Sir Paul McCartney has named John Lennon’s Imagine as one of the songs that mean the most to him.

Sir Paul chose the song as his final entry for Tracks of My Years on Radio 2, a feature in which a celebrity selects pieces of music that have soundtracked different periods of their lives.  Imagine was released in 1971, a year after the Beatles officially split.

“It’s just such classic by John. It was after we split up, so I wasn’t with him when he wrote it. It’s just one of those songs, when you hear it for the first time, you know it’s a killer. And I still love looking at footage of him singing it.

“It’s an anthem, the kind of thing everyone can relate to. It just sums a lot of things up, and it’s got to be one of John’s best songs,” Sir Paul has said.  Lennon and Sir Paul were estranged following the band’s break-up but were reconciled before Lennon’s death in 1980.

At the Glastonbury Festival in 2022, Sir Paul sang a “virtual” duet of I’ve Got a Feeling with Lennon, using Lennon’s performance from the 1969 Apple rooftop concert.  Other songs he has chosen for Tracks of My Years, part of Vernon Kay’s morning show on Radio 2, include That’ll Be the Day by Buddy Holly, Don’t You Want Me by the Human League and Mr Tambourine Man by Bob Dylan.

Dylan is one of Sir Paul’s heroes, and he told Kay that he had been starstruck to meet him at a US festival in 2016. “One of our girls said, ‘Bob Dylan wants to see you,’” he recalled. “We had met up in the ’60s. I came in to see him and was like, wow. It was just him and me in this massive big tent backstage, and he was very complimentary.

Source: telegraph.co.uk/Anita Singh

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When you’re as big a band as The Beatles, it’s pretty much impossible to escape the impact of your career-defining hits. These guys have quite a few, but here are some of those big ones that we’d rather not get stuck in our heads again.
“Here Comes The Sun”

Ah, yes, the song George Harrison wrote when he needed a break from The Beatles and business. While “Here Comes The Sun” is one of the Fab Four’s most celebrated tunes, it’s played so much that it’s kind of a challenge not to be a little sick of the thing.
“I Wanna Hold Your Hand”

Yeah, we get it. John Lennon and Paul McCartney really, really wanted to hold somebody’s hand. But gosh darn it, can’t they sing about anything else?

This song is fun, but there’s only so much doo-wop one person can take in one go. To be fair, though, “I Wanna Hold Your Hand” was the first Beatles song to give the group a No. 1 hit in the States. No wonder it gets played so much.

“‘From Me To You’ was released – a flop in America,” Paul McCartney even said of that time in the Anthology. “‘She Loves You’ – a big hit in England, big number one in England – a flop in the USA. Nothing until ‘I Want To Hold Your Hand’.”
“All You Need Is Love”

This is easily one of the most repetitive songs in The Beatles’ entire catalog. It’s hard not to agree with the message behind “All You Need Is Love”, but man, sometimes hearing “Love is all you need” at the end over and over again can be a little overkill.
“Yesterday”

There’s something both equally special and antagonizing about this song, which appears on The Beatles’ Help! album. Paul McCartney penned this hit, and it’s often thought to be one of his best songs. When it comes to having a love-hate relationship with “Yesterday”, John Lennon put it perfectly.

When you’re as big a band as The Beatles, it’s pretty much impossible to escape the impact of your career-defining hits. These guys have quite a few, but here are some of those big ones that we’d rather not get stuck in our heads again.
“Here Comes The Sun”

Ah, yes, the song George Harrison wrote when he needed a break from The Beatles and business. While “Here Comes The Sun” is one of the Fab Four’s most celebrated tunes, it’s played so much that it’s kind of a challenge not to be a little sick of the thing.
“I Wanna Hold Your Hand”

Yeah, we get it. John Lennon and Paul McCartney really, really wanted to hold somebody’s hand. But gosh darn it, can’t they sing about anything else?

This song is fun, but there’s only so much doo-wop one person can take in one go. To be fair, though, “I Wanna Hold Your Hand” was the first Beatles song to give the group a No. 1 hit in the States. No wonder it gets played so much.

“‘From Me To You’ was released – a flop in America,” Paul McCartney even said of that time in the Anthology. “‘She Loves You’ – a big hit in England, big number one in England – a flop in the USA. Nothing until ‘I Want To Hold Your Hand’.”
“All You Need Is Love”

Source: americansongwriter.com/Kat Caudill

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Sir Paul McCartney says one of his new songs was inspired by people suffering from “hardship” and admitted even he sometimes has to fight feeling ‘depressed”. ‌

The Beatles legend, 83, releases his first album in almost five years later this month called The Boys of Dungeon Lane. Amongst the 14 tracks is the song Life Can Be Hard, written around the covid pandemic.  ‌

Reflecting on the times people in Britain were going through then and their troubles now, Paul said: “There's a lot of hardship for many people - some people might have a health issue, a financial issue, whatever. Everyone's got something, but we've got to beat our way through those hardships.”

He said the song was about crawling out of a crisis or falling back in love with the world. Speaking in Mojo magazine, he added: “It beats the alternative, you know? The alternative is your life turns sour, and I don’t want that to happen. I don't want to get depressed, so I fight it and think, Come on, you've got a lot of good stuff going on. Concentrate on that. It's not always easy - in fact, it's never easy.”

Another track on the album is Come To Us which was released as a single last week and sees Paul and fellow Beatle Ringo Starr duet together for the first time. It is their love song to growing up in Liverpool. But Sir Paul insists the Fab Four did not come from identical backgrounds at all.  ‌

He explained: “Ringo was the one who came from most nothing in the Beatles. John was the poshest, and me and George were sort of in the middle from Speke, but Ringo was from the Dingle, and that was well hard!”

Paul says his family roots have helped him stay grounded both now and when he was in the Beatles, describing them as “a loving family” and “very smart working class people”.

Paul’s upcoming album has been produced by Andrew Watt, who has also made albums with the Rolling Stones, including their new one which is due to be released later this Summer. But it is unlikely Sir Paul’s album will sound anything like the work of the Stones. Paul explained: "If you're working with the Stones, they've got the Stones sound. It's kind of the opposite with me - we're trying not to do that. The way we approached this album was, We've done that before. Let's do it different."

Source: mirror.co.uk/Mark Jefferies

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The London townhouse where the Beatles recorded Let It Be, and, on the rooftop, performed their last concert, will open to the public next year as a museum. Among the promised attractions are a recreation of the Let It Be studio, rotating exhibitions, and a bevy of archival material spread across seven stories. Paul McCartney, who is preparing to release his album The Boys of Dungeon Lane this month, recently returned to the venue. “It was such a trip,” he said in a press release. “There are so many special memories within the walls, not to mention the rooftop. The team have put together some really impressive plans and I’m excited for people to see it when it’s ready.”

Though several unlicensed Beatles archives exist around the United Kingdom—including in the band’s Liverpool hometown—the new one, formally named The Beatles at 3 Savile Row, is the first to be officially ordained by the band and its label, Apple Corps. The building, in London’s Mayfair district, is already a tourist destination, Tom Greene, the label’s CEO, added in the press release. “Every single day, fans are taking pictures of the outside of 3 Savile Row—but next year they can go in and explore all seven floors of the iconic building, including the rooftop where even the railings remain the same from that famous day in 1969,” he said.

Source: pitchfork.com/Jazz Monroe

As The Beatles’ career progressed, the once innocuous band became politically, if not culturally, aware. To varying degrees, The Beatles started to take on more serious topics and develop a worldview that wasn’t always popular. John Lennon was one of the band’s strongest voices in that department.

Towards the end of the band’s tenure and into his solo career, Lennon protested many things, speaking out against world leaders, religion, and war. That change of heart and attitude eventually led him to return one of the most prestigious awards given to an English musician: an OBE, a.k.a Officer of the Order of the British Empire.

Not many people return their OBE once they get it. To many English artists, earning that mark of approval from the monarchy is something to celebrate. At one point, Lennon also thought so.

“I had no problem with it—none of us had any problems with it in the beginning,” Lennon once said. “We all thought it was really thrilling. We’re going to meet the Queen, and she’s going to give us a badge. I thought, ‘This is cool!’” 

But as time went on and Lennon’s view of England and the monarchy started to turn sour, that OBE rested heavily on his mind. He reportedly felt pretty passionate about returning it to the monarchy. “I must get rid of it,” he once said.

The reason Lennon returned his OBE will come as no surprise to anyone who has listened to his solo music. Lennon didn’t want to be associated with a country involved in war and violence.

Source: americansongwriter.com/Alex Hopper

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As The Beatles’ career progressed, the once innocuous band became politically, if not culturally, aware. To varying degrees, The Beatles started to take on more serious topics and develop a worldview that wasn’t always popular. John Lennon was one of the band’s strongest voices in that department.

 Towards the end of the band’s tenure and into his solo career, Lennon protested many things, speaking out against world leaders, religion, and war. That change of heart and attitude eventually led him to return one of the most prestigious awards given to an English musician: an OBE, a.k.a Officer of the Order of the British Empire.  

Not many people return their OBE once they get it. To many English artists, earning that mark of approval from the monarchy is something to celebrate. At one point, Lennon also thought so.

“I had no problem with it—none of us had any problems with it in the beginning,” Lennon once said. “We all thought it was really thrilling. We’re going to meet the Queen, and she’s going to give us a badge. I thought, ‘This is cool!’”

But as time went on and Lennon’s view of England and the monarchy started to turn sour, that OBE rested heavily on his mind. He reportedly felt pretty passionate about returning it to the monarchy. “I must get rid of it,” he once said.
Why John Lennon Returned His OBE

The reason Lennon returned his OBE will come as no surprise to anyone who has listened to his solo music. Lennon didn’t want to be associated with a country involved in war and violence.

“[I’m returning the OBE] as a protest against violence and war, especially Britain’s involvement in Biafra, which most of the British public are unaware of,” Lennon once said. “I began being ashamed of being British, and I’m a patriotic nationalist. That’s the truth, Yoko can vouch for that.”

Source: americansongwriter.com/Alex Hopper

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