
The 62-year-old filmmaker quipped that the candidness John and Yoko displayed made it seem as though they had never taken part in an interview previously. He continued, "Everything that they said 45 years ago is not just relevant today. It's even more relevant in terms of relationships, politics, how we treat each other," reports the Mirror US.
John and Yoko participated in the RKO Radio session to publicize their album Double Fantasy, which had been released just weeks before. This was their sole radio appearance to promote the record, spanning three-and-a-half hours at the Dakota.
Hosts Dave Sholin and Laurie Kaye conducted the interview with the pair, with Dave later remembering on 20/20, "He had arrived at the Dakota somewhere around noon. The visual of John opening up the door, literally jumping up, leaping into the room and extending his arms like, 'Hey folks, I'm here!'"
He added, "He had just turned 40. As he said, this was like he was opening up a new chapter. That was the mood of the day, and he could not have been more upbeat."
Laurie also noted that John appeared to be "just happy" as he walked into the room. She described, "Happy to be alive and happy to think of the years that he had ahead of him with Sean and making music and with Yoko."
Source: Scarlett O'Toole/irishstar.com
Paul McCartney spoke about his early days with Wings on the Dec. 19 episode of NPR's Book of the Day podcast
The musician released his book Wings: The Story of a Band on the Run in November. The oral history, centered on McCartney's post-Beatles group, pulls from interviews with band members and others in their orbit
Paul McCartney is looking back on the beginnings of his post-Beatles career. The musician, 83, who published the oral history Wings: The Story of a Band on the Run this year, spoke about the beginnings of his post-Beatles band with A Martínez on the Dec. 19 episode of NPR’s Book of the Day podcast.
After the Beatles disbanded in 1970, McCartney recalled being in a “freer state of mind.” He noted how the dynamics within the group — which also included John Lennon, George Harrison and Ringo Starr — were “changing,” though the breakup still remained a “shock" to him at the time.
“I was trying to encourage us to go back and start from square one,” McCartney said on the podcast. “But in actual fact, I did that with Wings.”McCartney, his wife Linda and guitarist Denny Laine formed Wings in 1971. The band saw a rotating roster of members before their breakup in 1981, and sold over 20 million records worldwide. Some of their beloved hits included “Band on the Run,” “Silly Love Songs” and “Live and Let Die.”
“It really was like a rebirth,” McCartney said. “And then the craziest thing was my lovely wife, Linda. We would sing around the house, and I always remember thinking, ‘Wow, she's really got something. But she's completely inexperienced.'"
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“She was very cute. She could tell I wanted to put a band together. I said, ‘Do you wanna be in it?’ She sorta said, ‘Uh, yeah.’”
McCartney also remembered trying to break away from the Beatles’ image during his early days performing with Wings.
Wings performing.
“At the time, I thought I'm trying to make a new band here. I'm trying to do this new thing, and promoters would say, ‘Would you just please just do ‘Yesterday’?’ We said, ‘No. We're not doing it.””
“We did it that way in order to build a Wings repertoire,” McCartney continued, adding that after they released their 1973 album Band on the Run, “we had songs that the audience would recognize that were our songs.” “I felt easier about, ‘Oh, yeah, here's a Beatles song’. So now, I interspersed them. But I felt I had to establish the identity of Wings first.”
Wings: The Story of Band on the Run, published on Nov. 4, pulls from hours of interviews with McCartney, members of Wings and other important players in the band's orbit, like George Martin and Sean Ono Lennon.
“I’m so very happy to be transported back to the time that was Wings and relive some of our madcap adventures through this book,” McCartney previously said in a statement. “Starting from scratch after The Beatles felt crazy at times. There were some very difficult moments, and I often questioned my decision. But as we got better, I thought, ‘Okay, this is really good.’”
Source: Carly Tagen-Dye/people.com
It’s feeling very, very big picture at the moment with it all. When I really think about this weird cyclical nature, it feels like I landed on a body of work (in writing and directing Episode 9 of The Beatles Anthology) that I’m very proud of. And now I’m sort of resetting to decide where to go next….”
Even The Beatles can use as occasional tune-up: the long-anticipated documentary series The Beatles Anthology premiered on Disney Plus the week of November 26th, just in time for Thanksgiving. Episodes 1 through 8 saw footage added, and, with the help of director Peter Jackson, songs for the now four-CD set were cleaned so clearly, Beatles fans heard more than they ever had before. But the addition that fans waited for the most was the entirely new Episode 9.
The Beatles Anthology originally debuted in 1995 as a three-CD set, an eight-episode documentary series, and later, in 2000, a large coffee table book. The project took the Beatles world by storm. From never-before-seen clips of the lads in the early days as the Quarrymen to then-new footage of George Harrison, Paul McCartney, and Ringo Starr recording songs left unfinished by John Lennon, fans were allowed an inside peek of the Beatles world and the rollercoaster they rode for so many years.
In 2016, fans experienced the Beatles’ touring years with Ron Howard’s documentary The Beatles: Eight Days a Week. In 2021, marveled at Peter Jackson’s docuseries Get Back, which explored the creation of the Let it Be album and the unforgettable rooftop performance. Then came Beatles ’64 (2024), produced by Martin Scorsese and directed by David Tedeschi, showcasing Beatlemania in America.
Those films were all in addition to one more, unfinished Lennon composition Now and Then, gifted to the surviving trio by Lennon’s widow, Yoko Ono, Lennon’s widow. George recorded guitar for the song in the nineties, with Paul and Ringo finishing the tune for what became a poignant, heartfelt public release in 2023.
Which brings us to the latest treasures, a fourth CD to the Anthology and a ninth episode to the docuseries, ironically playing into Lennon’s obsession with the number “9.” The man picked to write and direct the new film was Oliver Murray.
Source: Kristin Rhodes/filmint.nu
A short documentary titled A Song Reborn, about the making of The Beatles’ 1994 reunion tune “Free as a Bird,” has debuted on the band’s official YouTube channel. The five-minute film features previously unseen studio footage of Beatles members Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr working on the track, as well as their commentary about the recording.
The footage was shot during the making of the 1990s docuseries The Beatles Anthology, a restored and expanded version of which recently premiered on Disney+.
“Free as a Bird” was built around a home demo of an unfinished song John Lennon recorded in 1977. Lennon’s widow, Yoko Ono, gave the cassette with the recording to John’s fellow Beatles, who then completed the track.
Early in the video, we hear Harrison discussing what led to the decision to record a new track using the Lennon demo.
“Different ideas have been talked about, that we can do the background music or even write a new song,” he noted. “We always had a thing between the four of us that if any one of us wasn’t in it, we weren’t gonna go out as The Beatles.”
McCartney then explained, “We had this cassette, ‘Free as a Bird.’ It was very bad quality. It was just a mono cassette, with John and the piano locked in on one track, which nobody would normally deal with. … But the song was so strong, now, [it was] like, ‘Wow,’ you know, ‘this is impossible. John’s dead, but we’re actually gonna be able to play with him again.’”
Source: Matt Friedlander/americansongwriter.com
When Jesus is speaking to the condemned in Matthew 25:43, saying things like, “I was a stranger, and you did not invite me in,” there wasn’t a caveat at the end of the verse that said, “But that’s okay, because I know you had a recording session booked that night.” Thus, when Paul McCartney opened his front door to see a man claiming to be the Messiah himself, he thought he’d better invite him in for a cup of tea. (And a few questions.)
The strange encounter took place in the late winter of 1967, when The Beatles were recording Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. As McCartney recalled in Barry Miles’ Many Years From Now, he used to answer anyone who rang at his front gate. “If they were boring, I would say, ‘Sorry, no,’ and they generally went away. This guy said, ‘I’m Jesus Christ.’ I said, ‘Oop,’ slightly shocked. I said, ‘Well, you’d better come in then.’”
McCartney continued, “I thought, ‘Well, it probably isn’t. But if he is, I’m not going to be the one to turn him away. So, I gave him a cup of tea, and we just chatted.” The musician told his visitor that he had a recording session booked that night, adding, “If you promise to be very quiet and just sit in a corner, you can come.” That was an offer even Jesus couldn’t refuse.
Paul McCartney Facilitated a Full Circle “Jesus” Moment for the Beatles
The recording session at Regent Sound Studios in February 1967 wasn’t the first run-in The Beatles had with Jesus Christ—at least, in a public setting, anyway. The band had already been the subject of great controversy the previous year after John Lennon infamously said that The Beatles were “more popular than Jesus.” To be fair, the sentiment was valid, albeit hyperbolic. The Beatles were the biggest band in the world at the time. Still, conservative Christian critics of the American South took offense, sparking a wave of public burnings of Beatles records.
Source: Melanie Davis/americansongwriter.com
