Beatles News
Sean Ono Lennon opened up about why he's carrying on the legacy of his parents John Lennon, Yoko Ono and The Beatles
Sean said he is worried that people will forget his father and his music. Sean said he thinks he 'owes' it to his parents to do the work of protecting their legacy
Sean, 50, opened up about the legacy of dad John Lennon, mom Yoko Ono and The Beatles in a Dec. 21 interview with CBS Sunday Morning. With Yoko, 92, in her later years, Sean said he’s “technically” taken over her role as custodian of his dad’s legacy.
“But obviously the world is also the custodian of his legacy, I would say,” he added. “I'm just doing my best to help make sure that the younger generation doesn't forget about The Beatles and John and Yoko. That's how I look at it." The interviewer asked if he thought it was “even possible” that people could forget. “I do, actually," Sean admitted. "And I never did before."
The Beatles in 1967. From left: John Lennon, Ringo Starr, Paul McCartney and George Harrison.
John, alongside Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr and the late George Harrison found worldwide fame as The Beatles in the 1960s. John went solo in 1970, shortly after marrying Yoko, an artist in 1969. He released music solo and with Yoko until his murder at age 40 in 1980.
"My parents gave me so much that I think it's the least I can do to try and support their legacy in my lifetime,” Sean said. I feel like I just owe it to them. It's a personal thing." He described his parents’ legacy as “peace and love,” adding, "But it's not just peace and love. It's an attitude towards activism that is done with humor and love."
"I think the Beatles' music, and John and Yoko's legacy, is something important for the world to kind of cherish and be reminded of. So, that's how I see my job,” he said.
He added that he felt “a lot of pressure” to take over his mom’s role as maintainer of his dad’s legacy because “she set a high standard for the way that she dealt with my dad's music, and the Beatles stuff. She's always been very singular.”
John Lennon in Ann Arbor, Michigan in December 1971.
One of Sean’s ways of honoring his parents’ legacy involved their 1971 song "Happy Xmas (War Is Over),” originally a protest song against United States involvement in the Vietnam War that has become a holiday standard. He explained, "I wanted to see if I could get that feeling of maybe it sounds like you're hearing it again for the first time, or at least in a new context, in a way that you'd pay attention, as opposed to, 'Oh, there it is on the radio again.'"
He and former Pixar animator Dave Mullins made a short animated film titled War Is Over! that featured two soldiers playing chess on opposite sides of a war. Released in 2023, it won the Oscar for Best Animated Short Film in 2024.
John and Yoko’s story is also told in a new HBO documentary One to One, about the couple’s first year in New York and their 1972 Madison Square Garden concert, their only full-length concert together.
“It's my origin story, actually," Sean told CBS. "If you think about it, they came to New York, and that's the only reason I exist." Sean was born in Manhattan in 1975. He said some of the home video footage and recordings he had never seen before. “It's like getting more moments to spend with my dad. So actually, for me on a personal level, it just really means a lot,” he said.
Source: Victoria Edel/people.com
John Lennon appeared "open" and "excited" during his final interview on the day of his tragic death.
The Beatles legend was shot and killed aged 40 outside the Dakota building in New York City on December 8, 1980, by Mark David Chapman. John sustained four gunshot wounds - two to the back and two to the shoulder - at point-blank range. He was declared dead upon arrival at the hospital.
Director Steven Soderbergh has shared insights about John's last day, which involved a recording session, a photo shoot and participating in a radio interview. The interview took place with RKO Radio and featured John alongside his wife Yoko Ono.
Steven is revisiting the radio conversation in a new documentary and disclosed that John and Yoko were "both so free in their discussions" while covering topics ranging from politics to music and their future plans. "I was surprised at how open and excited they were to talk," Steven confessed to Variety.
The 62-year-old filmmaker quipped that the candidness John and Yoko displayed made it seem as though they had never taken part in an interview previously. He continued, "Everything that they said 45 years ago is not just relevant today. It's even more relevant in terms of relationships, politics, how we treat each other," reports the Mirror US.
John and Yoko participated in the RKO Radio session to publicize their album Double Fantasy, which had been released just weeks before. This was their sole radio appearance to promote the record, spanning three-and-a-half hours at the Dakota.
Hosts Dave Sholin and Laurie Kaye conducted the interview with the pair, with Dave later remembering on 20/20, "He had arrived at the Dakota somewhere around noon. The visual of John opening up the door, literally jumping up, leaping into the room and extending his arms like, 'Hey folks, I'm here!'"
He added, "He had just turned 40. As he said, this was like he was opening up a new chapter. That was the mood of the day, and he could not have been more upbeat."
Laurie also noted that John appeared to be "just happy" as he walked into the room. She described, "Happy to be alive and happy to think of the years that he had ahead of him with Sean and making music and with Yoko."
Source: Scarlett O'Toole/irishstar.com
Paul McCartney spoke about his early days with Wings on the Dec. 19 episode of NPR's Book of the Day podcast
The musician released his book Wings: The Story of a Band on the Run in November. The oral history, centered on McCartney's post-Beatles group, pulls from interviews with band members and others in their orbit
Paul McCartney is looking back on the beginnings of his post-Beatles career. The musician, 83, who published the oral history Wings: The Story of a Band on the Run this year, spoke about the beginnings of his post-Beatles band with A Martínez on the Dec. 19 episode of NPR’s Book of the Day podcast.
After the Beatles disbanded in 1970, McCartney recalled being in a “freer state of mind.” He noted how the dynamics within the group — which also included John Lennon, George Harrison and Ringo Starr — were “changing,” though the breakup still remained a “shock" to him at the time.
“I was trying to encourage us to go back and start from square one,” McCartney said on the podcast. “But in actual fact, I did that with Wings.”McCartney, his wife Linda and guitarist Denny Laine formed Wings in 1971. The band saw a rotating roster of members before their breakup in 1981, and sold over 20 million records worldwide. Some of their beloved hits included “Band on the Run,” “Silly Love Songs” and “Live and Let Die.”
“It really was like a rebirth,” McCartney said. “And then the craziest thing was my lovely wife, Linda. We would sing around the house, and I always remember thinking, ‘Wow, she's really got something. But she's completely inexperienced.'"
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“She was very cute. She could tell I wanted to put a band together. I said, ‘Do you wanna be in it?’ She sorta said, ‘Uh, yeah.’”
McCartney also remembered trying to break away from the Beatles’ image during his early days performing with Wings.
Wings performing.
“At the time, I thought I'm trying to make a new band here. I'm trying to do this new thing, and promoters would say, ‘Would you just please just do ‘Yesterday’?’ We said, ‘No. We're not doing it.””
“We did it that way in order to build a Wings repertoire,” McCartney continued, adding that after they released their 1973 album Band on the Run, “we had songs that the audience would recognize that were our songs.” “I felt easier about, ‘Oh, yeah, here's a Beatles song’. So now, I interspersed them. But I felt I had to establish the identity of Wings first.”
Wings: The Story of Band on the Run, published on Nov. 4, pulls from hours of interviews with McCartney, members of Wings and other important players in the band's orbit, like George Martin and Sean Ono Lennon.
“I’m so very happy to be transported back to the time that was Wings and relive some of our madcap adventures through this book,” McCartney previously said in a statement. “Starting from scratch after The Beatles felt crazy at times. There were some very difficult moments, and I often questioned my decision. But as we got better, I thought, ‘Okay, this is really good.’”
Source: Carly Tagen-Dye/people.com
It’s feeling very, very big picture at the moment with it all. When I really think about this weird cyclical nature, it feels like I landed on a body of work (in writing and directing Episode 9 of The Beatles Anthology) that I’m very proud of. And now I’m sort of resetting to decide where to go next….”
Even The Beatles can use as occasional tune-up: the long-anticipated documentary series The Beatles Anthology premiered on Disney Plus the week of November 26th, just in time for Thanksgiving. Episodes 1 through 8 saw footage added, and, with the help of director Peter Jackson, songs for the now four-CD set were cleaned so clearly, Beatles fans heard more than they ever had before. But the addition that fans waited for the most was the entirely new Episode 9.
The Beatles Anthology originally debuted in 1995 as a three-CD set, an eight-episode documentary series, and later, in 2000, a large coffee table book. The project took the Beatles world by storm. From never-before-seen clips of the lads in the early days as the Quarrymen to then-new footage of George Harrison, Paul McCartney, and Ringo Starr recording songs left unfinished by John Lennon, fans were allowed an inside peek of the Beatles world and the rollercoaster they rode for so many years.
In 2016, fans experienced the Beatles’ touring years with Ron Howard’s documentary The Beatles: Eight Days a Week. In 2021, marveled at Peter Jackson’s docuseries Get Back, which explored the creation of the Let it Be album and the unforgettable rooftop performance. Then came Beatles ’64 (2024), produced by Martin Scorsese and directed by David Tedeschi, showcasing Beatlemania in America.
Those films were all in addition to one more, unfinished Lennon composition Now and Then, gifted to the surviving trio by Lennon’s widow, Yoko Ono, Lennon’s widow. George recorded guitar for the song in the nineties, with Paul and Ringo finishing the tune for what became a poignant, heartfelt public release in 2023.
Which brings us to the latest treasures, a fourth CD to the Anthology and a ninth episode to the docuseries, ironically playing into Lennon’s obsession with the number “9.” The man picked to write and direct the new film was Oliver Murray.
Source: Kristin Rhodes/filmint.nu
A short documentary titled A Song Reborn, about the making of The Beatles’ 1994 reunion tune “Free as a Bird,” has debuted on the band’s official YouTube channel. The five-minute film features previously unseen studio footage of Beatles members Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr working on the track, as well as their commentary about the recording.
The footage was shot during the making of the 1990s docuseries The Beatles Anthology, a restored and expanded version of which recently premiered on Disney+.
“Free as a Bird” was built around a home demo of an unfinished song John Lennon recorded in 1977. Lennon’s widow, Yoko Ono, gave the cassette with the recording to John’s fellow Beatles, who then completed the track.
Early in the video, we hear Harrison discussing what led to the decision to record a new track using the Lennon demo.
“Different ideas have been talked about, that we can do the background music or even write a new song,” he noted. “We always had a thing between the four of us that if any one of us wasn’t in it, we weren’t gonna go out as The Beatles.”
McCartney then explained, “We had this cassette, ‘Free as a Bird.’ It was very bad quality. It was just a mono cassette, with John and the piano locked in on one track, which nobody would normally deal with. … But the song was so strong, now, [it was] like, ‘Wow,’ you know, ‘this is impossible. John’s dead, but we’re actually gonna be able to play with him again.’”
Source: Matt Friedlander/americansongwriter.com
When Jesus is speaking to the condemned in Matthew 25:43, saying things like, “I was a stranger, and you did not invite me in,” there wasn’t a caveat at the end of the verse that said, “But that’s okay, because I know you had a recording session booked that night.” Thus, when Paul McCartney opened his front door to see a man claiming to be the Messiah himself, he thought he’d better invite him in for a cup of tea. (And a few questions.)
The strange encounter took place in the late winter of 1967, when The Beatles were recording Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. As McCartney recalled in Barry Miles’ Many Years From Now, he used to answer anyone who rang at his front gate. “If they were boring, I would say, ‘Sorry, no,’ and they generally went away. This guy said, ‘I’m Jesus Christ.’ I said, ‘Oop,’ slightly shocked. I said, ‘Well, you’d better come in then.’”
McCartney continued, “I thought, ‘Well, it probably isn’t. But if he is, I’m not going to be the one to turn him away. So, I gave him a cup of tea, and we just chatted.” The musician told his visitor that he had a recording session booked that night, adding, “If you promise to be very quiet and just sit in a corner, you can come.” That was an offer even Jesus couldn’t refuse.
Paul McCartney Facilitated a Full Circle “Jesus” Moment for the Beatles
The recording session at Regent Sound Studios in February 1967 wasn’t the first run-in The Beatles had with Jesus Christ—at least, in a public setting, anyway. The band had already been the subject of great controversy the previous year after John Lennon infamously said that The Beatles were “more popular than Jesus.” To be fair, the sentiment was valid, albeit hyperbolic. The Beatles were the biggest band in the world at the time. Still, conservative Christian critics of the American South took offense, sparking a wave of public burnings of Beatles records.
Source: Melanie Davis/americansongwriter.com
The last two decades have produced some treats for Beatles fans, with various box sets and collectable merchandise hitting stores and websites. However, it would seem that the Fab Four have finally hit a miss with fans this year with the release of their Anthology 4 album.
To fill in those who may not know, The Beatles were a popular 60s British Band, made up of Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, John Lennon, and George Harrison. They officially broke up in 1970, devastating fans. Fans begged for the members to reunite, until Lennon, one of the chief singer-songwriters of the group, was assassinated in 1980, destroying any hope of a future reunion.
Before his death, Lennon had recorded various song demos on tape. His widow, Yoko Ono, lent some of these demos for McCartney, Harrison, and Starr to tinker with. The surviving trio decided on three songs: “Free as a Bird,” “Real Love,” and “Now and Then.” Thanks to the work of Electric Light Orchestra front man, Jeff Lynne, the first two demos were cleaned up, overdubbed with vocals, drums, and guitar, and released with the albums The Beatles’ Anthology 1 (1995) and Anthology 2 (1996). “Now and Then,” however, was deemed beyond saving, and was rejected for the release of Anthology 3 (1996). “Now and Then” would not be finished until 2023.
Source: themetropolitan.metrostate.edu
The following ranking is not arguing that The Beatles are one of the scariest bands or anything, and more just that they were stylistically all over the place, and adventurous when it came to genres, so sometimes, their willingness to experiment and get weird led to them also getting scary. The following tracks are among the Fab Four’s creepiest, with the last one mentioned here being a genuine endurance test, and honestly nightmarish non-stop for more than eight minutes.
10 "Within You Without You" (1967)
The scariest song from Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band will be mentioned in a bit, and maybe this spot should’ve gone to something like "Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite!," which is lyrically more unsettling, but oh well. Here’s “Within You Without You.” Even for a track on a psychedelic album like Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, this is musically quite adventurous, and the philosophical lyrics here are mysterious and a bit unsettling.
9 "Maxwell's Silver Hammer" (1969)
If you ignore the lyrics, then “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer” is among the bounciest of all the Beatles songs, in step (for better or worse) with Paul McCartney’s sensibilities on a musical front. But the lyrics are a part of the song, and shouldn’t be ignored, and they are plainly about a student going around and murdering people with a hammer.
“Maxwell’s Silver Hammer” is sort of funny, though, contrasting the morbid lyrics with silly everything else, and it’s hard to ignore the humor by the song’s end, when Maxwell seems to murder the judge who’s presiding over his criminal trial. And all that goes to show why “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer” is divisive, ultimately sticking out a little on the otherwise consistent Abbey Road, yet it being a song about killing people means it fits in with a ranking like this one, even if you might find it more silly than actually scary.
Source: Jeremy Urquhart/collider.com
Ringo Starr is cooperating with director Sam Mendes and his team on the upcoming four-part Beatles biopic, but a source exclusively tells Examiner that he’s being extremely uptight and micro-managerial about certain aspects of his life – especially regarding how much he partied back in the day.
“Some early concepts around what exactly the Ringo Starr-focused movie would cover leaned into Ringo’s hard partying during the height of the Beatles success,” the source says. “He loved being famous more than the other three guys – that’s a matter of historical record. Even with the casting of Barry Keoghan, you see a perfect fit with that kind of ‘wild man’ rock star portrayal.”
However, the source adds that with Starr’s “considerable input,” the ideas have evolved and filmmakers are trying to “unearth stories and moments from his years in the band that fans haven’t heard a million times before.”
“It’s all getting special attention from Sam and his team because they want all four films to be great and to be essential viewing for global audiences,” the source continues, “and Ringo has been generous with his own time in a way that Paul McCartney, who has his own control freak tendencies, simply can’t because he’s been working a lot this year.”
The source notes that McCartney, 83, is simply “trusting the filmmakers to handle his story with care,” but Starr, 85, has been taking a much more hands-on approach.
“As annoying as it can be to have to run every idea by Ringo itself, you do sympathize with the guy, and Barry is determined not to make his life story into a joke or a silly gimmick,” the source says. “If this is going to be a profitable enterprise, the Ringo film has to be every bit an equal to the films about John Lennon, Paul and George Harrison.”
Source: Whitney Danhauer/yahoo.com
Bluesy hits and simple melodies characterized the Beatles’ early career. The end of their tenure was characterized by oddball, psychedelic, heavily conceptual tracks. Operating in a sort of middle ground is the Beatles‘ self-titled record, a.k.a The White Album. Released in 1968, this record saw the group turn their backs on heady material in favor of uninhibited rockers. Many fans consider this album their best work, including Dave Grohl. These opinions are echoed by John Lennon, who also thought this record was a timeless effort. Find out why both Grohl and Lennon loved The White Album below.
For a few of the albums that came before The White Album, the Beatles relied on heavy concepts. From loose themes to concept records, these albums saw the group leave their blues-inspired early years behind. As they worked on their self-titled, Lennon counted it as a return to form.
The late-great Beatle felt the album was hyper-focused on the band as meritable rock musicians. They didn’t need any overarching concept; their talent could stand on its own.
“What we’re trying to do is rock ‘n roll, ‘with less of your philosorock,’ is what we’re saying to ourselves,” Lennon once said. “And get on with rocking because rockers is what we really are.”
“You can give me a guitar, stand me up in front of a few people,” he added. “Even in the studio, if I’m getting into it, I’m just doing my old bit… not quite doing Elvis Legs but doing my equivalent. It’s just natural. Everybody says we must do this and that, but our thing is just rocking. You know, the usual gig. That’s what this new record is about—definitely rocking.”
On top of this album being a return to their roots, Lennon also favored its notable lack of McCartney’s leadership. One of the many things that led to the Beatles’ breakup was Lennon and his other two bandmates’ feelings that McCartney’s grip on the group was too firm.
“[Paul] wanted it to be more a group thing, which really means more Paul,” Lennon added elsewhere. “So he never liked that album.”
Elsewhere, another legendary musician praised this record, Grohl. The drummer-turned-frontman has spoken at length about his love of the Beatles. Specifically, he’s praised The White Album.
“I think I was a glimpse of hope in my parents’ eyes, but this has some of my favourite Beatles songs on it: ‘Blackbird’, ‘Revolution #9’, ‘Revolution’, ‘Helter Skelter,’” Grohl once said of this record. “It’s funny to imagine those four cute little Beatles years later on LSD….I’d call this timeless.”
Source: Alex Hopper/americansongwriter.com
