Beatles News
"The greatest pop record ever made. A record that never dates, because it lives outside time”: How The Beatles created Strawberry Fields Forever – the experimental masterpiece that John Lennon regarded as the best song he ever wrote for the band.
Lennon once described Strawberry Fields Forever as “one of the few true songs I ever wrote”, adding that, along with Help!, “they were the ones I really wrote from experience and not projecting myself into a situation and writing a nice story about it”.
Strawberry Fields Forever is quite simply a masterpiece, a poignant, heartfelt song that bridges the innocence of Lennon’s post-War childhood with the kaleidoscopic, heady sensation of ’60s psychedelia.
It is also a landmark moment in the rich back catalogue of The Beatles. Like everything within the exhaustively chronicled career of The Beatles, there's no shortage of opinions on when exactly John Lennon first came up with the germ of Strawberry Fields Forever.
Forums were abuzz in late 2024, when a clip in the Beatles ’64 documentary showed Lennon in a New York hotel room at the height of Beatlemania playing what certainly sounds like the opening, descending melody of Strawberry Fields Forever on a Melodica. Some observers were not convinced.
What is fairly certain is that Lennon wrote the whole song between 26 September and 6 November 1966 in Spain, during filming for the Richard Lester-directed film How I Won The War, a black comedy in which Lennon plays hapless Private Gripweed.
In David Sheff’s 1980 book, The Last Major Interview With John Lennon And Yoko Ono, Lennon recalled the writing of Strawberry Fields Forever: “We were in Almeria,” he said, “and it took me six weeks to write the song.
“I was writing it all the time I was making the film. And as anybody knows about film work, there’s a lot of hanging around. “I have an original tape of it somewhere, of how it sounded before it became the psychedelic sounding song it became on record.”
Like the Paul McCartney-penned Penny Lane, Strawberry Fields Forever was Lennon’s nostalgia-fuelled look back to his childhood years in Liverpool.
Source: musicradar.com
During an interview on Stephen Colbert , former Beatle Paul McCartney Nancy Shevell went undercover to a movie theater to watch Yesterday , a film that imagines a world without the band.
“It was really fun. We were in the back row, and someone in the movie says, ‘Paul McCartney, the greatest songwriter in history.’ I had to laugh. It was really cool. We wanted to see the movie with the people, not with the studio executives. I thought it was great,” he said.
He also confessed to constantly dreaming about John Lennon , his friend and former bandmate. "When you have such a close and deep relationship with someone, for so long, sometimes that person can visit you in your dreams. I love when that happens," he confessed.
McCartney also commented a bit on his relationship with the musician, revealing that he felt a strong connection with Lennon who, like him, lost his mother very early. “We both knew that feeling. I never thought it affected my music, until someone told me that 'Yesterday' could be about my mother. 'Why did she have to go? / I don't know / She didn't tell me.' I didn't write it with that intention, but maybe it is.”
At the end of the interview, the singer recalled a photo of himself with John Lennon and spoke about the negative way the press portrayed the end of the Beatles, as a fight between the members that resulted in the end of their friendship.
“I believed the idea that I was the 'villain' of the story. So many rumors circulated at the time. I started to question myself: 'Did I really know John? Were we friends?'. Seeing this photo reaffirms, for me, that we were. It was really cool when we worked together.”
Source: Erica Y Roumieh/wikimetal.com.br
The Beatles did not find lasting peace in India, but they found something more enduring: a body of work that captured uncertainty without resolving it.
In February of 1968, at the height of their fame, the Beatles boarded a plane bound for India. They were the most recognisable faces on the planet, their music saturating radios, bedrooms, and public life, yet they arrived in Rishikesh seeking something stubbornly intangible.
Success had delivered them everything it promised and very little that it could sustain. The world expected spectacle; the four young men wanted silence. What they found instead was a brief, strange interlude—part retreat, part unravelling—that would leave behind some of the most enduring music of the twentieth century and quietly mark the beginning of the end.
Their destination was an ashram perched above the Ganges, run by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, whose teachings on transcendental meditation had begun to circulate through Western “counterculture.” India, to the Beatles, existed both as a real place and as a projection—a landscape onto which exhaustion, hope, and dissatisfaction could be mapped.
The Western press followed eagerly, framing the journey as a kind of pilgrimage, though the tone often veered into disbelief. Why, many wondered, would four wealthy, famous young men abandon comfort for austerity, guitars for meditation cushions?
The answer had been forming for years, particularly for George Harrison, whose fascination with Indian music began in 1966 when he purchased a sitar on a whim. That instrument led him to Ravi Shankar, the virtuoso who would become both teacher and spiritual guide.
Through Shankar, Harrison encountered Hindu philosophy not as fashion but as discipline, a structure for thinking about ego, suffering, and impermanence. The influence seeped into the Beatles’ music, inaugurating what critics later called the band’s “sitar phase,” though the phrase often flattened something more earnest into a trend.
Source: Madras Courier/madrascourier.com
Val Barone is a journalist working remotely and specializing in music features. A passionate music lover, she keeps up to date on the latest developments in the entertainment world, and in the past five years, she's written for several sites, including ScreenRant, MovieWeb, TheThings, and Far Out Magazine. She covers breaking news in the music world and loves sharing stories about the classic rock musicians she grew up listening to. As a Gen Z writer, she offers a fresh perspective on the events that change music history.
In 1967, The Beatles were at the height of their creativity. They had stopped touring, and their last release from 1966, Revolver, was their most ambitious album. At least, until the album that changed everything. Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band was revolutionary from the start, considered the first concept album. Just the cover art drove people into a frenzy in the '60s, and each song pulls the listener deeper into the world the Fab Four crafted. The last song, "A Day In The Life," is the perfect culmination for the album of the decade, its psychedelic themes, orchestral arrangements, and pop culture references perfectly capturing the music revolution The Beatles were leading at the time. The Song That Changed Rock 'n' Roll Forever
"It was a good piece of work between Paul and me. I had the “I read the news today” bit, and it turned Paul on, because now and then we really turn each other on with a bit of song, and he just said “yeah” — bang bang, like that. It just sort of happened beautifully," Lennon shared, calling it "a real groove." He also spoke about how they decided to divide the singing parts. Lennon had written most of the verses, except for one part. "I needed a middle-eight for it, but that would have been forcing it, all the rest had come out smooth, flowing, no trouble." McCartney, however, had been working on a short song that they both knew instantly would have fit perfectly into it, and that became the middle part.
Source: Val Barone/collider.com
Yoko Ono has been reduced, in the eyes of many Beatles fans, to a punchline. She’s the “reason for the band’s breakup”—a wedge between the once iron-clad John Lennon-Paul McCartney partnership. That’s, of course, obscuring the group’s numerous other issues among themselves. She’s an easy scapegoat for one of the most disappointing band breakups of all time. Anyone who came between a pair of friends from the late ’60s on has been branded a “Yoko”.
Ono’s unpopularity with fans was likely always a source of struggle for the artist, but it only got worse after Lennon’s death in 1980. Ono reportedly faced unthinkable bullying from grieving Beatles fans, who seemingly forgot she felt all they were feeling, albeit with a personal angle.
There was one Lennon song that managed to comfort Ono in the wake of her husband’s death and public backlash, “Grow Old With Me.”
“Grow Old With Me”
We can’t think of a more heartbreaking choice of song for Ono to listen to in the aftermath of Lennon’s murder than “Grow Old With Me.” Grow old along with me / The best is yet to be / When our time has come / We will be as one, the lyrics read, twisting the knife a little further.
Nevertheless, Ono clung tightly to an at-home cassette recording of this track to help her get through the dark times.
And times were dark. Not only was she grieving her husband, but a group of nasty fans was hell-bent on making the whole situation even harder. According to Ono, fans would call her apartment at The Dakota, claiming bomb threats and even Lennon’s reincarnation.
With all the fuss, Ono worried that her last connection to Lennon, the cassette tape, would be taken by some unruly fan.
“After his passing, all I had was a cassette of it,” Ono once said. “I had it in my handbag…When I went to sleep, I had some bells on my door, so if anyone came in, I’d hear it. I didn’t want people to take it from me.”
Source: Alex Hopper/americansongwriter.com
Paul McCartney has landed on top the Billboard Boxscore for November thanks to his Got Back tour.
The Beatles legend tops the chart after bringing in $51.7 million from sales of 150,000 tickets for 11 shows. The latest leg of the tour kicked off Sept. 29 in Palm Desert, California, and wrapped Nov. 25 in Chicago.
This is the second time McCartney’s Got Back tour earned him the #1 spot on the list. The tour previously topped the Billboard Boxscore in May of 2022.
McCartney’s Got Back tour, which initially launched in April of 2022 and has included shows in 2023, 2024 and 2025, has brought $410.7 million overall, with 2.4 million tickets sold.
In other news … The Beatles are helping fans get in the Christmas spirit with the YouTube release of The Beatles Holiday Yule Log (Merry Crimble) featuring classic Beatles tracks. The video features an image of roaring fire, with Christmas stockings hung on the mantel for McCartney, George Harrison, John Lennon and Ringo Starr. There’s also a turntable with pictures of the band members and presents wrapped in Beatles wrapping paper.
According to the description, “this video is made to be left on all holiday long, whether you are relaxing, seeing friends and family, or simply letting it play in the background while you do nothing at all.”
Source: ABC NEWS/kshe95.com
Lennon embedded subtle hints about leaving the Beatles in songs like “Glass Onion.”
He said, “I had to either be married to them [the band] or Yoko, and I chose Yoko.”
McCartney later stated Yoko was not to blame; the group was already breaking up.
Long before the Beatles’ official split in 1970, John Lennon was dropping subtle clues that he was ready to walk away.
In “Glass Onion” from the 1968 White Album, Lennon references a number of the Fab Four’s recent hits. The lyrics drop nods to Beatles classics like “Strawberry Fields Forever,” “Lady Madonna,” “Fool on the Hill” and “Fixing a Hole.”
Lennon also revisits the Magical Mystery Tour classic “I Am the Walrus,” with the line, “I told you about the walrus and me, man. You know that we’re as close as can be, man. Well, here’s another clue for you all. The walrus was Paul.”
In discussing the song, Lennon noted that he intentionally made the references confusing, challenging listeners to dig deeper for hidden meaning in the track.
“I threw the line in—’the Walrus was Paul’—just to confuse everybody a bit more. It could have been ‘the fox terrier is Paul,'” he once said.
“I mean, it’s just a bit of poetry. I was having a laugh because there’d been so much gobbledygook about Pepper—play it backwards and you stand on your head and all that.”
However, in one of his last interviews with David Sheff, Lennon revealed, “The line was put in partly because I was feeling guilty because I was with Yoko, and I was leaving Paul. I was trying … I don’t know. It’s a very perverse way of saying to Paul, you know, ‘Here, have this crumb, this illusion, this, this stroke, because I’m leaving.”
Over the years, fans and music historians have speculated endlessly about what caused the Beatles to break up — was it money, creative differences or relationships?
Lennon addressed the question directly in a 1971 interview with Rolling Stone, “I had to either be married to them [the band] or Yoko, and I chose Yoko.”
Paul McCartney offered a different perspective decades later. In a 2012 interview with British broadcaster David Frost, McCartney said that Yoko Ono “certainly didn’t break the group up, the group was breaking up.”
He adds that without her introducing Lennon to the avant-garde, songs like “Imagine” might never have existed.
“I don’t think he would have done that without Yoko, so I don’t think you can blame her for anything,” McCartney said.
“When Yoko came along, part of her attraction was her avant garde side, her view of things, so she showed him another way to be, which was very attractive to him. So it was time for John to leave, he was definitely going to leave [one way or another].”
Source: Isabella Torregiani/parade.com
The Beatles may have broken up in 1970, but the band continues to live on and 2025 was no exception. Fans of the band got a new look at their 1990s Anthology project with reissues of the documentary series, music and book.
-Disney+ debuted a restored and remastered version of the Anthology documentary series, which aired on ABC in 1995, with the eight-part series expanded to nine episodes. In addition, the music was reissued as The Anthology Collection, a box set featuring the first three Anthology albums, along with a new fourth edition, featuring 13 previously unreleased recordings. Anthology 4 was also released as a standalone.
-A 25th anniversary edition of The Beatles Anthology book, featuring more than 1,300 photos, documents, artwork and memorabilia, was also released.
-This year also brought casting news for Sam Mendes‘ four Beatles films, The Beatles – A Four-Film Cinematic Event, due out in April 2028. The project, in which each film will be told from the point of view of a different band member, will star Harris Dickinson as John Lennon, Paul Mescal as Paul McCartney, Barry Keoghan as Ringo Starr and Joseph Quinn as George Harrison.
Among this year’s other Beatles highlights:
-Ringo released a new country album, Look Up, and as part of the promotion for his Grand Ole Opry debut. He also headlined two nights at Nashville’s Ryman Auditorium, joined by some famous friends, with the shows turned into a special that aired on CBS.
-The Beatles won another Grammy, taking home best rock performance for “Now and Then.” In addition, Lennon’s son Sean Ono Lennon won the Grammy for best boxed or special limited edition package for his work on the reissue of his late father’s Mind Games album.
-McCartney surprised fans in New York City by headlining three shows at the 575-person-capacity Bowery Ballroom. The shows were a lead-up to his performance on the SNL 50 anniversary special.
-A new documentary about Lennon and wife Yoko Ono, One to One: John & Yoko, directed by Oscar-winning filmmaker Kevin Macdonald, opened in theaters in April.
-Original Beatles drummer Pete Best announced his retirement from music.
-The Lennon documentary Borrowed Time: Lennon’s Last Decade, from director Alan G. Parker, debuted in London in May. The film eventually opened in the U.S. in December.
-McCartney returned to the stage in the band’s hometown of Liverpool, joining Bruce Springsteen for The Boss’ show at Anfield Stadium. They played two songs together, The Beatles’ classic “Can’t Buy Me Love” and a cover of the Leiber & Stoller tune “Kansas City,” which The Beatles recorded in 1964.
Source: lakesmedianetwork.com
In the latest installment of his “You Gave Me the Answer” Q&A feature, Paul McCartney reflects on his eventful 2025 while also looking ahead to what he has in store for 2026.
As part of the feature, a fan named Sam asked the Beatles legend what he’s looking forward to the most in 2026.
“My new album!” McCartney declared. “We’re just starting to think about how to put that together.”
Sir Paul also revealed that he’s looking forward to the wide release of the Morgan Neville-directed documentary Man on the Run, “and all the activity that comes along with that.”
As previously reported, Man on the Run focuses on McCartney’s life and career following The Beatles’ breakup. The documentary focuses on Paul’s years with his post-Fab Four band Wings. Man on the Run will get its TV premiere on Amazon’s Prime Video streaming service on February 25, 2026.
The 83-year-old rock legend also said he’s excited about his long-in-the-works animated film High in the Clouds finally getting finished.
“High in the Clouds … is being made and we’ve finished up all the recordings of the vocalists in the last couple of days,” he noted. “In animation you have to do the dialogue and songs first so they can draw to it, it doesn’t work the other way round. We’re well on the way with that which is getting exciting.”
High in the Clouds is based on a 2005 children’s adventure book of the same name that McCartney co-wrote. The movie will feature the voices of McCartney, Ringo Starr, Celine Dion, Lionel Richie, Idris Elba, Jimmy Fallon, Hannah Waddingham, Himesh Patel, and other stars.
McCartney’s Favorite 2025 Highlights
The curators of McCartney’s website asked Paul what has been his “professional highlight of 2025.” McCartney pointed out, “The great thing is there’s so much suddenly happening. It’s like a log jam, loads of things have just come in.”
Among these, Paul listed his memoir, Wings: The Story of a Band on the Run, and its companion WINGS compilation. Both projects were released in November 2025.
McCartney said his favorite overall highlight of 2025 was probably the latest leg of his Got Back Tour. The 21-date North American outing kicked off on September 26 concert in Santa Barbara, California, and wound down with a November 24-25 stand in Chicago.
“The … tour was spectacular: the audiences were so warm and receptive,” Paul noted. He added, “[I]t was so successful and enjoyable for everyone involved.”
McCartney also explained that he especially enjoyed some of the more intimate shows he played in 2025. These included his three surprise clubs shows in January at the Bowery Ballroom in New York City; the Santa Barbara concert, and his November 6 performance in Nashville.
Source: Matt Friedlander/americansongwriter.com
Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band' is considered The Beatles' masterpiece. "With A Little Help From My Friends" originally had a line Ringo refused to sing. Ringo objected to it, fearing real audience reactions.
The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band is often regarded as the best album of all time. The album, released in May 1967, saw the band—John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr—take Beatlemania in a new direction, with a new influx of sonic styles and experimentation.
But it almost didn’t have one of its most important moments, all because of one line.
The line was in “With A Little Help From My Friends,” which Lennon and McCartney wrote together. “I remember giggling with John as we wrote the lines, ‘What do you see when you turn out the light? I can’t tell you but I know it’s mine,'” McCartney said in Barry Miles’s biography, Many Years From Now, per Far Out Magazine. But after Ringo scanned the first draft of the lyrics, he made a demand.
“The song ‘With A Little Help From My Friends’ was written specifically for me, but they had one line that I wouldn’t sing,” Starr said in The Beatles Anthology, the 1995 docuseries that was recently added to Disney+. And what line did Ringo refuse to sing? “It was, ‘What would you do if I sang out of tune?’ Would you stand up and throw tomatoes at me?'”
The Beatles began working on Sgt. Pepper’s in December 1966, months after wrapping up their final tour. Though they never formally announced that they were retiring from the road, the intense Beatlemania they experienced that year made them decide they’d be a studio-only band.
Starr clearly suspected that the band would eventually play live again, and he didn’t want to give the audience any ideas by singing a line about flying produce.
“I said, ‘There’s not a chance in hell am I going to sing this line,’ because we still had lots of really deep memories of the kids throwing jelly beans and toys on stage,” Starr said in Anthology (h/t Far Out), “and I thought that if we ever did get out there again, I was not going to be bombarded with tomatoes.”
Anyone who has ever heard “With A Little Help From My Friends” (or heard Joe Cocker’s version open up an episode of The Wonder Years) knows that the line goes “What would you do if I sang out of tune? Would you stand up and walk out on me?” Lennon and McCartney changed the line, resulting in a much better song—one that has endured in the decades since.
Source: Jason Brow/parade.com
