Beatles Rewind Podcast

At Shea Stadium on August 15, 1965, something extraordinary happened. The Beatles took the stage in front of 55,600 screaming fans, plugged into their 100-watt amplifiers, and proceeded to play a concert that nobody—including the Beatles themselves—could actually hear. The screaming registered on seismographs. George Harrison’s guitar amp was turned up full blast and he still couldn’t hear a singl...

Only one musician ever received co-billing on a Beatles single. Not Eric Clapton. Not George Martin. Not even the guy who played sitar on “Norwegian Wood.” The honor went to a keyboard player from Houston, Texas, who first met the Beatles when he was just sixteen years old, touring Europe with Little Richard. His name was Billy Preston, and the single read: “The Beatles with Billy Preston.” This i...

Yesterday, we began the story of the most famous rejection in music history: the Beatles’ audition for Decca Records on New Year’s Day, 1962. After a harrowing 10-hour drive through a blizzard from Liverpool, the four lads—John, Paul, George, and drummer Pete Best—arrived late and exhausted at Decca’s West Hampstead studios. They recorded 15 songs for producer Mike Smith (who was nursing a New Yea...

Here’s a story that should make anyone who’s ever bombed a job interview feel a little better about themselves: On January 1, 1962, four scruffy musicians from Liverpool drove ten hours through a blizzard to audition for one of Britain’s biggest record labels. They were nervous, sleep-deprived, and forced to use unfamiliar equipment. They recorded fifteen songs in a single afternoon. And then they...

The biggest, most valuable collection of rock-music memorabilia ever, including history-defining Beatles artifacts expected to fetch tens of millions, is headed to the auction block in New York. The late Jim Irsay’s remarkable collection of iconic Beatles items documenting the band’s evolution from their “mop-top” era to their peak creative phase includes a Ringo Starr drum estimated at $2 million...

John Lennon was many things—a musical genius, a cultural revolutionary, a provocateur—but he was also his own harshest critic. While millions of fans cherished every Beatles record, John spent much of his post-Beatles career publicly eviscerating songs he’d written, performed, and watched climb up the charts. If a lyric didn’t ring true or a melody felt too “sweet,” he was the first to tear it dow...

It is one of the great ironies of music history: the man with the most raw, expressive voice in rock and roll couldn’t stand the sound of it. To the rest of us, John Lennon’s voice was an awesome force of nature. To John, it was an annoyance that needed to be “fixed.” He constantly cornered producer George Martin with the same desperate plea: “Smother it.” He wanted his vocals buried in double-tra...

By 1965, the Beatles’ Mop Top era was effectively over. With “Rubber Soul,” They traded the simple sentiment of “She Loves You” for something more direct. No song captures that shift better than “Girl.” It feels less like a pop hit and more like a smoky, late-night confession in a Parisian basement. 🎸 On the album cover itself, The Beatles shed their clean-cut image for something grittier and mor...

The Omen at Euston Station In 1968, The Beatles were the most famous people on the planet, but they were also totally burnt out. Seeking a way to tune out the noise, they headed to an ashram in Rishikesh to study meditation with the the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. It was supposed to be a quiet spiritual reset, but it turned out to be a creative explosion; they ended up writing almost the entire White A...

Today, music has never been easier to find, or easier to ignore. You can summon virtually any Beatles song with a simple shout to a smart speaker, turning history into background noise. But a growing counter-culture is rejecting this ‘disposable’ era for something more real—the good old LP. Instead of listening on their phone, they’re cleaning heavyweight wax, dropping the needle, and exchanging d...

For the first time in over a decade, the “Beatle Calendar” is double-booked. This year, we aren’t just getting a reissue or a lost demo. For the first time since 2012, we’re getting releases from both Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr in the same calendar year. At their ages (82 and 84 respectively), most icons are content to let their legacy collect dust and royalties. Neither man needs more money....

When we think of the greatest musicians in history, the number of “southpaws” is staggeringly high. In the Beatles alone, 50% of the core band was operating on a different frequency. You have Paul McCartney, who redefined the melodic possibilities of the bass guitar, and Ringo Starr, a drummer whose “stumbling” style became a widely imitated heartbeat. Both men are left-handed and widely considere...

Every Beatles fan has probably wondered, at some point, “Is Eleanor Rigby a real person?” And like most things with The Beatles, the reality is far weirder, sadder, and more dramatic than you could ever imagine. 🕵️‍♀️ Grab your trench coat and a flashlight; we’re diving into a full-on mystery, complete with a graveyard, a forgotten maid, and a bitter battle between two songwriters over who actuall...

For decades, the “Greatest” Beatles songs were a list determined by middle-aged white men in suits at EMI and Capitol Records. Even though the Beatles were constantly churning out ear candy, if the suits decided against putting a song on a 7-inch vinyl with a fancy picture sleeve, and shipping it to radio stations, it wasn’t a “hit.” Case closed. But today’s digital era has pulled back the curtain...

Forget everything you think you know about 1964. And 1963. We’ve all seen the grainy footage: four guys in matching suits and ties, hair that looked outrageously long (back when people were still terrified of sideburns), and a wall of teenage girls screaming so loud you’d think they were being chased by a serial killer. 🎸💇‍♂️ But while the world was distracted by the “Ooohs” and the bowl cuts, t...

Few Beatles lyrics have caused as much lasting discomfort as John Lennon's “Happiness Is a Warm Gun.” For fifty years, it's been a cultural third rail—touch it and sparks fly. Read literally, it sounds less like poetry and more like something you’d expect to see printed on a bumper sticker on a pickup truck. Radio stations banned the song outright. Music critics wrote stern columns. Parents, with...

The most hilariously hypocritical saga in Beatles history involves Paul McCartney—yes, the guy who wrote “Yesterday” and “Let It Be”—desperately trying to get the world to hear 14 minutes of incomprehensible noise that he recorded in 1967. The same Paul McCartney who fought tooth and nail to keep John Lennon’s experimental “Revolution 9” off the White Album. 🎵 Welcome to the lore of “Carnival of...

Albert Einstein, the most famous physicist in human history, a passionate violinist who played Mozart sonatas in his Princeton living room every Wednesday night, died in 1955. A decade later, four working-class kids from Liverpool who couldn’t read music and learned guitar from borrowed chord books became the biggest band in the world. And somehow, both Einstein and the Beatles ended up with the s...

Let’s be honest: when you think about the Beatles’ legacy, you probably think about revolutionary pop music, Beatlemania, the British Invasion, and maybe that time Ringo temporarily quit because nobody appreciated his drumming after he got blisters on his fingers. You probably don’t think about their pets. But maybe you should, because the Beatles’ relationships with animals reveal something genui...

When you picture the Beatles, you see four mop-topped lads from Liverpool—John, Paul, George, and Ringo—standing together with their instruments, creating magic. This image is so powerful, so deeply embedded in our cultural consciousness, that it’s easy to believe they played every single note on every single record. The myth of the self-contained band, four musicians who needed no one else, has p...

On September 3, 1962, a sixteen-year-old Geoff Emerick began his career at EMI Studios on Abbey Road. By his second day, September 4, he found himself witnessing history: the Beatles’ second EMI recording session. While the band spent that day working on “How Do You Do It”—a song they famously disliked—and an early version of “Love Me Do” with Ringo Starr, Emerick was beginning a journey that woul...

Spring, 1969. Eric Clapton’s garden in Surrey, England. George Harrison is playing hooky. He’s supposed to be at yet another soul-crushing business meeting at Apple Corps, the Beatles’ increasingly dysfunctional company headquarters, signing contracts and listening to accountants drone on about tax implications and licensing agreements. Instead, he’s wandering around his friend’s garden with an ac...

In his final major interview—the September 1980 Playboy conversation with David Sheff conducted just months before his death—John Lennon stated plainly: “All music is rehash. There are only a few notes. Just variations on a theme.” This statement perfectly captures Lennon’s pragmatic, anti-pretentious view of musical creation that he maintained throughout his career. For Lennon, music wasn’t about...

Paul McCartney has always been the charming one, the Beatle who could work a crowd with that boyish grin and perfectly timed quips that made even the stiffest audiences relax. While John got attention for his dangerous wit—the kind that could offend or provoke—Paul specialized in a different kind of stage banter: cheeky without being threatening, clever without being cruel, the sort of humor that...

When The Beatles officially dissolved in 1970, the world didn’t just lose the greatest band in history—it gained four solo artists who would spend the next decade (and beyond) trying to define themselves outside the overwhelming shadow of their collective achievement. “The Beatles after The Beatles: The Solo Careers of John, Paul, George and Ringo (1967-1980)”, by Italian journalist Luca Perasi, i...