Beatles News
It's been 45 years since John Lennon was shot and killed outside his New York City apartment, but Beatles bandmate Paul McCartney still checks in on his widow, Yoko Ono, a source tells Closer.
"It's no secret Paul and Yoko weren't fans of each other all those years ago, but they have a great understanding of each other these days and a genuine friendship," reveals the source. "Growing older has mellowed them both and time has healed a lot of the wounds."
McCartney, 84, opened up about his reconciliation with Ono, 93, to Rolling Stone in 2013. "I thought, 'If John loved her, there's got to be something. He's not stupid,'" he recalled. "It's like, what are you going to do? Are you going to hold a grudge you never really had?"
"Paul has also gone out of his way to defend Yoko in recent years and that's been very appreciated by her," adds the source. "They have both suffered a lot of loss over the years and they are able to give each some comfort, sharing old memories and stories and reminiscing about the times they shared with John."
McCartney famously fell out with Lennon when the Beatles broke up in 1970, but the pair were able to patch things up in the years prior to the "Imagine" singer's murder at age 40 in 1980.
Source: yahoo.com/Kaitlyn Monteiro
Sir Paul McCartney, 84, has lived a life that's full of music, from listening to his father James play dancehall songs on the piano as a child, to joining a skiffle group with John Lennon as a teenager, to becoming the biggest band of all time with The Beatles. Then, he forged a solo career as a member of Wings and under his own name that has yielded more number-one hits than any other songwriter.
McCartney's music has been a cornerstone of pop culture for over 60 years, but what are the songs that formed his musical taste? Paul recently revealed the ten songs that have "soundtracked my life" to the BBC's Vernon Kay on his show Tracks Of My Years, which premieres on May 25 on BBC Sounds and iPlayer.
The full episode has since aired, revealing the stories behind each of Paul's 10 song choices.
Paul McCartney reveals 10 songs that soundtracked his life:
10. John Lennon – "Imagine"
09. The Beach Boys – "God Only Knows"
08. Bob Dylan – "Tambourine Man"
07. Prince – "Kiss"
06. The Human League – "Don't You Want Me"
05. The Kinks – "You Really Got Me"
04. Elvis -… pic.twitter.com/rUQyERDQnA
Counting down his top 10 picks
John Lennon – "Imagine"
In 1971, a year after the breakup of The Beatles, John Lennon released what would become his signature song, a wistful (and slightly acerbic) plea for humanity to envision a world without religion, war, or possessions, and to live in harmony. "When we came to not writing together, I think it was difficult for both of us," McCartney once said of Lennon. "But, y'know, he still did 'Imagine.' He still did one of his best things ever."
McCartney has routinely played songs written primarily by Lennon in concert, including "A Day in the Life," "Give Peace a Chance," and "Help!", but he won't touch "Imagine."
Source: yahoo.com/Tod Perry
The Beatles reshaped the course of popular music during their iconic run together. Decades after their split, they remain one of the most celebrated bands in history.
Billboard ranked The Beatles No. 1 on its list of the 50 greatest rock bands of all time. The Rolling Stones came in at No. 2, followed by Led Zeppelin at No. 3.
The publication credited the Fab Four’s seven-year run. That stretch produced 20 Hot 100 No. 1 hits and 12 classic albums. According to Billboard, rock as we know it may not exist without the band’s influence.
On August 20, 1969, Paul McCartney, John Lennon, George Harrison and Ringo Starr gathered in a recording studio for the last time. They met inside EMI Studios at 3 Abbey Road in London. No new music was actually recorded that day.
According to Ultimate Classic Rock, the band spent the day’s first part mixing “I Want You (She’s So Heavy).” The session lasted three and a half hours. The details came from Mark Lewisohn’s official Abbey Road session notes. Lennon reportedly wanted the song to end abruptly rather than fade out.
The edit was made in a silent pause, right after the lyric “She’s so…” Afterward, the four bandmates spent roughly seven hours discussing the album’s song order.
Source: aol.com/Paolo Songco
Paul Mescal as Paul McCartney singing in the Cavern Club.
There are a bunch of paparazzi photos circulating the internet of the four actors playing The Beatles in Sam Mendes' The Beatles – A Four-Film Cinematic Event, which is still quite a way away from hitting movie screens in 2028. The movies have been filming for a few months now (and are expected to be filming for quite a few more), and recently the faux Fab Four–Harris Dickinson as John Lennon, Paul Mescal as Paul McCartney, Joseph Quinn as George Harrison, and Barry Keoghan as Ringo Starr were snapped by photogs while filming the iconic Abbey Road cover photoshoot. The internet's response to how they look has been harsh.
Harris Dickinson as John Lennon, singing into a microphone with long hair and glasses. 'They Look Absolutely Ridiculous'
The cover of Abbey Road is one of the most iconic album covers of all time, so of course it had to be a part of the movie. In the photo, the four Beatles are crossing the street at a zebra crossing. Lennon is leading the way with a bushy beard and wearing a white suit; Starr follows him in a black suit. Then comes McCartney in a grey suit and no shoes, and trailing behind is Harrison in all denim. I'm not going to get into the fan lore that played into the "Paul is dead" theory, but everyone knows the photo.
In the paparazzi photo, the actors are dressed as The Beatles were that day, and, to be honest, they do look pretty ridiculous. Fans were quick to take to Reddit and talk smack:
"Every in-costume/makeup photo I see from these films just looks worse and worse." - u/Long_Emergency6122
"They look ridiculous." - u/ShameSuperb7099
"Looks like an SNL skit" - u/AZmoneyfolder
"John and George look so bad." - u/shlict
Source: yahoo.com/Hugh Scott
A 1969 song by The Beatles never reached No. 1 or even charted as a single when it was first released, but it has now been recognized among the greatest classic rock songs that never topped the charts.
In a July 15, 2026 ranking, Collider placed "Here Comes the Sun" at No. 2 on its list of "The 10 Greatest Classic Rock Songs That Were Never No. 1 Hits, Ranked." The song was written and sung by George Harrison and appeared on The Beatles' 1969 album Abbey Road.
The reason behind its unusual chart history is simple. During its original release period, "Here Comes the Sun" was intended as an album track rather than a single. Because The Beatles did not release "Here Comes the Sun" as a single in 1969, it did not have the opportunity to compete for a position on the singles chart at the time, per Collider.
However, that did not stop it from becoming one of the best-known songs in The Beatles' catalog. Collider's ranking puts the Harrison composition ahead of many other famous rock songs that also missed the top spot.
"Here Comes the Sun" came during a difficult period for Harrison and The Beatles.
Source: yahoo.com/Madz Dizon
Ringo Starr showed off his eye-catching long locks as he enjoyed dinner with his Bond Girl wife Barbara Bach in Malibu on Tuesday.
The Beatles icon, 86, was worlds away from his look as a member of the iconic boyband as he headed to Tra di No with his wife of 45 years and a group of friends.
The outing came 64 years to the day after Ringo became a member of The Beatles, with himself, John Lennon, George Harrison and Paul McCartney forming the famous foursome, that would go on to be one of the most iconic bands of all time.
Barbara, 79, a former Bond Girl who starred in The Spy Who Loved Me, was arm-in-arm with her husband as she arrived at the restaurant dressed in a cream jacket and purple trousers.
The couple married in 1981 after meeting on the set of Caveman the year before, and divide their time between homes in London, Los Angeles and Monte Carlo.
Barbara had already found fame as KGB agent Anya Amasova – not too subtly referred to as Agent Triple X – in the tenth James Bond movie which centred on a plan by a megalomaniac to destroy the world and create a new one under the sea.
Source: dailymail.com/Laura Fox
During the Beatles’ early hit-making years, John Lennon and Paul McCartney took most of the plaudits for their songwriting. George Harrison was slower to find his voice as a writer, and when he wrote his first solo composition for the Beatles, he was sick in bed. Even then, he wasn’t convinced what he had written could even be considered a song.
By the time the Beatles landed in Bournemouth, on England’s south coast, for a six-show residency at the Gaumont in August 1963, their debut album, Please Please Me, was already fueling the first ripples of Beatlemania. Harrison had come away from those sessions without a songwriting credit, despite handling lead vocals on “Chains” and “Do You Want to Know a Secret.”
Harrison had already co-written songs with fellow Beatles, including “In Spite of All the Danger” with Paul McCartney and “Cry for a Shadow” with John Lennon, but “Don’t Bother Me” was different. This was his first Beatles song written entirely by himself.
George Harrison of English rock and pop group The Beatles plays his 1963 Rickenbacker 360/12 guitar on stage during rehearsals for the ABC Television music television show 'Thank Your Lucky Stars' Summer Spin at Teddington Studios in London on 11th July 1964.
Harrison wrote it while he was sick in bed in Bournemouth. It would appear on the Beatles’ second album, With the Beatles, released in November 1963. But its creator wasn’t exactly impressed with his first solo effort.
“I don’t think it’s a particularly good song,” he once confessed in his autobiography, I Me Mine.
Source: guitarplayer.com/Phil Weller
Anna Sawai fumbled her first audition. She was 11, living in Tokyo after her family bounced from New Zealand to Hong Kong to the Philippines. Her mother, Kaoru, found a listing for a stage production of Annie in Tokyo just one month after they arrived. She bombed. But she filled the next year with dance and singing lessons, working tirelessly with her mother. And she nailed her second audition, going on to play the title role in a live Nippon Television broadcast. "It was my first experience where I learned, if you want something, you really have to put your head in the game. You have to go straight through and commit to it," Sawai, 34, tells me during a video call from her home in Tokyo.
Hard work never scared Sawai. Her early roles demanded a lot from her. In 2009, she joined her first Hollywood production, James McTeigue's Ninja Assassin, as a ninja, a physically strenuous role. She knew at the time that she wanted to pursue acting, but her team, which she says was better positioned in the music industry, had other plans. She fell into the J-pop world, joining a buzzy girl group called Faky, which prevented her from acting until her contract was lifted. Nearly a decade later, in 2018, she finally left the group and landed a role in the crime drama Giri/Haji, a critical success that paved the way for another supporting role in Apple TV+'s historical drama Pachinko. Her real breakthrough finally arrived in 2024 with ShÅgun, the acclaimed FX drama adaptation set in 17th-century Japan. "I was telling my agents that I wanted to do something that was going to challenge me and scare me," she says. Her turn as the highborn Toda Mariko earned her her first Emmy for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series. This fearlessness has been vital to her evolution, especially as she plunges into the cinematic chapter of her career.
Source: yahoo.com
While Beatles fans dreamed of the group reuniting in the 1970s, David Bowie once revealed that he nearly managed to get John Lennon and Paul McCartney back together in 1974 to form a supergroup with him.
It was the year Bowie moved to New York City, just three years after Lennon himself had emigrated there. Shortly after Bowie’s arrival, he met Lennon at a party hosted by Elizabeth Taylor. Of all the Beatles, Lennon was his favorite.
“He was one of the major influences on my musical life,” Bowie said in an interview recorded in the 1980s. “I mean, I just thought he was the very best of what could be done with rock and roll, and also ideas.
Although he was nervous when the two met privately, they quickly formed a bond that led to Lennon visiting Bowie one night, with McCartney in tow.
As Bowie explained to Marc Riley on BBC Radio 6 Music, he was lodging at the time at the Pierre Hotel.
“I’d taken over a suite virtually for months and months,” he said. “I was kind of living there.”
Bowie explained that he was obsessed with the newly released Sony video recorder and would spend hours making his own films. “Fortunately, I was doing cocaine so I could stay up most of the night and complete these things,” he said, tongue in cheek.
Source: guitarplayer.com/Christopher Scapelliti
On this day, 64 years ago, a 22-year-old drummer from Liverpool stepped onto the stage with three other young musicians. Just like that, the rock and roll music industry had changed forever.
When The Beatles formed in 1960, the original group consisted of John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, Stuart Sutcliffe and Pete Best. In 1961, Sutcliffe stepped away as their bassist to focus on a full-time career in painting.
Best was the group’s original drummer, but the bandmates had grown frustrated over his inability to improve. The group’s manager at the time, Brian Epstein, dismissed Best on Aug. 16, 1962.
Needless to say, The Beatles’ search for a new drummer would be quick. Two days later, Lennon found a potential replacement for Best and invited him to play at an Aug. 18 show.
On Aug. 18, 1962, Ringo Starr joined The Beatles on stage to perform at the Horticultural Society dance, per Oldies 93. The event was held inside the Hulme Hall in Port Sunlight, a village in the Metropolitan Borough of Wirral, England.
A large portion of The Beatles’ passionate fanbase initially opposed the band’s decision to swap Best for Starr. Nonetheless, the group stayed committed to Starr, and they released their first album, Please Please Me, in March 1963.
Source: aol.com/Alex Hoegler
