Beatles News
The Beatles never reunited before John Lennon's death. During his lifetime, though, he thought a band reunion was possible.
John Lennon said he lost interest in The Beatles when he met Yoko Ono. He remained in the band until 1969 when he told Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr that he wanted to move on. The band’s split was acrimonious, with the former Beatles insulting each other in interviews and songs. By the early 1970s, though, Lennon told a friend that he believed in the possibility of a reunion.
John Lennon was optimistic about a Beatles reunion by the early 1970s
In 1973, Lennon sat down with his friend, Elliot Mintz, for an interview. Mintz noted in his book, We All Shine On: John, Yoko, and Me, that he asked the question that was on everyone’s mind at the time.
“After carefully pulling out of the McDonald’s lot, I cautiously navigated to a surprisingly desolate stretch of beach near the Malibu pier, where the camera crew taped John and me talking about everything from his new album to his memories of Beatlemania to the ultimate question on everybody’s mind — and the one John had been asked at least a thousand times before: the possibility of a Beatles reunion.”
Source: Emma McKee/cheatsheet.com
The musician often called the Quiet Beatle sat in the background during the initial years of the Lennon & McCartney partnership, slowly building a voice of his own as a songwriter. The band’s latter years witness George Harrison coming to the forefront, writing music that is easily the equal of his illustrious peers.
A new generation seem to be agreeing. The top Beatles track on Spotify is ‘Here Comes The Sun’ – penned by George Harrison for their ‘Abbey Road’ album, it receives over 687,000 plays on the platform every single day.
George has just broken a new record, too. ‘My Sweet Lord’ – the gospel-drenched yearning for meaning that appears on his classic solo album ‘All Things Must Pass’ – has become the most streamed song by a solo Beatle daily on Spotify.
The song edges out Paul McCartney’s ‘FourFiveSeconds’ and receives 449,000 plays on Spotify every single day.
Source: Robin Murray/clashmusic.com
Sir Ringo Starr just realized the voice he always wanted.
The 84-year-old The Beatles legend, rose to fame after lending his drumming skills to the iconic band alongside the late John Lennon, George Harrison, and Sir Paul McCartney. While he certainly can "hold a tune", he reached the epiphany of how everything "worked out" for them because of the songwriting talent each member possessed.
In a conversation with The Sunday Times, he stated, "Well, I always wanted to be someone else. Like Jerry Lee [Lewis] or someone! I mean, I can hold a tune, as long as it’s in my key.” "And it just worked out with the Beatles because John and Paul were great writers,” Starr added.
The iconic musician continued, "That’s what made us. And I’d get one song. And a couple of them were really good, you know, With a Little Help from My Friends and Yellow Submarine. They’re still huge and I still do them on tour. They wrote me a lot of really nice songs."
With the release of his latest music album, Look Up and is touring with his band, Ringo Starr and Friends, he admitted that it is still "fun."
"The band sounds great. We have a fun time and we just do it,” Starr told the outlet of performing. Recalling his time in the past, he mentioned, "In the late Nineties, I would put in, like, two or three from the new album, and you could feel the room empty. It happens to everybody.”
"I was with (Sir Elton John's) mother at Wembley Stadium. He came on and said, ‘I’m only going to do the new album.’ Me and his mother left after three tracks because we didn’t know them,” Ringo Starr mentioned, recalling an incident that almost everyone can relate with.
Source: geo.tv
John Lennon liked a goofy Paul McCartney song from the early 1980s. It’s not clear which version of the track John liked.
John Lennon didn’t always like Paul McCartney’s songs, but he praised one of Paul’s solo hits from the early 1980s. Sadly, the track John liked sounds like it was performed by Kermit the Frog. Listeners loved the song anyway. John Lennon didn’t care about Paul McCartney’s solo songs.
During a 1980 interview from the book All We Are Saying: The Last Major Interview with John Lennon and Yoko Ono, John discussed Paul’s post-Beatles work. “Somebody asked me what I thought of Paul’s last album [McCartney II] and I made some remark like I thought he was depressed and sad,” he said. “But then I realized I hadn’t listened to the whole damn thing. I heard one track — the hit, ‘Coming Up,’ which I thought was a good piece of work. Then I heard something else that sounded like he was depressed.
“But I don’t follow their work,” he added. “I don’t follow Wings, you know. I don’t give a s*** what Wings are doing, or what George’s new album is doing or what Ringo is doing. I’m not interested, no more than I am in what Elton John or Bob Dylan is doing. It’s not callousness. It’s just that I’m too busy living my own life to be following what other people are doing, whether they’re Beatles or guys I went to college with or people I had intense relationships with before I met The Beatles.”
Source: Matthew Trzcinski/cheatsheet.com
When The Beatles broke up, John Lennon publicly aired his grievances with the band and his former bandmates. He made it clear that he was ready to move on and did not share the warm opinion of the band that so many did. Within a few years, though, Lennon said he had let go of these bad feelings. He claimed that his memories of The Beatles were fond, despite what he may have said in the past.
In the early 1970s, each of the former Beatles constantly fielded questions about whether or not the band would reunite. Lennon, who broke up the band, said a reunion was a possibility. His friend, Elliot Mintz wrote about it in his book We All Shine On: John Yoko and Me.
“‘It’s quite possible, yes,’ [John] said as we sat on the sand. ‘I don’t know why the hell we’d do it, but it’s possible.’” He’d spoken publicly about his problems with the band, but he claimed he’d moved past them. By 1973, he said he didn’t harbor any bad feelings about the band.
Source: Showbiz CheatSheet
50 years ago this month, music superstar Paul McCartney, his wife Linda and his band Wings flew into New Orleans to record songs for the album “Venus and Mars” at Allen Toussaint and Marshall Sehorn’s Sea-Saint Recording Studio in Gentilly.
News of the former Beatle’s visit made the front page of the Jan. 8, 1975, States-Item, with reporter Jack Davis writing that McCartney had received a temporary visa to stay in the city until March 1. Davis explained that the visa “will not allow McCartney to do any work other than the recording, meaning that performances by the 31-year-old rock star and songwriter are not permitted.” But fans did get glimpses of him coming and going from the studio on Clematis Street in Gentilly, where the couple’s three children also joined them.
About a month later, during a press conference aboard the excursion boat Voyageur, Paul McCartney said New Orleans was selected as a recording site because “it’s warm and it’s a musical city,” according to Millie Ball’s Feb. 14, 1975, story in The Times-Picayune. Music legends Lloyd Price, Earl King, Dr. John and Professor Longhair dropped by the sessions which also featured Toussaint on piano.
The McCartneys spent Fat Tuesday costumed as clowns and watching Mardi Gras parades from an apartment above Kolb’s Restaurant on St. Charles Avenue. McCartney wrote the song “My Carnival” the next day and recorded it at Sea-Saint. Joining the session were Meters band members Leo Nocentelli and George Porter Jr. as well as singer Benny Spellman on backup. McCartney also wrote “Going to New Orleans,” influenced by Professor Longhair and featuring McCartney whistling like the music icon. Neither song was released on “Venus and Mars,” although “My Carnival” was issued in 1985.
Source: Blake Pontchartrain/nola.com
George Harrison had a handful of hit songs after The Beatles broke up, but his best one didn’t hit No. 1. Interestingly, the tune in question was supposed to sound a bit like The Beatles’ “Penny Lane.” George’s best song might have hit No. 1 if he hadn’t made a particular decision. George had three No. 1 singles on the Billboard Hot 100: “My Sweet Lord”/”Isn’t It a Pity,” “Give Me Love (Give Me Peace on Earth),” and “Got My Mind Set on You.” Those are all good songs, but they aren’t George’s best. The pinnacle of his career was “What Is Life.”
The tune combines George’s rock ‘n’ roll tendencies with his spiritual outlook and producer Phil Spector’s Wall of Sound technique. The lyrics are clever, as they could be interpreted as being about loving a partner or loving God. It’s hard to listen to it without feeling some uplift, whether you are spiritual or not.
During a 2001 interview with Billboard, George discussed the origin of “What Is Love.” “When we were going through all the tapes, I just found this version that was like a rough mix [at Trident Studios in London on August 9, 1970] on which I tried having this piccolo trumpet player like the guy who played on ‘Penny Lane,'” he said. “It wasn’t actually the same bloke but I wanted that sound. So I had an oboe and a piccolo trumpet and I had this part for them all written out but they couldn’t play it the same; they couldn’t do this this kind of ‘hush’ phrase, and they played it very staccato like a classical player. So I must have just recorded them on it, then rough mixed it, and then ditched that.
Source: Matthew Trzcinski/cheatsheet.com
The Beatles were set to get back together in the mid-1970s, but drummer Ringo Starr has shared the reason the band said no – despite being offered nearly £41million for one just performance.
Legendary rock group The Beatles had a chance to reunite for a lot of money but turned it down for just one reason. Ringo Starr, the band's drummer, shared the group were offered $50million in 1976 – the equivalent of £200million today – to get back together for a one-off performance.
It seemed a tempting deal for the Fab Four but they eventually turned the offer down. Starr and fellow surviving Beatles member Paul McCartney briefly reunited at the Wings frontman's show in London late last year. But a full Beatles reunion never came to be after their break-up in 1970.
Their final live performance took place from the Abbey Road Studios' rooftop, where new songs like 'Don't Let Me Down' and 'Get Back' were performed. With Starr and McCartney reuniting on stage to play Helter Skelter and Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, some fans remembered the massive offer presented to the band in 1976.
While the band's members would go on to work with one another on some of their solo projects, such as when Starr and George Harrison collaborated on the single 'When We Was Fab,' the four never worked together as a unit again.
But that could have changed in 1976 when, Starr says, the group was offered a large sum to get back together. While each of The Beatles' members believed they would reform at some point and play some live shows, their offer of a reunion was prevented due to one strange reason.
Source: liverpoolecho.co.uk/Ewan Gleadow
The song is a fixture of Paul's live performances and was in the setlist for last year's 'Got Back' tour
During the break up of The Beatles, Paul McCartney spent a lot of his time at his farm in Campbeltown, Scotland. When John Lennon told his bandmates he wanted a "divorce" from The Beatles in September 1969, a devastated Paul retreated to Scotland to write what became his first solo album - 'McCartney'.
The release of that album in April 1970 confirmed Paul's departure from The Beatles and saw him receive much of the blame for the band coming to an end - as John's 1969 decision to quit had not been made public. After the release of 'McCartney', Paul continued to spend plenty of time at his Scottish farm and he decided to write a song about the quiet life there.
Paul bought the 183-acre site on the Kintyre Peninsula in 1966 and it became a sanctuary for him away from the pressures of fame. He wrote plenty of Beatles songs there, as well as Wings and solo hits.
In 1974, Paul recorded 'Junior's Farm', a song about life on the farm. Taking inspiration from Bob Dylan's 'Maggie's Farm', Paul came up with a character called Junior who had escaped the city for a new rural life.
It represented Paul's happiness to get away from the meetings that surrounded The Beatles' split. In the 2021 book 'The Lyrics: 1956 to the Present', he explained: "It was such a relief to get out of those business meetings with people in suits, who were so serious all the time, and go off to Scotland and be able just to sit around in a T-shirt and corduroys.
Source: Dan Haygarth/liverpoolecho.co.uk
The late former President Jimmy Carter reportedly held the 1971 John Lennon hit "Imagine" as his favorite tune. But its use as a song at his state funeral ceremony has set a firestorm on social media from critics saying it wasn't fit for use in what in a memorial service in a Christian church.
On Thursday, the tune was performed by fellow Georgian Trisha Yearwood and her husband Garth Brooks during Carter's Washington National Cathedral funeral service. One year earlier, Brooks and Yearwood performed it at former first lady Rosalynn Carter’s wake, as well. The country star couple previously worked with Carter on several Habitat for Humanity home projects, according to reports.
Social media lit up later Thursday, calling into question the performance of the song, given its lyrical rejection of religion.
"Imagine there's no heaven / It's easy if you try / No Hell below us / Above us, only sky," the first line goes.
On X, several observers, including top conservative figures, questioned the use of the song, while others differed.
"Having Joe Biden lecture us about what a strong Christian Jimmy Carter was before the crowd sits through ‘Imagine’ with the lyrics ‘Imagine there's no heaven /It's easy if you try’ makes me question the authenticity of the assertion," said commentator Erick Erickson, who also served on the Macon City Council in Carter’s home state.
"Imagine there is no heaven -- Sung for someone who is a devout Southern Baptist," one X user added.
"I don’t think Jimmy would appreciate the ‘no religion’ part," another said.
Self-described "Trumpocrat" Steve Carlson, a perennial Minnesota Democratic candidate now running for governor in 2026, wrote that it is an "insult" to have "Imagine" played at Carter’s funeral.
Source: foxnews.com/Charles Creitz
