Beatles Blog

Is it just me, or are there a lot of books about Beatle managers around at the moment? There are not one but three new books (out now or soon to be released) looking into what it is like to work at building the Beatle business. The first is a new release by Philip Norman called Mr. Moonlight – Brian Epstein and the Making of The Beatles. As it’s title suggests, this is a new examination of the…

Even on popular discussion forums (like the Steve Hoffman Music Forum – currently up to 846 pages talking about The Boys of Dungeon Lane), there are fans who doubt anyone could possibly try to collect each and every variation of the latest McCartney release. We’ve tried to capture all of the current variations we’re aware of in this chart. Here’s the latest version: [Click on image to see a…

Global Beatles Day this year seems – for the first time – to have been official taken under the wing of the Beatles’ company, Apple. The official page is giving it a big push in the lead-up to 25/6/2026. The day was established back in 2009 by Faith Cohen, an American fan from Indianapolis, as a grassroots initiative through social media. The date was selected to mark the anniversary of the…

 If your were wondering what direction Tom Greene, the new CEO of Apple Corps Ltd., was going to take the Beatle franchise, then wait no more. The brief official notification says it all: The first-ever official Beatles fan experience, opening in London in 2027 3 Savile Row is one of the most famous locations in The Beatles’ history as the original headquarters of Apple Corps, the recording…

The Beatles’ Japan Store has just announced a special 60th anniversary project commemorating the band’s visit to Japan in 1966. The Beatles performed at Nippon Budokan in Tokyo from June 30 to July 2 – and created something of a sensation throughout the country. Back then the previously unreleased albums Please Please Me and With The Beatles, were issued as special commemorative editions for the…

It hasn’t even been released yet but quite a bit of work is being done by fans to identify the source of every image seen on the brilliant collage which fills the inside of the gatefold edition (announced just last week) of Paul McCartney’s new Boys of Dungeon Lane LP. There’s also a cassette which includes a fold-out collage print: In what is turning into a major crowdsourced research project,…

Since we posted about the new Paul McCartney solo release The Boys of Dungeon Lane there have been some developments, principally to do with new variations and vinyl colours being added. As we did for McCartney III and it’s sibling McCartney III Imagined, we’ve started an illustrative chart showing all the known variations so far. We’ll add to this if any more come down the pipeline (which,…

No doubt you’ve heard by now there’s to be a brand spanking new Paul McCartney solo album called The Boys of Dungeon Lane – due in stores from May 29. Very exciting to get a whole album’s worth of new material from the master – especially after a five year wait. A new Paul McCartney release means inevitably there’ll be lots of variations to collect. Already there are 7 different vinyl colours…

There’s definitely a bit of a rush on Beatle and Beatle-related documentaries and films at the moment. First up is John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s Power to the People – live in concert. This will obviously be a brilliant companion piece to the recent documentary One To One: John & Yoko by Kevin Macdonald, a revelatory inside-look at John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s life in Greenwich Village in the early…

The old addage “when you’re on a good thing, stick to it” comes to mind today as Ringo Starr announces the release of his second album with T Bone Burnett as producer – due out on April 24. It’ll be called Long Long Road and it follows on from last year’s well-received Look Up, a return to country/Americana – a style Ringo, and his audience, are very comfortable with. Recorded in Nashville and…

If I said the name Rick Ward to you, you’d probably reply, “Rick who??” Which is interesting because if you’re a Beatle fan with even a half-decent collection you’ll definitely have at least five or six examples of his work amongst your vinyl, CDs and DVD’s. We’re all aware that long-time Beatle mate, bass player and artist Klaus Voormann (along with fellow artist Alfons Kiefer) painted the…

Whenever we venture up to the suburb of Hornsby in Sydney’s north, a visit to the used record store Mix Up Music is always on the cards. As you can probably tell from image, this is not the most appealing shop from the outside, and that vibe continues continues once you’re inside. It’s a bit of a rabbit’s warren with stock seemingly all over the place – but there is treasure to be found here if…

As mentioned in December, we made some successful bids on a big Beatle and Beatle-related auction here in Sydney, Australia. The other successful bid was on an auction lot made up of quite hard-to-find, original Australian (plus one quite rare New Zealand) Dark Horse Records singles. These are all 45’s you very rarely come across in the wild, so they’re welcome additions to the collection. They…

There has been a lot of speculation about the forthcoming documentary film, Paul McCartney – Man On The Run. Would there, or wouldn’t there, be an accompanying soundtrack release on physical media? Director Morgan Neville dropped a hint a few weeks ago saying yes, there would be one. But many fans figured he was simply referring to last year’s Wings triple LP band retrospective. Well, it turns…

The people at Record Store Day have just dropped the 2026 list of titles for April 18 and it contains eight titles of interest to Beatle-related collectors. First up is John Lennon – or maybe that should be Sean Ono Lennon channeling his Dad? What’s coming is like a Part Two to the Mind Games Meditation Mixes, which came out back in October, 2024 in the wake of the big Lennon Mind Games…

When you see an iconic image like this one it is often fascinating to hear the backstory as to how it came about. Photographer Chris Floyd has a fantastic tale to tell about working with Paul McCartney and the process of capturing an image of him for the ages: If Floyd’s photographs looks familiar, that’s because another from that same shoot eventually made it’s way (some 12 years later via…

The Beatles have released a new short film on the “making of” their Anthology song, ‘Free As A Bird’: A Song Reborn is directed by Oliver Murray, who did a similar thing in 2023 for ‘Now And Then’: Hopefully soon we’ll get the Oliver Murray take on ‘Real Love’, with even more unseen footage?