The Beatles

How Liverpool soon outgrew the Beatles

20 January 2024 9:00 am

For the bands playing at Eric’s, the celebrated Merseyside punk club of the late 1970s, even to own a Beatles record was considered embarrassing

In the dark early 1960s, at least we had the Beatles

9 December 2023 9:00 am

The first half of the decade saw towns bulldozed, the Beeching cuts, everyday racism, political scandal and the threat of Armageddon. But there was also Beatlemania…

What happened to the supermodels of the 1990s?

14 October 2023 9:00 am

‘What advice would you give to your younger self?’ has become a popular question in interviews in recent years. It’s…

The phoney mystics who fooled the West

2 September 2023 9:00 am

Many suspect mystics have exploited naive westerners in search of spiritual enlightenment over the past century, Philip Hensher discovers

My childhood Cold War fears are back

2 April 2022 9:00 am

On the day before my seventh birthday, which I spent at my grandma’s in Yorkshire, a young man named Raymond…

More mesmerising than it should be – Disney+'s The Beatles: Get Back reviewed

4 December 2021 9:00 am

My late friend Alexander Nekrassov loathed the Beatles, which I used to think was a wantonly contrary position akin to…

It's amazing how little insight Paul McCartney has into the Beatles' genius

27 November 2021 9:00 am

The Paul people are out in force these days. A New Yorker profile, a book and a new documentary have…

The nearest thing to Paul McCartney’s autobiography: his guide to the Beatles’ songbook

13 November 2021 9:00 am

Whatever your favourite theory of creativity, Paul McCartney has a cheery thumbs-up to offer. You think the secret is putting…

James Bond and the Beatles herald a new Britain

11 September 2021 9:00 am

The word ‘magisterial’ consistently attaches itself to the work of David Kynaston. His eye-wateringly exhaustive four-volume history of the Old…

As pretty as anything he’s written in four decades: McCartney III reviewed

23 January 2021 9:00 am

Grade: A-   The greatest songwriter of the 20th century, or just one of the top two or three? Who…

No one ‘got’ the Sixties better than David Bailey

5 December 2020 9:00 am

What caught my eye towards the end of Look Again was this conversation between David Bailey and the shoe designer…

From cheeky mop tops to long-haired holy men: The Beatles come of age in America

17 October 2020 9:00 am

In his latest book, the veteran pop commentator David Hepworth is concerned with satisfaction, its acquisition and maintenance. On record,…

Dion, one of the last living links to the earliest days of rock ’n’ roll

30 May 2020 9:00 am

He toured with Little Richard, sang with Van Morrison, inspired the Beatles and Paul Simon. Graeme Thomson talks to Dion, one of the last living links to the early days of street-corner rock ’n’ roll

The musical benefits of not playing live

18 April 2020 9:00 am

Many performers hated playing live. But freed from the stage they often made their best and wildest work, argues Graeme Thomson

Letters: The ban on public worship has enabled more of us to experience spiritual riches

18 April 2020 9:00 am

Divine works Sir: Luke Coppen writes that livestreamed services ‘lack the vital communal dimension of worship’ and ‘are, at times,…

The last great purveyors of a vanishing art form: Green Day’s Fathers of All... reviewed

7 March 2020 9:00 am

Grade: B+ It is an eternal mystery to me why Britain has never had much time for power pop, seeing…

Did Radio 2 really need to give us four days of the Beatles to celebrate Abbey Road?

5 October 2019 9:00 am

This Changeling Self, Radio 4’s lead drama this week, clearly ought to have gone out in August. It’s set —…

The bias against digital music is more emotional than scientific

6 July 2019 9:00 am

It’s an increasingly common lament that computers have ruined everything, and a longing for the days before Google and Twitter,…

Himesh Patel as Jack in Yesterday

Funny moments swamped by an intolerable romance: Yesterday reviewed

29 June 2019 9:00 am

Yesterday is the latest comedy (with sad bits) from Richard Curtis, directed by Danny Boyle, about an unsuccessful singer-songwriter, Jack,…

The Beatles perform in Liverpool prior to signing their first recording contract: George Harrison, John Lennon, Paul McCartney, and original drummer Pete Best. Photo: Hulton Archive / Getty Images

The greatest Beatle? Pete Best

30 March 2019 9:00 am

Which of the Beatles would you most like to have been? Not either of the dead ones, presumably. Nor the…

The short, happy life of the long playing record

23 March 2019 9:00 am

On 19 June 1948, the modern LP was unveiled at a press conference by the Columbia Records president Ted Wallerstein,…

Alan Johnson. Credit Getty Images

Alan Johnson: the rock and roll years

15 September 2018 9:00 am

We’ve had Alan Johnson the lad from the slums of north Kensington, Alan Johnson the postman and Alan Johnson Member…

Having your cake

30 September 2017 9:00 am

For those in the know, Jimmy Webb is one of the great pop songwriters of the 1960s and 70s, up…

The dark side of creativity

29 July 2017 9:00 am

In Eureka, Anthony Quinn gives us all the enjoyable froth we could hope for in a novel about making a…

The Heckler: love your music, Macca, just not sure about you

7 May 2016 9:00 am

It’s slightly galling, after years of sticking up for Paul McCartney, to read a new biography of the bloke and…