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    Rare Beatles Audition Tape Surfaces in a Vancouver Record Shop

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    The recording appears to be from the band’s 1962 audition for Decca Records, which notably rejected the group.The tape sat unremarkably on a shelf behind the counter, collecting dust for five, maybe 10 years — so much time that Rob Frith says he lost track.Frith, 69, could not seem to recall how it had found its way to Neptoon Records, his store in Vancouver, British Columbia, which in its 44 years has become a repository for tens of thousands of vinyl records and other musical relics.The label on the cardboard box said it was a Beatles demo tape, but, having heard enough bootleg recordings over the decades, Frith was skeptical until he enlisted a disc jockey friend, Larry Hennessey, to load it onto his vintage tape player a few weeks ago.It was just before midnight on March 11 when they pushed play on the mystery tape. From the opening guitar riff and the intonation of a 21-year-old John Lennon, Frith said he could not believe his ears as he listened to the Beatles performing a cover of the Motown hit “Money (That’s What I Want).”“Right away, we’re all kind of looking at each other,” Frith said. “It seems like the Beatles are in the room. That’s how clear it is.”Frith said the tape appeared to be a professionally edited recording of the Beatles’ New Year’s Day 1962 audition for Decca Records in London, a session that notably ended with the band’s rejection.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Beatles Movies Cast Revealed, Including Paul Mescal and Barry Keoghan

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      The director Sam Mendes announced the stars of his four-film series, each told from the perspective of a different Beatle, set to be released in 2028. There has been no shortage of movies about the Beatles. But the director Sam Mendes is embarking on a project that stands apart for its ambition — four films, each from a different band member’s perspective — and now we know who will be playing the Fab Four.The films will star Paul Mescal as Paul McCartney, Harris Dickinson as John Lennon, Joseph Quinn as George Harrison and Barry Keoghan as Ringo Starr, according to Mr. Mendes’s production company.The four films, which will tell the story of one of the world’s most influential and adored bands, will be released together in April 2028, “creating the first bingeable theatrical experience,” the company wrote. In announcing the films last year, Mr. Mendes, the British director best known for films like “American Beauty” (1999) and “Revolutionary Road” (2008), said he was “honored to be telling the story of the greatest rock band of all time, and excited to challenge the notion of what constitutes a trip to the movies.”He announced the cast at the CinemaCon convention in Las Vegas on Monday, according to The Hollywood Reporter. While the Beatles have been big-screen subjects before — including in Danny Boyle’s “Yesterday” (2019) and Sam Taylor-Johnson’s “Nowhere Boy” (2009) — this is the first time that the members of the band and their estates have granted full life story and music rights for a scripted film, according to Sony Pictures.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      An ‘In Like a Lion, Out Like a Lamb’ Playlist

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      Prepare for spring with songs from the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Lion Babe, Buddy Guy and others.Karen O of the Yeah Yeah YeahsJack Plunkett/Invision, via Associated PressDear listeners,Early March is such a tease, occasionally giving us a fleeting preview of desperately desired springtime — only to snatch it away with yet another dreary, blustery, 30-something-degree day. You know the saying: “In like a lion, out like a lamb.” Since we’ve finally almost reached that fabled calendrical turning point in the middle of the month, I thought I’d put together a playlist that goes in like a lion and out like a lamb.Given their potent and evocative symbolism, there is no shortage of music that references lions or lambs. Lions connote strength, fire and even potential danger; lambs, in keeping with their biblical association, often represent purity, gentleness and self-sacrifice. In today’s selections, you’ll hear these themes explored by artists like Genesis, Neko Case and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, among others.May these songs bring warmer afternoons, longer days and much lighter jackets.Momentum for the sake of momentum,LindsayListen along while you read.1. The Tokens: “The Lion Sleeps Tonight (Wimoweh)”Let’s begin with the most famous version of this oft-covered classic about a lion in peaceful repose. Most elements of what would eventually become “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” were written by the South African musician Solomon Linda, whose 1939 version of the song was titled “Mbube,” the Zulu word for “lion.” Pete Seeger’s folk group the Weavers released an influential version in 1951 (as Seeger, Edward Norton plays it onstage in “A Complete Unknown”), but the doo-wop group the Tokens took the song to new heights of popularity in 1961, with this rendition that featured English-language lyrics by the songwriter George David Weiss.▶ Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTubeWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Sons of Paul McCartney and John Lennon Release New Song

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      James McCartney teamed with Sean Ono Lennon for “Primrose Hill,” a ballad with echoes of the Beatles aesthetic.For six decades, the partnership summarized by the songwriting credit “Lennon-McCartney” has been pop music’s gold standard. So there was some surprise last week when fans woke up to a brand-new track from McCartney and Lennon — if not the same duo.James McCartney, the son of Linda McCartney and the Beatles’ Paul McCartney, released the song, “Primrose Hill,” last Thursday. He co-wrote it with Sean Ono Lennon, the son of Yoko Ono and the Beatles’ John Lennon.James, 46, announced the single — a dreamy ballad with echoes of the Beatles’ style — on social media the day after its release. Its B-side, “Beautiful,” came out in February.“With the release of this song it feels like we’re really getting the ball rolling and I am so excited to continue to share music with you,” he wrote.James began releasing his own music with a 2010 EP titled “Available Light,” which he recorded partly at Abbey Road. His first full album, “Me” from 2013, was produced by David Kahne, a former record executive who has worked with the Strokes, Linkin Park, Lana Del Rey and yes, Paul McCartney. (The album featured vocals, guitar and drums from his father.) Its follow-up, “The Blackberry Train,” came out in 2016. James previously contributed to albums by both of his parents, including “Flaming Pie” and “Wide Prairie.”Through a representative, McCartney and Ono Lennon declined to comment on the new track.Paul McCartney did tout his son’s fresh work on social media, adding: “lots of love to Sean Ono Lennon.”Perhaps the most poignant reaction to the track, and to the opportunity and burden of the Beatles legacy, came from yet another band scion: the drummer Zak Starkey, who is the son of the drummer Ringo Starr.One observer had ruefully commented on an Instagram post from an unofficial Paul McCartney fan account, “Sad ya can’t just walk your own road.”Starkey — an accomplished drummer who has toured with the Who and Oasis — replied, the Beatles are a “wall u cannot go thru over or under — I was 25 when I came to terms with that.” More

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      The Beatles’ ‘Let It Be’ Film Will Stream After 54 Years on Disney+

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      Michael Lindsay-Hogg’s unloved — or misinterpreted? — 1970 documentary, the source for Peter Jackson’s “Get Back,” will stream on Disney+.In 2021, the director Peter Jackson’s sprawling and vibrant Beatles docuseries, “The Beatles: Get Back,” streamed on Disney+ to nearly universal acclaim. The three-part epic, which ran nearly eight hours, captured the drama and frenzy as John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr recorded, over the pressure-filled month of January 1969, what would become the last album that the Beatles released, “Let It Be.”As fans were well aware, Jackson’s series was culled from nearly 60 hours of behind-the-scenes footage originally shot by the director Michael Lindsay-Hogg for “Let It Be,” his little-seen, though often dismissed, 1970 documentary about those recording sessions.After its initial theatrical run, Lindsay-Hogg’s film largely disappeared for more than a half-century with the exception of low-quality VHS versions and bootlegs. Fans tend to remember it as an intriguing historical document capturing the late-stage creative flights of a seismic musical force, but also as a divorce proceeding of sorts, with stark moments of internal discord as the band hurtled toward a nasty split.By that view, “Get Back,” with its abundant moments of jokey banter and on-set clowning, was seen by some as an overdue corrective to “Let It Be.”Little surprise but Lindsay-Hogg, 83, has a very different view. The acclaimed director had a hand in inventing the music video, with his promotional films for the Beatles and the Rolling Stones in the mid-1960s, and went on to win plaudits for the 1980s British mini-series “Brideshead Revisited.” He has fought for a half-century for “Let It Be” to get a second look and, in his mind, a fair shake.On May 8, he will get his wish, when “Let It Be,” meticulously restored by Jackson’s production team, begins streaming on Disney+ in collaboration with Apple Corps, the company that oversees the Beatles creative and business interests. Lindsay-Hogg spoke to The New York Times about the culmination of a long crusade. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Peter Brown, One of the Beatles’ Closest Confidants, Tells All (Again)

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      At 87, the dapper insider is releasing a new book of interviews conducted in 1980 and 1981 with the band and people nearest to it.Peter Brown stood in his spacious Central Park West apartment, pointing first at the dining table and then through the window to the park outside, with Strawberry Fields just to the right.“John sat at that table looking through here,” Brown said, “and he couldn’t take his eyes off the park.”That’s John as in Lennon. And the story of the former Beatle coveting this living-room view in 1971 — and how Lennon and his wife, Yoko Ono, eventually got their own place one block down, at the Dakota — is just one of Brown’s countless nuggets of Fab Four lore. In the 1960s he was an assistant to Brian Epstein, the Beatles’ manager, and then an officer at Apple Corps, the band’s company. A key figure in the Beatles’ secretive inner circle, Brown kept a red telephone on his desk whose number was known only to the four members.And it was Brown who, in 1969, informed Lennon that he and Ono could quickly and quietly wed in a small British territory on the edge of the Mediterranean, a piece of advice immortalized in “The Ballad of John and Yoko”: “Peter Brown called to say, ‘You can make it OK/You can get married in Gibraltar, near Spain.’”Next week, Brown and the writer Steven Gaines are releasing a book, “All You Need Is Love: The Beatles in Their Own Words,” made up of interviews they conducted in 1980 and 1981 with the band and people close to it, including business representatives, lawyers, wives and ex-wives — the raw material that Brown and Gaines used for their earlier narrative biography of the band, “The Love You Make: An Insider’s Story of the Beatles,” published in 1983.Now 87, Brown is a polarizing figure in Beatles history. He was a witness to some of the band’s most important moments and was a trusted keeper of its secrets. “The only people left are Paul and Ringo and me,” he said.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Sam Mendes to Direct Four Beatles Films

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      The Oscar-winning filmmaker Sam Mendes was given full rights to the band’s music and their life stories for the unusual quartet of films, planned for 2027.The British director Sam Mendes has signed on to direct not one but four biopics about the Beatles, each telling the story of the Fab Four from a different member’s point of view.Apple Corps, the guardian of the Beatles’ musical interests, and Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr and the families of John Lennon and George Harrison have granted full life story and music rights for the scripted films — a first — which will be financed and released by Sony Pictures Entertainment. The films are planned for release in 2027.“I’m honored to be telling the story of the greatest rock band of all time, and excited to challenge the notion of what constitutes a trip to the movies,” Mendes said in a statement on Tuesday. The announcement teased that the films would be released in an “innovative and groundbreaking” manner, but did not offer details.In recent years Mendes, the Oscar-winning director of “American Beauty,” has helped refresh the James Bond franchise with “Skyfall” and told the story of two British lance corporals in World War I in “1917.” As a theater director, he showed an ability to work with complicated biographical material over a long stretch of time with “The Lehman Trilogy,” a saga about the rise and fall of Lehman Brothers that earned him a Tony Award.Biopics about pop stars have grown popular in recent years: “Bob Marley: One Love” was on track to earn an estimated $33.2 million last weekend, following on the success of films including “Elvis” in 2022 and “Bohemian Rhapsody” in 2018.The Beatles have shown strength with movie audiences since they starred in “A Hard Day’s Night” in 1964, playing versions of themselves. Their fans continue to show an appetite for expansive projects: Peter Jackson’s documentary series “The Beatles: Get Back,” an over-seven-hour project, was released to much acclaim in 2021 on Disney+. More

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      How Paul McCartney’s Lost Bass Guitar Was Found Five Decades Later

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      The Höfner violin bass that accompanied the Beatles to fame went missing more than 50 years ago. Two journalists and a Höfner expert were determined to find it.No one seemed to know what had happened to one of the most important bass guitars in music history, though in the decades since it went missing there had been some dramatic rumors.Was the Höfner violin bass, which had accompanied Paul McCartney and the Beatles to worldwide fame, tucked away in a private collection? Had it been secretly shipped to a wealthy fan in Japan?It turned out the bass was passing time in a more unassuming locale: the loft of a family home in East Sussex, England. The family reported the guitar in late September, after a couple of journalists and a guitar expert started a new campaign looking for it in 2023, more than 50 years after it was last seen.The guitar, which has been authenticated by its manufacturer, has been returned to Mr. McCartney, according to a statement posted on his website on Thursday. “Paul is incredibly grateful to all those involved,” it said.It was the denouement to an enduring mystery that had gripped Beatles fans, including one group who pooled their skills to help find it.‘It started Beatlemania’The Höfner 500/1 guitar is a precious part of Beatles lore. It can be heard on recordings of hit songs including “Love Me Do,” “She Loves You” and “Twist and Shout.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Paul McCartney Talks About His Beatles Photos Coming to the Brooklyn Museum

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      Sixty years after the Beatles appeared live on “Ed Sullivan,” McCartney reflects on his photos capturing those halcyon days. The Brooklyn Museum will exhibit them, and some will be for sale later.They are now a collector’s trove — Paul McCartney’s own photos, shot 60 years ago, when the Beatles took Europe and America by storm: images of screaming fans (one carrying a live monkey); a girl in a yellow bikini; airport workers playing air guitar, and unguarded moments grabbed from trains, planes and automobiles.McCartney, now 81, doesn’t like to sit still and reminisce about the past, so he chatted while driving home from his recording studio in Sussex, England. ‘‘My American friends call these small, one-way lanes ‘gun barrels,’ ’’ he said, warning his interviewer that at any moment the signal might die (it did). In the end, it took two days to complete a coherent conversation about the breakthrough period when the Beatles went viral, captured in the traveling exhibition ‘‘Paul McCartney Photographs 1963-1964: Eyes of the Storm,’’ which features 250 of his shots. Currently it’s at the Chrysler Museum of Art in Norfolk, Va., and comes to the Brooklyn Museum May 3-August 18. (Don’t be surprised if the artist shows up for the opening.)It was McCartney’s archivist, Sarah Brown, who found 1,000 photographs the musician had taken over 12 weeks — from Dec. 7, 1963, to Feb. 21, 1964, — in the artist’s library.“I thought the photos were lost,’’ he said. ‘‘In the ’60s it was pretty easy. Often doors were left open. We’d invite fans in.” Even the recording studio wasn’t a safe space. “I was taking my daughter Mary to the British Library to show her where to research for her exams, and in one display case I saw the lyric sheet for ‘Yesterday,’” he said. A sticky fingered biographer had swiped the original from their studio.Rosie Broadley, a senior curator at the National Portrait Gallery in London, where the show was inaugurated, said, “His photographs show us what it was like to look through his eyes while the Beatles conquered the world.’’McCartney won an art prize at school and practiced photography with his brother, Mike (who later became a professional photographer). He graduated to a 35 mm SLR Pentax camera when the Beatles hit it big.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More