Reba McEntire responds to rumours she’s selling weight loss gummies
‘The Voice’ star calls out ‘clickbait’ posts suggesting she’s selling weight loss gummies
Reba McEntire has hit out at “clickbait” rumours suggesting she’s selling weight loss gummies.
In a post shared to X, formerly Twitter, the 68-year-old country singer addressed reports she’s leaving NBC’s The Voice. “Please do not click on any articles that say I am leaving The Voice. This is not true,” McEntire began her post. The Reba star joined the popular singing competition as a coach in May 2023.
“These are fake websites to lure people in with clickbait where they claim I have a company to sell weight loss gummy products,” she continued, before acknowledging the fake posts that she’s selling weight loss products. “This is false. I do not sell or promote any type of gummy product,” McEntire said.
The “Does He Love You” singer was previously at the centre of a fake advertisement in 2022, when scammers had created ads on Facebook that falsely claimed the country music star was associated with Natures One CBD Gummies and other keto gummy products.
According to Snopes, the misleading ads claimed to reveal some sad news about McEntire. They led users to articles that resembled FoxNews.com and other digital news outlets, making it appear as if McEntire was promoting the CBD and keto gummies products.
McEntire isn’t the only celebrity to call out false ads using her likeness to peddle weight loss gummies. In October 2022, Oprah Winfrey urged her fans not to purchase products using her name and image. “And so it happened to me again today,” she began the Instagram video. “A woman came up to me and said: ‘Can you help me get your weight loss gummies?’ And I said: ‘Ma’am, I don’t have anything to do with weight loss gummies.’”
Winfrey said that she was compelled to address the weight loss scam after she was approached about the gummies five times in one week. “Somebody’s out there misusing my name, even sending emails to people advertising weight loss gummies,” she added.
Please do not click on any articles that say I am leaving The Voice. This is not true. These are fake websites to lure people in with clickbait where they claim I have a company to sell weight loss gummy products. This is false. I do not sell or promote any type of gummy product.
“I have nothing to do with weight loss gummies or diet pills and I don’t want you all taken advantage of by people misusing my name. So please know, I have no weight loss gummies,” Winfrey stressed.
She captioned her video with a warning to her followers, explaining that she hasn’t endorsed any weight loss supplement being advertised online.
“Fraud alert!” Winfrey wrote. “Please don’t buy any weight loss gummies with my picture or name on them. There have been social media ads, emails, and fake websites going out and I want you to hear it straight from me, that I have nothing to do with them. Please don’t be taken advantage of and don’t give your personal information to them.”
Despite having no connection to the weight loss gummies, McEntire has previously revealed exactly how she stays fit and healthy. “In the early ‘90s, I was on Fit for Life. That’s the slimmest I ever was,” the country singer told People in 2020. According to McEntire, the diet plan calls for cutting out sugar and “don’t mix your carbs and protein”.
“Instead of having potatoes and steak, just have steak and vegetables. If you’re going to have carbs, then have our carbs with vegetables,” she said at the time.
While McEntire doesn’t follow the strict diet these days, she maintained that “portion control works best for me now”.
“I do like to go on vacations and that’s when I really splurge,” she added. “I love Mexican food – chips, salsa and guacamole. And then chicken enchiladas and a really neat dessert. That’s my cheat day.”
Dolly Parton recently commended Beyoncè for being the first Black woman in history to top Billboard’s Hot Country Songs chart with her latest single “Texas Hold ‘Em.” The Queen of Country took to social media to congratulate the “Halo” hitmaker, sharing that she has always been a “big Beyoncè fan.”
“I am a big fan of Beyoncè and very excited that she’s doing a country album. So, congratulations on your Billboard Hot Country number one single.” ABC News properly referred to the sweet message as Dolly welcoming Queen B into “the country music family.”
Dolly also expressed that she cannot wait to hear Beyoncé’s country album in its entirety when it comes out next month. Slated for release on March 29th, Act II (Beyoncé’s eighth studio album) will feature the aforementioned chart-topping single, as well as “16 Carriages,” and other unreleased country tracks.
A post shared by Dolly Parton (@dollyparton)
Fans sounded off in the comment section of Dolly’s post, encouraging the two fabulous queens to collaborate in the future.
“Dolly Beyoncé collab maybe? Just a thought.”
Speaking of queens, Queen Latifah also reached out to Dolly in the comments saying, “Love You Dolly!!!” with a handful of heart emojis. Additionally, Oprah relayed support for the post commenting, “Legends supporting legends ❤”
Dolly, who knows a thing or two about breaking down genre barriers, released her rock & roll album Rockstar late last year, featuring special guests Sting, Kid Rock, Steven Tyler, Stevie Nicks, Joan Jett & The Blackhearts, Chris Stapleton, Miley Cyrus, Elton John, Lizzo, Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr, and Lynyrd Skynyrd to name a few. To celebrate her birthday on January 19th, the “9 to 5” hitmaker released a handful of additional tracks that were not included in the original release of the album.
Fans can listed to Dolly’s latest record and the two released Act II tracks off Beyoncè’s highly-anticipated country album on iHeartRadio now!
Dolly Parton is a country-music trailblazer.David Crotty/Contributor/Getty Images
Dolly Parton is an award-winning country artist, philanthropist, and actress.
Her hit songs “I Will Always Love You” and “Jolene” were inspired by real-life people.
Dollywood is a Parton-inspired theme park, but the singer says she’s never been on the rides.
Dolly Parton didn’t write “I Will Always Love You” about a romantic partner.
Dolly Parton and Porter Wagoner performing together. Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images
“I Will Always Love You,” later popularized by Whitney Houston, is an iconic song in music history.
But contrary to popular belief, the lyrics center on the end of a professional relationship, rather than a romantic one.
In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Parton appeared with her mentor Porter Wagoner on his eponymous TV show. But when it came time for Parton to spearhead her own career, Wagoner was not happy, and a rift started forming.
“There was a lot of grief and heartache there, and he just wasn’t listening to my reasoning for my going,” Parton told CMT in 2011. “I thought, ‘Well, why don’t you do what you do best? Why don’t you just write this song?’”
Parton penned “I Will Always Love You” later that day and sang it to him the next.
“He started crying,” Parton told the Tennessean in 2015. “When I finished, he said, ‘Well, hell! If you feel that strong about it, just go on — providing I get to produce that record because that’s the best song you ever wrote.’”
Parton’s smash hit “Jolene” was partially inspired by a bank teller.
The song’s name was also inspired by a fan. Debra L Rothenberg/Getty Images
The country lament “Jolene,” one of Parton’s biggest hits, is a tale of flirtation slightly inspired by a bank teller who set her eyes on Parton’s husband, Carl Dean — who Parton said also loved the attention.
“It was kinda like a running joke between us — when I was saying, ‘Hell, you’re spending a lot of time at the bank. I don’t believe we’ve got that kind of money,’” Parton told NPR in 2008. “So it’s really an innocent song all around, but sounds like a dreadful one.”
In that same interview, Parton said the song’s name came to her when she met a fan with red hair and green eyes, which she incorporated into the song’s lyrics.
“I said, ‘Well, you’re the prettiest little thing I ever saw. So what is your name?’ And she said, ‘Jolene,’” Parton recalled. ” … I said, ‘That is pretty. That sounds like a song. I’m going to write a song about that.’”
She is Miley Cyrus’ honorary godmother.
Dolly Parton performing with her goddaughter, Miley Cyrus. Kevin Mazur/Getty Images for The Recording Academy
Back in the 1990s, Billy Ray Cyrus hit it big with “Achy Breaky Heart” and was the opener for some of Parton’s shows. He also appeared in her video for “Romeo.”
Parton said the two connected because of their country roots, and so he asked his longtime friend to be his daughter’s godmother.
“We never did do a big ceremony, but I’m so proud of her, love her and she’s just like one of my own,” Parton told “Good Morning America” star Robin Roberts in 2009.
In addition to staying close to the pop singer, Parton guest-starred on the Disney Channel sitcom “Hannah Montana” as the titular character’s godmother.
Parton rejected an offer from Elvis Presley.
Elvis Presley wanted to cover “I Will Always Love You.” Michael Ochs Archives/Getty; AP
Before Houston shattered records with her remake of Parton’s “I Will Always Love You” for “The Bodyguard” (1992) soundtrack, the “King of Rock and Roll” wanted to sing it.
Parton said Presley’s manager, Colonel Tom Parker, once contacted her to discuss his client possibly covering the song, but the deal fell apart after Parton realized that she would have to relinquish 50% of the publishing royalties.
“I cried all night. I mean, it was like the worst thing. You know, it’s like, ‘Oh, my God … Elvis Presley,’” Parton told CMT in 2006. “And other people were saying, ‘You’re nuts. It’s Elvis Presley. I mean, hell, I’d give him all of it.’”
“I said, ‘I can’t do that. Something in my heart says, don’t do that,’” she added.
Parton said she eats pie instead of cake on her birthday.
Dolly Parton prefers pie to cake. Christopher Polk/ Getty Images
It’s traditional to have cake on birthdays, but according to Maggie Jones’ reporting for USA Today, Parton is partial to pie.
“I don’t eat much cake. I usually have pie on my birthday,” Parton wrote in an email. “My favorite pie is chess pie. That is ‘chess’ not CHEST pie.”
She once lost a Dolly Parton-lookalike contest.
Dolly Parton exaggerated her usual look for the competition. Getty
Parton described herself as “flashy” and “flamboyant” during a 2019 interview with Elle, adding, “Had I not been a girl, I definitely would have been a drag queen.”
But when she had the chance to embrace the glamour during a lookalike contest where she just needed to be herself, Parton lost.
“At a Halloween contest years ago on Santa Monica Boulevard where all the guys were dressed up like me, and I just overexaggerated my look and went in and just walked up on stage … I didn’t win,” she said in the 2009 interview with Roberts. “I didn’t even come in close, I don’t think.”
Parton has tattoos to cover up small scars.
Dolly Parton’s tattoos include ribbons, bows, and butterflies. Jim Cooper/AP Images
Parton’s tattoos are something of an urban legend, with fans speculating if she had any and why she’d hide them. But in a 2020 interview with People magazine, she cleared up some of the confusion.
She said she was sick for a while, and her feeding tube and other procedures left scars that she decided to cover up with ribbon, bow, and butterfly tattoos, among others.
“I do have some tattoos, that’s true. But they’re tasteful. I’m not a tattoo girl,” Parton said. “My tattoos are pretty, they’re artful and they usually started out to cover some scar, not to make a big statement.”
She can play a lot of musical instruments.
Dolly Parton can play more than just the guitar. Gems/Getty Images
The country legend is a talented multi-instrumentalist who plays the dulcimer, banjo, guitar, piano, recorder, and saxophone, among others.
In a 2016 interview with Vogue, Parton said she plays “some of everything.”
“My family’s very musical, and everybody played musical instruments, so we just grabbed up anything and tried to play,” she said. “Like I said, I ain’t all that good at it, but I can play enough to make a show!”
Parton may have a wig for every day of the year.
Dolly Parton is also known for her impressive hairstyles. LUCY NICHOLSON/Reuters
Parton is known for her signature blonde tresses, and the superstar has an impressive collection of wigs to ensure that she never has a bad hair day.
And in the same Vogue interview, Parton struggled to give an accurate count of her collection.
“Oh, heavens, I have no idea. I can’t really count them all,” she said. “I always make a joke and say, ‘I wear one almost every day, so I must have at least 365!’”
Parton has her own theme park but has never been on any of the rides.
Dollywood is a Dolly Parton-inspired amusement park. Ron Davis/Getty Images
Dollywood, which opened in 1961, is a theme park in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, fashioned after Parton’s childhood fantasies. It boasts an array of roller-coasters and water rides, but Parton has never experienced them herself.
“I don’t ride the rides,” she told The New York Times in 2019. “I never have. I have a tendency to get motion sickness. Also, I’m a little bit chicken.”
“With all my hair I got so much to lose, like my wig or my shoes. I don’t like to get messed up,” she added. “I’m gonna have some handsome man mess it up, I don’t want some ride doing it.”
Parton said she sleeps in her makeup.
Dolly Parton and Katy Perry. CBS
Most beauty gurus will tell you that a critical step in skin care is washing your makeup off before bed, but Parton’s beauty routine flies in the face of conventional wisdom.
“You never know if you’re going to wreck the bus, you never know if you’re going to be somewhere in a hotel and there’s going to be a fire,” Parton told The New York Times in her 2019 interview. “So I leave my makeup on at night and clean my face in the morning.”
Her parents paid for her birth with a sack of oatmeal.
Dolly Parton grew up in Sevierville, Tennessee. Paul Natkin/Getty Images
According to Michael Williams’ book “Eastern Sevier County,” Parton grew up “dirt poor” in a two-room cabin with her 11 siblings and parents in Sevierville, Tennessee.
Their circumstances were so dire that her father, a tobacco farmer, paid for her birth with a sack of oatmeal.
But Parton told Entertainment Tonight in 2015 that she’s never been ashamed of her upbringing or family.
“I’ve always loved being from where I am. I think my childhood made me everything I am today,” she said. “I would trade nothing for being brought up in the Great Smoky Mountains.”
Parton has earned two Guinness World Records.
Dolly Parton on “The Tonight Show With Jay Leno.” NBC/Getty Images
In January 2018, Parton won two Guinness World Records: the most decades with a Top 20 hit on Billboard’s Hot Country Songs chart and the most hits on Billboard’s Hot Country Songs chart by a female artist for her six consecutive decades and 107 trending tracks.
“To receive these two Guinness World Records is so great,” Parton said while collecting her awards. “Joining so many wonderful singers and songwriters who have been honored this way feels so special to me.”
She added, “You never know when you start out with your work how it’s going to turn out, but to have these two world records makes me feel very humbled and blessed!”
Parton’s first crush was Johnny Cash.
Dolly Parton and Johnny Cash at the Country Music Association Awards in 1978. ASSOCIATED PRESS/AP
As a teenager, Parton performed at the renowned Grand Ole’ Opry in Nashville, Tennessee, where she laid eyes on the “Man in Black” himself.
“I was sitting in the audience and that’s when I first knew about sex appeal,” Parton told Nightline in 2012. “He had this tick when he moved his shoulder … and it was still sexy. It still got to me.”
She said she wakes up at 3 a.m. to meditate.
Dolly Parton said she gets work done between 3 a.m. and 7 a.m. Evan Agostini/Invision/AP
In her classic song “9 to 5,” Parton famously sings, “Tumble outta bed and stumble to the kitchen, pour myself a cup of ambition.” We can only assume all this takes place after she wakes up at 3 a.m.
In 2018, Parton told the “Today” show that she wakes up early to do her “little meditations” and “little spiritual work” before getting ahead of her day by checking her mail and making calls.
“I do more work between three and seven than most people all day, because it’s quiet and the energy’s all low-key, except mine,” she said. “I just love the wee hours.”
She has spoken about following a low-carb diet.
Dolly Parton said she’s been more conscious of her diet as she gets older. Kevin Winter/Getty Images
Parton has named banana pudding, chicken and dumplings, and roast pork among her favorite foods, the latter of which she prefers a bit fatty. And she told The New York Times in 1992, “The greasier the food, the better.”
But in recent years, she’s spoken about being a bit more mindful of her diet.
“I’m a short little thing with a big, country girl appetite so I have to really watch it,” Parton told Fox News in 2016. “… I’d be big as a house if I ate everything I wanted so I’m a big eater.”
“My best bet is to stay on low carb because on a low carb you can actually eat quite a bit of food of the things you’re allowed,” she added.
Parton and her husband Dean have been married for over 50 years.
Dolly Parton and Carl Dean got married in 1966. Mark Humphrey/AP Images
Parton launched a successful music career and found love in Nashville, Tennessee.
In the capital of country music, Parton met Carl Dean outside the Wishy Washy Laundromat, and they married two years later in 1966.
“We’ve been together most of our lives,” Parton told People in 2018. “I always joke and laugh when people ask me what’s the key to my long marriage and lasting love. I always say ‘Stay gone!’ and there’s a lot of truth to that.”
“I travel a lot, but we really enjoy each other when we’re together and the little things we do,” she added.
Parton and her bestie have been friends since childhood.
Dolly Parton and Judy Ogle have been best friends for over six decades. Ron Galella/Getty Images
Parton’s marriage is not her only enduring relationship — Judy Ogle has been Parton’s closest friend for over six decades.
“Our parents knew each other, we grew up together, we were like sisters, became best friends,” she told The Sun in 2019. “She was very quiet, I was very outgoing. So we made perfect friends. We went all through school together.”
Parton created a library to promote literacy.
Dolly Parton speaking about Dolly’s Imagination Library. Andrew Harnik/AP
In 1995, Parton was inspired by her father’s illiteracy and opened Dolly’s Imagination Library in Sevier County, Tennessee, to provide an avenue for kids to learn to read.
The organization has since sent over 120 million free books to children worldwide.
“My daddy just loved it when all the little kids would call me ‘The Book Lady,’” she wrote on the website. “That meant more to him than the fact that I had become a star and worked my butt off.”
Dolly, the cloned sheep, was named after Parton.
Dolly the Sheep was named after Dolly Parton. Matthew Polak/Sygma/Sygma via Getty Images
In 1996, another Dolly made waves — but this one was a female sheep and the first mammal cloned from an adult cell.
Dr. Ian Wilmut, who led the team of scientists in Scotland behind the creation of Dolly, told BBC, “Dolly is derived from a mammary gland cell and we couldn’t think of a more impressive pair of glands than Dolly Parton’s.”
And in a 2014 interview on the Scottish radio show SSE Hydro, Parton said she was flattered by the decision.
“I was told she was called after me because she had big mammary glands. She gave me a lot of competition …” Parton said. “I never met her but I always said there’s no such thing as baaad publicity.”
She saved her 9-year-old costar on the set of her 2020 Netflix film.
Dolly Parton plays an angel in “Christmas on the Square.” Netflix
Parton appeared in the Netflix holiday film “Christmas on the Square” as an angel, which was fitting, since she saved her 9-year-old costar Talia Hill.
In a 2020 interview with Inside Edition, Hill said she was nearly hit by an oncoming vehicle on set but Parton pulled her out of the way.
Parton then reportedly told her, “Well, I am an angel, you know.”
“And I was in shock. She hugged me and shook me and said, ‘I saved your life!’” Hill said. “And my mom was crying, and she said, ‘Yes, you did, Dolly Parton. Yes, you did.’”
Dolly Parton grew up dirt-poor to a loving family in the mountains of Tennessee in a place called Locust Ridge. Whitney Houston grew up well-to-do in New Jersey’s biggest city, Newark, the child of musical royalty. Her mother, Cissy, was a Grammy-winning gospel artist, her first cousin was Dionne Warwick, and her distant cousin was opera legend Leontyne Price.
The two could not have come from more different backgrounds, but one of pop music’s greatest love songs, “I Will Always Love You,” brought them together. How that happened, and how the song came to be, is a remarkable story, one that includes Elvis Presley and his manager, Colonel Tom Parker; actor Kevin Costner; and Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.
The song, written and recorded by Parton in 1973, was not about the loss of a romantic love. It was instead written about the end of a long-standing professional relationship. Porter Wagoner, a country star well-known for his gaudy attire and coiffed hair, gave Parton her big break in show businesses, signing her to a long-term deal on his nationally syndicated musical variety show. The two enjoyed great success performing and singing together, creating a succession of country hits.
But as time passed, Parton wanted her freedom, creatively and financially. She wanted to leave the man who’d done so much for her career, but how could she do it with grace and gratitude?
“We were going around and around with that,” Parton told The Tennessean in 2015 about ending her partnership with Wagoner. “So, finally, I thought, How am I gonna make him understand how much I appreciate everything, but that I have to go? He won’t listen to me. He’s not listening to the reason why I want to go!
“So I went home and I thought, Well, what do you do best? You write songs. So I sat down, and out of a very emotional place I wrote this song.”
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How did Wagoner react? “He said, ‘It’s the best thing you ever wrote,’” Parton recalled in Ken Burns’ documentary Country Music. “‘OK, you can go, but only if I can produce that record.’ And he did and the rest is history.”
“I Will Always Love You” made its way to No. 1 on the country charts in 1974 along with another song Parton penned on the same day she wrote her farewell to her former boss, “Jolene.” The songs established her as one of country music’s best performing artists and one of Nashville’s finest songwriters too.
And that’s where Presley comes into the story. Parton’s hit song had come to the rock legend’s attention through his manager, Parker. “[Elvis] loved the song and wanted to do it,” Parton told BBC Radio. “Had it worked up. They’d already called me to come down to the studio and to hear part of the song.”
But the Presley cover of Parton’s love song would never come to be. The night before the recording was to take place, Parker told Parton that he didn’t allow Presley to record anything without half of the publishing rights.
“I said, ‘I’m sorry, but I can’t give you the publishing,’” Parton told W magazine. “I wanted to hear Elvis sing it, and it broke my heart—I cried all night. But I had to keep that copyright in my pocket. You have to take care of your business.”
Parton, it turned out, wasn’t just a great singer and songwriter; she was also a shrewd businesswoman. She understood the value of her intellectual property and wasn’t about to give it away, even to the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll.
How did one of R&B’s greatest divas come to perform Parton’s country ballad? It turns out that Costner, one of America’s most famous actors at the time, loved the song and happened to be producing a 1992 movie called The Bodyguard, in which he co-starred with Houston. He called Parton and asked if he could use the song in the movie’s soundtrack. She quickly said yes but never heard back about how it would be used in the movie—or if it would be used.
“I didn’t know if they had it, I didn’t know if they had done it,” she told Kelly Clarkson on Clarkson’s syndicated TV show.
Parton first heard the song the way millions of Americans did—while driving in her car around town. “I was just driving along, and I had the radio on,” she said. “When I heard it, I just freaked out. I had to pull over to the side because I honestly thought that I was gonna wreck. It was the most overwhelming feeling.”
America—and the world—was overwhelmed too. The song catapulted to the top of the Billboard charts and stayed there for an astonishing 14 weeks, a record at the time. The song stayed on the top of the U.K. charts for 10 weeks and would go on to sell over 20 million copies worldwide.
Parton’s decision to keep her publishing rights and say no to Parker and Presley was one of the best business decisions of her life. “I made enough money to buy Graceland,” Parton told a reporter about the royalties she earned from Houston’s cover.
Houston’s version of “I Will Always Love You” became—and still is—the bestselling single ever recorded by a female artist. Parton still holds the record for the bestselling single ever written by a female artist.
It’s a quintessentially American story, the story of “I Will Always Love You.” A talented white woman from the Smoky Mountains of Tennessee wrote a song that a brilliant black female singer from urban New Jersey brought to the world in ways no one could plan, let alone imagine.
There was no talk of cultural appropriation, by Parton or Houston or anyone else. The two women were doing what musical artists in America have done from the beginning of time: borrow any and all forms of music and make it their own. Thanks to the miracle of free enterprise and intellectual property rights, musical artists in America are not merely protected against the theft of their work but also incentivized to share their work—their songs—with others, across race, class, culture, geography and time.
Many artists would go on to cover the song, including Linda Ronstadt and LeAnn Rimes. One Middle East dictator loved the song so much he commissioned Syrian pop star Mayyada Bselees to cover it in Arabic and used it as his official campaign song in 2022. That was Saddam Hussein, who won the Iraqi “election” in typical dictatorial style with 100 percent of the votes but didn’t live to the end of his seven-year term.
Which version of the song is the best? That’s not for this writer to answer. But one thing is certain: the Houston cover of “I Will Always Love You” changed the life of the writer—and the singer—forever, making both of them a small fortune. And the world a better and more beautiful place.
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
Reba McEntire Begs Fans to Not Believe “False” Stories in Urgent Instagram Post
Reba McEntire Begs Fans to Not Believe “False” Stories in Urgent Instagram Post
You can always count on Reba McEntire to keep it real. The 68-year-old country music icon took to Instagram to clear the air on a recent rumor and warn her fans about a potential scam using her name.
Recently, fans of The Voice may have noticed reports swirling online about Reba leaving her position as a coach on the popular singing competition show. The “Fancy” singer shut it down in no uncertain terms.
The article in question claims, “Reba McEntire Confirms She Is ‘LEAVING’ The Voice After her Accidental ‘Live’ Confession On Air.” Reba covered the text with a bold red “FALSE.”
She wrote in the caption, “Please do not click on any articles that say I am leaving The Voice. This is not true. These are fake websites to lure people in with clickbait where they claim I have a company to sell weight loss gummy products. This is false. I do not sell or promote any type of gummy product. Please report these posts if you see them on Facebook or Instagram.”
Fans left comments like, “You tell em Reba” and “Don’t let them get you mama 👏👏👏 love you.” Kristin Chenoweth chimed in with, “Ridiculous! ❤❤❤” and Lance Bass joked, “Craaaaap. I already bought them!”
Reba is far from the first celebrity whose name has been linked to fake gummy claims. Ben Napier, Trisha Yearwood, Lainey Wilson, and Dolly Parton have all warned fans about similar scams.
The good news is The Voice returns for its 25th season on February 26, and Reba will be there! She’ll be joined by returning judges Chance the Rapper and John Legend, plus new additions Dan + Shay, who are the first duo to share judging duties.
Reba McEntire responds to rumors she’s leaving The Voice: ‘This is not true’
She put rumors of her departure to rest just a day before the new season arrives.
Reba McEntire is dealing with rumors the same way she previously dealt with Graboids. She’s shooting them down.
McEntire took to social media on Sunday — just a day before the season 25 premiere of The Voice — to dispel rumors that behind-the-scenes tensions are prompting her to leave the show.
“Please do not click on any articles that say I am leaving The Voice. This is not true,” McEntire wrote on X (formerly Twitter). “These are fake websites to lure people in with clickbait where they claim I have a company to sell weight loss gummy products. This is false. I do not sell or promote any type of gummy product.”
Please do not click on any articles that say I am leaving The Voice. This is not true. These are fake websites to lure people in with clickbait where they claim I have a company to sell weight loss gummy products. This is false. I do not sell or promote any type of gummy product.
McEntire joined The Voice as a coach in May 2023, replacing the departing Blake Shelton. Prior to that, she’d appeared on the show as both a Mega Mentor and a Battle Advisor.
Rumors about her dissatisfaction circulated in the fall with uncited claims and unnamed sources. McEntire addressed the rumor mill with Extra during a charity event in October. Asked if she was leaving the show, she replied, “Well, not right yet. We’re not through.”
Reba McEntire.Art Streiber/NBC
McEntire went on to say she’d become “best friends” with fellow judge Gwen Stefani. “At first, she was so intimidating and I thought she was being mean to me, and then she said, ‘I just want you to like me,’ and I said, ‘Well, that’s all you had to say.’”
She also praised the show, the contestants, and the crew. However, the vague “yet” in her reply may have fueled the fire for some.
The new season of The Voice debuts on Monday, Feb. 26 at 8 p.m. ET on NBC.
‘Harry Styles doesn’t need a One Direction reunion – he’s bigger than the band ever were’
Louis Walsh remembers bringing One Direction up in The X Factor, where he recalled Harry Styles was always a “star in his own right” – and as a result, doesn’t need a reunion.
Piers Morgan and Louis Walsh clash over Eurovision
One Direction fans have been begging for some kind of reunion since they split up back in 2016.
The band, who sold more than 70 million records worldwide, became an almost overnight phenomenon when they first appeared on The X Factor back in 2010.
But, after their split, the members all began solo careers, with Harry Styles catapulting himself to the top of the charts with three number-one albums.
He has since headlined Wembley Stadium, and countless other stadiums around the globe. As a result, Louis Walsh believes Harry “does not need” any kind of One Direction reunion in the coming years.
Speaking exclusively to Alex Apati of Ladbrokes LIVE, Walsh said: “Harry was always going to be this pop star. He doesn’t need a reunion. He’s a star in his own right.”
Louis went on to condemn One Direction, saying: “He’s bigger than the band ever were … I wouldn’t recommend [a reunion], actually. Harry Styles doesn’t need it. It’s like how George Michael didn’t need Wham!, Robbie [Williams] didn’t need Take That. They might just do it for a TV show or a charity event, or something like that. But that’ll be it.”
The former X Factor judge went on to speak about Zayn Malik and his solo music, as well.
Zayn was the first member of the boy band to release his own music but has since gone quiet in recent years.
“I’m surprised Zayn [Malik] hasn’t brought out more music,” Louis confessed. “Because I thought he was very talented. Maybe in time, we’ll see them get back together, but I don’t see it.”
Looking back on their relationship, Louis confessed he doesn’t speak to the band anymore.
“I don’t keep in touch with any of the guys from One Direction,” he admitted. “They were great for the show, and Simon [Cowell] very much made them what they were. They were very raw at the start, but he made them good, and he gave them great songs. He gave them a lot of time, and then he signed them to his label.”
He went on to add: “It’s all about the songs, and they had great sons after the show. It’s the same reason why Take That and Westlife are still as big as they are today; it’s the songs.”
Zayn Malik Says He Never Wanted to Be the “Mysterious One” in One Direction
And he finally opened up about why he decided to leave the band back in 2015.
Every Directioner remembers where they were (and how long they cried for) when news first broke that Zayn Malik was leaving One Direction back in 2015. The main question on everyone’s mind? Why, Zayn, why? Well, now, over eight years later, the former boybander is ready to give fans a bit of closure by sharing his side of the story in detail for the first time — and he’s not holding back.
On Wednesday’s episode of the Call Her Daddy podcast, Malik opened up about the split when chatting with host Alex Cooper during his first interview in more than six years. When prompted by Cooper to reflect on the moment he knew that it was “time to leave” One Direction, the singer shared that it partially had to do with group “politics” and his “competitive” nature.
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“I think I’d known for a minute, but there was a lot of politics going on,” he began. “Certain people were doing certain things, certain people didn’t want to sign contracts, so I knew something was happening so I just got ahead of the curve. I was just like, ‘I’m just gonna get out of here. I think this is done.’”
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He continued, “I, completely selfishly, wanted to be the first person to go and make my own record. I was like, ‘I’m gonna jump the gun here for the first time.’ I’m a passive dude, but when it comes to my music and my business, I’m serious about it and I’m competitive. I wanted to be the first to go do my own thing.”
Zayn Malik Opened Up About His “Really Good” Co-Parenting Relationship With Gigi Hadid In Rare Interview
Zayn then explained that being around his bandmates, Harry Styles, Liam Payne, Louis Tomlinson, and Niall Horan, 24/7 during their five years of touring also contributed to his departure.
“There were obviously underlying issues within our friendships, too,” Malik revealed. “We’d been together every day for 5 years, and we got sick of each other if I’m being completely honest. We were close, you know, we’d done crazy things with each other that nobody else in the world will ever understand. I look back on it now in a much fonder light than I would have as I’d just left.”
Elsewhere in the interview, the singer also touched on what he thought of his “bad boy” persona throughout his time in the band, adding, “They just said, ‘Oh yeah, you can be the mysterious one. That wasn’t necessarily my personality, I’m just chill. I know that a lot of people have high-energy personalities, and it’s just not the way I am.”
But while fans may have had to wait several years to hear from Malik in an interview, he later assured fans that they won’t have to wait nearly as long for new music as his next single, “Love Like This,” is set to drop on July 21. “It’s just a summer jam. It’s a good vibe. It just feels like summer,” he shared.
From the British Invasion, to innovative recording techniques and embracing Eastern sounds, here’s how the Beatles got so big.
In 1998 viewers of Britain’s Channel 4 television voted for the Beatles as the ultimate music of the millennium. They are perhaps the most obvious example of music having achieved international appeal, providing an enduring symbol of global culture. They were by no means the first popular musicians to achieve international celebrity. Composers such as Händel and Mozart, and virtuoso performers such as Paganini and Liszt, were known throughout Europe. However genuinely international musical celebrity (as we now think of it) only became possible after the onset of the mass media, especially recording and radio.
Before the Beatles a number of US musicians had become famous around the world and adored by their many fans. Perhaps the most famous of these were the singer Frank Sinatra in the 1940s and the ‘King of Rock ‘n Roll’, Elvis Presley, in the 1950s. In the early 1960s the Beatles became the first rock band to achieve global appeal and the first to make their place of origin a key part of that appeal.
On 9 February 1964, 70 million Americans (60 percent of the US television audience) watched the band on the Ed Sullivan show. That one event not only opened the eyes and hearts of another nation to the four Liverpool musicians, it also triggered a phenomenon now referred to as the British invasion. Before the Beatles few British records reached the US charts. In 1963 just one song out of 114 was a British hit. By 1965 the British invasion had reached its peak and 36 out of 110 songs were by British acts. By 1967 however US tastes had begun to change and the first wave of the British invasion had begun to ebb.
1962: 2 UK artists, 96 US artists, 98 total
1963: 1 UK artists, 113 US artists, 114 total
1964: 32 UK artists, 68 US artists, 100 total
1965: 36 UK artists, 74 US artists, 110 total
1966: 30 UK artists, 97 US artists, 127 total
1967: 22 UK artists, 90 US artists, 112 total
By achieving this kind of success in the US and then across Europe and the rest of the Americas, the Beatles opened the way for other British bands to follow. US tours and hits were achieved by bands like the Rolling Stones, the Who, the Dave Clark Five, The Kinks, the Animals, Gerry and the Pacemakers and the Searchers.
How can the Beatles’ global appeal be explained? Popular theories have usually pointed to the genius of the individual members of the band and to fate, luck and destiny. But more critical and scholarly explanations have also emerged.
Some musicologists, for example, argue that the Beatles’ global success had a lot to do with how they incorporated the sounds of many different traditions, religions and cultures into their music whilst still making these sounds accessible to popular music fans. George Harrison’s use of the sitar on songs like Norwegian Wood, for example, belied his more sophisticated understanding of Indian raga music.
Others have sought explanations for the social and cultural impact of the Beatles, including their impact on Western popular culture. The band’s films, for instance, revived film musicals, and their songs helped popular music of the 1960s to become the soundtrack for political, social and cultural upheaval, particularly in the US.
The Beatles were also innovative in business and strategy, having a huge impact on global music industries. They were one of the first rock groups to have their own production company, Apple, and to attempt to manage their own career after the death of their manager Brian Epstein. They also pioneered new recording techniques and ideas, forgoing live tours and performances to develop a new, more sophisticated studio sound. Today, Beatles collectables and original albums are amongst the most profitable sectors of the antique and memorabilia industries.
Of course, a band is nothing without its fans and while, US audiences especially, had screamed at major stars such as Frank Sinatra since the 1940s, Beatles’ fandom reached a new level of intensity. For the first time a term was coined by the mass media to describe this reaction, as ‘Beatlemania’ swept across the States. On occasion the shouts and sobs of teenage girls drowned out the performance and even made it difficult for the group to hear their own music. Even after the Beatles stopped touring ardent crowds stood for hours outside the gates of London’s Abbey Road recording studios waiting to catch a glimpse of the band. In a tribute to their devotion George Harrison included a song about them, ‘Apple Scruffs’, on his first solo album ‘All Things Must Pass’ (1970).
Why the Beatles’ new song Now and Then is the most important record of 2023
Wikipedia called it a psychedelic soft rock ballad, even though it was anything but. Some thought it slight, a filigree morsel. They listened and listened and, try as they might, were disappointed, and came away sensing corporate overreach and digital plagiarism.
Friends of mine in the music industry called it soppy, maudlin, wet. Others became sick of the hype almost immediately or complained about AI being used to enhance and delineate John Lennon’s croaky, indistinct voice. For me, and millions of others, it was a legitimate link with a part of our history which, even if we were too young to experience it first time around, remains hallowed and cherished. In 2023, the Beatles made another record. And it was good.
There were other so-called legacy releases this year: the much-celebrated Angry, by the Rolling Stones, which rather brilliantly repurposed the riff from Start Me Up, and Atomic City by U2, recorded to celebrate the start of the band’s epoch-making residency at the Sphere in Las Vegas.
Both were worthy of the people who made them. Now and Then was the record that properly resonated, though, because the seemingly never-ending story of the Beatles is the great counter-narrative of post-war Britain, a journey that links austerity and the end of rationing with IG and TikTok; that travels from the sexual revolution of the sixties to the creative insurgence of AI.
It is also a story of family, romance, heartbreak and renewal; a soap opera the likes of which we had never seen before. The Beatles were the most mediated entity of the late twentieth century, a phenomenon not unrelated to the fact that they were extraordinarily brilliant at what they did. And what they still continue to do (on a personal note, this is also why I am always slightly suspicious of those who claim not to like the Beatles; it seems like an irrational dislike of your children or your parents).
Now and Then was initially a demo, which Lennon had made in his New York apartment in 1977. In 1994 his widow, Yoko Ono, gave the recording to the surviving members of the Beatles, for inclusion on the multimedia Anthology project – a TV documentary, three-volume set of double albums and a book tracing the band’s history.
The Beatles
Apple Music
But while the band successfully tarted-up Lennon’s other demos – Free as a Bird and Real Love – they were unable to get Now and Then up to an acceptable standard. However, thanks the MAL software used on Peter Jackson’s Get Back, Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr were able to bring all four members back together for one final effort.
George Harrison was not a fan of the latest final Beatles single. Thirty years ago, he called it “fucking rubbish”. His widow believes, however, that he finally gave it his blessing through the medium of an old clock. Olivia Harrison says they bought a folk-art timepiece in 1997 that had Scrabble letters on the base spelling Now and Then. For years after George’s death in 2001 it sat in a summer house but last year, she brought it into the home and was just putting it on a mantelpiece when the phone rang. It was McCartney, asking her if she remembered the abandoned song, “I was looking at the clock dumbfounded,” she says. “It felt like some kind of sign from George. It felt like approval.”
During an interview with BBC Radio 1, McCartney explained: “Before John died, he was working on some songs, and Yoko spoke to George Harrison and said, ‘I’ve got a cassette with some John songs on that he never got to finish, would you be interested in finishing them off?’ So we thought about it, and we thought, ‘Yeah, it would be great’, ’cause in a way we would be working with John again, which we thought we would never be able to do.”
Unsurprisingly, we embraced it as though it were a new Harry Potter book, giving the Beatles their first number single since The Ballad of John and Yoko in 1969. The 54-year gap between them marks another landmark achievement for the Beatles, who have eclipsed a record set by Kate Bush in 2022 when Running Up That Hill landed at the top spot. Bush’s last song to reach number one – Wuthering Heights – came 44 years earlier.
And while there remains much debate about this, I think creatively Now and Then deserves to be considered in the same class as the finest work the band produced. Nothing can ever shake the emotional pull of the Beatles’ canon, but as an adjunct to their greatest hits, it is a greatest hit itself. As one fan said, having just heard the song premier on Radio 2, “I’m only in my mid-thirties but the Beatles were a massive part of my childhood with my parents listening to them, and now this new song. I’m in tears, it sounds so haunting yet so beautiful.”
The chatter about the quality of the production is interesting, as it’s purely the result of technological advances; as the record is a composite – a labyrinthine one at that – so everyone feels they have the right to notionally produce it themselves. No one questions the production of Lucy in The Sky with Diamonds, say, or Norwegian Wood, because that’s what they sound like. Similarly, as Now and Then has been built like a digital jigsaw, so we all feel we have the right to say, deep breath, it would have sounded better if they had a) double tracked John Lennon’s voice, b) made the acoustic guitar less intrusive, or c) been more mindful of the If I Fell key change. But it is what it is, and what it is, is very, very good indeed.
Of course there have been professional naysayers – The Telegraph’s wearisome Neil McCormack was predictably withering, calling the record “plodding soft rock” – and yet most of the carping has centered around the song’s sentimentality, a characteristic which was always part of the Beatles’ DNA, and is one of the reasons they remain so cherished.
It is also an elegy, burnished by McCartney to stand as a testimony to their time on earth. It might not be the band’s greatest song, nor its greatest record, but in many ways, it is their defining moment, because it feels like an echo of everything that went before. As a final gesture, it is not just fitting, it is almost perfect. Lennon wrote Now and Then as a love song to Yoko, but here it is recast as a tribute to his old friends, his band mates.
Now and Then might not be the band’s greatest song, but in many ways, it is their defining moment.
Dylan Jones
“The Beatles always get lucky because this one is a really good song for now, almost like John is singing to his friends from beyond the grave,” says Giles Martin, who helped produce it. From him to them, then a family broth (Giles is the son of the band’s original producer George Martin) of warm memories and harmonised love. In the same way that Jackson’s Get Back reestablished Lennon as the leader of the band (appearing towards the beginning of the film strung out on drugs, by the time of their rooftop performance he is very much back in charge), so Now and Then moves him very much to the foreground, only this time by McCartney. In essence this is now a song of brotherly love.
Every new Beatles project produces a kind of global media frenzy, an echo of the Beatlemania that swept Britain in 1963, and America a year later, when their appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show in February 1964, just months after the tragedy of J.F.K.’s assassination, lifted a depressed American mood.
On its release, inevitably there were many who were disappointed with Now and Then. But there were many more who were transported. One of the most effecting eulogies I read was a reader’s comment in The Guardian. “I had no idea how emotionally I would react to this song,” wrote Klara, 33, from London. “My youngest brother passed away last year from a brain tumour at 27. He was a big Beatles fan; he chose Beatles songs for his wedding and for his funeral – a lot of people commented that he had the music taste of someone twice his age. I had been wondering, in the lead-up to the release, what he would have thought of the band using AI to finish it, and if he’d have liked the final result.
“When I heard the opening lines, and the melancholy in John’s voice, I got chills all over. The sadness of the song encapsulates the emptiness you feel when you lose someone you love, and you know you have to continue on without them. I don’t know if I could have appreciated the song as much without having known this feeling. My brother had a habit of humming Beatles melodies to himself as he was out working in the garden, and I could imagine him singing the Now and Then chorus every time I listened to the song today. I wish my brother had been able to hear it; I think he would have given it a thumbs up.”
And if it remains our neverending story – A Word in Your Ear’s Mark Ellen says, “The Beatles are our happy place” – so it remains theirs, too. The Beatles were as blown away by their omnipotence as we were. This year just added to the lustre.
Like Lazarus suddenly appearing in Pepperland, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band were back on the bandstand, their psychedelic Edwardian satin suits dry-cleaned and freshly pressed. Fifty-three years after “Let It Be” reached number one, the Beatles finally released their final record.
The story of a song
The story of Now and Then begins in the late 1970s, when Lennon recorded a demo with vocals and piano at his home in New York’s Dakota Building. In 1994, Yoko Ono gave the recording to Paul, George and Ringo, along with John’s demos for Free as A Bird and Real Love, which were both completed as new Beatles songs and respectively released as singles in 1995 and 1996, as part of The Beatles Anthology project.
Free as A Bird was a terrific song ruined by ELO’s Jeff Lynne’s awful leaden production and fat drum sound, while Real Love is now acknowledged as something of a mistake. At the same time, Paul, George and Ringo also recorded new parts of the third song and completed a rough mix for Now and Then with Lynne. At that point, technological limitations prevented John’s vocals and piano from being separated to achieve the clear, unclouded mix needed to finish the song. Now and Then was shelved, with a hope that one day it would be revisited.
Cut to 2021, and the release of The Beatles: Get Back docuseries, directed by Peter Jackson, which astonished viewers with its award-winning film and audio restoration. Using WingNut Films’ MAL audio technology, Jackson’s team had de-mixed the film’s mono soundtrack, managing to isolate instruments and vocals, and all the individual voices within the Beatles conversations.
This achievement opened the way to 2022’s new mix of Revolver, sourced directly from the four-track master tapes. This led to a question: what could now be done with the Now and Then demo? Jackson and his sound team, led by Emile de la Rey, applied the same technique to John’s original home recording, preserving the clarity and integrity of his original vocal performance by separating it from the piano.
“There it was, John’s voice, crystal clear. It’s quite emotional,” says Paul, who with Ringo, set about completing the song in 2022. Besides John’s vocal, Now and Then includes electric and acoustic guitar recorded in 1995 by George, as well as Ringo’s new drum part, and bass, guitar and piano from Paul, which matches John’s original playing. Paul added a slide guitar solo inspired by George; he and Ringo also contributed backing vocals to the chorus.
“It was the closest we’ll ever come to having him back in the room, so it was very emotional for all of us,” says Ringo. “It was like John was there, you know. It’s far out.”
In Los Angeles, Paul oversaw a Capitol Studios recording session for the song’s wistful, quintessentially Beatles string arrangement, written by Giles Martin, Paul and Ben Foster. Paul and Giles also added one last, wonderfully subtle touch: backing vocals from the original recordings of Here, There and Everywhere, Eleanor Rigby and Because, woven into the new song using the techniques perfected during the making of the LOVE show and album. The finished track was produced by Paul and Giles and mixed by Spike Stent.
“We all play on it, it’s a genuine Beatles recording,” Paul says. “In 2023 to still be working on Beatles music, and to release a new song, I think it’s an exciting thing.”
And it is brilliant. Neither a re-tread or an homage, it is something genuinely new, with a reinvigorated vocal, Ringo playing rimshot, and a melody for the ages. It is a classic Beatles single, and worthy of all the fuss.
“It was incredibly touching to hear them working together after all the years that Dad had been gone,” says Sean Lennon. “It’s the last song my dad, Paul, George and Ringo got to make together. It’s like a time capsule and all feels very meant to be.”
How Anthology changed Beatles history
This time capsule, came from a time when the Beatles were at an incredibly low ebb. The Anthology series started in 1995, serendipitously piggy backing onto Britpop, which was itself a massive echo of the Beatles’ heyday. Anthology was basically Beatlemania II.
1995 was the year in which the Beatles had a full-on resurrection, although they were only partly responsible for it themselves. While the Anthology project certainly reignited interest in the band, the Beatles were also a fundamental part of the Britpop DNA, and hence unavoidable. Plus, Ian McDonald’s 1994 book Revolution in The Head: The Beatles’ Records and the Sixties had given them the kind of critical re-evaluation that was hard to ignore.
“A sunny optimism permeated everything, and possibilities seemed limitless,” he wrote. “The Beatles were at their peak and were looked up to in awe as arbiters of a positive new age in which the dead customs of the older generation would be refreshed and remade through the creative energy of the classless young.” The book’s commentary was not just encyclopaedic, its cultural scholarship painted the Beatles as genuine pop geniuses, and with good reason.
The same year also saw the pendulum start to slowly swing back to Paul McCartney from John Lennon; from hereon in it would start to be McCartney whom the culture would hold up as King Beatle. It was as if people had suddenly realised that, yes, while John Lennon was 15 years dead, we still had half of the greatest writing partnership in the history of pop still walking among us – making records, touring, appearing on TV, and influencing an entire generation of musicians and nascent pop stars obsessed with his old band.
In the Eighties, the Beatles had started to become vitiated, marginalised even, by a culture that perhaps felt it had learned everything there was to know about them. While the Beatles had never quite gone out of fashion, During the eighties the remaining members were probably at their lowest point creatively, with Ringo Starr narrating Thomas the Tank Engine, George Harrison releasing novelty songs like Got My Mind Set On You, and McCartney sullying his image with substandard album fillers.
Anthology changed all that. Anthology, and a generation of Sixties-obsessed musicians who weren’t even born when the Beatles started their journey. It was almost as though the stars of Britpop had been acting as fluffers for the Beatles, as for the last three years, not a week had gone by without a member of Oasis, Blur, Pulp or whoever making a reference to the Fab Four (Oasis themselves had been called the Sex Beatles, the coarse-grained Beatles, the Mancunian Beatles, the Burnage Beatles, and Noel Gallagher actually learnt to play guitar by listening to the Red and Blue Beatles albums).
“The Beatles invented popular music and the Beatles are an ideal for living,” said Gallagher. “And they are, of course, where I pinch all my songs from.”
Jarvis Cocker, another Britpop luminary, said, “The Beatles were the first group I was ever properly aware of. In my early teens I would sometimes stay in and listen to the radio all day in the hope I would catch a song by them I’d never heard before and be able to tape it on my radio-cassette player.”
Journalists contributed to this fetishistic narrative by constantly writing about the way in which Britpop was being framed by the Beatles themselves, or at least by the Beatles industry. If you trawl back through the mountain of press coverage surrounding even the most mediocre Britpop acts, it is remarkable how often you see the word “Beatlesque”.
The Beatles were the core of Britpop
ES
This could have been referring to anything from Penny Lane-style piano clusters, an overuse of cellos, close harmonies, colloquial lyrics, nonsense words, gang-like group photographs, upbeat radio interviews, Sixties-inspired clothes, Pop Art graphics, pudding-bowl haircuts, jangly guitars, rudimentary drumming – you could take your pick.
Hanif Kureishi once said that by 1966 the Beatles behaved as if they spoke directly to the whole world, and they did, but completely in their own vernacular: Beatleworld was a world full of ten-bob notes, dressing gowns, the National Health, plastic porters and men from the motoring trade. The Beatles were British, and their style and their idiom were as important and as influential as the music they made. Hence the wholesale adoption of the band by the protagonists of Britpop.
“The Beatles were freshly placed before the public by the Anthology series,” says David Hepworth. “Because this happened to be around the time of Britpop, they seem to have emerged from that process for many people as the Godfathers of Blur.”
The Anthology series afforded the band a resurrection of sorts, both for those who had fallen in love with them in real time – as they had defined and redefined the Sixties on a weekly basis, and additionally for those who were becoming acquainted with them for the first time, during a period which seemed to have been completely framed by the decade the Beatles more or less created.
All of a sudden the Beatles had some agency in their own legacy, and from then on they would start to control that legacy, by creating new Beatles products – 1, Let It Be… Naked, Cirque du Soleil’s Love, the Yellow Submarine Songbook and of course the all-important agreement between Apple Corps and Apple Inc, finally allowing the band’s songs to become available on iTunes – and contextualising their past in the process.
“We put the 20-year anniversary of Sgt Pepper on the cover of Q in 1987,” says Ellen, who was then the magazine’s editor, “and it seemed quite courageous at the time. No one was talking about the Beatles. They had yet to ascend to that plateau of immortality cemented by the release of Anthology in which they’ve occupied ever since.
“These days you can’t imagine their reputation will ever diminish as the more we discover about them – from new books, film clips, recording outtakes – the more it confirms how supernaturally talented they were.”
The biggest beneficiary in all of this was McCartney, who in a heartbeat experienced a huge re-evaluation by critics and musicians alike. McCartney was now a bizarre composite of groovy Sixties rocker and living, breathing – possibly up for a collaboration – Godhead.
McCartney was no longer the practitioner of piffle – he was a man who had helped invent the British post-war pop experience, and here he was, still walking among us.
Dylan Jones
McCartney was no longer the practitioner of piffle – the author of Mull of Kintyre, We All Stand Together, Mary Had A Little Lamb, and the man who had recorded a cover version of the theme to the appalling TV soap Crossroads – he was a man who had helped invent the British post-war pop experience, and here he was, still walking among us.
McCartney himself was also reacquainting himself with his old group. In the immediate aftermath of the Beatles, he was reluctant to acknowledge the importance of his previous existence (in his eyes he was a box-fresh performer, publicly spooning with his beloved wife, Linda, in Wings); he expected to be afforded the respect of his fans, without wanting to explain why. He was a Beatle, after all; he just didn’t want to be reminded of the fact. But in the mid-Nineties he started to grow more accepting of his past, no longer bristling when pesky journalists brought up his mop-top achievements.
Before Anthology, he would often only talk about the Beatles reluctantly, but afterwards it was like a switch had been flicked, and he would start to mention his old band mates without being prompted. The immediate success of the Anthology series appeared to make McCartney relax a little and move easier in his skin.
McCartney had once seen himself as a variety artist, a tinker able to knock off a ballad as well as a sweaty R&B workout, an all-round entertainer firmly rooted in the tradition of the music hall. Always a staunch traditionalist, the man responsible for some of the most far-reaching and influential music ever recorded had, in the years since the Beatles collapsed, often seemed tyrannically nostalgic for the early days of rock’n’roll.
Yet his work had continued to pop and fizz, and as we started to look at McCartney’s solo work with renewed interested, it became possible to imagine lots of it sitting quite happily next to Lennon’s abrasive psychedelia or Harrison’s partially composed complaints on any number of Beatles LPs.
So after Anthology, the re-evaluation of Beatle product became a profession in itself. Everything the Beatles did was ripe for re-examination. In the Eighties, the received wisdom was that Sgt Pepper was the jewel in the Beatle crown, the highlight of the canon. But around the time of Anthology, critics started to say that Revolver was the real pinnacle of the band’s creativity (the formative flushes of psychedelia, a proper spread of styles etc) – but then soon after it was the turn of the White Album, a double album that hitherto had been considered a mediocre curate’s egg.
According to the powers that be (rock critics over the age of 35) The Beatles was not only the best Beatles album ever made, it was also – bar the odd Bob Dylan LP – the greatest album ever made by anyone. Which was obviously not the case, because then it became the turn of Rubber Soul, and then, almost inexplicably, A Hard Day’s Night, the soundtrack album to the Fab Four’s second film, recorded in July 1964.
But then as soon as this was suggested, it all made sense. This was not only the first Beatles album to feature entirely original compositions, but – while Paul McCartney was (is) undoubtedly the stronger songwriter – it was the high-water mark of John Lennon’s Sixties songwriting; never again would he scale these heights, never again would he match McCartney for sheer volume and variety.
The second side contains the best selection of Lennon songs on any Beatles LP, songs which suggest he could have gone in many other directions had the drugs, the apathy and the cynicism not devoured him. McCartney would go on to write better, more iconic songs, but this album showed the band at their cohesive best.
Oasis band members Noel, left, and Liam Gallagher
Zak Hussein/PA
None of this escaped McCartney’s notice, and he was grateful for the attention. Of course, it didn’t hurt that he was adored by Noel Gallagher, who used every interview to espouse his love for McCartney’s former band. In fact, Gallagher loved Paul McCartney almost as much as he hated his brother Liam.
“Stella McCartney, who I’d never met, was having her first ever fashion show in London,” said Gallagher. “This would have been 1994, and I was still living in a basement flat in Camden at the time. Somebody called my flat and said that Stella’s having a party [at her father’s house] and did I want to come across.
“They didn’t tell me that McCartney might be there, as they thought I might freak out, kind of thing. So we went to his gaff, and Twiggy answered the door. And in this room on the left as we walked in was this embossed wallpaper, with hand-painted flowers, which is what they used to do in the Sixties when they were tripping. And inside, dancing to Desmond Dekker’s Israelites, was Paul McCartney. There was a juke box in the room.
“Somebody said, ‘This is whatsisname from Oasis,’ and he went, ‘Hey man, great to meet you.’ And he said something about my song] Slide Away. And I happened to have a brown suede jacket on that looked very reminiscent of the cover of Rubber Soul, and I kinda had longish hair.
“And he said, ‘Hey, you look like a Beatle.’
“And I said, ‘So do you.’”
Linda McCartney was the hostess for the evening, and she organised for some vegetarian food to be offered around “at silly o’clock in the morning”, and then McCartney took Gallagher down to the bottom of his garden, where he had a meditation bubble.
“It’s literally a glass bubble with a round bed in it, like a large Christmas snow dome. Me and him get in, and he pressed this button, and the bed goes up into a tinier bubble, and he said, ‘Yeah, we used to come out here in the Sixties and look at the stars.’ Just me and him. And I’m thinking, he better not try and get off with me! Ha! He’s an amazing dude, such a warm, open, brilliant… he’s a proper geezer, man, I love him.”
McCartney’s equity at the end of 1995 was higher than it had been in years. Ditto George Harrison and Ringo Starr. The Beatles were back in business, and business was good. Free as A Bird may not have been the self-allusive masterpiece the Beatles wanted it to be, but the collective goodwill that accompanied their re-emergence was to carry the band onto even greater heights. Since their inception, in 1960, they had been avatars of goodwill, and their newfound re-fame weirdly made them seem even more benevolent, even more able to spread the love.
Peak Beatles? We weren’t even close.
Perhaps at the time it wasn’t so surprising that the Beatles’ equity had been so low. In a sense their previous existence had been defined by the murder, in 1980, of John Lennon, allowing a narrative to develop that cast the more acerbic Beatle as the band’s creative, tormented leader, and the remaining members as A-grade also-rans.
In the popular imagination, John Lennon had been the anguished firebrand, the one who pushed the envelope until it broke. But this assumption started to change after Anthology, as Paul McCartney came to be seen as the real architect of the band.
Until Anthology’s release, the consensus was that Lennon’s death had cast a pall on the group, leaving his former bandmates to explore mediocrity while he remained inviolate. It had been Lennon who always appeared to be pushing the others, Lennon who was the most outspoken, and Lennon who could occasionally look frightening. The John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band album in December 1970 was such a statement of intent that it looked as though he would own the decade to come.
And even though he was only operational for another five years, and even though his quality control during that period was as bad as the other ex-Beatles – he followed Imagine, his commercial high point and his most memorable record, with Some Time In New York City, an agitprop double album that revelled in its exploration of sexism, racism, colonialism and incarceration – it was Lennon whose photo adorned the most button badges.
While it would be invidious to say that Lennon died at the wrong time, when he was fatally shot by a deranged fantasist in the archway of the Dakota building, in Manhattan, on 8 December, 1980, his critical standing was hardly at its peak. Double Fantasy, the comeback record he had made with Yoko Ono, had been released just a few weeks before and had been resoundingly panned by the critics.
Rolling Stone hated it. The Times hated it. Everyone seemed to hate it. It was labelled weak, lame and completely bereft of cultural relevance. In one especially perceptive review, the NME’s Charles Shaar Murray wrote, “It sounds like a great life, but it makes for a lousy record,” and, “I wish Lennon had kept his big happy trap shut until he had something to say that was even vaguely relevant to those of us not married to Yoko.”
And yet as soon as he was shot, he became a legend. In 1980, Beatles just didn’t die and, even though Lennon had been largely invisible since 1975, in his absence he had acquired an almost mythic glow. The tributes framed Lennon as the Beatle who had been a tearaway in Hamburg, framed him as the misanthrope who had defined – no, invented – sardonic rock lyrics in the sixties. He was the sharp-tongued middle-class yob who didn’t take any crap from anyone, the oven-baked rock star with the ever-ready quips – never forget that it was Lennon who said, about his own bandmate: “Ringo? He’s not the best drummer in the world. You know what? He’s not even the best drummer in the Beatles.”
Work on The Long and Winding Road (which was what Anthology was called before George Harrison put his foot down about the series being named after a McCartney song) had started almost as soon as the band broke up in 1970, but because of the various contractual issues concerning manager Allen Klein’s relationship with the band, the project was in abeyance for years.
The Klein issue was resolved in 1977, but almost as soon as it was, Apple began another bout of legal battles with the company which still owned most of the Beatles’ recordings, EMI. The issues related to everything from packaging charges to CD royalty rates, and they kept both parties busy until the end of the Eighties. Anthology was revived in earnest at the start of the Nineties, and work on the documentary series started in 1991.
By 1994, with the six-part documentary series in full production mode, McCartney, Harrison and Starr were ready to fully immerse themselves in the musical side of the venture, editing the vast collection of Beatles outtakes and exploring the possibility of making some new music.
With Free as A Bird, the idea was to build the song, layer upon layer, creating a modern Phil Spector-style sound, albeit one administered by Jeff Lynne. McCartney and Harrison competed over who should write the lyrics for the unfinished passages, and on this occasion, McCartney won.
Free as A Bird was a beautiful song, but it was rather ruined by Lynne’s ham-fisted production technique, which made it sound like a dirge. Although he didn’t really like being asked about it, if pressed, George Martin admitted at the time that the reason he didn’t produce Free as Bird (and the follow-up, another tarted-up Lennon song, Real Love) was because George Harrison didn’t want him to.
When it was released, Martin used his partial deafness as an excuse, and said he didn’t have the time. Considering that he could hear well enough to cast his eyes and ears over every other song on Anthology I, II and III, and that he had spent years doing so, the excuses rang somewhat hollow.
The Beatles performing
Apple Music
Soon after, he changed his story.
“I wasn’t asked,” he said. “I heard the quality of what they had to deal with, and it was quite a problem. If I had been asked to do it then I probably would have done it, but I wasn’t asked. I didn’t have any great regrets, so it was no skin off my nose. I think if I had produced it, it would have been a different sound.”
And then some.
“They stretched it and compressed it and put it around until it got to a regular waltz control click and then they were done,” he said. “The result was that in order to conceal the bad bits they had to plaster it fairly heavily, so that what you ended up with was quite a thick, homogenous sound that hardly stops.”
In the hands of Martin, it could have been a classic, but in Lynne’s clammy, eager little mitts it sounded like a Rutles b-side (Lynne always was the archduke of the moptop knockoff, even when creating mini-masterpieces for ELO – Lennon once said that the reason ELO stopped having hits was because they’d run out of Beatles songs to copy).
As the Beatles biographer Philip Norman said, there had probably never been a record that more people wanted to love, although inevitably it was a disappointment. How could it not be?
The reunion record was actually never going to sound any different. When McCartney came up with the idea of recording a “new” Beatles record to supplement the outtakes, demos and forgotten songs which constitute the Anthology albums – whenever Ringo went down to dinner with him in Sussex, he would bring it up, and he would do the same over the phone with George – Harrison took the chance to get his own back on Martin.
The Beatles producer had never been overly enamoured by Harrison’s writing, and, with a little help from Lennon and McCartney, had kept him at arm’s length from benediction by making sure he only got one or two songs on each album. So when McCartney suggested the record, Harrison insisted they get Lynne, his fellow Travelling Wilbury, to produce it.
Not that the sessions were without incident. Harrison reportedly left at one point, claiming that McCartney was being too bossy. “It was just like the Beatles all over again,” he told friends.
Having agreed to pursue the Anthology project, they quickly realised that what they didn’t need, or rather what the world didn’t need, was a three-quarter Beatles record.
Hello, Yoko?
On New Year’s Day, 1994, McCartney phoned Yoko, asking if she had any of John’s old demos that they could perhaps use as a base for a song. The three of them had been working on some instrumental music to be used in Anthology and apparently the work hadn’t been going so well. And so Yoko sent over a couple of cassette tapes containing four songs: Grow Old with Me, Free as A Bird, Feel Love and Now and Then. Harrison didn’t initially love Free as A Bird, as “I sort of felt John was going off a little bit towards the end of his writing.” But he eventually came around.
Yoko Ono and John Lennon
In March 1995, McCartney, Harrison and Starr started working on Now and Then by recording a backing track, however after only a day’s work, the song was abandoned, and scrapped. Lynne said the session – which took place, like all the Anthology sessions, at McCartney’s studio at The Mill, in East Sussex – consisted only of “one day – one afternoon, really, messing with it. The song had a chorus but almost totally lacking in verses. We did the backing track, a rough go we really didn’t finish.”
Although there was a mains hum on the original recording, the dreamy quality of the original record, plus the passages between the vocals, actually afforded the song more of an experimental feeling, one that would have suited some playful extemporising. Harrison for one felt the song didn’t warrant any more attention – McCartney once said Harrison claimed it was “f***ing rubbish”. In 1997, he would say, “George didn’t like it. The Beatles being a democracy, we didn’t do it.”
At the time, another song felt unnecessary. After all, the success of the Anthology album meant the Beatles revival was now in full swing. The anticipation in the press was feverish, and in some circles Free as A Bird was being treated as though someone had just discovered an unpublished novel by J.D. Salinger.
And if anyone were in any doubt as to the continued popularity of the group, one only had to look at the sales figures: in the UK, 450,000 copies of Anthology were sold in its first day of release, the most sales for an album in a single day ever. The compilations were like fashion weeks, staggered every six months to complement the season. So as soon as Anthology 1 had appeared, the advance publicity started for Anthology 2, and ditto Anthology 3.
Consequently, there was a huge amount of speculation regarding which tracks had or had been sanctioned for inclusion. At the time there was a lot of talk about whether or not the albums were going to contain McCartney’s infamous 14-minute avant-garde opus Carnival of Light.
Originally commissioned for the Million Volt Light and Sound Rave, an underground event held at the Roundhouse in London in early 1967, it was recorded during a session for Penny Lane and was largely a collection of echo-laden percussion, backward tape loops, and what might be now called simply “bashing”.
Those who have heard it tend to call it “experimental”, although having heard it myself I think I’d describe it as four men using blancmange to make fire. For serious collectors, for years this was the holy grail of Beatle memorabilia, a recording that was so legendary it was thought by some to be purely mythical. But the track did exist, and McCartney lobbied hard for it to be included, only to have it vetoed by Harrison.
McCartney wanted it included to prove his avant-garde affiliations, which is precisely why Harrison didn’t want it in there.
Not that it mattered, as there were hundreds of other Beatle morsels for the band and George Martin to choose from. Anthology reminded us all that as well as being pop culture behemoths who became global citizens, the Beatles were also obsessively, almost pathologically creative, constantly experimenting, always pushing the culture forward – not just nudging, but often by force.
As Rolling Stone said in its review of Anthology 2 (released six months after the first one), “the essence of the Beatles’ legacy is the deceptive ease with which the band assimilated musical influences from J.S. Bach to Chuck Berry, from Ravi Shankar to Karlheinz Stockhausen.”
John and George in Paris in 1964
Sir Paul McCartney/PA
The creative hothouse of the studio was their sanctuary, their gilded shed, their laboratory, their library, their church. Even casual listeners could experience not so much a pang of musical nostalgia, but rather a creeping realisation that while Britpop’s imitation was the sincerest form of flattery, perhaps the originals really were the best.
And the material on the albums was fascinating. “Any detail, any faint suggestion of context or intent, anything at all that might shed a little light on the creative process, assumes an incalculable worth,” said the reviewer in Mojo. “If you’re the type whose pulse quickens on learning that Lennon began A Day in The Life with two bars of ‘Sugarplum fairy, sugarplum fairy’, or that McCartney concluded a version of I’m Down with the words ‘plastic soul, man, plastic soul’, then this is very heaven.”
The accompanying documentary series was timed to coincide with the album’s release, and featured new interviews with the remaining Beatles, as well as wealth of truly amazing archive material, a lot of it unseen. The retelling of the Beatles story, intertwined with the vast number of alternative versions of familiar songs, meant that we were presented with an immediate parallel history of the Beatles’ lives, as well as our own.
In this sense, the whole experience felt like some kind of fantasy, a nether world of wonderful memories that now had alternative narratives, alternative endings. Listening to the Anthology albums started to feel like a remixed version of our own lives, like finding different variants of familiar family snapshots. “Oh look, here’s a photo of Vera, Chuck and Dave, but this one’s taken just after Dave dropped the cake, and they’re all laughing!”
I remember its release in a professional capacity, rushing down to Apple Corps in Ovington Street in Knightsbridge, to meet the Beatles’ long-term publicist Derek Taylor, to discuss the ways in which we – The Sunday Times – could feature this monumental event.
If the hype surrounding the unveiling of Anthology 1 wasn’t enough, Taylor’s old-school huckster enthusiasm compounded the excitement, talking about the contents of the record in the way the directors of the British Museum talked about the Treasures of Tutankhamun exhibition in 1972.
He was a tremendous gossip, outlandish at times, and could be quite confrontational when he saw fit. Taylor said Anthology was “The Beatles’ attempt to reclaim their own history… We are still trying to preserve our humanity and humility amid all the craziness and greed. This band is f***ing tight. That’s why they all had to go and see the Maharishi together. They still behave like that. It’s the Three Musketeers.”
A year after the launch of Anthology 1, Taylor was at an awards ceremony in London, to see George Martin honoured for his work on the project. It was a star-studded audience, and included Mick Jagger, Oasis, Rod Stewart, and all of U2. The guest presenter giving Martin his award was the legendary Pop artist Peter Blake, whose speech included the fact he’d only been paid £200 for his work designing the sleeve of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.
As Blake continued his introduction, musing on whether or not he still owned the copyright, Taylor raised his head and said, in a voice that could no doubt be heard in a different time zone, “Shut up, you pompous c***!” Not only did he manage to immediately quieten the room, he also managed to shut up both Liam and Noel Gallagher, who were arguing on a nearby table. The Beatles had out Britpopped Britpop.
The last time I saw Taylor was around this time, and I remember the extravagant scarf he wore – I thought – ostentatiously around his neck. He would die a year later of throat cancer. His death was another interruption for the Beatles, although the Apple HQ appeared to be as alive as ever, and whenever I visited, you could be guaranteed a sighting of label boss Neil Aspinall, George Martin or even one of the Threetles themselves. The Beatle comeback was in full swing, gathering momentum seemingly by the hour.
I interviewed both McCartney and Ono at the time, and a short while later, Starr too, but while both Macca and Yoko – who it could be said were the real architects of the project – were comprehensively enthusiastic about Anthology, by the time I got to Ringo I think some of the shine had come off.
For most of the sixties we knew him as a cuddly, ugly-cute pop star, a happy go lucky imp ever ready with a self-deprecating quip or nonsensical epigram (he famously came up with titles for various Beatles songs such as Tomorrow Never Knows, although 1964’s A Hard Day’s Night, which has forever been associated with him, was actually coined by the singer Eartha Kitt a year earlier).
But by the mid-nineties Ringo was not so cuddly anymore, not so self-deprecating. The moptop had long grown tired of being cast as the bumbling Beatle, and he was certainly tired of decoding their legacy for others.
“I never read anything about the Beatles, never,” he told me. “A lot of people like to make stuff up and I’m sick of it. Doing the Anthology was our way of setting the record straight. Often our accounts of what happened would differ, but what it did show was how we loved each other. Then we grew up and we broke up.
“Thank God the Beatles happened in the Sixties and not now. It was pretty tough on us but not as tough as it is today, particularly for groups like Oasis. There aren’t any pictures of us in clubs, and the Beatles were in clubs every night. We could escape, unlike this lot. I don’t lie awake at night worrying about Oasis, though. The Beatles had a couple of drinks too in the Sixties and we made it through. We’re still here.”
The reemergence of the Beatles also reminded us what a soap opera it all was, and while most of their new fans hadn’t been around when the four of them had been using the newspapers to take pot shots at each other, most of them were well-versed enough in the history of the Beatles; to have them back, still using the newspapers to undermine each other, was almost an additional extra.
George Harrison seemed to find it easy to disparage McCartney, no doubt thinking in his karmic way that he still had a long way to go to make up for being sidelined as songwriter, but Ringo appeared to save his wrath for members of the press. He loathed talking about the past, particularly the B-E-A-T-L-E-S, so interviewing him could be tricky.
When we met, I was told that there was to be no booze or cigarettes around, although as the interview was scheduled to start at 9.30am, this wasn’t too much of a problem. Ringo hadn’t had a drink since 1988, and usually didn’t like to be reminded of the fact. He might have known he’d have problems with drink, as he had had his first alcoholic blackout aged nine.
Being in the Beatles didn’t help; the band had always been partial to a few Scotch and cokes, while Ringo’s drinking started to get worse in the mid-Seventies, shortly after his solo career peaked. His cognac drinking became legendary, and he once said, “I wouldn’t go out because you’d have to be in the car for 40 minutes without a drink.”
The reemergence of the Beatles also reminded us what a soap opera it all was.
Dylan Jones
“He can be a handful,” said someone who used to work with him, “but if you steer clear of the Beatles and the booze you’ll be alright.” As it was, Ringo brought these subjects up independently.
“Though he’s still lumbered with the clownish image, I think he handles it quite well,” said an executive who used to work at Apple in London. “With day to day matters he’s always been easy to deal with – in fact, you get the feeling he’s overridden by the others [the Beatles] a lot of the time.
“It’s only when he gets involved with those he doesn’t know that his other side shows through. He can be mistrustful of people.”
Still, perhaps unsurprisingly, the success of the Anthology series eventually made all three remaining Beatles more amenable, and in Harrison and Starr’s case, far more willing to engage with the media. McCartney had never stopped engaging with the press, it had only been his own past he’d had a problem with.
What had changed, of course, was the fact that the Beatles now had product – new product, fortified old product – and a realisation that the market was only going to become energised if it had something to consume. And so, as they had done so many times in the past, the Beatles innovated, reinventing the heritage market by excavating the past rather than simply repackaging it.
A new appreciation
One of the ways in which the band started to be re-appreciated was a new understanding of their craftsmanship: there was an artisanal aspect to their work, and while none of the four were virtuosos – hence the deployment of Eric Clapton on George Harrison’s While My Guitar Gently Weeps – it was their doggedness and ingenuity that people appreciated, and the genius that resulted from that doggedness.
The exhaustive doodles on the Anthology records only confirmed what we had already thought: these guys really put the hours in. Not only that, when they released the remixed Love album, the one that accompanied the Las Vegas Cirque du Soleil show, Ringo was being hailed as the best drummer to emerge from the whole period. Who knew?
So if anything, the Beatles brand was bigger than it had been before, as was their ability to surprise.
The other, quintessentially important aspect of the Beatles reboot was their international appeal. They had always been a global phenomenon, and so consequently Anthology was a genuinely global event. It was the first Beatles album to enter the Billboard chart at Number One, selling nearly 900,000 copies in its first week alone. It was certified 3 x Platinum after six weeks in the charts, creating a genuine media phenomenon. The Beatles were all over American network television, on the covers of American magazines, and all over AM and FM radio. The Beatles were well and truly back.
Bob Iger, who would one day run The Walt Disney Company, was at the time the President of the US TV network ABC, who paid $20m for the privilege of screening Anthology.
“I don’t think there is anyone that comes close to being as marketable as they are,” he said. “According to Steve Chamberlain, the Beatles brand manager at Capitol/EMI America, “What we are doing is managing the Beatles as Coca Cola manage Diet Coke.”
Which meant that they were very clearly the most successful Britpop export, bigger than Oasis, much bigger than Blur, and far bigger than Pulp, Elastica and Supergrass combined. It was the success of Anthology that reminded the world that Britain was its cultural capital, not just back in the Sixties, when the Beatles were in their pomp, but now, in the Nineties.
There was lot of sound coming out of Britain, but the noise seemed to fade as it made its way across the Atlantic. So it seemed as though Britpop was a bit like a lung volume test, when you blow into a tube until you can’t blow any more. No matter how much it blowed, it seemed, Britpop only had so much puff. Well, compared to the Beatles, at least.
A few months after the final Anthology release, I was invited by Yoko Ono to the seventh-floor apartment in the Dakota, the huge gothic block on New York’s Central Park West, which she once shared with her husband. This was where he recorded the bulk of his demos, and where he had first worked his way through Free as A Bird.
The first thing I noticed when I walked in was John Lennon’s white baby grand, the celestial piano on which he wrote so many of his songs. Though it had been home to Ono since the couple bought it in 1973, to a visitor the gigantic nine-room apartment felt somewhat like a private chapel. I was asked to remove my shoes and the slightly religious sensation was intensified as the afternoon sun caught the piano’s white keys and the silver picture frames on top of it.
Yoko Ono
Jason Roberts/PA
I just couldn’t stop staring. It wasn’t just the Beatles-related artefacts that appeared to be strewn, haphazardly, around the flat, it was the more prosaic realisation that, OMG, John Lennon had sat on that sofa, John Lennon had probably drunk from that mug and the same John Lennon had spent the best part of the 1970s looking out of his Dakota windows at Central Park. Look, I thought to myself, I’m doing it too!
It was a weird sensation, briefly imagining yourself as John Lennon, a man who was as mythical as he was legendary, a man who could be as humdrum as he was remarkable.
Lennon was everywhere: staring down at me from the Warhol painting in the “black” room, in the photographs on the walls in the kitchen and in dozens of those silver picture frames on top of his piano (John with Yoko, John with Sean, John with Julian, John with Paul… but mainly John with Yoko).
Apartment 72 was something of a museum too, because as well as the acres of Egyptian antiques and dozens of Ono’s own installation pieces, it was littered with paintings, lithographs and famous silk screens: a de Lempicka here, a de Chirico there.
This wasn’t Graceland, this was a living apartment. It was here on 72nd Street that John and Yoko spent their five years of role reversal. While Yoko spent her days in their office on the ground floor, John would be upstairs, attending to Sean and “watching the trees change colour” in Central Park.
“This is where John used to bake bread,” said Ono as she showed me into the kitchen, with its spice jars, chopping boards and the unremarkable detritus of domesticity. “Every day he’d get up and make Sean’s breakfast while Sean played on the floor. Then he’d get up and make bread while I went to work downstairs. Often, I’d work at the kitchen table just to be near them. We were a family, and this was our home, Sean’s home, and because of that I’ll never leave.”
Ono had had more than her fair share of bad press in the years since she first met Lennon. With his death, it initially appeared to actually get worse, as if we somehow couldn’t bear the thought that she was still alive while he wasn’t (before I met her, one of Yoko’s American publicists even asked if I had any deep-rooted animosity towards her, as though it were a given; she seemed surprised when I said I thought she had actually been treated unfairly, although I can’t have been the first person to say it).
This vilification she carried throughout her career, much like Linda McCartney, who until her death was also, rather disgustingly, considered to be Paul’s undoing, at least creatively.
In person, Ono certainly didn’t seem like a business barracuda, but then it was obvious from the way in which her underlings scattered from the apartment with the wave of her hand that she was probably a formidable boss. Tiny, dressed entirely in black, she was extremely birdlike, talking in short, staccato sentences.
She seemed endearingly dotty rather than demonstrative, often repeating herself or misunderstanding questions. I’m sure she was acutely responsible when studying the bottom line, but then, as the custodian of John Lennon’s estate, she ought to have been.
The office on the ground floor of the Dakota was as fascinating as the apartment, being crammed with all sorts of valuable Beatles memorabilia and was where Yoko sat with her assistants, approving advertising artwork and plotting her husband’s online future. In her private office next door, fluffy white clouds floated across the sky-blue ceiling.
There was a bronze sculpture of an apple with two bites out of it and, on her desk, a framed blank cheque, made out to Yoko and signed by John; I’m sure to certain cynics it would be an apposite approximation of their relationship.
“There are those who will never forgive me,” said Yoko, as I left the Dakota building that day. “They called me a professional widow, called me a dragon lady, called me lots of things, but you have to take strength from that. I can’t change the way people feel, I just have to deal with it in my own way.”
For John, Grow Old with Me was song that would be a standard; the kind they would play in church every time a couple gets married.
Yoko Ono
So, is Now and Then the final piece in the Beatles jigsaw, the end of their operational narrative arc? Perhaps not. There was a fourth song on Yoko One’s cassettes, and many believe it is the best Lennon demo of all. The fourth song on Yoko’s tapes was Grow Old With Me. It hailed from the Double Fantasy period, a version of which had actually already been released, on the 1984 posthumous John Lennon album Milk and Honey.
“For John, Grow Old with Me was one that would be a standard,” said Yoko, “the kind they would play in church every time a couple gets married. It was horns and symphony time.”
Like Hey Jude, Lennon imagined it as the sort of song people would sing around campfires. “It was a song John made several cassettes of, as we discussed the arrangements for it,” said Yoko. “Everybody knew how important those cassettes were. They were in safekeeping… All of them disappeared except the one on the end of the record. It may be that it was meant to be this way, since the version that was left was John’s last recording… recorded together in our bedroom with a piano and a rhythm box.”
The Lennons identified closely with Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning, and Grow Old with Me was a response to Ono’s own song Let Me Count The Ways (based on Barrett and Browning’s Sonnets From The Portuguese), reflecting Browning’s Rabbi Ben Ezra (“Grow old along with me, the best is yet to be”).
Although unfinished and unpolished, the songs on Milk and Honey, in the words of Lennon expert Paul Du Noyer, “diarise his hopes and fears with compelling honesty”. Grow Old with Me was no different, an emotive plea that sounds not dissimilar to the bootleg demo of Free as A Bird – over-reaching vocals and faltering keyboards.
It would be ten years before the song was turned into Lennon’s last mini classic.
Having had it rejected by the remaining Beatles for the third Anthology record, in 1996 Yoko would ask George Martin to overhaul the song for inclusion on the four-CD Lennon Anthology and he did it with ease. Martin liked the song more than any other Lennon demo he had heard since his death and used his considerable skills to give it the gravitas it needed.
Its arrangement is unassuming, even business-like: the strings swell and the flutes trill in all the right places, leaving Lennon’s plaintive, occasionally maudlin voice to carry the song to its inevitable conclusion. Martin’s judgement is perfect, letting the song sing for itself.
With its stately Imagine feel and the same vamping piano, Grow Old with Me is one of Lennon’s less flinty songs (when he chose to, Lennon was capable of mining even deeper seams of sentimentality than McCartney), almost a hymn.
The Beatles should have persevered with Grow Old with Me. Who knows? Maybe one day they will.
Now And Then/Love Me Do double A-side single are available now. The Beatles’ 1962-1966 (The Red Album) and 1967-1970 (The Blue Album) Collections expanded, mixed in stereo & Dolby Atmos for 2023 edition is also available no
Photo: Getty Images
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