Beatles News
This past Sunday, February 2, saw The Beatles take home the Best Rock Performance honor at the 2025 Grammy Awards for the song “Now and Then.” This marked the first time that the Fab Four has won a Grammy since 1997. That year, the band was honored with three trophies.
In celebration of The Beatles’ latest Grammy win, a video presentation looking back at the excitement surrounding the release of “Now and Then” in November 2023 has been posted on the group’s official YouTube channel.
As previously reported, “Now and Then” was billed as “the last Beatles song,” and was created using a demo recorded by the late John Lennon around 1977, with new parts added by the surviving Beatles in 1995 and the 2020s. As noted in a description of the track that accompanies the YouTube video, the song’s release “became a cultural moment in history, uniting listeners around the world in a shared music experience as the band released their final single.”
The clip features footage and images depicting the various ways the release of “Now and Then” was promoted in cities around the world.
The video includes footage of fans purchasing physical copies of the single in various stores. It also features articles in newspapers and magazines, billboards, ads projected on buildings, and more.
In addition, the clip shows a montage of fans’ reactions to the song on social media, and snippets from the official “Now and Then” music video. The presentation with a simple note to fans that reads, “Thank you.” Beatles drummer Ringo Starr took to his social media pages to express his excitement about the band’s Grammy win.
“Wow, another Grammy. Well, done everybody,” Ringo wrote. “I send you peace and love. That’s right the beat goes on. thanks, peace and love Ringo.” The post also featured a new photo of Starr smiling and flashing a peace sign.
Source: Matt Friedlander/americansongwriter.com
A copy of a book written by John Lennon and signed by both him and his first wife has sold at auction for £2,000. The book, originally published in 1964, went under the hammer at the Cotswold Auction Company in Cheltenham.
"It's a little gem, it has drawings, poems and little articles by John," said auctioneer and director of the company, Lindsey Braune. She added it went to a "very keen bidder" on the telephone, based in the UK.
The hardback book is an illustrated collection of humorous and surreal poems, short stories and observations that Lennon wrote down. Around 300,000 copies were printed when the book was first issued.
The copy that was sold was given to the owner's son on his 21st birthday. "There's a few of these books around but they don't come up at auction that often," said Ms Braune.
Items relating to the Beatles are highly sought after by collectors. "There are so many autographs that were purported to be by them, but they were so often actually done by secretaries or roadies as the band had so many to do," Ms Braune said.
"Anything with a real John Lennon signature on it are very rare, and the fact it's the book he wrote is extra special."
Source: Jonathan Holmes/BBC.com
The Beatles picked up another Grammy Award Sunday night, with their final song “Now And Then” winning best rock performance. Neither Paul McCartney nor Ringo Starr were on hand to accept the award in person, but now Ringo has reacted to their latest honor.
“Wow, another Grammy. Well, done everybody,” he shared on Instagram, next to a photo of him giving the peace sign. “I send you peace and love. That’s right the beat goes on. thanks, peace and love Ringo.”
So far McCartney has not commented on the win.
The win was The Beatles’ eighth Grammy Award and their first in 28 years. Their last wins came in 1997 when they won best pop performance by a duo or group with vocals; best music video, short form for “Free As A Bird”; and best music video, long form for The Beatles Anthology.
They were also honored with a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2014.
While The Beatles did win best rock performance, they lost in the major category, record of the year. That honor went to Kendrick Lamar for “Not Like Us.”
Source: 100.7 KSLX
When I checked George Harrison out on the Internet, I kept finding the same words to describe him - underappreciated and overlooked. He was always seemingly eclipsed by his virtuoso Beatle bandmates John Lennon and Paul McCartney. Their towering genius at songwriting and musicianship unfortunately put Harrison in the shade. That seems unfair. He was every bit as brilliant and special in his own subtle way as they were in theirs.
Now, almost 24 years after his death in 2001 at the too-young ago of 58, his work bears renewed evaluation. In my opinion, Harrison's stunning 1970 triple album All Things Must Pass qualifies him for greatness in itself. It is an unequaled encapsulation of everything that made him remarkable and unique as an artist.
Looking Back At George Harrison's Amazing Career
Maybe you have seen a program on PBS called Concert for George that was filmed in London on November 29, 2002, one year after Harrison left us.. Some of his musician buddies got together in his memory and played his songs in a rollicking, reverential show. Eric Clapton, Tom Petty, ex-Beatles Paul and Ringo, Billy Preston, Harrison's son, Dhani, and others played and sang their hearts out. If anything, it proved how very gifted George Harrison really was and how much he is missed.
Source: Judy Bass/wideopencountry.com
Everybody knows how George Harrison started the ’70s: His seven-times platinum international chart-topping triple album All Things Must Pass reeled off the No. 1 “My Sweet Lord” in the wake of the Beatles‘ split.
Less known, though they should be, are underrated later gems like 1976’s Thirty Three & 1/3 and Harrison’s self-titled 1979 album. They spawned a trio of Top 30 hits (“This Song,” “Crackerbox Palace” and “Blow Away”), but will never be as ubiquitous as the triple-album behemoth that began the decade.
In between, Harrison had some highs (1973’s Living in the Material World and its chart-topping single “Give Me Love,” after a guest-packed charity concert and album) and some lows (1975’s decidedly uneven Extra Texture, a plagiarism scandal). The following list of Top 25 George Harrison ’70s Songs aims to put it all in perspective.
Extra Texture even gets a little love. So do a number of deeper cuts that never found their way onto radio playlists or jukeboxes with other Top 40 solo hits like “What Is Life,” “Dark Horse” and “You.” Of course, the 23-song All Things Must Past provided a deep well of material, but his other ’70s LPs yielded their own musical delights, too.
Harrison made an impressive entrance into the next decade with the No. 2 smash “All Those Years Ago,” a 1981 tribute to fallen bandmate John Lennon, but ended up going through a creative dry spell. He’d never be this musically active again.
Source: MSN
The Beatles have won their eighth competitive Grammy award thanks to a little help from artificial intelligence. The 2023 track “Now and Then” — which Billboard reports is the first song knowingly created with AI assistance to earn a Grammy nomination — was awarded Best Rock Performance on Sunday, beating out competition from Green Day, Pearl Jam, The Black Keys, Idles, and St. Vincent.
The track was pieced together using a demo that John Lennon recorded in the late 1970s, with Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, and George Harrison later providing their own contributions in the mid-‘90s, with the aim of including the final song in The Beatles Anthology project. “Now and Then” wasn’t released, however, due to technical limitations at the time preventing Lennon’s vocals and piano from being separated from the original lo-fi demo.
McCartney and Starr later managed to complete the song in 2021 with help from filmmaker Peter Jackson and his sound team, who developed machine-learning technology (a type of AI that uses algorithms to learn from data) capable of isolating and cleaning up different components of Lennon’s recording. This greatly differs from generative AI tech that can be used to create music that mimics an artist’s style and vocals, but confusion around AI terminology led to some backlash online when the track was released.
“To be clear, nothing has been artificially or synthetically created. It’s all real and we all play on it,” McCartney said in 2023, addressing speculation about AI’s role in development. “We cleaned up some existing recordings — a process which has gone on for years.”
Source: theverge.com/Jess Weatherbed
Japanese-New Zealand actress Anna Sawai is reportedly being considered to portray Yoko Ono in Sam Mendes’ highly anticipated four-part Beatles biopic project. The news has sparked excitement and discussion among fans, given Sawai’s rising prominence in Hollywood and the significance of Yoko Ono in John Lennon’s life and the Beatles’ history.
Director Sam Mendes, best known for 1917 and Skyfall, is embarking on an unprecedented cinematic journey by telling The Beatles’ story through four separate but interconnected films—one dedicated to each band member. This innovative storytelling approach is a first for a major motion picture, providing an in-depth and multifaceted view of the band’s legendary rise, relationships, conflicts, and ultimate breakup.
The films have received full cooperation from Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, and the families of John Lennon and George Harrison, ensuring an authentic and authorized portrayal of the iconic group. With major casting decisions underway, the addition of Anna Sawai as Yoko Ono could add a new layer of depth to the narrative, particularly regarding John Lennon’s later years.
Anna Sawai has been gaining widespread recognition for her talent and versatility. Recently, she captivated audiences in FX’s ShÅgun, a historical epic set in feudal Japan. Her previous credits include Pachinko, Fast & Furious 9, and Monarch: Legacy of Monsters, proving her ability to take on complex roles in a variety of genres.
Source: yahoo.com/Diana Wilson
Left-handed guitarists have never had it easy, especially in the early years of the instrument's U.S. popularity. Reportedly, Jimi Hendrix’s father forced him to play right-handed when he was a youngster out of belief that left-handedness was a sign of the devil. Jimi accommodated his dad when he was around and then flipped the guitar for left-handed playing when he was gone.
Paul McCartney had it somewhat easier. A southpaw, his dad didn't force him to play right handed, but like other lefty guitarists he had to tweak his Zenith acoustic guitar by switching the string order and making homemade fixes to the nut. Even so, over time he managed to learn how to play guitar right-handed given that much of the time he was among right-handed guitarists with no suitable instrument in sight.
“I can play right-handed guitar a bit, just enough for at parties,” he confirmed to Guitar Player in 1990. “Hopefully, by that point everyone is drunk when I pick it up, because otherwise they're going to catch me. But I could do that."
He explained that it would have made little sense to ask if he could re-string someone's guitar. "And at a party, you only want to play it for 15 or 30 minutes or so, and by the time you've goofed up their guitar and you hand it back to them, they've got to string it back again, and it's silly. So I had to learn upside down.”
Source: guitarplayer.com/Elizabeth Swann
Fans of The Beatles never imagined they'd see the day when the group released their final song, let alone earn a couple of Grammy nominations for it.
However, while it's incredible that the over 60-year-old band is seeing a resurgence of love and recognition for their last tune, Now and Then, some fans can't help but notice that not all of its band members are being honored technically.
Deceased Beatles John Lennon and George Harrison are not listed on the band's Grammy nomination for Now and Then, despite being featured on the track.
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The Beatles' Now and Then, is up for Record of the Year and Best Rock Performance, but only the two living Beatles — Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr — are nominated for those awards.
Lennon, who died in 1980, and Harrison, who died in 2001, are not eligible due to Grammy rules for “new recordings” and cannot earn an award for “material that has been recorded within five years of the release date.”
So, if The Beatles win in either category, only McCartney and Starr will walk away with awards, instead of the entire group, which would've included Harrison's widow Olivia Harrison and son Dhani Harrison and Lennon's widow Yoko Ono and sons Julian and Sean Lennon.
This has happened before, according to Billboard.
For instance, Nat “King” Cole was not nominated when his daughter Natalie Cole won Record of the Year and Best Traditional Pop Performance in 1992 for their studio-created duet Unforgettable. He had died in 1965.
Source: the-express.com/Hannah Furnell
The record of the year category for the 2025 Grammys is full of zesty pop hits from young female acts such as Chappell Roan, Charli XCX and Sabrina Carpenter.
There’s also Kendrick Lamar’s operatically vicious “Not Like Us” and some poignant, expansive work from Beyoncé (“Texas Hold ’Em”) and Billie Eilish (“Birds of a Feather”).
Then there’s the Beatles’ “Now and Then”. The quartet is back on the Grammy leaderboard a full six decades after winning their first statuette.
“Now and Then”, salvaged from a famously muddy demo from John Lennon, was made possible with the AI-driven, instrument-isolating mix technology first showcased in the documentary series The Beatles: Get Back.
Not even the deaths of Lennon and George Harrison could stand in the way of the most tantalising prospect in rock – a new and final Beatles single, featuring all four members together.
The Recording Academy lauded the single with record and rock performance nominations. The music industry saw the achievements of “Now and Then” as a major feat of production technology and songcraft.
But the academy has also set hard rules around where AI can aid in making music and where it is disqualifying.
“Now and Then” is perhaps the best-case scenario for AI’s place in music.
It’s a pearl of music history, made possible through subtle technology that illuminates, rather than generates. But will its Grammy success open the floodgates for more veteran artists to access and alter old recordings?
“I think AI is a bit like nuclear power. It can split the atom – is that a good idea? Yes if you’re creating energy, but no if it’s a bomb,” said Giles Martin, producer of “Now and Then” and son of long-time Beatles’ producer George Martin.
“For me, when I listen to John’s voice, without fabrication, I felt like I was with him. That’s almost the opposite of AI.”
In 2023, the Recording Academy laid ground rules for how music can incorporate artificial intelligence and still be eligible for awards. The rules say that “only human creators” can win Grammys, and that “the human authorship component of the work submitted must be meaningful”.
Source: scmp.com
