No one is as acutely aware of how fame can create wild, true rumors about someone quite like a fellow rock star. Yet, even these iconic musicians sometimes buy into the myths and rumors about their contemporaries. John Lennon and Frank Zappa certainly had plenty of preconceptions about the other, all of which they (mostly) disproved during their first fateful meeting in a hotel apartment in 1971.

Lennon met Zappa by tagging along with Village Voice columnist and broadcaster Howard Smith, who previously told the ex-Beatle he was interviewing Zappa later that day. The “Imagine” singer told Smith how much he revered Zappa, saying, “He’s at least trying to do something different with the form,” per Barry Miles’ Zappa: A Biography.

“I’m very impressed by the kind of discipline he can bring to rock that nobody else can seem to bring to it,” Lennon told Smith. However, not even Zappa’s impressive rock ‘n’ roll discipline was enough to dispel some of the rumors Lennon believed about him.
John Lennon and Frank Zappa Proved Each Other Wrong Simultaneously

In Barry Miles’ biography of Frank Zappa, he described the Mothers of Invention bandleader as “absolutely deadpan” when he opened his hotel-apartment door and saw John Lennon standing in the hallway with Howard Smith. Speaking of the experience with Smith on his radio show later that day, Lennon said, “I don’t know why I should have believed it because I should know better, having had all that guff written about me.”

Source: americansongwriter.com/Melanie Davis

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Paul McCartneyneeds no introduction—but he deserves one anyway.

Born in Liverpool in 1942, McCartney went from a working-class kid who traded his father's trumpet for a guitar to one half of the most successful songwriting partnership in music history. (No big deal or anything.) As a founding member of The Beatles, he helped reshape popular music, culture and an entire generation. But here's the thing about Paul McCartney—his story didn't end when The Beatles broke up in 1970. In fact, you could say that's when he really got started!

The "Live and Let Die" singer formed Wings, launched his solo career, won 19 Grammys, was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II—and that's not all. At the tender age of 72, he scored a top-five hit with Rihannaand Kanye Weston "FourFiveSeconds" and broke the record for the longest gap between Billboard top-ten singles in history—29 years, if you're curious!

In November 2025, he closed out his Got Back tour—playing nearly three-hour shows to sold-out stadiums at 83 years old. He's lost bandmates, buried the love of his life and weathered one of the most public breakups in music history. And through it all, he's never stopped creating, never stopped performing and never stopped believing that the best is yet to come. If that's not the definition of an eternal optimist, I don't know what is—and that's why Paul McCartney is today's quote of the day.

Source: yahoo.com/Colleen Broomall

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There are a handful of Beatles tunes that feature one or some of the band’s members. “Within You Without You” is one such song that features only one Beatle: George Harrison. Released on Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band in 1967, this song doesn’t feature the other three members of The Beatles. But it does feature some noteworthy session talent. And they all gathered at Abbey Road Studios on this day, March 15, to record this underrated classic.

“Within You Without You” was written by George Harrison, at the time a rare contribution from the guitarist. Traditionally, members Paul McCartney and John Lennon were the main songwriters of the group. And it was clear that the band had been sleeping on Harrison’s talents.

“Within You Without You” was Harrison’s second composition that was in the Indian classical style. It was something that he had become inspired by following a 1966 stay in India to learn sitar from Ravi Shankar. The song was recorded at EMI’s Abbey Road Studio 2 in London without the other Beatles. But Harrison didn’t record it alone.

You’ll hear quite a bit of talent on this psychedelic raga rock classic. Harrison takes on the lead vocals, swarmandal (an Indian harp), sitar, tambura (a lute-like instrument), and acoustic guitar.

Anna Joshi and Amrit Gajjar play the dilruba (an Indian bowed instrument) and Buddhadev Kansara and Neil Aspinall (a childhood friend of Harrison who would later head Apple Corps.) play the tambura. Natwar Soni can be heard on the tabla (Indian hand drums) as well. The session musicians just keep coming, including Reginald Kilbey, Allen Ford, and Peter Beavan on cello. A number of violinists also contributed to the track, including Jack Greene, Jack Rothstein, Ralph Elman, David Wolfsthal, Julien Gaillard, Paul Scherman, Erich Gruenberg , and Alan Loveday.

Source: americansongwriter.com/Em Casalena

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The return of our Behind the Curtain column continues with another anecdote from longtime music journalist and writer Steve Rosen — recalling his encounters with a big-time meet-up with George Harrison at Warner Bros. Records, circa 1974.

The day was a California postcard. A startling and fiery sun perched high above in a crystal blue sky, blazed down in diamonds of promise. It was an essential day, a meteorological marvel meant to be stored away for future reference. A day by which all other days would be measured.

“Dude,” a friend would ask the following week, “was last Tuesday the best day ever?”

You tell him it was — a sui generis day like no other. Even if the day itself was all you’d been given, that would have been gift enough. But the weather was merely an underscoring for the occasion, a gilded and golden opportunity to spend an hour with George Harrison. You would forget how to breathe before you forgot this. Simply saying the words out loud was enough to render you stupid all over again because the event was cloaked in so much magic and improbability. You muttered the words to yourself in a hushed and reverential whisper: “I hung out with a Beatle.”

Source: rockcellarmagazine.com/Steve Rosen

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In February of 1968, the Beatles gathered in EMI Studios to shoot a pair of videos for their song “Lady Madonna,” their first single of that year.

Back then, of course, they weren’t called “music videos,” but instead “promotional films.” And as was often the case with the Beatles, the original plan turned into something else.

At first, the idea was to film the band miming to “Lady Madonna,” but ultimately the Beatles decided to use the studio time to record an entirely different song, “Hey Bulldog.” This is why, if you pay close attention to the video, you’ll notice the images of the band playing and singing does not match up with the lyrics and instrumentation of “Lady Madonna.”

“The group were on a roll as far as recording was concerned and didn’t want to lose a day,” film producer Denis O’Dell recalled in his book At the Apple’s Core: The Beatles From the Inside. “Rather than mime for the promo film, they asked us instead to film them recording a new song they were working on at the time. The song, a forceful rock number written predominantly by John, was called ‘Hey Bulldog,’ and that’s the song that audiences saw in the clip. We tried to edit the footage so that it echoed the rhythm of ‘Lady Madonna’ (which wasn’t too difficult since the songs have roughly similar tempos), but if you’ve ever wondered why that promo isn’t lip-synched now you know!”

There were actually two films made, similar but with slightly different clips. In the second film below, you’ll notice a section devoted to, of all things, George Harrison eating a plate of beans.

Source: aol.com/Allison Rapp

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Nowadays, a studio-only artist is pretty much unheard of. It’s a shock when a musician decides not to perform live anymore, but that career trajectory was more common in decades past. The most famous outfit to ever do this was The Beatles. The band gave up life on the road long before they actually decided to split up. This decision was the result of many factors, but notably, a disastrous final tour that was destined to fail before they even played the first date. From dictators to fiery protests, one particular tour spelled the end of The Beatles’ career as a live band.

 Before The Beatles’ final tour, the band had already racked up a fair amount of controversy. Between John Lennon’s “More popular than Jesus” comments and an angry encounter with President Marcos from the Philippines, the band wasn’t situated to have a smooth run when they entered into their 1966 U.S. tour.

A trip to the Philippines prior to the tour’s start set the band up for disaster. The Beatles were supposed to meet Marcos’ wife but opted to take a day off instead. This angered the leader and ultimately sparked a mob outside the show they were set to play that day. Though they delivered a public apology, it didn’t erase the bad press.

“He tried to kill us, President Marcos,” George Harrison once said years later, clearly still reeling from the experience.

Source: americansongwriter.com/Alex Hopper

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