Beatles News
John Lennon’s tragic death in 1980 forever changed the trajectory of life for his widow Yoko Ono and their son Sean.
The former Beatle was just 40 years old when Mark David Chapman shot and killed him outside the Dakota apartment building in New York City, where he lived with Ono, now 92, and Sean, 49.
The immediate aftermath was devastating for Ono, a prolific artist and musician whose life story is being shared as never before in Yoko, a new biography from journalist and author David Sheff (out March 25 from Simon & Schuster).
The intimate biography covers Ono’s incredible life story, from her early years in Japan and her progressive artwork to her love story with Lennon and the ways she rebuilt her life after losing him.
The book features interviews with Ono, her family, close friends and collaborators, and comes from a longtime friend in Sheff, who has known Ono since 1980 and who previously covered Ono and Sean for PEOPLE in the 1980s.
Source: people.com/Rachel DeSantis
The woman who broke up the Beatles: Why everything you think you know about Yoko Ono is wrong
David Sheff spent many hours with Ono and John Lennon and has strong views on her talent - and how profoundly she changed pop culture. A popular media narrative implied that Ono somehow controlled Lennon Credit: Mark and Colleen Hayward/Redferns
Yoko Ono has been characterised as many things during her lifetime, most of them negative. Even now, she’s still lazily seen as the woman who broke up the Beatles.
But she was no groupie or hanger-on; Ono was in fact an avant-garde artist asking challenging questions about art itself long before she met Lennon, as a new book about her seeks to show. The art world has belatedly come to appreciate her, dedicating a Tate Modern retrospective to her work last year. But to many others she has always been, as her biographer David Sheff writes, “a caricature, a curiosity, or even a villain – an inscrutable seductress, a manipulating con artist, and a caterwauling fraud who hypnotised Lennon and broke up the greatest band in history”.
Source: Rosa Silverman/telegraph.co.uk
Back in February, The Beatles won a Grammy for best rock performance for their single “Now and Then.” And the win was a very special one for Ringo Starr.
“I didn’t expect to win, but it was great,” Ringo tells People. “It just felt like John (Lennon) was with us.”
The win came 55 years after The Beatles broke up. It marked the band’s first Grammy win since 1997, when “Free As A Bird,” from Anthology 1, took home the Grammy for best pop performance by a duo or group with vocals.
Released in November 2023, “Now and Then” featured vocals Lennon recorded on a demo in the late ’70s, along with new recordings from Ringo and Paul McCartney, and guitar parts George Harrison recorded in the ’90s during the sessions for the Anthology series.
The song, said to be the final Beatles tune, debuted at #7 on the Billboard Hot 100 and at #1 in the U.K.
Source: ruralradio.com
Ringo Starr is ready to see his past play out on the silver screen.
Director Sam Mendes announced last year that he’s set to direct four intersecting feature films that tell the stories of each of the four Beatles members — Starr, Paul McCartney, John Lennon and George Harrison — from their point of view.
Now, Starr, 84, tells PEOPLE in this week’s issue that he’s looking forward to his film. “I’m excited that [Mendes] has taken the madness of making four movies at the same time," he says.
"My life as a lad, John's life, Paul's life, George's life, I mean, it must interact in some way," adds Starr. "There’ll be Beatles in mine around when I joined, and there’ll be Beatles in Paul’s. We’ll all be there. So I’m excited to see what he does with it.”
While no official casting announcements have been made, Starr seemingly confirmed that Barry Keoghan will pick up a set of drumsticks to portray him, saying in an interview last year that he thought the rumors of the Saltburn actor playing him were “great.”
“The only thing, I heard the guy who’s playing me was taking drum lessons, and I asked someone to tell him not to take too many,” Starr now jokes to PEOPLE.
Other casting rumors suggest that Paul Mescal will play McCartney, 82, and Harris Dickinson will take on the role of Lennon, while either Joseph Quinn or Charlie Rowe will play Harrison.
Source: people.com/Rachel DeSantis
George Harrison remains one of the most celebrated musicians in history, and his legacy extends far beyond his time with The Beatles. Decades after his passing, his solo work continues to resonate with listeners, especially in his home country of the United Kingdom. While attention is usually paid to his more mainstream successes — like All Things Must Pass or Cloud Nine — this week, one of his lesser-known, but still beloved releases, is back in the spotlight.
This week, Wonderwall Music returns to the Official Soundtrack Albums chart in the U.K. The set lands in one of the lowest rungs on the 50-spot tally, as it settles at No. 49. The full-length, originally released more than five decades ago, continues to find an audience with Harrison’s fans.
Though it might not be the first record that comes to mind when discussing Harrison’s solo career, Wonderwall Music has previously enjoyed great success. The collection previously peaked at No. 1 on the same U.K.-based ranking, standing out as the top-performing soundtrack for a while.
Source: forbes.com/Hugh McIntyre
On This Day March 20, 1969 …
John Lennon and Yoko Ono, who met in 1966 and became romantically involved in 1968, got married in Gibraltar.
They honeymooned in Paris, Amsterdam and Montreal, staging bed-ins for peace in the latter two cities. Lennon documented the whole honeymoon experience in the top 10 single “The Ballad of John and Yoko,” recorded with help from Paul McCartney.
The couple welcomed their only son, Sean Taro Ono Lennon, in October 1975 and remained married until Lennon’s murder on December 8, 1980.
They did separate for 18 months between 1973 and 1975, during which Lennon dated May Pang. That time was referred to as Lennon’s “Lost Weekend.” A documentary from Pang’s point of view, The Lost Weekend: A Love Story, was released in 2023.
John and Yoko are the subject of another documentary, One to One: John & Yoko, which follows the 18 months they lived in New York’s Greenwich Village in the early ’70s, culminating with their 1972 One to One concerts, Lennon’s only full-length performances after The Beatles‘ 1970 breakup.
Source: kslx.com
Ringo Starr Barbara Bach attend Starr's annual 'Peace And Love' campaign, in Beverly Hills, California, on July 7, 2024.
Ringo Starr keeps things simple. He and his wife, actress Barbara Bach, have been married for nearly 44 years, so the pair are clearly doing something right. But when asked if he has a secret to marital bliss, the legendary rocker’s answer comes easily: “No.”
The rule, according to Starr, is there is no rule.
“There’s up-and-down days, and sometimes I’m really stupid, and then we get over it,” he tells PEOPLE in this week’s issue.
Starr, 84, and Bach, 77, tied the knot in London 1981 and have been happily married ever since, raising five children as part of their blended family (The former Beatle shares sons Zak, 59, and Jason, 57, and daughter Lee, 54, with his late ex-wife Maureen, while Bach is mom to daughter Francesca, 56, and son Gianni, 52, with ex-husband Augusto Gregorini).
These days, Bach is a muse, too, having inspired Starr’s song “Thankful,” which he co-wrote for his new country album Look Up.
With lyrics like, “My world came crashing down and shattered/Then you came along/My shelter from the storm/I put my life into your hands/And you made me a better man,” the track marks an unusually personal tune for the drummer.
27th April 1981: Left to right, Francesca Gregorini, Barbara Bach, Ringo Starr, and Lee Starkey walk together hand in hand on Starr and Bach's wedding day, London, England.
Source: people.com/Rachel DeSantis
The final days of The Beatles saw relations between the band tested. After they retired from touring in 1966, the band focused their attention on producing innovative music in the studio, beginning with their seminal 1967 record 'Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band', which captured the zeitgeist and reinvented popular music.
That album's follow up, 1968's 'The White Album' was marked by disagreements. Its sessions were notoriously tempestuous. About that period of recording, Paul McCartney said: "There was a lot of friction during that album. We were just about to break up, and that was tense in itself". John Lennon later added: "The break-up of The Beatles can be heard on that album."
The recording of 'The White Album' saw Ringo Starr briefly walk out of the band. It was during the recording of the song 'Back in the USSR' and the Dingle native was said to have grown tired of the mood in the camp and criticism of his drumming.
Source: uk.news.yahoo.com/Dan Haygarth
This week has turned out to be a very special one for The Beatles on the band’s home turf in the United Kingdom. The rockers appear on multiple albums rankings, as well as a tally dedicated to bestselling songs. That’s not unusual for one of the top-performing acts of all time, but what is notable about the group’s showing this time around is that it includes two brand new releases – from a band that hasn’t been properly together in more than half a century.
The Beatles collect not one, but two new hit singles this week. The titles are not actually individual tracks, but rather very short collections that the Official Charts Company classifies as singles instead of EPs – which many fans would argue they are.
A pair of closely related projects, Saturday Club 31st March 1964 Part 1 and Part 2, both manage to debut on the Official Physical Singles chart. The projects enter right next to one another, coming in at No. 81 and No. 82, respectively. Those two “singles” are actually EPs, and they both feature five songs apiece.
The Beatles on Saturday Club
Saturday Club 31st March 1964 Part 1 is made up of The Beatles covering tracks by American acts such as Carl Perkins and Chan Romero, paying homage to the rock and country tunes the musicians were loving at the time.
Source: forbes.com/Hugh McIntyre
There were many reasons behind The Beatles' split and relations remained strained for some time. Tensions ran high in the final years of the 1960s as creative differences emerged among the band.
They had retired from touring in 1966 and focused on recording innovative, boundary-breaking music in the studio. That began with the iconic 1967 album 'Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band', which captured the zeitgeist of the so-called summer of love that year and spent 27 weeks on top of the Record Retailer chart in the United Kingdom.
The recording sessions of its follow up, known as 'The White Album', were notoriously feisty. Ringo Starr left the band for a period, fed up with the mood, as The Beatles clashed.
About that period of recording, Paul McCartney said: "There was a lot of friction during that album. We were just about to break up, and that was tense in itself". John Lennon later added: "The break-up of The Beatles can be heard on that album."
In September 1969, after the band had recorded the majority of what became 'Let it Be' (the 'Get Back' sessions) and 'Abbey Road', John told Paul, George Harrison and Ringo that he wanted a "divorce" from The Beatles. Paul went away to work on his first solo album 'McCartney', believing it was all over for the group.
Source: uk.news.yahoo.com/Dan Haygarth
