Beatles News
More than their guitar playing, bass playing, or drumming, The Beatles were known for their songwriting. Their lyrics, storytelling, and the way they keyed into the collective consciousness with their ideas. It’s how they articulated the world that made the same world fall in love with them over the few short years the band was together.
Here below, we wanted to explore three examples of what made them so good as a group. How lyricism helped an audience get to know the group and their music instantly. Indeed, these are three of the best opening lines from songs by The Beatles.
A melodic song of loneliness. And an especially interesting song coming from perhaps the most famous musician on the planet at the time of its writing. What did Paul McCartney know about loneliness? Well, it turns out a lot. He composed an exquisite song that is both lovely to listen to and deep to think about. And he gets you from the top of the track, as he sings,
Ah, look at all the lonely people
Ah, look at all the lonely people
Eleanor Rigby
Picks up the rice in the church where a wedding has been
“Across the Universe” from No One’s Gonna Change Our World (1969)
Source: americansongwriter.com/Jacob Uitti
Performing at the Cavern Club carries extra meaning for Zak Starkey. The 59-year-old drummer, who is Ringo Starr's oldest son, has played some of the world's biggest stages with The Who and Oasis but this weekend he made his debut at the club that was made famous by his dad's band.
Zak, who has also been part of Liverpool bands the Lightning Seeds and the Icicle Works, brought his supergroup Mantra of the Cosmos to Liverpool for two gigs at the Cavern on Sunday. Made up of Shaun Ryder (Happy Mondays), Zak, Andy Bell (Oasis, Ride) and Bez (Happy Mondays), the band's new single 'Domino Bones (Gets Dangerous)', which features Noel Gallagher, was released exclusively at the Cavern.
The Beatles played at the Mathew Street venue 292 times between 1961 and 1963. Ringo joined the band in August 1962, replacing Pete Best, and photographs of the Dingle-born drummer adorn many of the Cavern's walls.
Saturday night saw Zak perform there for the first time, playing with the Icicle Works' Chris Sharrock, at its live lounge before his band's gigs yesterday. The weight of the occasion and the club's Beatles history had played on his mind beforehand, but a text message from famed Beatles fan Noel Gallagher put him at ease.
Zak told the ECHO: "It was very surreal. I was s***ting it - proper s***ting it until I got on there and it was amazing. The music is like holy music isn't it.
"Before I was s***ting my pants. I was sitting in my room and I text Noel saying I was s***ting it. He said 'get down there and get on, what are you talking about?'.
Source: liverpoolecho.co.uk/Dan Haygarth
You might think that one half of the songwriting team that rapidly created some of popular music’s most important songs at a rate that has largely been unmatched by any other artist would have something to say about discipline in songwriting. In actual fact, Paul McCartney’s attitude has always been to let intuition guide, as opposed to following a rigid process, when birthing new tracks.
When interviewed about his songwriting workflow with NPR’s All Songs +1 podcast in 2016, Paul opened up about the fact his songs can be triggered by a variety of starting points. “If I was to sit down and write a song, now, I'd use my usual method: I'd either sit down with a guitar or at the piano and just look for melodies, chord shapes, musical phrases, some words, a thought just to get started with,” said Paul. “Then I just sit with it to work it out, like I'm writing an essay or doing a crossword puzzle.”
Later, in the same interview, Paul stated that he had long been a ‘student of the instinctive’, and that once he’s hit on a cool idea, he’ll try a range of approaches to build it into a full song, but it doesn’t always work out; “I just fiddle around with that and try and follow the trail, try and follow where it appears to be leading me. And sometimes it leads me down a blind alley so I have to retrace my steps and start again down another road.”
McCartney, who - at the time of the interview - was guest-teaching a songwriting class at the Liverpool Institute High School for Boys, said that he always introduced his class by telling the young, aspiring songwriters the same thing; “Nearly always the first thing I go in and say [is], 'I don't know how to do this. You would think I do, but it's not one of these things you ever know how to do. You know I can say to you: Select the key. We will now select a rhythm. Now make a melody. Now think of some great words,' That's not really the answer.”
Source: Andy Price/yahoo.com
The track was described as 'the greatest love song of the last fifty years' by Frank Sinatra
The vast majority of The Beatles' songs were written by Paul McCartney and John Lennon, with them jointly credited to Lennon-McCartney. Paul and John's writing partnership was legendary, with their contrasting moods and approaches often meeting in a very happy medium.
About that partnership, Music and Musicians magazine's Wilfred Mellors wrote in 1972: "Opposite poles generate electricity: between John and Paul the sparks flew. John's fiery iconoclasm was tempered by Paul's lyrical grace, while Paul's wide-eyed charm was toughened by John's resilience."
However they were not the only talented songwriters in the group. George Harrison wrote a number of The Beatles' finest songs, including 'Here Comes the Sun', 'While My Guitar Gently Weeps' and ‘Within You Without You’.
At times George had to fight to make his voice heard, with Paul and John assuming creative control of the band as the principal songwriters. The Wavertree-born star had written some songs that The Beatles recorded and was given a quota but he grew frustrated with the supporting role he had to play on 'Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band' and 'The White Album'.
Source: liverpoolecho.co.uk/Dan Haygarth
Ringo Starr recently approved of a book that imagines John Lennon living a long life before The Beatles reunite. Interestingly, the book was written by a noted country musician.
After The Beatles broke up, fans immediately wanted them to get back together. Ringo Starr recently approved of a book that imagines John Lennon living a long life before The Beatles reunite. Interestingly, a noted country musician wrote the book.
A new book focuses on John Lennon getting to perform at 1 last Beatles concert
Gary Burr is a songwriter known for his work in country music, including penning Patty Loveless’ “I Try to Think About Elvis” (which mentions The Beatles in passing). He also penned songs for Ringo. In a 2024 interview with The Tennessean, Burr said he wrote a book called Reunion that provides an alternate history of the Fab Four.
“[The story] starts with a rainy night in Hawaii and there’s a traffic accident and a young man in the back of the car is killed,” Burr said. “The man is [John’s killer] Mark David Chapman. So that means that in my world, my reality, he never did get to New York, he never did kill John. And 20 years later, for the reason that I lay out in the book, Paul needs to see if he could get the lads back together for one big last concert.”
Burr ran the concept by Ringo first. “We are friends and we’ve got a really good relationship,” he said. “And this is tricky. So when I started writing it, I didn’t want to do it without him knowing about it. So I called him up and I told him what I was doing and he was really sweet. He just said, ‘You know, I would never tell you what you can and can’t do with your art.'”
Source: cheatsheet.com/Matthew Trzcinski
Inspiration for a rock ‘n’ roll song can come from strange places, from newspaper clippings to the advice of a car dealer—for the Beatles’ psychedelic classic “A Day in the Life,” John Lennon used both. The closing track from Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band is a true testament to the Beatles’ deep dive into strange and unusual musical experimentation.
The song travels through multiple sections, from Lennon’s melancholy melodies to McCartney’s bouncy interlude to an absolute cacophony of noise directed by Ringo Starr’s steady beat buried in the mix. It’s an eccentric Frankenstein of a song, all of its pieces sewn together by musical motifs and the sheer determination of the Fab Four.
…and the newspaper and luxury car dealer, of course.
When John Lennon began writing the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band closer, “A Day in the Life,” he had a copy of Daily Mail propped up on the music stand of his piano. “I noticed two stories,” Lennon recalled in Anthology. “One was about the Guinness heir who killed himself in a car. That was the main headline story. He died in London in a car crash.” (Interestingly, this is the same heir who was with McCartney when he got into the moped crash that scarred his lip and kicked off the Beatles’ mustachioed era.)
“On the next page was a story about 4,000 potholes in the streets of Blackburn, Lancashire,” Lennon continued. “There was still one word missing in that verse when we came to record. I knew the line had to go, Now they know how many holes it takes to — something — the Albert Hall. It was a nonsense verse, really, but for some reason, I couldn’t think of the verb. What did the holes do to the Albert Hall? It was Terry who said ‘fill’ the Albert Hall, and that was it. Perhaps I was looking for that word all the time but couldn’t put my tongue on it. Other people don’t necessarily give you a word or a line. They just throw in the word you’re looking for anyway.”
Source: americansongwriter.com/Melanie Davis
John Lennon and Yoko Ono separated in 1973. He went to LA without her and seemed happy about it.
She told him that she had begun to feel suffocated by their constant togetherness, and asked him to move out. At first, Lennon appeared thrilled. He was single for the first time in his adult life.
Amid growing tension in their marriage, Ono told Lennon that she wanted a break. She suggested that he move to Los Angeles to give them some much-needed space. Ono asked the couple’s friend, Elliot Mintz, to keep an eye on her estranged husband. At first, however, Lennon seemed perfectly fine to Mintz.
“For the first few months, John appeared entirely content in Los Angeles — one might even say gleeful,” Mintz wrote in his book We All Shine On: John, Yoko, and Me. “He seemed to consider his expulsion from the Dakota and banishment to the West Coast as something of a bachelor’s holiday.” Mintz believed that Lennon was excited to experience what it was like to be single for the first time in his adult life.
“Remember, he was twenty-one when he married Cynthia; he was twenty-eight when he married Yoko. Now, at the cusp of thirty-three, for the first time in his adult life, he didn’t have a wife (or, for that matter, three other partners) who made up his extended family. He was a free man.” His mood eventually turned darker.
Before long, the fun began to wear off. Lennon wanted to go home but Ono, who was communicating with Mintz, wasn’t ready.
“After three or four months in LA, much of his initial enthusiasm had boiled off and his mood was starting to curdle,” Mintz wrote. “He was missing Yoko: he began asking me when I thought she’d be ready for him to come home, a question I could never answer.”
Lennon began spending more and more time at bars with the Hollywood Vampires, a drinking club with members like Alice Cooper, Keith Moon, and Mickey Dolenz.
Source: cheatsheet.com/Emma McKee
The Beatles were never scared to try something new and experiment with different sounds. The Fab Four revolutionised popular music in the second half of the 1960s, evolving from their early rock and roll stylings to create an innovative, psychedelic and avant-garde new sound.
1965's 'Rubber Soul' is credited with beginning that journey in earnest, as the band looked more closely at what they could achieve with an album and how they could push the boundaries lyrically and musically. The 1966 album 'Revolver' is viewed as the start of The Beatles' psychedelic era, influenced by their time in India and use of LSD.
The following year saw 'Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band' reinvent what could be done with an album - using new studio techniques, capturing the zeitgeist of the so-called 'summer of love' and changing music forever. Though The Beatles' experimental music in this period was adored by critics and fans, it didn't always lead to harmony within the band.
The ECHO has recently looked at John Lennon's dislike of 'Sgt Pepper', his worry that Paul McCartney was trying to sabotage his work on 'Strawberry Fields Forever' and his disdain for the song 'Let it Be'. We've also looked into how the recording of 'Back in the USSR' on 1968's 'The White Album' led Ringo Starr to leave The Beatles temporarily.
Source: uk.news.yahoo.com/Dan Haygarth
Snoop Dogg and Paul McCartney might not be the first musical duo one thinks of when considering kindred creative spirits, but stranger things have certainly happened. After a fortuitous meeting of the two musical icons backstage at a charity concert, it seems likelier than ever. (Okay, well, maybe it’s just in our heads at this point. But what’s the harm in dreaming?)
The touching moment between the California rapper and former Beatle showed not only the mutual admiration and respect each musician had for the other. But it also highlights the diverse musical interests each artist has outside of the genre for which they became famous.
Snoop Dogg Meets Paul McCartney
During a January 2025 appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live, Snoop Dogg recalled meeting the legendary Sir Paul McCartney for the first time. The California rapper was backstage at a fundraiser concert when someone from McCartney’s team reached out to him. “They was like, ‘Sir Paul would like to meet you,’” Snoop said, putting on a fake British accent. “I’m like, ‘For real?’” The rapper told McCartney’s team to bring him over, and the two hit it off instantly. “[The conversation] was just about respect and love,” Snoop said.
“He really knew who I was musically. That blew my mind,” he continued. “It’s like, I’m telling him about all the records I like from him, but then he telling me about who I am and how he liked me. It’s just appreciation. I call that, you know, mutual love. Fan appreciation.” Despite the swagger that Snoop Dogg has come to be known for over his decades-long career, he couldn’t help but feel humbled in McCartney’s presence. When show host Kimmel mentioned how exciting it must have been to realize Macca was aware of his work, the rapper modestly joked back, “What did I do?”
Then, of course, Kimmel had to ask the all-important question: did Snoop Dogg and McCartney light a doobie together? Unfortunately for all the hopeful stoners out there, that smoke sesh never came to be. “I smoked around him,” Snoop Dogg added with a sly smile. He added that although he wanted to keep talking to McCartney, actor Woody Harrelson joined the conversation and “just bogarted the whole situation. Then, Paul was like, ‘I’ll catch up with you later! I’m like, ‘Damn, Woody, I was over here having a conversation.’”
Source: americansongwriter.com/Melanie Davis
As years pass and time goes by taste and talent change immensely. There are hoards of different factors that redefine somebody’s artistic palette and these very factors do not discriminate whatsoever. Hence, they even touch the most incredible minds, including the ever so great, Paul McCartney.
Paul McCartney has been very candid about the songs he likes, dislikes, and absolutely detests. That being so, he’s not one to bite his tongue for the sake of pride, and he proved that to be more than true when discussing The Beatles classic, “When I’m Sixty-Four.”
Paul McCartney Made an Ageist Mistake
“When I’m Sixty-Four” was released on The Beatles’ 1967 album, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. In a holistic sense, both the album and the song marked a major transition in The Beatles’ career. Prior to the release of the album, McCartney and The Beatles had been more than busy, but for McCartney, there was still ground to be broken. Thus, their psychedelic masterpiece was born and so was “When I’m Sixty-Four.”
However, when Paul McCartney spoke with the Los Angeles Times he divulged his grievance with the song. He told the publication, “It was really an arbitrary number when I wrote [‘When I’m Sixty-Four’]. I probably should have called it ‘When I’m 65,’ which is the retirement age in England.” “And the rhyme would have been easy, ‘something, something alive when I’m 65.’ But it felt too predictable. It sounded better to say 64,” he added.
Source: americansongwriter.com/Peter Burditt
