Beatles News
John Lennon’s ‘Walls and Bridges’ album clocked up its 50th anniversary this week. ‘Walls and Bridges’ was released on 4 October 1974 in the UK and a week earlier in the USA.
Work on ‘Walls and Bridges’ began in June 1974 at Record Plant East New York at 321 W 44th St. It was the same studio Bruce Springsteen recorded ‘Born To Run’, Eagles made ‘Hotel California’ and ‘Fleetwood Mac recorded ‘Rumours’.
The core players for ‘Walls and Bridges’ with John were included Jim Keltner on drums, Klaus Voormann on bass guitar, Jesse Ed Davison guitar and Arthur Jenkins on percussion.
The first single off the album was Lennon’s now classic ‘Whatever Gets You Thru The Night’, featuring Elton John on piano and harmony vocals. The second and final single off the album ‘#9 Dream’ features John’s personal assistant and girlfriend during the 18 month break-up with Yoko called The Long Weekend, May Pang on backing vocals.
Harry Nilsson is credited as Backing Vocals and co-writers on ‘Old Dirt Road’.
There has not been an announcement of the anniversary release at this point. However, multiple outtakes surfaced on both the ‘Menlove Avenue’ 1986 and ‘John Lennon Anthology’ (1998). Between the two albums you can compile a playlist of almost a complete alternate version of ‘Walls and Bridges’ minus ‘Beef Jerky’ and ‘Ya Ya’.
Source: Paul Cashmere/noise11.com
At the 2024 Grammy Awards, Taylor Swift made history—in more ways than one. The singer-songwriter’s single “Anti-Hero” competed for Song of the Year, and though it didn’t win, the nod was enough to make it a special bit of recognition for the superstar.
With one more chance to win the prize awarded to the “best” written song of the year, Swift broke out of a tie with several other musicians for the most nominations ever in that vertical. The chart-topper currently stands alone thanks to that feat, but that may not be the case for very long.
Before “Anti-Hero,” Swift was matched with both Paul McCartney and Lionel Richie for the most Song of the Year nominations, with six apiece. Both male songwriters have won the award once—McCartney for “Michelle” by the Beatles and Richie for “We Are the World”—while Swift is still waiting to earn the honor, even though she now claims the most nods of all time.
McCartney is a possible nominee once again this year. The Beatles’ comeback and “final” single “Now and Then” is eligible for prizes at the 2025 Grammys, including Song of the Year. While nothing is certain, it’s entirely possible that Recording Academy voters won’t want to miss out on another chance to reward the most successful and beloved band of all time.
“Now and Then” could very well earn McCartney his seventh Song of the Year nomination. That should be enough for him to reform his tie with Swift…though she’s also a very probable candidate for one of the eight available slots.
Swift has several singles that are eligible for Grammy love, and voters have shown themselves to be huge fans her as well. Her most likely submission will be “Fortnight,” the lead single from her latest full-length The Tortured Poets Department. The tune, which features Post Malone, soared straight to No. 1 on the Hot 100, and so it’s probably what she’ll lead with.
Source: Hugh McIntyre/forbes.com
The artist Yoko Ono, the widow of the late former Beatle John Lennon, was admitted to a New York City hospital on Friday after complaining of severe flu-like symptoms, her West Coast-based spokesman said.
Spokesman Elliot Mintz denied U.S. media reports that Ono, 83, had suffered a possible stroke or heart attack, and said he understood she would be released from the hospital on Saturday.
Ono had called her doctor, who said her symptoms sounded like the flu, and advised her to go to the hospital as a precaution, Mintz said. He did not know if she admitted herself or was taken by ambulance.
Her career as an artist has spanned more than five decades. Last year, the Museum of Modern Art in New York marked her achievements with an exhibition of her early works showing how her ideas influenced the development of art in the city in the 1960s.
Ono, also an experimental musician and film-maker, was once described by Lennon as "the world's most famous unknown artist: everybody knows her name but nobody knows what she does."
She and Lennon were married on March 20, 1969, and their son, Sean, was born in 1975. Lennon was shot to death on Dec. 8, 1980, outside the famed Dakota apartment building just west of New York's Central Park.
Source: Victoria Cavaliere/aol.com
One of Paul McCartney’s most enduring songs is “Hey Jude,” but he was never convinced that would be the case. McCartney wrote the song shortly after John Lennon’s divorce from his wife, Cynthia Lennon. He ultimately came to think fondly of the song, but he did not always feel this way. McCartney admitted he was quite nervous to release “Hey Jude” because he wasn’t sure it was good.
Paul McCartney said he worried about how people would react to ‘Hey Jude’. In 1970, The Beatles had recently split up, and McCartney prepared to release his first solo album, McCartney. A journalist for Rolling Stone asked the bassist if the new album would have any ballads that were as strong as “Let It Be” or “Hey Jude.”
“Yeah, I think so,” he responded. “I can never tell.”
McCartney explained that he had difficulty discerning which of his songs were good.
Source: Emma McKee/Showbiz Cheat Sheet
Paul McCartney said The Beatles were surrounded by people, but they couldn't necessarily count them as friends. He shared why things were complicated.
John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr endured unprecedented levels of fame while they were in The Beatles. They became the biggest band in the world, ripping any shred of normalcy from the Fab Four’s lives. McCartney said that while they were constantly surrounded by people, it was difficult to tell who their real friends were. He said Starr struggled to count his genuine friends on one hand. Paul McCartney said Ringo Starr and the rest of the Beatles struggled to find real friends
When The Beatles became famous, they found themselves feeling isolated despite being constantly surrounded by people.
“I remember Ringo saying at the time ‘How many friends have I got?’ and he couldn’t count them on one hand,” McCartney told Rolling Stone. “And that’s what it boils down to, really. You can have millions of friends, but when someone asks you how many friends you’ve got, it depends on how honestly you’re going to answer. Because I don’t think I have that many.”
A black and white picture of The Beatles running down an alley.
He pointed to times of difficulty in his life, like when he faced public backlash for marrying Linda McCartney. He wasn’t sure if the isolation was his own doing, or if he didn’t have many true friends. “No one went against me or anything, I think I isolated myself a bit,” he said. “It’s just one of those things.”
Source: Emma McKee/cheatsheet.com
Most music fans agree: George Harrison was under-appreciated as a songwriter during his time with the Beatles. Between 1962 and 1970, the Fab Four released a little over 200 songs, only a small fraction of which were penned by Harrison.
It would not be until the latter portion of the band's tenure and into the early years of Harrison's solo career that his talent earned more recognition — 1970's All Things Must Pass, for example, was one of the best-selling albums of the '70s and is consistently cited today as a landmark singer-songwriter release. Or you can look at it this way: two of the most-streamed Beatles songs ever were written by Harrison, "Here Comes the Sun" and "Something."
Appearing on 1969's Abbey Road, "Something" was Harrison's very first A-side Beatles single — seven years after the band began releasing music. It was a No. 1 hit in the U.S., as well as No. 4 in the U.K., and almost immediately, fellow musicians recognized its strength and starting covering the song both live and on their own records.
"I realize that the sign of a good song is when it has lots of cover versions," Harrison would say in The Beatles Anthology. We agree. Below, in no particular order, are the 10 Best Covers of 'Something' by George Harrison.
Frank Sinatra
Frank Sinatra did "Something" his way. He started performing the song live at his concerts not long after the song was released, and also included it on his 1972 album Frank Sinatra's Greatest Hits, Vol. 2. "It's one of the best love songs I believe to be written in 50 or 100 years," Sinatra said just before performing the show at the Concert for Americas in the Dominican Republic in 1982, "and it never says 'I love you' in the song, but it really is one of the finest." The singer was in his mid 60s then — compared to Harrison, who was 26 when he laid down the original demos of the song — lending it a sort of wisened tone.
Source: Allison Rapp/ultimateclassicrock.com
New York musician David Peel rings up the Greenwich Village apartment of John Lennon and Yoko Ono. She answers. After exchanging standard greetings, Ono seems to crumble.
Yoko Ono: People are saying that I’m the one who broke up the Beatles, you know? When I was pregnant, I got letters that said, “I hope your baby dies.” And they sent me a rag doll with a bunch of needles stuck in it, in its eyes, in its mouth, in its nose. When I walk down the street with John, they come up to me and say, “you’re ugly.” They pull my hair and hit me in the head.
David Peel: That happened in England?
Yoko Ono: Yes, yes, in England. I had three spontaneous abortions during that time.
David Peel: Oh my God, Yoko, I can’t believe it.
That 1971 conversation was never made public, until being included in the documentary One to One: John & Yoko, which debuted at the recent Venice Film Festival, will be shown at the BFI London Film Festival in mid-October and is awaiting a commercial release date. What is striking about the movie, which addresses a well-known subject (the English press enthusiastically piled onto the public lynching of Ono at the time, as period newspaper clippings make clear) is the timbre of the voices it captures, their indignation, their anguish, and the look it provides at a moment that was as socially and politically turbulent as it was musically innovative.
Source: Carlos Marcos/english.elpais.com
Paul is dad to five children: Heather, Mary, Stella, Beatrice and James, and it’s a title the rock legend clearly treasures. “As far as being a dad is concerned, I've always just tried to give my kids a bit of guidance if they seem to need it — but that was mainly when they were younger,” he said in an interview published on his website in February 2023. “Now that they are older, they're guiding me.”
The Beatles star continued, elaborating on how his fatherhood role has changed now that his kids are all adults. “They don't need so much guidance these days, but if there's ever a problem, I'm very happy to be the guy they come to,” he wrote. “So, that's largely the thing of being a dad. You're just there to help, and I suppose have fun with — we do have a lot of fun.”
Paul became a father in 1969 after he married his first wife, photographer Linda McCartney (née Eastman), and adopted her daughter Heather from a previous relationship. That same year, the pair welcomed their first child together, daughter Mary. They went on to have two more kids together: Stella in 1971 and James in 1977.
Following Linda’s tragic death in 1998, Paul married former model Heather Mills in 2002. A year later, the two welcomed Paul's youngest child, daughter Beatrice. Paul and Mills separated in 2006 and, after a contentious legal battle, their divorce was finalized in 2008.
James has said that he struggled with accepting Mills into his family after his mother's death, so was estranged from his father for a period of time. “We drifted quite far apart — it was a difficult period,” James told The Irish Mirror in 2013. “The estrangement was partly because of Heather. It was difficult because of Mum’s death and then moving on, having a new mother.”
However, Paul and James have not only reconciled since then, but their relationship has grown stronger than ever. “[He] is my dad and he is also my best friend,” James told The Irish Mirror. In June 2024, James shared a sweet Instagram post in honor of his musician father turning 82.
“Happy Birthday Dad. I will always love you,” he wrote. “You are a guiding light that shows me how to move forward. You love me, I love you and that's all that matters. ❤️.”
Here’s everything to know about Paul McCartney’s only son, James McCartney. Paul welcomed his only son, James Louis McCartney, on Sept. 12, 1977, with his late wife Linda in London.
The couple, who wed in 1969, were already parents to three daughters, including Mary Anna McCartney, born in August 1969, Stella Nina McCartney, born in September 1971, and Heather Louise McCartney, Linda’s daughter from a previous marriage who was born in December 1962. Upon their marriage, Paul officially adopted Heather.
Source: Katie Mannion/people.com
Few artists have left as indelible a mark on music history as Paul McCartney. After the phenomenal success of The Beatles, McCartney didn’t miss a beat in continuing his legacy through his next great venture: Wings. Formed in 1971, the band was McCartney’s creative outlet during the 1970s, producing a string of chart-topping hits that cemented his post-Beatles career. Wings wasn’t just a side project—it became one of the most successful bands of the decade, blending McCartney’s genius for melody with rock, folk, and even orchestral influences. With his wife Linda McCartney on keyboards and a rotating lineup of talented musicians, Wings soared to international fame with some of the most memorable tracks in rock history.
In this article, we’ll take a deep dive into the top 10 most popular Paul McCartney and Wings songs of all time. From heart-pounding rock anthems to tender ballads, these tracks showcase the extraordinary versatility and timeless appeal of McCartney’s songwriting. Whether you’re a long-time fan or new to their music, these songs are bound to transport you back to an era where McCartney and Wings ruled the airwaves. So, buckle up and get ready to rediscover some of music’s greatest hits!
1. “Band on the Run” (1973)
2. “Live and Let Die” (1973)
3. “Jet” (1974)
4. “Maybe I’m Amazed” (Live Version, 1977)
5. “Silly Love Songs” (1976)
6. “Mull of Kintyre” (1977)
7. “Let Me Roll It” (1973)
8. “Helen Wheels” (1973)
9. “My Love” (1973)
10. “Listen to What the Man Said” (1975)
Source: Edward Tomlin/singersroom.com
Ringo Starr has always been a health nut, but even his obsessive rituals for clean and environmentally conscious living are no longer doing everything they did as he advances in years, a source exclusively tells Closer.
The aging Beatle, 84, recently sparked health fears after canceling the remaining shows in his U.S. tour on Wednesday, September 25, which included a widely anticipated return performance at Radio City Music Hall in New York City. The drummer made the decision following a doctor consultation for a nasty cold, during which he was advised to take it easy for a while.
“He’s still keeping up with the all-organic vegan diet and hasn’t touched a drop of alcohol in 36 years, but even an obsession with health and avoiding germs isn’t enough to keep the flu bug away, at least not anymore,” the source says.
“For a guy who never got the sniffles, this is worrying.”
Before kicking off his fall tour with his All Starr Band in San Diego on Saturday, September 7, the Beatles alum opened up about how he stays healthy.
Speaking about his habits to The San Diego Union-Tribune in May 2023, the rocker said, “I watch what I eat. I’ve been vegetarian for the last 25 years.
Source: Mike Hammer/closerweekly.com
