Beatles News
For some people, an album is simply a collection of singles and a few fillers and nothing more. Paul McCartney, however, is an artist who typically considers his work more carefully. He and the Beatles helped define the modern album—work that seems to expand the bounds of what an album was in the decades before their rise to fame. Because of this, McCartney fans were shocked when he made an album full of what he called “throwaways.” Find out which album that was below.
McCartney’s writing always stood in stark contrast to his bandmates’. By the end of their tenure, the band had all but given up on McCartney’s whimsical songwriting voice. To pursue that creative ambition, he needed to shed the weight of the other Beatles.
Though he got his wish, it wasn’t as easy a road as he might have thought before the band broke up. Of course, changing gears might have seemed like heaven to McCartney in the middle of the Beatles’ tenuous relationship, but finding solo success was almost equally as hard.
Fans wanted more of the same, which they couldn’t have after the Beatles parted ways. In hindsight, it would’ve been impossible to please everyone with a debut solo effort, but McCartney made it even harder thanks to his daring introduction, McCartney.
The Risk of Releasing McCartney
McCartney’s debut album was a massive risk for the singer. McCartney swapped the Beatles’ polished perfection for something more akin to the DIY style we know today. He opted to rework older material and even improvise songs. This resulted in a work that was a far cry from what fans had come to know. Though it’s now looked on more favorably, McCartney was a hard pill to swallow upon its release.
McCartney once described this album as a collection of “throwaways.” But he didn’t mean it pejoratively. McCartney wanted to capture the energy of songs that don’t typically make the cut.
Source: Alex Hopper/americansongwriter.com
There has never been a band comparable to the Beatles, so it stands to reason that capturing their music-altering run as a film would require an approach just as unprecedented.
That seems to be the logic behind Sony Pictures' The Beatles — A Four-Film Cinematic Event, the collection of biopics — each told from the perspective of an individual band member — officially unveiled at CinemaCon earlier this year.
The four interconnected films are currently casting up ahead of production and a planned 2028 release. In the meantime, here's everything you need to know about the ambitious project.
Who is playing the Beatles in the movies?
Sony understandably made a spectacle of their casting announcement, revealing the four leads for the "Cinematic Event" at CinemaCon, all of whom are actors on the rise from the British Isles.
Oscar nominee Paul Mescal will play Paul McCartney. Babygirl breakout Harris Dickinson will be John Lennon. The Banshees of Inisherin Best Supporting Actor nominee Barry Keoghan will play Ringo Starr. Stranger Things and The Fantastic Four: First Steps actor Joseph Quinn will be George Harrison. Who else has been cast?
Casting outside of the Fab Four has picked up recently with Mendes adding actors to play romantic partners for each of the Beatles, as well as their manager.
Four-time Academy Award nominee Saoirse Ronan is on-board to play Linda McCartney. Deadline reported that Mia McKenna-Bruce (How to Have Sex) is playing Starr's first wife Maureen Starkey. Variety then claimed that Emmy-winning ShÅgun star Anna Sawai and recent Emmy-nominated The White Lotus player Aimee Lou Wood are "circling" the roles of Yoko Ono and Harrison's first wife, Pattie Boyd, respectively.
Also joining the cast is James Norton (House of Guinness) as the man who helped shape the Beatles into the band that took over the world, manager Brian Epstein. Who is writing and directing?
While Oscar winner and four-time nominee Sam Mendes is taking on directing duties for all four movies, a trio of writers are splitting up the scripts. Jez Butterworth (Ford v Ferrari), Oscar-winning Conclave scribe Peter Straughan, and recent Emmy winner for Adolescence Jack Thorne are all signed up for screenwriting duties, though it's unclear how the workload will be divided.
Source: Kevin P. Sullivan/goldderby.com
An “impractical” song written before She Said, She Said is the first psychedelic song John Lennon ever wrote.
The Beatles member behind hits like Come Together and I Am the Walrus confirmed an earlier song was actually his first test of psychedelic-tinged songwriting. Lennon would confirm this two years after The Beatles had officially split up, giving an interview breaking down his writing style in the early years. Though the song proved “impractical” compared to the popular She Said, She Said, it would be the first time Lennon had written with a psychedelic intention in mind. A few candid reflections on the song in question were shared in 1972, where Lennon wished he had stuck to the “original idea” he had for Tomorrow Never Knows, a song which featured on Revolver.
He said: “This was my first psychedelic song. Tomorrow Never Knows… I didn’t know what I was saying, and you just find out later. I know that when there are some lyrics I dig, I know that somewhere people will be looking at them.
“Often the backing I think of early-on never comes off. With ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’ I’d imagined in my head that in the background you would hear thousands of monks chanting. That was impractical, of course, and we did something different. It was a bit of a drag, and I didn’t really like it. I should have tried to get near my original idea, the monks singing. I realise now that was what I wanted.”
Source: Ewan Gleadow/cultfollowing.co.uk
Had he lived, Lennon would have celebrated his 85th birthday on October 9, 2025. Here are five songs written by John Lennon but recorded by other acts.
John Lennon’s body of work is staggeringly impressive. With The Beatles and as a solo artist, he created some of the most enduring music of the rock era. And though it represented a small fraction of his creative output, his work as a writer for (and in one case, with) other artists is worthy of note. In addition to his production credits (for wife Yoko Ono, The Silkie, David Peel and the Lower East Side, Mick Jagger and Harry Nilsson), Lennon composed songs expressly for other artists he admired. Nearly all of that activity took place between his leaving The Beatles in 1969 and the start of his retirement/hiatus in 1975. Had he lived, Lennon would have celebrated his 85th birthday on October 9. On the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the first of many compilations surveying his solo work – 1975’s Shaved Fish – here are five songs written by John Lennon but recorded by other acts.
“God Save Us” by Bill Elliot & the Elastic Oz Band (single, 1971)
In the years immediately following The Beatles’ breakup, Lennon championed a variety of political and/r social justice causes. One was the London-based underground magazine Oz. The publication had run afoul of obscenity laws in the U.K., and John and Yoko took up their cause. Lennon quickly penned this song with hopes of the single raising money for Oz’s defense. Phil Spector produced the quickie session, which has a flavor not unlike the material on Imagine, and enlisted Bill Elliott of George Harrison protégé band Splinter to record the lead vocal. Sadly, the ad budget to promote the release cost more than the single earned.
Source: Patrick Prince/goldminemag.com
The Beatles had wanted to put on a final performance before they split up.
Though Paul McCartney, John Lennon, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr would play out a show on the roof of Abbey Corps Headquarters, the four had spoken of playing a regular, attended show. Lennon would say it’s the reason he had agreed to a television special, which had been scrapped during the making of the band’s final two albums. Harrison would also say he “really wanted to play” but that the opportunity to do so had simply not occurred during their sessions together. McCartney would also suggest a live show was the right time to “light a rocket and really take off for the end” of the band. Plans for a show beyond the rooftop gig never came to be, though it seemed the band were keen on performing together in front of a planned, ticketed audience.
Lennon would say during the Get Back sessions in 1969 that he would have liked to play live with The Beatles again. He said: “I would dig to play onstage, you know? I mean, if it was all… everything was all right and there was no messing and we’re just gonna play onstage.
“You know, that’s why I said yes to the TV show. I didn’t want the hell of doing it, but nobody else wants to go on the stage or do a TV show. You know, that’s what it’s about. Nobody wants to get out there. You know?”
Harrison, Lennon, McCartney, and Glyn Johns would then speak on the possibility of doing the live set and even got as detailed as discussing an order for the songs. Johns would suggest the band needed to find a way to “change from the acoustic numbers to the electric numbers” and that the band would need a “run-through on each number to get the balance set for it”.
Harrison would then say: “No, really, you know, I mean. And also we’ve played… This is the most I’ve ever played by playing every day. And I can just feel myself getting… My fingers getting loose a bit. But really I just want to play. That’s what it was about.”
Even McCartney was up for a show and said it would be a way for The Beatles to “go and have fun with it.” He said: “I think all I wanna do is, like, uh… I probably, you know, having got it together, I probably just wanna go and have fun with it. Rather than just, sort of, finish off exactly as we started.
Source: Ewan Gleadow/cultfollowing.co.uk
English actor James Norton will play Brian Epstein, the influential manager of the Beatles, in the upcoming four-part musical biopic by director Sam Mendes.
He’ll star in “The Beatles — A Four-Film Cinematic Event,” as the unconventional project has been dubbed, alongside Paul Mescal as Paul McCartney, Harrison Dickinson as John Lennon and Barry Keoghan as Ringo Starr and Joseph Quinn as George Harrison.
Epstein, a legend among Beatles fans and often considered the band’s fifth member, met the Fab Four in 1961 and helped propel them into a global phenomenon. He was with the group until he died in 1967 from a drug overdose at age 32. (Epstein’s own epic story was immortalized in the 2024 biopic “Midas Man.”)
Sony, the studio behind the films, declined to comment on Norton’s casting, which was first reported by Deadline.
Mendes is making four separate movies, one from each Beatles member’s point of view. All four installments will debut on the big screen in April 2028. The films are expected to intersect to capture the band’s improbable journey from Liverpool to the center of global culture, leading to their 1970 breakup. Given Epstein’s influence, it’s likely that he’ll appear in each of the films.
It’s unclear how other key figures in the Beatles universe will factor into the cinematic quartet. As previously announced, Saoirse Ronan is playing Linda McCartney, “Shogun” star Anna Sawai will portray Yoko Ono, “The White Lotus” breakout Aimee Lou Wood is circling the role of Harrison’s spouse Pattie Boyd and Mia McKenna-Bruce will appear as Starr’s first wife Maureen Starkey.
Norton, 40, recently appeared in another musical biopic, last year’s “Bob Marley: One Love,” as record producer Chris Blackwell. His other credits include Netflix’s limited series “House of Guinness,” “Grantchester,” “Happy Valley” and HBO’s third season of “House of the Dragon.”
Source: Rebecca Rubin/variety.com
The story of how one of The Beatles' biggest ever songs was almost not released under the band's name.
The Beatles were always so much more than the sum of their parts. Despite the delights of John Lennon and Paul McCartney's solo careers (and those of George Harrison and Ringo Starr, too), when the Fab Four were together they genuinely changed the history of popular music and the whole society.
But even when they were together there were moments when individual members of the band were in complete creative control.
That was especially true on The Beatles (aka The White Album), when each corner of the band was frequently off doing their own thing. But there's one much earlier example that really stands out, too. 'Yesterday' is one of the most famous Beatles song that very nearly wasn't a Beatles song. This is why.
Who wrote 'Yesterday'?
Like the vast majority of The Beatles' original songs, 'Yesterday' was credited to Lennon–McCartney. It says it right there on the label.
But we all know that while some of the duo's songs for the Fab Four were true co-writes and many were driven by one of the pair and polished by the other, there were songs that were pretty much or actually entirely written only by either Paul McCartney or John Lennon.
These songs were still credited to the duo, thanks to an agreement they had from their earliest days writing songs together.
So 'Yesterday' was a Lennon–McCartney song, but it was actually written almost entirely by Paul McCartney.
In one interview in 1966, Lennon suggested he'd pitched in a little ("we just held finish off the ribbons 'round it"), but by his Playboy interview in 1980 he said plainly: "That's Paul’s song, and Paul's baby. Well done. Beautiful – and I never wished I'd written it."
There was a little bit of afters, decades later, when Sir Paul tweaked the songwriting credits for The Beatles songs on 2002 Back in the US live album to "Paul McCartney and John Lennon".
Yoko objected, ad a year later he switched it back, and told the Sunday Herald: "I'm happy with the way it is and always has been. Lennon and McCartney is still the rock 'n' roll trademark I'm proud to be a part of – in the order it has always been." Regarding the actual writing, the "official" story goes that Paul McCartney woke one night at the family home of his then-girlfriend Jane Asher at 57 Wimpole Street with the melody for the song in his head.
In those pre-voice note days, he jumped on to the nearby piano and played it out so he wouldn't forget it.
"There wasn't any room for me to keep my records," McCartney said in The Lyrics book of his room at Jane's. "They had to be kept outside on the landing. But somehow I had a piano in there - a small, sawn-off piano that stood by my bed."
That top line was so incredibly, obviously brilliant that Macca was initially convinced that he'd pinched it from somewhere.
As well as friend, singer and pop fan Alma Cogan ("I think she may have thought I was writing it for her," McCartney later recalled), Paul revealed in Hulu doc 3, 2, 1 that he played the melody to George Martin: "George's got a wider knowledge of particularly older songs.
"So I said, 'What's this?' He said, 'I don't know.' I said...it's this melody, y'know, 'cause I can't have written it. There was no conscious effort involved. I just woke up and it was there.'"
Source: Mayer Nissim/goldradio.com
Saoirse Ronan is set to play photographer and musician Linda McCartney in the upcoming Beatles biopic.
The Oscar nominated actress will play alongside Paul Mescal, who takes up the role in the four films, directed by Sam Mendes.
The films are set for simultaneous release, with each film focusing on one of the four band members. Saoirse Ronan is set to play photographer and musician Linda McCartney in the upcoming Beatles biopic.
Linda married Paul in 1969, with the pair going on to have three children together. Born and raised in New York City, Linda was the second of four children to Louise and Lee Eastman. Linda attended Scarsdale High School and then Vermont College, where she obtained an Associate of Arts in 1961.
She majored in Fine Arts at the University of Arizona, where she also developed a fondness for photography. Linda didn’t complete her studies due to the tragic death of her mother in a plane crash in 1962. Linda got her start in photography when she took up a receptionist and editorial assistant gig with Town & Country magazine.
Before Paul, Linda was married to Joseph Melville See Jr. They married in 1962 and divorced three years later in 1965. Their only daughter, Heather, was born in December 1962.
Five years later, Linda met Paul for the first time during a photo job in London. Linda eventually made the move to London with her daughter Heather, with the pair marrying in 1969. It was a devastating time for Beatles fans as Paul was the last of the band members “unattached.” The pair went on to have three children — Mary, Stella and James — with Paul also adopting Heather. Paul is also father to Beatrice McCartney, 21, who he shares with his second wife, Heather Mills.
The children have all forged great careers for themselves with Heather an artist, Mary a photographer and documentarian, Stella a fashion designer and James a musician and songwriter.
Source: Extra ie
Jack Walters is a film and television journalist based in Newcastle, UK. He is a Senior Writer on Screen Rant's New Movies team, and has also published work at Loud & Clear Reviews, Next Best Picture, and ScreenSphere.
Another important casting announcement was recently unveiled for Sam Mendes' four Beatles biopics. Saoirse Ronan will officially play Linda McCartney in the four-movie cinematic event, while Anna Sawai, Aimee Lou Wood, and Mia McKenna-Bruce are reportedly circling the roles of Yoko Ono, Pattie Boyd, and Maureen Starkey, respectively.
Mendes' Beatles films will be released simultaneously in April 2028, with each movie detailing the Beatles' story from a different band member's perspective. This will be a very interesting step forward for the biopic genre, and it crucially means that certain characters will appear multiple times across the movies - so it's even more important that they're accurately cast.
8. Cynthia Lennon - Depending on which era of the Beatles' career these movies take place throughout, Cynthia Lennon will need to be present to some degree. Even if Sam Mendes decides to set his stories after John and Cynthia's breakup, there's no way to write her out of the story entirely without undermining a huge portion of Lennon's background.
7. Brian Epstein - Epstein was with the Beatles long before they were the "Fab Four", and his death had an immeasurable impact on their dynamic towards the end of the '60s. There would never have been "The Beatles" as we know them today without Epstein, so it's inevitable that he'll show up in Mendes' movies in some measure.
Source: Jack Walters/screenrant.com
Before he was known as a writer, producer and one of the world’s foremost fingerstyle guitarists, Laurence Juber spent three years, from 1978 to 1981, as a member of Wings. Prior to that, he had established himself as an in-demand London session guitarist. An invitation to jam with Wings guitarist-bassist Denny Laine soon changed into a life-changing event when Paul and Linda McCartney joined in.
After playing a few blues and reggae tunes, Paul turned to Juber and asked, “What are you doing for the next few years?”
“It was in that nanosecond that everything flashes in front of you,” Juber says. “I had spent my entire teenage years and beyond becoming a studio musician, and then there's Paul McCartney offering me a gig.
“On the one hand, you think, What am I giving up? On the other hand, I was in a place in my life where, if there was going to be a big change, the universe was kind of leading me to it. How could I say no?”
Juber contributed guitar parts to the 1979 Wings album, Back to the Egg — his fire-spitting solo on the punk-rockabilly number “Spin It On” is a particular standout — and he played with Wings on their 19-date U.K. tour that year.
Source: Joe Bosso/guitarplayer.com
