When a deluxe edition of John’s classic John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band album was first seriously mooted back in 2020, I was curious to see how deep they could excavate and unravel a record which famously was as ‘bare bones’ as you could get. At most, the songs featured just three instruments – guitar or piano, bass and drums – and vocals, with a few numbers offering even more slender arrangements. Coming off the back of John and Yoko’s so-called ‘primal scream’ therapy in California in the midst of The Beatles’ split, these stripped back recordings were Lennon’s way of mirroring the intent ..read more

Amid all the hullabaloo surrounding the release of ‘Now and Then’ in November, the major facelift and expansion of the definitive Beatles compilations which followed in its wake seemed something of a footnote. The Red and Blue albums – or 1962-66 and 1967-70, to give them their official titles – were overhauled and freshened up to cash in on the tidal wave of publicity accompanying “the final Beatles song” and also, handily, the 50th anniversary of their original release. This saw the addition of a whopping 21 tracks to the albums’ already-hefty 54-song running order, plus remix ..read more

Let me start by saying how much I love Band on the Run. I think it’s one of the greatest albums ever made, right up there with Sgt Pepper and Abbey Road, and never tire of listening to it. It’s undoubtedly among Paul’s best solo records (though I think he has topped it on two or three occasions), and comfortably his most critically-acclaimed and commercially successful. It is one of the signature albums, along with the likes of Rumours, Led Zepplin IV and Dark Side of the Moon, from that 1970s era when LPs ruled the world and sold by the bucketload. It boasts a couple of monster hits ..read more

As well as the unexpected thrill of hearing a brand new Beatles song in November, we were also treated to two wonderful bits of film to go with it. First, on the eve of the single’s unveiling, Apple released Now and Then – The Last Beatles Song, a short film detailing the (very) long and winding road from the tune’s creation to ultimate completion, tantalisingly previewing a few excerpts of what we would hear the following day. And 24 hours after the track itself came out, the promotional video arrived on You Tube, stirring the promotional pot and whipping up fan frenzy even more. It was a bri ..read more

It was a sad irony that news of Denny Laine’s death came just a day or two after the announcement of yet another re-release of Band on the Run, the high watermark of Wings’ recorded output. Even if you are one of those people, like me, who sees Wings as a backing band for Paul rather than a fully-fledged group in its own right, there’s no denying some of those band members made important contributions to the McCartney sound during what was – commercially at least – his most successful solo era. But Denny wasn’t just a sideman who played and sang what Macca told him to, like most of the others ..read more

I still remember the disappointment I felt when, on my way home from work in the late summer of 1996, I leafed through the new issue of MOJO magazine and saw the exclusive reveal of the tracklisting for the forthcoming Beatles Anthology Vol. 3 album. It stated, categorically, that – unlike the first two volumes in the series – there would no ‘new’ Beatles to lead off the set, that the well of ‘Threetles’ sessions which had produced ‘Free as a Bird’ and ‘Real Love’ had run dry. It wasn’t a massive surprise. There’d been no updates on Paul, George and Ringo working together since the previo ..read more

Amid all the hoo-ha about the new Beatles single ‘Now and Then’, it’s worth noting that another modern-day collaboration between the two surviving Fabs slipped out comparatively unnoticed in recent weeks. Ringo’s latest EP, Rewind Forward, features the first McCartney song written specifically for his old drummer in more than 40 years. While Paul has performed on a number of Ringo’s releases over the past decade or so, ‘Feeling The Sunlight’ is the first custom-made Macca tune to feature on a Starr solo effort since ‘Private Property’ and ‘Attention’ adorned Stop and Smell the Roses  ..read more

After becoming a full-on Fabs fan in the mid-1980s, I lapped up not only all the music I could get my hands on but also any visual product which cropped up on the UK TV schedules or fledgling home video market. That said, the first few programmes I saw which focused on John Lennon were somewhat peculiar, to say the least. At the end of 1985, the BBC broadcast John Lennon: A Journey in the Life, a very odd effort featuring Scouse actor Bernard Hill as a 40-year-old John quite literally walking and talking us through his life against rudimentary painted backdrops and clumsily dramatised scenes f ..read more

When I first heard that British journalist Ray Coleman was writing a book on Paul McCartney, with Macca’s co-operation, I was somewhat excited. I had read the second volume of Coleman’s 1984 biography on John Lennon, and absolutely loved it. The prospect of a similar in-depth examination of Paul’s entire life and career – not just the Beatles years – had me licking my lips in anticipation. But when it was revealed the book would be limited in scope to the song ‘Yesterday’ and its impact on its author’s life, my enthusiasm rapidly drained away. Yes, it is a great and hugely important compositio ..read more

If there is a ‘sound’ of Beatlemania, an aural expression of the moment in time when music, culture and society began to be shaken to their core by the atomic blast generated by the Fab Four, there are a few candidates you could point to. In literal terms, there is the Live at the Hollywood Bowl album, when you can hear the teenage contingent of the world going bonkers just by being in the presence of the Moptops, reflecting the deafening hysteria that greeted the band’s every appearance (the songs they are playing at those 1964 and ’65 shows are almost an afterthought). A Hard Day’s ..read more