The Beatles news

Recommended gig: Backbeat - The Birth of the Greatest Rock and Roll Band in the World

Mon, 16 Jan 2012 15:08:28 +0000

Absolute Radio has announced that The Beatles will be performing live in concert. You can get your tickets now from the Absolute Radio ticket store.

New song: BACK CATALOGUE

Wed, 16 Nov 2011 00:00:00 +0000

The song 'BACK CATALOGUE' has been added to the Absolute Radio playlist

Watch: Interview

Fri, 22 Jul 2011 03:17:10 +0100

Ringo Starr collected the Icon Award at the MOJO Awards 2011 in London, revealing it was an honour, and ruled out any involvement in the London 2012 Olympics opening ceremony.

Photos: Geoff Lloyd meets Paul McCartney

Thu, 16 Jun 2011 15:51:25 +0100

Watch: Interview

Tue, 24 May 2011 09:47:16 +0100

Iain Lee speaks to the legendary Ringo Starr about his drumming abilities, peace and love, the All-Starr Band and more...You can also download the podcast of this interview here.

Watch: Interview

Tue, 05 Oct 2010 16:36:45 +0100

Julian Lennon speaks to Geoff Lloyd about his new book, Beatles Memorabilia: The Julian Lennon Collection. It's published by Goodman and costs £25, it's available to buy from Amazon and all good book stores.

Photos: Christian O'Connell meets Paul McCartney.

Wed, 12 May 2010 17:04:56 +0100

Archive interviews

Wed, 12 May 2010 17:04:51 +0100

We've been through the One Golden Square archives to find several Beatles interviews from the past few years. Grab your headphones and enjoy archive interviews from Paul McCartney, Yoko Ono, Giles Martin and Pete Best - everyone's favourite Beatle-who-never-was.

Listen: Interview

Wed, 12 May 2010 17:04:34 +0100

Absolute Radio's Geoff Lloyd speaks to Sir Paul McCartney at his offices about staff parties, his offices in London and his up-coming headline slot at Hard Rock Calling festival.You can buy tickets from the Absolute Radio Ticket Store now.

Read Geoff Lloyd's review of The Beatles' 'Love' album

Fri, 18 Dec 2009 15:46:59 +0000

Our authority on The Beatles: Geoff Lloyd was invited to the Abbey Road studios recently for an exclusive hearing of the new album, read his account below...

The 'Love' album preview at Abbey Road

Thirty six years after The Beatles recorded their last session here (overdubs on George Harrison's 'I Me Mine', fact geeks) the long, low wall outside the famous EMI recording studios in London's Abbey Road is still covered in fans' graffiti.

Like the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, as soon as they finish painting it, they have to start all over again. In the peak tourist months, London's already heaving traffic congestion is exacerbated by a constant stream of pilgrims posing for photographs on the nearby zebra crossing, emulating the iconic album cover. At the height of Beatlemania, interviewers would regularly ask what would happen when the general public lost interest. John and George bought a chain of supermarkets. Ringo mused about becoming a hairdresser. Paul talked about writing songs for other people. As it turns out, they needn't have bothered.

It is a crisp October afternoon, and one quarter of The Beatles, as for much of this year, dominates the day's tabloid headlines. Regrettable though the circumstances are, it shows the the public's appetite for all things Fab remains as insatiable as ever. They are about to be served a far more nutritious feast.

We are at Abbey Road to listen to the new Beatles album, 'Love'. It is the soundtrack to a Cirque du Soleil production of the same name, currently playing in Las Vegas. In the nineties, after years of legal wrangles, trauma and deep, old wounds, the three surviving Beatles (Harrison, McCartney,Starr) began to repair their friendships whilst working on the 'Anthology' project.

For the first time in years, they would socialise, and whenever Cirque du Soleil were in town, they would go along together to take in the show. Harrison, in particular was a great fan of the movement and spectacle performances, and became close friends with one of Cirque du Soleil's founders, Guy Laliberté. Out of this friendship was born the idea of a Beatles-inspired Cirque production.

The playback of the 'Love' album is in Abbey Road's studio three. The whole building is steeped in popular music history, and The Beatles occasionally used this studio, especially when working more individually such as on 'The Beatles' (a.k.a 'The White Album'.) Unlike Studio Two, which was home to most of The Beatles recording career, and to this day still smells like an old, musty, church hall, Studio Three is modern and intimate. Before entering the studio we are given strict instructions regarding privacy. All mobile phones have to be left inside a locked cloakroom, we have to sign disclaimers, and we are frisked for secret tape recorders by a security guard on the way in.

The studio is on two levels; there is a comfortable control room on a mezzanine floor, and downstairs, the studio floor has been furnished with comfortable armchairs for us to sit and listen. We are told that once the playback commences, we are free to move between the two, and to help ourselves to refreshments. I've been to many album playbacks which have turned out to be fairly sociable affairs, with people chatting and stuffing their faces with vol-au-vents while the music plays in the background. This time, we sit in in our armchairs and stay there is silent wonderment from start to finish. Despite a lovely spread of hummous, crisps and triangular sandwiches.

The album has been put together by veteran Beatles producer George Martin, and his son Giles, also in the knob-twiddling game. The concept is to provide a soundtrack to the Cirque De Soleil show using well-loved Beatles songs, but presented in a fresh way. Martin and son painstakingly went through every studio session The Beatles ever recorded, and built layers and layers of elements from different takes of different tracks into the fabric of some of the best loved songs in the band's canon. For example, a first listen to the new version of "Strawberry Field Forever' yields up a composite of various takes of the song, augmented with vocals and/or instrumentation from 'Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band', 'Piggies', 'In My Life', 'Hello, Goodbye' and 'Penny Lane'. There are doubtlessly many others in there too.

As with all latter-day Beatles releases, care has been taken to present each Beatle's material proportionately. Although the track listing looks slightly Lennon-heavy, McCartney is almost equally represented. George Harrison's 'While My Guitar Gently Weeps' is the only song to feature new instrumentation; a George Martin-scored string section sensitively added to the beautiful 'Anthology' demo version, this being one of the stand-out tracks. Whereas Ringo-sung songs were sometimes throwaway fillers on The Beatles' studio albums, a great deal of attention has been lavished on the hybrid of 'Goodnight' and 'Octopus's Garden' included here, and the marrying of this track with the drum track from 'Lovely Rita' is another of the highlights.

I am always impressed by the way that Apple Corps, The Beatles company, is aware of protecting the band's legacy. They rarely licence the recordings out, and carefully drip-feed selected product onto the market every few years, taking care not to cheapen the band's reputation. There are bound to be Beatles fans who consider the 'Love' album to be little short of heresy, taking the bands recordings and re-editing them to create something removed from the already perfect original releases. I tend to disagree, though. The original releases are still there, and always will be. The definitive Beatles releases are those from 1962 to 1970 and, of course, if you want to take a dip at the high tide mark of popular music, that's the place to do it.

For those of us who love and savour those original recordings, but crave more, 'Love' is very exciting. It's those magical songs in a parallel universe, given new dimension. Instead of each song being its own cake, it's the whole lot melted down, stirred up together and made into new ones. I know it's not strictly possible to melt a cake, but you know what I mean.

There's probably a better analogy involving coloured strips of Plasticine, perhaps you could go away and work on it yourself...

As we left Abbey Road and walked through St John's Wood, my head was, predictably, full of The Beatles. It so often is, in that part of London. I thought about four nervous and excited young boys arriving from Liverpool to record their first album. Of the hours in the studio when a great beat-pop band started to discover super-powers recording 'Rubber Soul' and 'Revolver'. Of the strains and fissures that grew between four friends in the eye of the hurricane. Of the arrival and omnipresence of Yoko Ono into the previously hallowed and unaugmented band dynamic. Of the incredible studio photographs of Linda McCartney, taken when the rot had set in and spread, but capturing moments of warmth and magic. The 'Love' album is the soundtrack to that incredible story, eschewing chronology for essence.

I was born after The Beatles split up. If I could have lived at any time in history, I would love to have been a thirteen year old in 1962, and spent my adolescence hearing those incredible records with fresh ears, in context with the culture of the time. Taking an album home from the shop, removing the record from the packaging, placing it on the turntable and putting the needle onto the disk, and hearing it for the first time must have been mind-blowing. I've heard stories about the week 'Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band' was released, when people would throw parties just to sit and listen to this astonishing album, and pirate radio DJs played the whole thing, uninterrupted from start to finish.

Tony, Annabel and myself were talking about how my generation missed out on having that experience of absorbing new Beatles material for the first time, and we had an idea. The new Beatles album 'Love' is a journey from start to finish, and that's the best way to listen to it: To treat it like you might a DVD or a book, and devote a whole evening to it being your entertainment, with no other distractions. We're going to try and recreate that excitement on the radio. We're going to play 'Love', uninterrupted, in its entirety.

Since the album is stunning, we already know it's going to be a very special experience, so we hope you can set aside an hour and a half of your time, to enjoy a world exclusive, the new Beatles release 'Love' on Wednesday 15th November at 11pm.

Listen: Interview

Tue, 01 Dec 2009 13:22:23 +0000

Christian O'Connell speaks to The Beatles legend Paul McCartney on the Breakfast Show to talk about his memories of playing with The Beatles.

On Absolute Radio

Tue, 08 Sep 2009 16:39:07 +0100

September is not only Absolute Radio's birthday, it's a big month for Beatles fans. On September 9 2009, all thirteen of The Beatles' studio albums, plus compilations, are being remastered and re-released on vinyl and CD.

Is your Beatles collection complete? Check out our merchandise page where you can purchase all of the remastered albums. We've also got a funky t-shirt up for grabs, exclusive to Absolute Radio. You can purchase it right here, with loads more designs also on offer.

Also coming on September 9 will be The Beatles™: Rock Band™, which will allow fans to play along to Beatles classics on their Playstation 3, Nintendo Wii or Xbox 360. You can win an Xbox 360 console with a copy of The Beatles™: Rock Band™ in our brain-busting Beatles Quiz.

Archive interviews

We've been through the One Golden Square archives to find the cream of our Beatles interviews throughout the past few years. Grab your headphones and enjoy!

Albums on Absolute Radio

To celebrate the re-launch of the band’s catalogue, Absolute Radio is playing out all 15 reissued Beatles albums in full during evenings throughout September. Here's the running order...

Please Please Me - Tuesday 1 September at 11pm
With The Beatles - Wednesday 2 September at 11pm
A Hard Day's Night - Thursday 3 September at 11pm
Beatles For Sale - Monday 7 September at 11pm
Help - Tuesday 8 September at 11pm
Rubber Soul - Wednesday 9 September at 11pm
Revolver - Thursday 10 September at 11pm
Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band - Monday 14 September at 11pm
Magical Mystery Tour - Tuesday 15 September at 11pm
Yellow Submarine - Wednesday 16 September at 11pm
The Beatles (White Album) - Thursday 17 September at 11pm
Abbey Road - Monday 21 September at 11pm
Let It Be - Tuesday 22 September at 11pm
Past Masters, Volume One - Wednesday 23 September at 11pm
Past Masters, Volume Two - Thursday 24 September at 11pm

The Beatles Rock Pilgrimages

Here at Absolute Radio we love Rock Pilgrimages, letting you follow in the footsteps of your favourite rock stars. From Abbey Road to Strawberry Fields, there are countless places to visit if you're a Beatles fan. Check out our list and add your own Pilgrimage!

We'll be celebrating The Beatles' musical achievements throughout September, so stay tuned to Absolute Radio for more great stuff!

Buy exclusive Beatles merchandise

Tue, 08 Sep 2009 16:17:27 +0100

We've got another treat for Beatles fans!
This white t-shirt is a new design and it's exclusive to Absolute Radio listeners. To get your hands on this design and many more, head over to our Beatles merchandise shop.

And that's not all! You can complete your Beatles collection with any of their re-mastered CDs or get rocking alongside The Fab Four with The Beatles™: Rock Band™.

Complete your collection

On September 9 2009, Parlophone/EMI will reissue all thirteen of The Beatles' studio albums (plus two Past Masters singles compilations) on vinyl and CD. This is the first time the CDs have been reissued since 1989, with enhanced sleevenotes, unseen photos, remastered audio, DVD elements and eco-friendly cardboard wallets.

Not only that, but The Beatles™: Rock Band™ will be released on the same day. You can win the game, along with an Xbox360 console in our brain-busting Beatles Quiz.

Buy now on Amazon.co.uk
Let It Be

Buy now on Amazon.co.uk
Abbey Road

Buy now on Amazon.co.uk
Yellow Submarine

Buy now on Amazon.co.uk
The Beatles (The White Album)

Buy now on Amazon.co.uk
Magical Mystery Tour

Buy now on Amazon.co.uk
Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band

Buy now on Amazon.co.uk
Revolver

Buy now on Amazon.co.uk
Rubber Soul

Buy now on Amazon.co.uk
Help!

Buy now on Amazon.co.uk
Beatles For Sale

Buy now on Amazon.co.uk
A Hard Day's Night

Buy now on Amazon.co.uk
With The Beatles

Buy now on Amazon.co.uk
Please Please Me

Buy now on Amazon.co.uk
Past Masters

Buy now on Amazon.co.uk
Box Set - Remastered in Stereo

Buy now on Amazon.co.uk
The Beatles Box Set - In Mono

Buy The Beatles™: Rock Band™

Fancy following The Beatles through their careers and get to play alongside the Fab Four? Check out The Beatles™: Rock Band™.

Buy now on Amazon.co.uk
The Beatles™: Rock Band™

Listen: Paul McCartney interview 2005

Tue, 08 Sep 2009 11:37:22 +0100

Another great interview from our One Golden Square archives, this time it's Paul McCartney speaking to Pete Mitchell and Geoff Lloyd in 2005.

Listen: Paul McCartney interview 2007

Tue, 08 Sep 2009 11:35:10 +0100

Paul McCartney paid us a visit at One Golden Square in 2007. Hear his interview with Geoff Lloyd, taken from the Absolute Radio archives.

Listen: Yoko Ono interview

Tue, 08 Sep 2009 11:33:35 +0100

We've sourced this from our One Golden Square archives. Hear the legendary Yoko Ono speaking to Pete Mitchell, recorded in 2003.

Listen: Giles Martin

Fri, 03 Jul 2009 16:23:31 +0100

Geoff speaks to Giles Martin, record producer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist. He's also the son of Sir George Martin, famed producer of almost all of The Beatles' records.

Listen: Paul McCartney interview 2008

Mon, 24 Nov 2008 17:37:48 +0000

Geoff's full interview with Paul McCartney from the Hometime Show's 'McCartney Week' in 2008.

Photos: Paul McCartney on Geoff Lloyd's Hometime Show

Fri, 21 Nov 2008 17:53:12 +0000

Interview: Pete Best

Fri, 24 Oct 2008 13:04:26 +0100

Pete Best is best known for being 'The Beatle That Never Was,' he was booted from their line-up before The Beatles made it really big. But all's well that ends well; these days he regularly tours the U.S. with The Pete Best Band!

Beatles superfan Geoff Lloyd invited him along for an interview; you can check out Nelson's bad photography and the interview, here.

Listen: Geoff interviews Pete Best

Fri, 24 Oct 2008 12:11:00 +0100

Geoff has a chat with everyone's favourite Beatle-who-never-was.

Photos: Pete Best: Interview

Thu, 23 Oct 2008 16:47:02 +0100

The TV ad for The Beatles Love

Thu, 30 Nov 2006 14:25:56 +0000

Even the TV ad is a work of genius...

Four track Beatles sampler

Wed, 22 Nov 2006 17:11:07 +0000

Just to whet your appetite before Geoff plays the entire Beatles Love album at 11pm on 15 November, here are four of the tracks for your listening pleasure.

If these don't have you running back early from the pub next Weds to hear the whole shebang, we don't know what will...