Beatles News
Watching Sir Paul McCartney perform or speak in interviews, it's easy to momentarily forget that the legendary Beatles musician is now 82 years old. Despite his age, McCartney remains a dynamic force on stage, receiving high praise for his headlining performance at Glastonbury in 2022.
The prolific singer-songwriter has been captivating audiences for nearly seven decades, and his recent 'Got Back' tour saw him performing across various countries in 2022 and 2023. Remarkably, each show lasted almost three hours, showcasing his extraordinary stamina.
As a father-of-five, many wonder about the secret behind his enduring energy. Over time, McCartney has shared several of his methods for maintaining youthfulness, as reported by Express.co.uk.
One notable aspect of his lifestyle is his diet. McCartney became a vegetarian in the 1970s alongside his late wife Linda. In 1991, Linda launched her own range of vegetarian food products, which remain popular to this day.
Discussing his dietary choices, McCartney said in the 2021 cookbook "Linda McCartney’s Family Kitchen": "Now of course, it’s really not difficult at all. You just go down the shops and most places will have great veggie options. ".
He reflected on the decision to become vegetarian: "It was a joint decision and we never looked back. It was a great thing to do, and it turned out we became part of a vegetarian revolution."
Numerous studies over the years have highlighted the health benefits of a vegetarian diet. For instance, research published in the British Medical Journal in 2019 discovered that vegetarians had a 22 percent lower risk of heart disease compared to meat eaters.
Source: Fiona Callingham/getsurrey.co.uk
Ringo Starr will be releasing a new project on Jan. 10, 2025, and he’s got an all-star team of collaborators to make it the best it can possibly be. Here’s everything we know so far.
The Beatles star and former drummer is well on his way to gifting fans with a new country album featuring Alison Krauss. Titled ‘Thankful,’ the album is said to be a second preview of ‘Look Up,’ a collaborative project with T Bone Burnett.
Like its “thankful” name, Starr hopes to inspire and spread positivity with the songs on the album. Apart from producing and co-writing nine of the 11 tracks on the album, the 84-year-old also sings on it alongside Burnett and Kraus.
He previewed the album with the debut track “Time On My Hands,” saying of the song, “I love this track. I wrote it with my producer and engineer,...
Source: imdb.com
The Beatles had a great deal of magic to them, and that magic arose from the peculiar chemistry between four people. Remove even one of them, and it just couldn’t persist. Ringo Starr knew that, and that’s perhaps what made his decision to leave the band in 1968 all the more striking.
The group had lost manager Brian Epstein the year before, his death from an overdose accelerating a feeling of being adrift. Numerous projects – the Magical Mystery Tour film, a trip to India – would help to plug that gap, but a sense of inertia had set in.
During the sessions for what would become The White Album, Ringo Starr decided that he had simply had enough. Walking out of the band, he informed John Lennon he was leaving before going on holiday to Sardinia.
“I went to see John [Lennon], who had been living in my apartment in Montagu Square with Yoko [Ono] since he moved out of Kenwood,” Starr recalled, “I said, ‘I’m leaving the group because I’m not playing well and I feel unloved and out of it, and you three are really close.’”
He would tell the Anthology film makers: “I had definitely left. I couldn’t take it anymore. There was no magic and the relationships were terrible. I knew we were all in a messed-up stage. It wasn’t just me; the whole thing was going down.”
The holiday refreshed him, however – Ringo Starr wrote ‘Abbey Road’ classic ‘Octopus’s Garden’ while in the Mediterranean, and the band struggled to move on without his percussive nous.
Returning to a hero’s welcome, The Beatles adorned his drum kit with flowers – but his return couldn’t fully patch up the band’s emerging fissures.
Source: Robin Murray/clashmusic.com
As perhaps the most famous band of all time, the Beatles have been the subject of their fair share of conspiracy theories. However, among speculation about coded messages in “Helter Skelter” and urban legends about John Lennon meeting aliens, the idea that Paul McCartney died long ago and was replaced by somebody else has endured more than any other. This wild claim was said to have taken place at the height of the Beatles's fame, and it proposes that John, George, and Ringo somehow managed to find the perfect Paul replacement at the drop of a hat.
Not only does the notorious ‘Paul is Dead’ theory boggle the mind with its sheer ridiculousness, but McCartney has had an almost equally impressive career with his post-Beatles band, Wings, and as a solo artist, meaning that the new Paul was arguably even more talented than the original. Those who swear by this outlandish theory are not without their evidence, as some have pointed to clues in Beatles music and album artwork that hint the original McCartney may no longer be of this world.
The Paul Is Dead Theory Explained. Some claim McCartney died during the sessions for Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band
The urban legend that Paul McCartney died and was replaced with a lookalike started back in 1966 but gained widespread popularity in 1969 after it was discussed on American college radio. The story goes that a caller told the Detroit WKNR-FM DJ Russ Gibb about the rumor live on air (via Detroit News), and the host discussed the theory and its clues with more callers for the next hour. The idea behind it was that McCartney died in a car crash, and, to spare the public from grief, the Beatles, along with Britain’s MI5, quickly found a suitable replacement.
Source: Stephen Holland/screenrant.com
A guitar bought by George Harrison for about £58 has sold at auction for more than £1 million.
The Futurama electric guitar was bought by The Beatles star when he was a 16-year-old apprentice electrician in 1959 and was paid for in 44 instalments after his mother signed a hire purchase agreement at Frank Hessy’s music shop in Liverpool.
It went under the hammer in Nashville, Tennessee on Wednesday at Julien’s Auctions’ Played, Worn & Torn sale, fetching 1.27 million dollars (£1.03 million) – twice its initial estimate. Martin Nolan, executive director of Julien’s Auctions, said the figure set a world record for the highest sale of a George Harrison guitar.
The Futurama electric guitar was bought by George Harrison for about £58. “George Harrison’s iconic Futurama guitar, one of the most important guitars in rock and roll history and formative to The Beatles’ sound, has made history at today’s auction,” Mr Nolan said.
“We’re beyond thrilled to add this Harrison guitar to the Julien’s Auctions’ million-dollar club, which already includes guitars from John Lennon, Eric Clapton, and Kurt Cobain.” The auction house sold John Lennon’s Hootenanny acoustic guitar for 3 million dollars (£2.3 million) earlier this year and has previously sold an acoustic guitar of Lennon’s for 2.4 million dollars (£1.8 million).
The guitar was sold by a collector who bought it in 2019, but the instrument almost had a different owner when it was offered in a competition for Beatles fans in Beats Instrumental magazine in 1964.
The competition was won by an AJ Thompson, who lived in Saltdean near Brighton, East Sussex, but, when offered the chance to have money instead of the guitar he took the cash, Mr Nolan said.
Source: John Besley/standard.co.uk
Austin Butler as Elvis truly changed Hollywood, because now, not only are we getting Timothée Chalamet as Bob Dylan and Selena Gomez as Linda Rondstat, but Paul Mescal is also reportedly in talks to lead one of four upcoming biopics about The Beatles. Each movie, set to come from director Sam Mendes, will focus on a different member of the band — and their unique points of view — but will intersect to “tell the astonishing story of the greatest band in history,” per Variety.
Here's everything you need to know about the upcoming Beatles movies.
Is there a new Beatles movie coming out?
Yes, director Sam Mendes is developing four movies about The Beatles — one for each member of the band. Each individual movie will tell a story from the perspective of one member (including Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, John Lennon, and George Harrison).
“I’m honored to be telling the story of the greatest rock band of all time, and excited to challenge the notion of what constitutes a trip to the movies,” Sam Mendes told Variety.
Where can I watch the new Beatles biopics?
Each of the four movies will be released in theaters, thanks to Sony Pictures Entertainment. They're hoping to shoot all four in the UK starting in 2025 and release them in 2027.
“You have to match the boldness of the idea with a bold release strategy,” Sony Pictures chief Tom Rothman told The Hollywood Reporter. “There hasn’t been an enterprise like this before, and you can’t think about it in traditional releasing terms.”
Source: Chloe Williams​/yahoo.com
A one-on-one fight between friends is always hard to watch, but add another person to one side, and it turns even more vindictive—something perfectly encapsulated by the Paul McCartney diss track John Lennon recruited George Harrison to play on. To be fair to Lennon and Harrison, McCartney had technically thrown the first musical punch.
Nevertheless, watching the former Beatles (sans Ringo) blow off steam was a somewhat saddening development in their artistic legacies.
The Paul McCartney Diss Track John Lennon and George Harrison Recorded
John Lennon put “How Do You Sleep” on his 1971 record, Imagine, one year after the first unofficial breakup rumors and messages began popping up around the Beatles. The song features George Harrison on slide guitar and seems to directly refer to their former bandmate, Paul McCartney, which Lennon would later say was a direct response to McCartney’s track “Too Many People,” released the same year.
“Too Many People,” from the 1971 album Ram, doesn’t name anyone specifically. However, it’s hard not to pick up on the subtext in McCartney’s lyrics post-Beatles breakup. Too many people going underground, too many reaching for a piece of cake, he begins. That was your first mistake, you took your lucky break and broke it in two. Now what can be done for you? You broke it in two.
“I heard Paul’s message in Ram,” Lennon told Crawdaddy. “Too many people going where? Missed our lucky what? What was our first mistake? Can’t be wrong? Huh! I mean, Yoko Ono, me, and other friends can’t all be hearing things. So, to have some fun, I must thank Allen Klein publicly for the line ‘just another day.’ A real poet! Some people don’t see the funny side of it. Too bad. What am I supposed to do, make you laugh? It’s what you might call an ‘angry letter’ sung. Get it?”
Source: Melanie Davis/americansongwriter.com
The Beatles posing together. From left to right: musicians George Harrison, John Lennon, Paul ... [+] McCartney and Ringo Starr, circa 1965. The Beatles debut their new "single" “From Us To You” inside the top 10 on a chart in their home country, earning yet another smash on one more tally.
The Beatles don’t release “new” music very often. The band was all but done with doing so for decades before they returned with “Now and Then” in late 2023, which the remaining two members promised would be the last thing they’ll release…probably. While they’re not writing and recording like they did so many decades ago, those companies that own the rights to everything they made continue to share archival projects and previously unreleased tunes and recordings—and fans snap them up without hesitation.
The Fab Four collect new hits on two charts in their home country of the United Kingdom this week. The band even manages to return to the top 10 on a tally with a debut, which is surprising given how long it’s been since they first split.
The Beatles’ latest offering, “From Us To You,” debuts at No. 9 on this week’s Official Vinyl Singles chart. It’s the seventh top 10 smash from the rockers, and not even their first new one of 2024.
In August, a project titled “From Us To You - 2 March 1964” hit the same tally. The Beatles pushed that set to No. 6, and now they’ve collected their second new top 10 smash—at least on vinyl—of the year.
Source: Hugh McIntyre/forbes.com
The Beatles 1964 U.S. Albums In Mono Reviewed: Track selection not withstanding, Beatlemania’s stateside iteration still sounds thrilling
New vinyl boxset collects The Beatles' first six American studio LPs in mono.
America and Britain are two nations separated by salt water, a common language (per George Bernard Shaw) and different Beatlemanias. The U.K. phenomenon in 1963 remains the gold standard for pop hysteria, a massive rush of love at the speed of light detonated by a handful of singles and an album, Please Please Me, almost half of which was covers from the club sets.
The former colonies were late to the party – EMI's Yankee arm, Capitol Records, spent that year exercising its right of first refusal – but we caught up fast. And this deluxe, vinyl set of the Beatles' first six American studio LPs from mono-master tapes in period sleeves (also available separately) – is hardly the full chaos. Add the cash-ins by ’63 licensee Vee-Jay plus the sudden worth of the 1961 Hamburg sessions and nearly two dozen U.S. albums and 45s were issued over 1964. Capitol's trade pitch for The Beatles Story, a two-LP audio documentary released that November and a bonus in the box, put it bluntly: “The Greatest Profit Package in History.”
But this helter-skelter has a story of its own, a weirdly reordered, uniquely illuminating arc of breakthrough at once belying and beholden to Capitol's mercenary disregard for the Parlophone canon (shortened LPs to save on publishing royalties; made-up platters sequenced with the logic of a roulette wheel). If Please Please Me is the first, giant step of a killer bar band led by two emerging-virtuoso composers, Capitol's debut, Meet The Beatles!, is that genius unleashed with visceral finesse: nearly all John Lennon-Paul McCartney originals, largely drawn from the British jump forward, late-’63's With The Beatles. In this telling, America doesn't stand a chance – the shotgun entrance of I Want to Hold Your Hand and I Saw Her Standing There; the hard Liverpool stares in Robert Freeman's iconic mod-noir cover photo – and George Harrison is a writer from the start (Don't Bother Me).
Source: David Fricke/mojo4music.com
John Lennon’s legacy remains impeccable, even decades after his death. His music is still reaching new people and impacting the charts, which is an incredible accomplishment after so much time has passed. The former Beatle launches one of his most famous tracks on a pair of tallies this week, earning not just Lennon, but also his wife, another hit—one that’s already become a smash in many other regards.
“Instant Karma (We All Shine On)” reaches two charts in the United Kingdom for the first time this week. At first glance, it looks like the single has already landed on the two tallies it appears on at the moment, but further research seems to suggest that it’s actually new to these lists.
Lennon and Yoko Ono see “Instant Karma (We All Shine On)” appear on both the Official Singles Downloads and Official Singles Sales charts this week. The tune settles at Nos. 78 and 86, respectively. Those individual tallies report the song as a return, but the single’s own page via the Official Charts Company—the U.K.’s Billboard equivalent—states that this frame is its first on those two rosters.
Different versions of “Instant Karma” have reached the U.K. charts in the past, and it looks like this specific take, which is credited to both Lennon and Ono—and only them—is new to these specific rosters. An earlier edition, which also names The Plastic Ono Band alongside the two main stars, became a top 10 smash on the list of the most-consumed songs in the country back in 1970. That year, it spent several turns at No. 5, which turned out to be the track’s peak.
Source: Hugh McIntyre/forbes.com
