Beatles News
Paul Simon wrote “Bridge Over Troubled Water” on Blue Jay Way, a location made infamous by George Harrison in The Beatles song of the same name. Paul Simon and George Harrison became friends and performed together on Saturday Night Live in 1976.
Simon described Harrison as “amazing ... brave, open, kind.”
Simon & Garfunkel were at the height of their folk-rock fame in 1969 when they recorded one of their most enduring classics. Yet, few fans realize this song has a surprising connection to The Beatles.
Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel were writing and recording “Bridge Over Troubled Water,” and other songs for what would become the album of the same name in the latter part of 1969. After wrapping up a television special and a grueling tour, the exhausted duo set out to finish this seminal album.
Simon said in a 1972 interview with Rolling Stone that his and Garfunkel’s Beatles connection came via George Harrison, in a home on Blue Jay Way, immortalized in the Magical Mystery Tour song of the same name.
“We were in California. We were all renting this house. Me, Artie and Peggy [Harper], (Simon’s wife) were living in this house with a bunch of other people throughout the summer. It was [written at] a house on Blue Jay Way, the one George Harrison wrote ‘Blue Jay Way’ about,” he explained.
However, while the location of the songs was the same, the resulting tunes couldn’t have been more different. “Bridge Over Troubled Water” is a Gospel-influenced folk-pop ballad, while “Blue Jay Way” is psychedelic and experimental.
Source: Lucille Barilla/Parade.com
Producer George Martin wasn’t called the “fifth Beatle” for no reason. Truly, this man is responsible for getting the Fab Four their start and had a big hand in many of their greatest hits. And among those hits, Martin spoke about his top picks and favorite tunes. Let’s look at just a few of George Martin’s favorite Beatles songs, shall we?
This No. 1 US hit from the Fab Four was one of George Martin’s top picks. Years ago, Martin appeared on a 1995 episode of BBC Sounds’ Desert Island Discs, where Sue Lawley would interview various big names in the music world to learn more about their favorite songs and general music taste. Martin appeared on the show to talk about his favorite tunes, like “Oboe Quartet in F Major” by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and “Bess, You Is My Woman Now” by George Gershwin. “I Want To Hold Your Hand” from 1963 made it to his list.
This one’s not a song, per se, but a medley of songs that make up more than half of a massively famous Beatles record. George Martin described the second side of Abbey Road from 1969 as “very much [his] favorite” and described the medley as “one of [his] favorite works.” For reference, Side Two of Abbey Road, which wasn’t released last but was the band’s final recording, features 11 songs. Some tracks from Side Two include “Mean Mr. Mustard”, “The End”, and the hidden track “Her Majesty”.
“Side two of ‘Abbey Road’ was very much my favourite,” the world-famous producer once said. “Because it was Paul and I doing what I wanted to do after ‘[Sgt.] Pepper’.”
UMe’s announcement today that it is reissuing Ringo Starr’s first four solo albums on colored vinyl on Oct. 24 puts a spotlight on his celebrated 1973 album Ringo, which enabled him to set a pair of Billboard Hot 100 records that he holds to this day.
Starr is the only ex-Beatle to land two No. 1 singles from one studio album and the only one to release back-to-back singles that both reached No. 1. Starr topped the Hot 100 in November 1973 with “Photograph,” which he co-wrote with his former Beatles bandmate George Harrison. His follow-up, “You’re Sixteen,” a jaunty remake of a 1960 hit by Johnny Burnette, reached No. 1 in January 1974.
Both singles were released from Starr’s third studio album, Ringo, which was produced by Richard Perry, one of the hottest producers of the era. (Perry died last December at age 82.) Starr’s first two studio albums were Sentimental Journey, a 1970 collection drawn from the Great American Songbook, and Beaucoups of Blues, a 1970 country- and folk-shaded album recorded in Nashville. So Ringo was his first contemporary pop/rock album. On the album, Starr collaborated with his Beatles bandmates John Lennon, Paul McCartney and Harrison, as well as Harry Nilsson, Martha Reeves, Billy Preston, Marc Bolan of T. Rex and The Band’s Robbie Robertson, Garth Hudson, Levon Helm and Rick Danko, among others.
Released on Nov. 2, 1973, Ringo reached No. 2 on the Billboard 200. It was Starr’s highest-charting album, which makes him the only ex-Beatle not to top the Billboard 200. Ringo was kept out of the top spot by Elton John’s classic double album Goodbye Yellow Brick Road. (There were no hard feelings: John contributed to Starr’s follow-up album, Goodnight Vienna, co-writing “Snookeroo” and playing piano on the track.)
Source: Paul Grein/billboard.com
There are a few sayings that you need to keep handy when record collecting. The chase is better than the catch. A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. And in a recent month at Discogs, the online database of audio recordings and marketplace, one saying stands true: beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
Or more accurately, a record's worth is really how much a person is willing to pay for it. And it might shock you how much someone paid for an EP by an Irish quartet, and how it outsold The Beatles.
When Discogs revealed its monthly "The 25 Most Valuable Records Sold" report for September 2025, it was surprising to see that an ultrarare copy of The Beatles' debut album, Please Please Me, came in at second place. At No. 1? The debut release from U2.
U2 (Bono, The Edge, Adam Clayton and Larry Mullen Jr.) experienced their breakthrough success in the 1980s with albums like War, The Unforgettable Fire and The Joshua Tree. But in 1979, they were just starting out, releasing their debut EP, Three.
The band pressed 1,000 copies of their three-song EP, each coming with a hand-numbered sticker on a CBS (Columbia Broadcasting System) sleeve. This particular copy has the band's name spelled as "U-2" on the label. The member's names are inscribed on the records' runouts, STEREO is eplled in all caps, and the "correct spelling of their native 'Ireland.'
Source: Jason Brow/yahoo.com
‘I’ll be around for another 60 years’: Lost tapes reveal John Lennon’s best-laid plans. Only ‘acts of God’ can stop me making music, former Beatle told DJ five years before he was shot dead in New York
John Lennon said he believed he would keep making music for “another 60 years” five years before his death, a newly-unearthed recording has revealed. The Beatles star was shot dead outside his residence in New York in 1980, aged 40.
In the interview, carried out by DJ Nicky Horne in 1975, he said: “Apart from acts of God, I will be around for another 60 years and doing it until I drop.”
Horne recently rediscovered the original recordings in his basement, and elsewhere in the conversation Lennon said he was dissatisfied with his work and wanted to throw away his album Walls and Bridges.
Mark Chapman shot Lennon in the back four times when the musician returned home on Dec 8 1980. Just hours before, Lennon had signed an autograph for Chapman, who remains in prison. Horne said Lennon had made him feel comfortable by baking him chocolate cookies and insisting on doing the interview cross-legged on the carpet in his apartment.
During the chat, the musician expressed fears that his phones had been tapped by the FBI. He had been an outspoken critic of Richard Nixon at the time.
The Guardian has reported that Lennon said: “I know the difference between the phone being normal when I pick it up and when every time I pick it up, there’s a lot of noises.
“[The administration was] coming for me one way or the other; I mean, they were harassing me. And I’d open the door and there’d be guys standing on the other side of the street. I’d get in a car and they’d be following me in a car and not hiding.”
The full interview is to be aired on Boom Radio at 9pm on Wednesday, on the eve of what would have been Lennon’s 85th birthday.
Source: Craig Simpson/telegraph.co.uk
The upcoming quartet of Beatles biopics is one of the most intriguing film projects currently in the works – and one of the stars of the movies has given an update about his "dream" role in Sam Mendes's ambitious project.
Harris Dickinson – who will portray John Lennon in all four films – spoke to RadioTimes.com about the process of getting into character as the iconic musician during an exclusive interview to promote his directorial debut Urchin.
“ It's been amazing," he said. "It's such a unique experience to play someone of that calibre. I mean, it's intimidating, but it’s enriching, it's like an opportunity to delve into something incredibly complex and challenging, which I've loved."
He continued: "I feel really lucky to go to work every day and get to, kind of, attempt to dig into who and what that is."
The films will also star Paul Mescal as Paul McCartney, Joseph Quinn as George Harrison and Barry Keoghan as Ringo Starr, with a lengthy shoot having got under way during the summer.
Some reports have suggested that the filming process will take as long as 15 months ahead of the simultaneous release of all four films in 2028, but Dickinson has by no means been put off by the huge commitment required to take part.
"[ It’s] inevitably longer, but I think that's what you want as an actor," he explained. "You wanna be able to spend a good amount of time on something and get a good opportunity to really invest in it properly. That's kind of the dream.”
Harris Dickinson, Paul Mescal, Barry Keoghan and Joseph Quinn against a white background
After months of speculation, Dickinson and his co-stars were officially unveiled as the Fab Four during a surprise appearance at CinemaCon in Las Vegas back in April, in which they recited lyrics from the band’s song Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band and then took a Beatles-style synchronised bow.
The official longline for The Beatles – A Four-Film Cinematic Event reads (via Deadline): "Each man has his own story, but together they are legendary."
The Beatles films will be released in April 2028.
Source: radiotimes.com/Patrick Cremona
Four-time Academy Award nominee Saoirse Ronan (Brooklyn) has inked a deal to play Linda McCartney, the first wife of The Beatles’ Paul McCartney, in Sam Mendes’ The Beatles — A Four-Film Cinematic Event, multiple sources tell Deadline.
Reps for Sony declined to comment. Ronan joins a cast that includes Paul Mescal as Paul McCartney, Barry Keoghan as Ringo Starr, Joseph Quinn as George Harrison, and Harris Dickinson as John Lennon. With each of the Mendes-directed Beatles films telling the story of a different member of the band, Ronan is expected to feature prominently in the installment centered on McCartney, though it’ s unknown to what extent she might appear in the other three.
Linda McCartney was a photographer, musician and animal rights activist who rose to prominence in the 1960s with her portraiture of The Rolling Stones, Jimi Hendrix and The Doors. The first female photographer to have her work on the cover of Rolling Stone, she married Paul McCartney in 1969 and worked alongside him as part of his band Wings in his post-Beatles career. A passionate advocate for vegetarianism and animal welfare, she launched her own company, Linda McCartney Foods, in 1991 and passed away from cancer in 1998.
We were first to report on the Beatles films from Mendes, all of which will be released in theaters in April 2028, in a bold experiment in eventizing. Mendes will direct from scripts written by Jez Butterworth, Peter Straughan and Jack Thorne, as we told you first, though it’s unclear which projects each is tackling. A collaboration between Sony Pictures Entertainment and Mendes’ Neal Street Productions, the films will be produced by Mendes, Pippa Harris and Julie Pastor of Neal Street, as well as Alexandra Derbyshire, in association with Apple Corps for Sony Pictures.
This marks the first time that The Beatles and Apple Corps Ltd. have authorized the use of the band members’ life stories and music in scripted films. In addition to distributing, Sony Pictures is the financier of these projects.
An Irish actress known for her work in prestige pictures like Brooklyn, Lady Bird and Little Women, Ronan has most recently been seen in Nora Fingscheidt’s The Outrun and Steve McQueen’s Blitz. Up next, she’ll be seen starring in Bad Apples, a dark comedy from filmmaker Jonatan Etzler that’s coming off its world premiere at TIFF. As we first reported, she’s also set to star opposite Austin Butler in Deep Cuts, a music-themed A24 love story from The Iron Claw’s Sean Durkin, adapting the debut novel by Holly Brickley.
Source: Matt Grobar/deadline.com
For the first time since it was originally published in 2000, Chronicle Books will release The Beatles Anthology, 25th Anniversary Edition in a unique co-release with Disney+, UMG, and Apple Corps
The Beatles’ expanded Anthology Collection music releases will also be released Nov. 21 by Apple Corps Ltd./Capitol/UMe
The Beatles’ restored, expanded “Anthology” documentary series begins streaming November 26 on Disney+
RINGO: In 1963 the attitude of my whole family changed. They treated me like a different person.
One absolutely clear vision I had was round at my auntie’s, where I’d been a thousand times before. We were having a cup of tea one night and somebody knocked the coffee table and my tea spilt into my saucer. Everyone’s reaction was, "He can’t have that. We have to tidy up." That would never have happened before. I thought then, "Things are changing." It was absolutely an arrow in the brain.
Suddenly I was "one of those," even within my family, and it was very difficult to get used to. I’d grown up and lived with these people and now I found myself in Weirdland.
GEORGE: My family changed, but in a nice way. They were so knocked out with the whole idea of what was happening. Anybody would be. Everybody likes success, but when it came on that scale it was ridiculous. They loved it.
My mother was a nice person, but she was naive; as we all were in Liverpool in those days. She used to write to anybody who’d written to us, answering the fan mail. She’d answer letters from people saying, "Dear Mr Harrison, can you give us one of Paul McCartney’s toenails?" Still, to this day, people come up to me brandishing letters that my mother once wrote to them. Even back when I was a kid, she had pen-pals, people who lived in Northumberland or New Zealand or somewhere, people she’d never met: just writing and sending photographs to each other.
RINGO: Home and family were the two things I didn’t want to change, because it had all changed "out there" and we were no longer really sure who our friends were, unless we’d had them before the fame. The guys and the girls I used to hang about with I could trust. But once we’d become big and famous, we soon learnt that people were with us only because of the vague notoriety of being "a Beatle." And when this happened in the family, it was quite a blow. I didn’t know what to do about it; I couldn’t stand up and say, "Treat me like you used to," because that would be acting "big time."
The other thing that happens when you become famous is that people start to think you know something. They all want to know what you think about this and that, and I would blah on — as a 22/23-year-old — as if suddenly I knew. I could talk about anything, I knew exactly how the country should be run, and why and how this should happen; suddenly I was a blaher: "Yeah, Mr Blah here, what do you want to know?" It was so crazy. I remember endless discussions that went on for days and days — nights and days, actually, discussing the world, discussing music.
Source: Lizz Schumer/people.com
Imagine, released in 1971, dug as deep lyrically as John Lennon’s solo debut (John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band). But Lennon also focused on making the album a more commercial affair that would reach a wider audience. He ended up with perhaps the most beloved album of his career. Here are five tidbits of trivia surrounding the songs on Imagine.
The whole idea behind the Imagine album was for John Lennon to deliver his opinions and beliefs in ways that were much more palatable to the music listening masses. Thanks to this strategy, the title track became an anthem almost instantly upon its release. Lennon had borrowed some ideas from Yoko Ono’s work for the concept of imagining a better world. After the song was released, Lennon mused that he should have given Ono credit as a co-writer. Years later, he would make good on his devotion to Ono’s musical input, as she would write and sing half the songs on Double Fantasy.
John Lennon did everything he could to leave behind the specter of The Beatles once he left the group. On his first solo album, he even included the song “God”, which made clear his intention to put the Fab Four in his rear view mirror. But he didn’t shy away from some of the writing he did before the band broke up. In the case of “Jealous Guy”, Lennon reached back to a song that he wrote back in 1968 when he was on retreat in India with his other Beatles. It was originally called “Child Of Nature” and was inspired by a lecture given by the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.
Source: Jim Beviglia/americansongwriter.com
April 10, 1970, is one of the most memorable days in music history. It is the day the world lost the greatest band of all time, The Beatles. The Beatles’ breakup came in the form of a press release announced by Paul McCartney. To this day, the breakup seemingly makes many skip a heartbeat and lose a breath or two. It was just that culturally severe to the world. Though it wasn’t unexpected, as The Beatles’ breakup was years in the making, and their growing divide was rather common knowledge.
The most common timeline of The Beatles’ demise more or less starts in 1968 with the recording of the White Album and ends in 1970 with McCartney’s announcement. That is the arc the majority of fans refer to and have accepted. However, a source close to The Beatles once said that their demise started years before their end. Specifically, after The Beatles quit touring.
That source is Hunter Davies, the author of the only authorized biography of The Beatles. According to Davies, The Beatles’ decline started before the White Album, and in total, lasted roughly around four years.
Source: Peter Burditt/americansongwriter.com
