The 2025 GRAMMYs, officially known as the 67th GRAMMY Awards, is airing live and already The Beatles and the Lennon Estate have won big:
Best Rock Performance WINNER: The Beatles – Now and Then The Black Keys – Beautiful People (Stay High) Green Day – The American Dream Is Killing Me Idles – Gift Horse Pearl Jam – Dark Matter St. Vincent – Broken Man
The award was accepted on stage by Sean Ono Lennon.
By the way, ‘Now and Then’ has also been nominated for Song of the Year in the prestigious Brit Awards in the UK.
Also tonight Sean Ono Lennon and art director Simon Hilton have accepted the Grammy Award for…….
Best Boxed or Special Limited Edition Package Alpha Wolf – Half Living Things WINNER: John Lennon – Mind Games Kate Bush – Hounds of Love (The Boxes of Lost at Sea) Nirvana – In Utero Unsuk Chin & Berliner Philharmoniker – Unsuk Chin 90 Day Men – We Blame Chicago
The Beatles were also GRAMMY nominated, indirectly, in the category below:
Best Audio Book, Narration, and Storytelling Recording Barbra Streisand – My Name Is Barbra Dolly Parton – Behind the Seams: My Life in Rhinestones George Clinton – …And Your Ass Will Follow WINNER: Jimmy Carter – Last Sundays in Plains: A Centennial Celebration Various Artists – All You Need Is Love: The Beatles in Their Own Words
All You Need is Love is an oral history of The Beatles (available digitally as an audiobook) from never-before-heard interviews. The material is comprised of interviews with Paul McCartney, Yoko Ono, George Harrison, Ringo Starr, their families, friends and business associates that were conducted by Beatles intimate Peter Brown and author Steven Gaines in 1980-1981 – during the preparation of their international bestselling book, The Love You Make.
Record of the Year The Beatles – Now and Then Beyoncé – Texas Hold ’Em Billie Eilish – Birds of a Feather Chappell Roan – Good Luck, Babe! Charli XCX – 360 WINNER: Kendrick Lamar – Not Like Us Sabrina Carpenter – Espresso Taylor Swift Featuring Post Malone – Fortnight
The GRAMMY’s are using this year’s ceremony to raise much-needed funds for those impacted by the terrible greater Los Angeles wildfires. You can donate by visiting MusiCares Fire Relief.
Much as was expected the Paul McCartney camp has announced there will be a commemorative 50th anniversary edition released this year of Wings’ fourth studio album, Venus and Mars. Also as expected it will take the form of a Half Speed Master, out on March 21, 2025.
The special 50th-anniversary vinyl edition will be cut at half speed using a high-resolution transfer of the original master tapes from 1975 by Miles Showell at Abbey Road Studios. The album will be presented as a meticulous reproduction of the original UK pressing, with recreations of the original “Venus and Mars are alright tonight” circular sticker and “comparative sizes of sun and planets” bookmark sticker. Just like the original it will come with two posters with photography by Aubrey Powell and Sylvia de Swaan. The iconic album artwork by Hipgnosis has been meticulously recreated and presented in a gatefold sleeve.
Venus and Mars will also be available in Dolby Atmos for the first time, newly mixed by Giles Martin and Steve Orchard.
Intriguingly, the official press release says“The first Wings release for 2025, Venus and Mars follows 2024’s theatrical release of the rare Wings live-in-studio performance film One Hand Clapping……”
And, “More exciting celebratory Wings’ activities and announcements are soon set to follow”, clearly implying that there are other Wings goodies in the pipeline for 2025.
Could this mean the LONG awaited London Town and Back to the Egg archive box sets are not far off?
Wishing all our readers a very Happy Holidays and a prosperous New Year!
Thank you to the talented artist, illustrator and musician Alvaro Ortega who has produced many a clever Beatle-inspired animation. Check out his website.
Of course for avid collectors there’s a sub-category of releases that come out on these two days per year that are essential as well. These are records in some way associated with The Beatles. These can be from artists that have rubbed shoulders with the band, have been produced by them, or who appear on labels owned by them. So, here’s a history of these records for your enjoyment. As usual, if you spot anything we’ve missed please get in touch!
The first of the “associated” records dates back to Record Store Day 2016 and the re-issue of a 7″ single by the band Grapefruit. This featured two previously unreleased tracks recorded for Apple in 1968, with one track (the A-side called ‘Lullaby’) produced by John Lennon and Paul McCartney. Only 750 of these were pressed:
Being produced by John Lennon also put Harry Nilsson’s Pussy Cats LP on the “must seek out” list for RSD 2018. This was the first time the album had been re-issued since it’s 1974 debut. It came out on brown and black marbled “hardwood” vinyl in a print run of 1500 copies:
Also for RSD 2018, producer and ‘Fifth Beatle’George Martin scored a release of his instrumental album Beatles to Bond and Bach (also originally from 1974). It was re-issued as a collectable, limited edition of 2500. Each LP was individually numbered and on 180g blue vinyl:
Sitar maestro and long-time friend and mentor of George Harrison, Ravi Shankar, had an amazing album produced by the Beatle in 1997. Chants of India was originally released (only on CD) on Angel Records, one of the EMI stable of classical labels. But by 2020 George’s son Dhani had re-launched Dark Horse Records, the label his father first started back in 1974. The very first LP in the revived catalogue was Chants of India – on vinyl for the first time. It earned the catalogue number DH0001 and came out as part of the RSD ‘Drops’ in that pandemic year of 2020. It was on red vinyl, housed in a gatefold sleeve with an exclusive photo print, and limited to 3000 copies:
Dark Horse then proceeded to have a bit of a run of Record Store Day releases. The next was the following year for the first of the RSD ‘Drops’ that year (June, 2021), and it was the first of many Joe Strummer titles to be reissued on the label. It was a 12″ picture disc single featuring ‘Junco Partner’, an ultra-rare acoustic home recording of the song famously recorded by The Clash. The B-side was a live version of the song recorded at the Brixton Academy in 2001 by Joe Strummer and The Mescaleros. Bearing the catalogue number DH0003 there were 3500 copies pressed:
Also in 2021, this time for RSD Black Friday, came another Joe Strummer title. It was a 12″ single on pink vinyl. The hype sticker said it all: “Dark Horse Records | Joe Strummer | ‘Johnny Appleseed’ | 12″ Single B/W ‘At The Border, Guy’ | Celebrating the 20th Anniversary of the Classic Album Global A Go-Go | Limited Edition Pink Vinyl | DH0006″. 4500 copies:
On to RSD 2022 now and a Dark Horse Records re-issue from Shankar Family and Friends: ‘I Am Missing You’, a 12″ single on blue vinyl. This is a track taken from their originalDark Horse self-titled LP, released in 1974 and produced by George Harrison. It was issued as a 7″ single back then. 2700 copies:
Record Store Day Black Friday 2022 saw two more Dark Horse Records titles issued. One was Dark Horse Records – The Best 1974-1977, with 12 remastered selections from across the catalogue including Ravi Shankar, Splinter, Attitudes, Henry McCullough and Kenny Burke. This was on black vinyl – 2150 copies:
Another RSD Black Friday for 2022 was Joe Strummer’s Live at Music Millennium. Recorded on November 2, 1999 this was a previously unreleased, rare acoustic in-store performance at a Portland, Oregon music shop called Music Millennium. On black vinyl on the Dark Horse label, there were 3600 copies pressed:
2023 saw an absolute flurry of activity on the Record Store Day front – for both RSD proper, and for Black Friday later in the year.
First up the band Stairsteps. Once signed to the original Dark Horse Records, they got a remastered re-release of their 1976 album, 2nd Resurrection (co-produced by Billy Preston) on gold vinyl. 1410 copies:
Once again Joe Strummer featured heavily, with Dark Horse adding to an ever-lengthening series of reissues. For 2023 RSD it was the turn of Streetcore as a “Limited 20th Anniversary Edition”. It came in a gatefold sleeve and looked great on white vinyl. It includes a colour printed inner sleeve and 1,760 copies were pressed (according to the Record Store Day website).
And also for RSD 2023 came one Beatle-related release with a somewhat tenuous link – the original soundtrack album for the 1971 spaghetti western movie, Blindman – starring none other than Ringo Starr. 1000 copies of this came out on “blood splatter” vinyl. And yes, the vinyl does look as gruesome as it sounds:
First up was a Black Friday reissue of the 1974 Splinter LP The Place I Love, produced by George Harrison:
Black Friday also saw the re-issue of a title originally released by Apple Records back in 1973 – Ravi Shankar and Ali Akbar Khan’s In Concert 1972. Co-produced by George Harrison, this was a 2LP set with 1280 copies being pressed:
The third Black Friday 2023 release was Leon Russell in country mode with Hank Wilson Vol. II. This was a red vinyl reissue of his 1984 country album, originally released on Paradise Records. Dark Horse Records was reissuing the album on vinyl for the first time since 1984. It includes a duet with Willie Nelson on ‘Wabash Cannonball’. 1700 copies:
And that brings us to 2024. Earlier this year Record Store Day for Beatle-related titles was pretty big and, it must be said, a drain on the wallets of completists! There were four releases in all – and this was in addition to no less than ten Beatle and solo releases.
Dark Horse was again busy. They had out a remastered 25th anniversary edition of the Joe Strummer and the Mescaleros double LP, Rock Art & The Ex-Ray Style. This was the debut album by the band in limited pink vinyl. 1800 were pressed with the original gatefold artwork by Damien Hirst being “meticulously reproduced”:
One fairly obscure Dark Horse LP was listed as a RSD Limited Run/Regional Focus release – with only 800 copies on offer on the day. It was was a very interesting LP called Dreamers In The Field by Huun-Huur-Tu, Carmen Rizzo and Dhani Harrison on clear vinyl:
Cat Stevens (Yusuf Islam) has been signed to Dark Horse for almost 2 years now and the label last year released a new, original record from him called King of a Land. For RSD 2023 they also reissued two of his back-catalogue titles, Numbers – A Pythagorean Theory Tale (originally from 1975), and Izitso (originally from 1977). These both came with spectacular lenticular gatefold cover art.
So, Dark Horse was prolific for RSD this year with no less than six records – one of them a double. There were also two solo George Harrison Zoetrope releases to add into the mix.
For RSD Black Friday just passed, things calmed down somewhat. There was only one Dark Horse title to chase down if you were keen, Leon Russell’s Hymns for Christmas. This is on emerald green vinyl. It’s another “first time on vinyl” and 1300 copies:
So, that’s it for the Beatle-related titles. As we said, if you have any thoughts, corrections, or items we’ve missed please get in touch.
Been looking for information on just how the six newly-reissued Beatles1964 U.S. Albums in Mono LPs were originally compiled back in the day by Capitol Records?
For those who like a visual to help take in complex information, this chart is a fantastic resource showing exactly which songs from the original UK albums were used to create the records that Capitol produced for US audiences. It’s like a Beatles Parlophone/Capitol family tree!
(click on image to see a larger version, or download below)
A new biography of John Lennon and Paul McCartney is due to hit bookshelves next April, but if you happen to be in New York and at Strawberry Fields in Central Park on December 8 (for the tribute to Johnon the anniversary of his death) you could score yourself a complimentary pre-release copy. Check out the details on this below.
John Lennon and Paul McCartney knew each other for twenty-three years, from 1957 to 1980. Using a selection of songs they wrote and performed before, during, and after The Beatles this book is the biography of a relationship that changed the cultural history of the world.
An extract from the Prologue to John & Paul sums it up well:
This is a book about how two young men merged and multiplied their talents to create one of the greatest and most influential bodies of work in history. The partnership of Lennon and McCartney was responsible for159 of the Beatles’ 184 recorded songs, and they were the dominant creative decision-makers within the group. “There is no doubt in my mind that the main talent of that whole era came from Paul and John,” said George Martin. “George, Ringo and myself were subsidiary talents.” This is also a love story. John and Paul were more than just friends or collaborators in the sense we normally understand those terms. Their friendship was a romance: passionate, tender, and tempestuous, full of longing, riven by jealousy. This volatile, conflicted, madly creative quasi-marriage escapes our neatly drawn categories, and so has been deeply misunderstood.…
This book tells the story of John and Paul’s friendship, from when they meet until John’s death. It does so by way of the richest primary source of all: their songs. Each chapter is anchored in a song that tells us something about the state of their relationship at the time, either in its words or in how it was created or performed.
Ian Leslie draws on extensive research and on song versions released right up to the present day, garnering insights even from the latest studio outtakes and films – right up to Peter Jackson’s Get Back opus. His book promises a unique perspective too because he’s not coming from a music journalism background. Far from it in fact. Leslie is a writer and author of acclaimed books on human psychology and creativity, relationships and communication, and he writes about the intersection between psychology, popular culture and business. He’s co-hosted the podcast series Polarised (on the way we do politics today), created and presented the BBC radio comedy series Before They Were Famous, and writes the influential Substack newsletter The Ruffian.
John & Paul is due for publication by Celadon Books on April 8, 2025 and we’ll publish our full review here closer to the official release, but until then here are the details of a special book giveaway you might like to attend. It will take place on December 8 at Strawberry Fields, Central Park, New York. From 2-3PM on December 8 staff members from Celadon will be attending the tribute to John at Strawberry Fields. If you would like to come by while they are there, you can learn more about this new Beatle book and take home an early copy.
We reviewed Volume 1 last year and can vouch for the level of research, knowledge and insight Perasi brings to the task. As an author he has credibility. Perasi one of the two official Italian translators of Paul McCartney’sThe Lyrics, and in 2022 he collaborated with MPL on the label copy for the massive The 7” Singles Box.
“Keeping in with the structure of the previous volume, this is the second part of the ‘musical biography’ of one of the most important song composers ever,” says the author. This latest volume covers the next 23 years (and 250 songs) in the McCartney catalogue.
The book consists of individual song entries across the period 1990-2012. It includes songs written by other composers as well as 26 unreleased tracks – each providing detailed information of musicians and recording dates, anecdotes and contemporary interviews, together with many exclusive interviews with key personnel by the author.
Paul’s classical works are also explored in detail. “I am very proud of the interview I did with Maestro Carl Davis a long time ago, there are some incredible insights into the process of the Liverpool Oratorio,” adds the author.
This book is enriched with almost 1,000 footnotes, with illustrations and QR codes for an even broader multimedia experience. Albums, tours and other events provide further background to the stories behind the songs.
As we said in our previous review, it all adds up to an intriguing mix of information that truly demonstrates that music is about ideas, and that the prolific PaulMcCartney is never short of them.
Music Is Ideas – The Stories Behind the Songs (Vol.2) 1990-2012 is guaranteed to inform, stimulate, and lead to further exploration of the music.
A rare acetate demo recording of the Lennon/McCartney song ‘I’ll Be On My Way’, from January 1963, is up for auction next week:
The single-sided, 7″ 45rpm disc has a Dick James Music Limited Demo Disc label which is pasted over a Melodisc label. It has typewritten recording details and is in its original paper sleeve.
This acetate was given to Mike Maxfield (1944-2023) by Paul McCartney. Maxfield was guitarist with The Dakotas, Billy J. Kramer’s backing band, and they recorded the song exclusively as the B-side of their debut single, ‘Do You Want To Know A Secret’ (also a Lennon/McCartney song) released in late April 1963.
Mark Lewisohn, in The Complete Beatles Chronicle, lists the song as being part of The Beatles live repertoire of 1961-62. While credited to Lennon/McCartney, this is a song written by Paul in1959, and he takes the lead vocal on this demo recording, although it is not known when and where it was recorded.
It’s thought the acetate was given to Maxfield around January 1963 for Billy J. Kramer and The Dakotas to learn and record their version, which took place in March. The only other known version by The Beatles was recorded to be played on the radio by the BBC at its Paris Studio in London. The band were guests on the show Side By Side. They recorded it “as live” on April 4, 1963 and it went to air on June 24. That Beatle recording was first officially released on the 1994 compilation album, Live At The BBC.
For further information on this lot please visit the lot listing at Bonham’s Auctions.
As you can see, along with producer T Bone Burnett, there are some heavy hitters helping out including Alison Krauss, Billy Strings and Molly Tuttle.
Variety has just published this in-depth article with a very recent interview with Ringo, and contributions from T Bone Burnett. Well worth a read.
And the online magazine JamBase is running this article with information about the background to Look Up as well:
Billy Strings is not only a star who can fill massive arenas with his band but has also become an in-demand studio musician. For example, Beatles legend Ringo Starr and fellow music icon T Bone Burnett called upon Strings to contribute to Starr’s forthcoming country album.
While Starr hasn’t officially announced Look Up, Ringo spoke about the album with Fox News Digital in July. “I met him [when] Olivia Harrison was reading poems for George. There was about 100 of us there listening, and he was one of them, and I bumped into him [off and on] since the ’70s,” Starr said of Burnett.
“He said, ‘What are you doing? I said, ‘Oh, well I’m doing this, EPs [extended play albums, which have more tracks than a single, but less than a record]. I’m getting people to write a song, put some music on it,” the Beatles legend continued. While Ringo Starr had several pop songs written for the project, he thought Burnett’s tune was “absolutely one of the most beautiful country songs I ever heard. So, I thought, ‘I’m going to do a country EP.’”
When Ringo talked to Burnett about cutting additional tracks, T Bone explained he had nine songs ready to go. “I thought let’s make a real CD, so I’m back making a CD,” Starr said about the decision to turn the EP into an LP.
In May, T Bone Burnett revealed he was working on a country album with Starr while speaking to Variety. Burnett had high praise for Ringo. “He’s such a beautiful singer. Ringo was in a band with two of the best singers in rock ‘n’ roll history, so people never took him as seriously as a singer as they should. If you listen to all the country stuff he did, ‘What Goes On’ and ‘Act Naturally’ and ‘Honey Don’t,’ he did so much great country music, even in the Beatles. And, you know, he’s called Ringo Starr because that’s a cowboy name, and he wanted to be a cowboy when he was a kid. As we all did back in those days; we always all wanted to be Gene Autry.”
Starr’s first solo foray with country was Beaucoup of Blues, an album of country covers he recorded in Nashville in 1970. “Yeah, it’s pretty good. I mean, they whipped it out really quickly; I think they did it in two days or so,” Burnett said of Beaucoup of Blues. “And we’re gonna do something a little more thorough. I mean, Ringo in his third act is deserving of a serious album… I want to make a classic Ringo Starr country record. I think we can,” T Bone added.
Ringo initially planned to put out the country album this fall as per his May chat with Variety. Starr gave a status report to the outlet. “We’ve done 90% of my work. He (Burnett) may want to put other stuff on it. And tomorrow I’m gonna finish off the odd lines I have to re-sing or think about, and then it should be done. As far as I’m concerned, the drums are good and the songs are good and, you know, I sing to the best of my ability, but sometimes I change the melody. That’s the way I am, and I had to back off a bit and do his melody, because he wrote it. So that’s what happened. It just came about and we’re just going with the flow. And now we’ve got a country record. The last country LP was… was it 1970? [Beacoups of Blues]. And now we’ve got one coming out probably in October. Because it’ll be coming out on vinyl and on CD, you’ve gotta get it in, and now it’s like five or six months before you put anything out. I mean, I’d like to finish it here and put it on the radio right now, but you can’t do that anymore.”
Ringo has also announced he’ll be supporting the new country album with two performances at the fabled Ryman Auditorium in Nashville. The shows will be filmed for a special. Check out the Ryman page for more.
And here’s the second teaser song, a co-write by Ringo and long-time collaborator Bruce Sugar. It features the great Alison Krauss on back-up vocals:
Why A Hard Day’s Night now? Why white vinyl? Why the stereo version? Why only in the UK?
It is part of the UK’s National Album Day – which, granted, has “Great British Groups” as it’s theme this year – but their official webpage doesn’t appear to know anything about a Beatle release. A Hard Day’s Night isn’t mentioned at all in the feature news item on their site that goes into great detail about all the releases associated with the day.
Yes, it has been announced on the official Beatles site. And yes, they say it is because it is the 60th anniversary, but there are no links to order it anywhere, and it comes out in 10 days time.
This looks to be the stereo version and not newly remixed by Giles Martin. The Beatles site makes no mention of the mastering, so we can only assume it is the stock-standard 2009 stereo remaster, which has been out since……well 2009 on CD and 2012 on vinyl.
It’s all just a bit odd!
The limited edition reissue on 180g White Vinyl will be released on October 19th. Will you be getting it?
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