John Lennon was just 40-years-old when he was murdered outside the Dakota in New York City.

 The Beatles' singer-songwriter was shot twice in the back and twice in the shoulder by Mark David Chapman as he returned to the building with Yoko Ono following a recording session. John was rushed to hospital, but was sadly pronounced dead on arrival.

In the months that followed his death, Beatles expert David Stark met with John's aunt, Mimi Smith. John lived with his aunt for most of his childhood and the pair remained close throughout his life, with John even calling Mimi every week until his death.

Recalling his meeting with Mimi, Stark exclusively told The Mirror US, "I really got on with her." He explained how they'd been introduced by a mutual friend who was visiting Mimi at the time.   Stark said, "This American girl said, 'Come down and meet Mimi and maybe try and cheer her up', because that was in the summer of '81 and John being killed in December 1980s."

The Beatles expert explained how he had never met Mimi before traveling to meet her for a weekend in 1981. "I didn't stay with her, but I was in the bungalow over the weekend and just chatting," he explained.

Stark continued, "I just think it was like therapy for her just to talk really. And she kind of came out of herself a bit."

Source: themirror.com/Scarlett O'Toole

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At times while in The Beatles, George Harrison had to fight to make his voice heard. With John Lennon and Paul McCartney assuming creative control of the band as their primary songwriters, George's writing did not always take centre stage.

The Wavertree-born star had written some songs that The Beatles recorded on their early records - he was given a quota of compositions for each album. When the band retired from touring in 1966 and focused on recording innovative music in the studio, George grew frustrated with the supporting role he had to play on 'Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band' and 'The White Album'.‌

This came to a head in January 1969, as The Beatles began work on what would become their final album 'Let it Be'. George walked out of the band temporarily, fed up with the mood and the way he was being treated.  The bad mood that marked the recording of 'Let it Be' had its roots in the 1968 sessions for 'The White Album', which had been notoriously tempestuous. Ringo Starr departed the band for a period during the recording of 'Back in the USSR' and it seems George was also affected by that time.

The sessions for 'The White Album' came after The Beatles' retreat in India. George had led the band's interest in the culture of India and meditation. However the trip to Asia did not end well - the band had a fall out with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, who they had studied under. Ringo and Paul left early anyway, heading back to England to focus on their new business interests at Apple Corps.

John and George then left after hearing accusations about the Maharishi relating to a female member of the party. George stayed in India rather than going home with John, instead he went to meet his mentor in Chennai.

Source: liverpoolecho.co.uk/Dan Haygarth

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If you are a man, you know what it’s like to have a conversation at a set of urinals. It’s awkward, weird, and most men seemingly try to avoid it, as the mutual understanding is that you don’t talk to another person when you’re using the restroom. However, that rule has to be broken every so often, and Steven Tyler broke it when he met Paul McCartney for the very first time.

Everybody knows Steven Tyler as a free-spirited musician who is no stranger to ambitious and intense rock and roll antics. As we all know, he is quite the animated character. That being said, it isn’t all that surprising to learn that Steven Tyler first met Paul McCartney during a stop in the restroom at a urinal. Frankly, it is arguably the perfect setting for this type of interaction. It’s memorable, comical, and just downright hilarious. Regardless, here is how Steven Tyler first met Paul McCartney at a urinal.

While at the Hammersmith Odeon theater in London, Steven Tyler needed to do what everybody needs to do: Use the restroom. However, what was seemingly intended to be a routine visit turned into a once-in-a-lifetime interaction. And Steve Tyler recollected the one-of-a-kind moment in an exclusive interview with Blabbermouth in 2007.

“My first meeting with Paul McCartney was certainly memorable,” Steven Tyler told the publication. “I was in a backstage urinal at the Hammersmith Odeon. McCartney walked in, started doing what people do in urinals. For the record, I did not check his size out.”

Source: americansongwriter.com/Peter Burditt

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Fans of the legendary musician Sir Paul McCartney are still hoping his "sequel" to a Beatles album will be released.

Though there is no indication his follow-up to one of the Fab Four's biggest records will receive an official release, fans remain hopeful of having it out there for people to listen to.

Return to Pepperland was the name given to an unfinished recording project by McCartney and American record producer Phil Ramone. It was produced as a tribute to the 20th anniversary of the 1967 Beatles album Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.

A post to the r/PaulMcCartney Reddit page has seen fans share their reasons for the album not yet releasing, as some suggest it may never be published. Those who have heard the album on a bootleg tape, however, say it is one of McCartney's best.

One user who has heard the release called it a "great album" with a "fantastic" title track that is in need of an official release.

The album itself is one of McCartney's most bootlegged albums, meaning dedicated fans have pieced together official recording tapes to assemble what could have been the tracklist to his unreleased follow-up to Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.

While you can listen to Return to Pepperland, McCartney's proposed follow-up to the psychedelic classic which defined The Beatles' image in the mid-1960s, fans are holding out hope for an official release.

One fan asked: "Why hasn't Return to Pepperland been released? It’s a great album and the title song is fantastic. Cuts have been released but not the whole album. So why not?"

A multitude of reasons could be given for why the album has not yet released, with recordings taking place through the 1980s. One fan suggested there are "albums worth" of material in McCartney's archive which may never see the light of day.

They wrote: "Basically, I don't think this is really something we fans can answer. He took 50 years to release One Hand Clapping as an album. Why?

Source: express.co.uk/Ewan Gleadow

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About 16 months after the process of recording it began, Let It Be trickled into record stores. It arrived in May 1970, 55 years ago this month. By that time, Beatles fans had started to mourn the fact that the four men’s professional relationship had ruptured.

Anniversaries of the release dates of other Fab Four albums are generally a cause for celebration and reflection. With Let It Be, maybe it’s only the reflection part, as we all try to get a handle on this legacy of this star-crossed project.

As had been the case with several Beatles’ projects in the second half of their recording career, Let It Be, or Get Back, as it was also known for a while, belonged to Paul McCartney. The Beatles would create a new album from scratch, film a documentary about that process, and then close the whole thing out with a live performance of the fresh songs.

McCartney saw it as a way of pulling the band back together after The White Album had progressed at times like it was four separate solo albums. He misjudged the growing disenchantment of John Lennon and George Harrison. The dour environment, with blinding lights pouring down on the band in the cold studio, didn’t help tempers much.

Peter Jackson’s Get Back documentary, released four years ago, somewhat rebutted the notion that the process was a joyless slog. But that doesn’t change the fact that George Harrison briefly quit the band after a studio dustup with McCartney. Or that Lennon dressed down McCartney for his overbearing behavior when the cameras weren’t looking.

Perhaps the Let It Be album could have come out stronger had The Beatles shown interest in completing it. But they were so happy to be done with it after the rooftop concert that they quickly moved on to the Abbey Road album.

Source: americansongwriter.com/Jim Beviglia

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Paul McCartney said John Lennon always thought he was up to no good. Lennon once accused McCartney of sabotaging his songs.

John Lennon and Paul McCartney began to butt heads in the latter half of the 1960s. While they had worked closely together in the early years of The Beatles, their collaborative process grew increasingly fraught. Lennon even went so far as to accuse McCartney of trying to sabotage some of his songs. He shared how he thought McCartney did it.
John Lennon said Paul McCartney subconsciously ruined songs

Lennon saw “Across the Universe” as one of his best songs ever. He didn’t like the band’s recording of it, though. He blamed McCartney for this.

“I think subconsciously sometimes we — I say ‘we,’ though I think Paul did it more than the rest of us; Paul would … sort of subconsciously try and destroy a great song,” Lennon said, per the book All We Are Saying: The Last Major Interview With John Lennon and Yoko Ono by David Sheff, adding, “He tried to subconsciously destroy my songs, meaning that we’d play experimental games with my great pieces like ‘Strawberry Fields’ — which I always felt was badly recorded.”

He believed McCartney spent more time and effort on his own songs and allowed Lennon’s to fall to the wayside.

“Usually we’d spend hours doing little detailed cleaning-ups of Paul’s songs; when it came to mine, especially if it was a great song like ‘Strawberry Fields’ or ‘Across the Universe,’ somehow this atmosphere of looseness and casualness and experimentation would creep in,” he said. “Subconscious sabotage. He’ll deny it, ‘cause he’s got a bland face and he’ll say the sabotage doesn’t exist. But this is the kind of thing I’m talking about, where I was always seeing what was going on.”

He acknowledged that people might view him as paranoid, but he believed he was presenting the “absolute truth.”

Source: cheatsheet.com/Emma McKee

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