In March 1967, while recording the Sgt. Pepper track "Getting Better," John Lennon inadvertently took LSD after mistaking it for an amphetamine.  Paul McCartney decided to take LSD alongside Lennon for the first time, leading to an intense bonding experience.

In his book John & Paul: A Love Story in Songs, author Ian Leslie suggests that such moments of vulnerability and support strengthened Lennon and McCartney's artistic synergy and personal connection

John Lennon and Paul McCartney changed the world with the 162 songs they wrote for the Beatles, but few demonstrate the creative and emotional complexities of their relationship quite like “Getting Better,” from the band’s 1967 opus, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. Speaking to PEOPLE 50 years after writing it, McCartney would cite the track as emblematic of their contrasting philosophical dispositions — with himself handling the bright and buoyant “It’s getting better all the time” chorus while Lennon offered the tart counterpoint: “It can’t get no worse.”

In John & Paul: A Love Story in Songs, author Ian Leslie details their union with perceptive insights bolstered by extensive research. The book highlights not only how “Getting Better” illustrates Lennon and McCartney’s individual personalities, but also how the recording session became an unexpected bonding experience of the psychedelic variety.

As with many songs from this era, the initial idea came from McCartney. While strolling in the park on an early spring day in March 1967, he recalled a favorite phrase of part-time Beatles’ drummer Jimmie Nicol, who subbed in for a few dates on the 1964 world tour while Ringo Starr recovered from tonsillitis. When interviewers asked how he was coping with the whirlwind role, Nicol would invariably reply with a hopeful “It’s getting better!” Nearly three years later, the line bubbled into McCartney’s consciousness, appealing to his innate sense of optimism.

Source: people.com/Jordan Runtagh

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When I Want to Hold Your Hand topped the U.S. charts, Paul McCartney and John Lennon felt the pressure to write another hit song.

The Beatles had already won the hearts of fans in the U.K. and Europe, but soaring to the number one spot on the American charts in February 1964 took their fame to even greater heights. The band's song I Want To Hold Your Hand climbed swiftly to the number one spot in America just days before they landed in New York for their debut U.S. performance.

Dominating the top spot for seven weeks, the song triggered Beatlemania across the States. Amid this frenzy, and while touring in Paris, news of their chart-topping success reached The Beatles, leaving Paul to head straight to their hotel piano to write their next hit.

Paul ended up writing Can't Buy Me Love. Discussing the song, Paul said, "Can't Buy Me Love is my attempt to write a bluesy mode."

He further explained, "The idea behind it was that all these material possessions are all very well but they won't buy me what I really want. It was a very hooky song. Ella Fitzgerald later did a version of it which I was very honored by."

While John openly acknowledged the song was mostly Paul's, he claimed to have contributed to the chorus. Recounting in a 1980 interview, John commented, "That's Paul's completely. Maybe I had something to do with the chorus, but I don't know. I always considered it his song."

Source: themirror.com/Dan Haygarth

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John Lennon and Paul McCartney were each other’s favorite audience. That was plainly clear as the besotted Beatles bantered, bickered and obsessed over the 23 years they were friends and rivals.

Ian Leslie’s new biography “John & Paul: A Love Story in Songs” (Celadon, 436 pp., out now) unpacks their intense and complicated relationship from their first meeting in 1957 to Lennon’s murder in 1980.

Along the way, there’s psychoanalysis (Leslie specializes in writing about human psychology, communication and creativity) and the occasional hair-curling discovery.

Nothing here is entirely new: Leslie relies on previously published interviews and conducted just one himself for the book, with “Let It Be” director Michael Lindsay-Hogg. But Leslie does an extraordinary job of providing context for familiar anecdotes, and there are many that will feel surprising.

Among the biggest revelations:

Paul McCartney planned to pursue a solo career if The Beatles never hit it big.  The complex relationship between Beatles songwriters John Lennon and Paul McCartney is the focus of the new book "John & Paul: A Love Story in Songs."

When the Fab Four signed their contract with manager Brian Epstein in 1961, Paul requested a clause allowing Epstein to split up the artists “so that they shall perform as separate individual performers.” Epstein’s assistant, Alistair Taylor, recalled Paul saying he would go solo if things didn’t work out with the band.

Source: usatoday.com

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The Beatles biopic is officially happening, which means it's time to brush up on all there is to know about the Fab Four.

Actually, make that biopics—there are four of them: one for Paul McCartney (Paul Mescal), one for Ringo Starr (Barry Keoghan), one for George Harrison (Joseph Quinn), and one for John Lennon (Harris Dickinson). And naturally fan-casting has already started for the giant cast of characters in each of these men's lives. Specifically, their wives and girlfriends.

If you aren't up-to-date on who The Beatles were dating in the 60s due to reasons like not being born yet, let's start with a deep dive on Paul's famous relationships with the likes of Jane Asher and Linda Eastman.

Paul and Dot met at Casbah Club in 1959 and immediately hit it off. As in, they dated for two-and-a-half years and even got engaged. But since their relationship was largely pre mega-fame, not much is known about Dot and there aren't readily available pictures of her and Paul together. In fact, Beatles biographer Bob Spitz told The Globe and Mail, "She was very reluctant at first to talk. This takes her from being a very private person to a very public person. This was a story she had kept to herself for nearly 40 years. It took a lot of time to convince her talk to me. She told me her story very hesitantly, in a halting way. In the manner she told it, I knew it was absolutely accurate."

Source: cosmopolitan.com/Mehera Bonner

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Music icon George Harrison never understood Paul McCartney's 'fruity' Abbey Road song.

By 1969, the cracks that had formed between The Beatles during the recording of The White Album and Let It Be had turned into craters and they were on the brink of breaking up. However, they wanted to squeeze out one more hit album, Abbey Road.

Harrison had already quit the band once in January 1969, during the recording of Let It Be, due to rising tension between him and McCartney. He was also fed up with constantly being pushed to the side along with his music and eventually began hating all the tracks McCartney put forth.

Reflecting on his time in The Beatles during a 1977 interview with Crawdaddy, Harrison said: "Sometimes Paul would make us do these really fruity songs. I mean, my god, Maxwell's Silver Hammer was so fruity. After a while we did a good job on it, but when Paul got an idea or an arrangement in his head... But Paul's really writing for a 14-year-old audience now anyhow. I missed his last tour, unfortunately."

Whether or not McCartney's songs were good or not, Harrison had grown sick of working on them instead of his own. An over-arching tension began for Harrison during the recording of The White Album.  George Harrison didn't like one of Paul McCartney's Abbey Road songs.

Source: themirror.com/Hannah Furnell

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Pete Best, the drummer most famous for getting fired from The Beatles before the group shot to international fame, has retired. The news was announced by his brother Roag Best, who wrote on Twitter/X, “Well what an absolutely wonderful ride we’ve had. However, everything comes to pass.” (All Things Must Pass would’ve been too on the nose, we suppose.) “My brother Pete Best has announced today he is retiring from personal appearances and performing with the group. His daughter has informed me it’s due to personal circumstances.” Best (whose handle on the platform is “BeatlesPeteBest”) confirmed the news with a repost, adding, “I had a blast. Thank you.”

Best was an original member of The Beatles, and his family was closely entwined with the group. His mother, Mona Best, owned the Casbah Coffee House where the band played many of its early gigs—the band members even helped her decorate the space—and she became a pseudo-manager for them in their early days. (She shared a son, Roag, with The Beatles’ longtime road manager Neil Aspinall.) But when the band fired Pete in the early 1960s in favor of Ringo Starr, he ended up quitting the music biz for decades, instead becoming a civil servant in their hometown of Liverpool. It wasn’t until the late ’80s that he returned to the stage, eventually becoming the frontman of The Pete Best Band. According to his website, his group “captures the sound of the Beatles in their formative years – the early years for many ‘was’ The Beatles.”

Source: avclub.com

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