John Lennon released the song Imagine in May of 1971.
I was born less than six months later in that same year, the third child of a couple hippies who had no business having kids. But they had truth - and so did John.
And then consider these inventors of all that we listen to, those who create the sountrack for our lives: Buddy Bolden, Robert Johnson, Professor Longhair, David Bowie, Fats Domino, Kendrick Lamar, and Van Morrison.
In an alternate universe they would be seen as Joyce, Shakespeare, Fitzgerald and Hemingway. Frederick Douglas, James Baldwin, Maya Angelou, Walter Mosley, Seamus Heaney - the beacons of truth through the dark and dimly-lit tunnel of sociological change and evolution.
IMAGINE. (Ultimate Mix, 2020) - John Lennon & The Plastic Ono Band (with the Flux Fiddlers) HD
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Instead, Lennon was feared by parents for being a "rock-n-roll" musician, for playing "black" music. Imagine that. Wow.
"People have always been trying to stamp out rock 'n' roll since it started, I always thought that it's because it came from black music and the words had a lot of double entendre in the early days. It was all this 'our nice white kids are gonna go crazy moving their bodies', y'now the music got to your body and The Beatles just carried it a bit further, made it a bit more white, even more than Elvis did because we were English." - John Lennon.
We miss you, John, and thank you for inspiring people to learn to love truth and for honoring the invention of our African American brothers and sisters. You stayed true. You will be missed.
WORKING CLASS HERO. (Ultimate Mix, 2020) - John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band (official music video HD)
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Below I lay some flowers at your grave - the track my brother Joey wrote - inspired in large part by your style and sound, your truth.
Joey was part of a Dublin band that charted in the UK, trying to model your mojo. He wrote this song when he got back to the States, but continues to busk in front of the Dakota with his band mate, Nigel Williams, on the date of your birth - whenever possible.
Why would anybody want to make up a story about a celebrity dying, knowing fully well that it's a blatant lie?
Attention? Power? Notoriety? Such is the mystique of the celebrity death hoax, a bizarre practice whereby someone spreads a fake rumor about a famous person's death.
Of course, celebrity death hoaxes are easily dismissed, considering the fact that the celebrity in question is always alive. All the celebrity needs to do is, y'know, absolutely anything, and then everyone with a brain will think to themselves, "Oh, that celebrity can't send a tweet if he's dead, so he must be alive." But as long as they manage to last, celebrity death hoaxes can be a great source of entertainment–especially the unbelievably stupid ones.
5. Bill Nye the Science Guy
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In 2012, just three days after making one of his first viral YouTube videos speaking out against creationism, Bill Nye the Science Guy—best known for being the only good part of elementary school science lessons—was presumably struck down by God.
Except Bill Nye was perfectly fine. So why spread the rumor?
As far as science can prove, religious beliefs are entirely predicated on fiction, and even if God is real, he presumably doesn't give a sh!t whether or not Bill Nye the Science Guy is debunking creationism on YouTube. Still, it's funny to think that some dude was so peeved at Bill Nye's video that he started a death hoax.
4. Jon Bon Jovi
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In 2011, glam rock star and steel horse-riding cowboy Jon Bon Jovi allegedly went into a coma at a hotel. Bon Jovi immediately refuted this, releasing a photo of himself holding a sign that said, "Heaven looks a lot like New Jersey."
In and of itself, this is one of the most bland, boring death hoaxes out there. Imagine having the free reign to pick any cause of death for a guy who sings about being a cowboy who rides a steel horse and settling on "coma." Very lame.
"All I heard was 'Bon Jovi this,' 'Bon Jovi's starting a restaurant,' said Goho. "What was the latest one? The Advil commercial? It was like, 'Jeez, Bon Jovi was a household name due to music, not business."
Apparently this dweeb was just really upset off that Bon Jovi did an Advil commercial, which begs the question: Why didn't he say Bon Jovi died from an Advil overdose?
3. Eddie Murphy
Comedians In Cars w. Jerry Seinfeld & Eddie Murphy ‑ LA Tastemaker
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For whatever reason, celebrity death hoaxes become a lot more prominent right after another celebrity actually dies for real. Thus, when Fast & Furious star Paul Walker tragically died in a car crash, some people also decided that Shrek star Eddie Murphy died in a snowboarding accident.
(Also, before moving forward, I'd like to take a moment to point out that the linked article, which was published by The Independent in 2013, continually uses the term "Chinese whispers" to refer to the children's game "telephone." "Chinese whispers" is an incredibly racist term, and it's kind of mind-blowing that The Independent was still publishing this kind of stuff only seven years ago.)
The Eddie Murphy death hoax is really great because it's just so stupid. Has Eddie Murphy ever talked about going snowboarding? That's such a specific, high-skill activity that, quite frankly, it should be expected that anyone who doesn't actively talk about snowboarding probably does not go snowboarding. If Eddie Murphy had a famous joke about snowboarding, it would kind of make sense. But he doesn't. It's so out of left field, and that's just awesome.
As it turned out, John was actually saying, "Cranberry sauce," but that didn't stop the rumors from devolving into full-blown conspiracy theories. Unlike other celebrity death hoaxes, especially more modern ones which are immediately debunked thanks to the trusty ol' Internet, the Paul McCartney death hoax never went away.
Even after McCartney made multiple public appearances, some people posited that he was a body double and that the real Paul McCartney really was dead. Some lunatic even made a documentary trying to prove it. There's no arguing with crazy.
1. Lucas Grabeel
LUCAS GRABEEL
Sosugary
The story: In 2013, a few years after his last big movie role in The Adventures of Food Boy, washed up High School Musical actor Lucas Grabeel decided to leave his Hollywood dreams behind and set out on a new adventure to find himself. After selling off all of his belongings, Grabeel bought a one-way ticket to Brazil, telling friends and family that he was going to the Amazon Rainforest in order to be "the first person to discover a new plant."
Grabeel was last seen wandering off during a group tour. His whereabouts remain unknown, but he is presumed to be dead.
So where did this hoax come from?
Me. I told this story to a bunch of people in college, because I enjoy lying to people. At least one of them believed me. See? That's how easy it is to start a celebrity death hoax.
It was reported on Saturday that rock legend Little Richard had died in Tennessee at the age of 87.
Born Richard Penniman, Little Richard became famous as a pioneer of rock music in the 1950s, with a series of hits from "Tutti Frutti" to "Long Tall Sally" and "Good Golly Miss Molly." His gospel-inflected singing with energetic piano and gibberish lyrics became emblematic of the era's music, and the iconic rasp of his versatile voice has been emulated by many, but never matched.
Beyond his music, his flamboyant, gender-bending style (originally intended to make him non-threatening to white men) would go on to be a foundation of the Rock aesthetic, inspiring musicians from Prince to Elton John, David Bowie, and beyond.
Considered one of the first black musicians to become a crossover success—appealing to white audiences as well as black—Little Richard worked with musicians like Chuck Berry, the Beatles, and the Rolling Stones, and he helped to launch the career of Jimi Hendrix—who played in his band, the Upsetters, and said, "I want to do with my guitar what Little Richard does with his voice." Over multiple decades Penniman's Born Again Christianity—to which he converted in 1957—resulted in a complex relationship with music, drug use, and sexuality. At various points he defined himself as either gay or "omnisexual," while at other times he denounced homosexuality as "unnatural," and "contagious."
Through multiple departures and subsequent returns to the music world, Little Richard remained popular and influential and continued performing into his 80s. He was among the first group of inductees to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame when it opened in 1986, and his contributions to music will live on for generations, both in his memorable hits and in his massive influence on icons like Otis Redding and James Brown.
Responding to his death, Mick Jagger wrote on Twitter, "When we were on tour with him I would watch his moves every night and learn from him how to entertain and involve the audience and he was always so generous with advice to me. He contributed so much to popular music. I will miss you Richard, God bless." And fellow early-rock icon Jerry Lee Lewis said of Penniman's passing, "It is with a heavy heart that I ask for prayers for the family of my lifelong friend and fellow rocker 'Little Richard. He will live on always in my heart with his amazing talent and his friendship! He was one of a kind and I will miss him dearly."
The story of psychedelics is intertwined with the story of music, and tracing their relationship can feel like going in circles.
For thousands of years, artists have been using naturally-grown herbs to open their minds and enhance their creative processes. Since LSD was synthesized by Albert Hoffman in 1938, psychedelics have experienced a reemergence, blooming into a revolution in the 1960s, launching dozens of genres and sounds that focused on acid, shrooms, and all of the portals they opened. Around the 1960s, scientists also began studying the relationship between psychedelics and music, and even back then, researchers found that, when combined, music and psychedelics could have therapeutic effects on patients.
More modern studies have discovered that LSD, specifically, links a portion of the brain called the parahippocampal—which specializes in personal memory—to the visual cortex, which means that memories take on more autobiographical and visual dimensions. Other studies have found that LSD can make the timbres and sounds of music feel more meaningful and emotionally powerful. Today, psychedelic music still thrives, and you can hear flickers of those early trip-inspired experiences all across today's modern musical landscape.
"There is a message intrinsically carried in music, and under the effects of psychedelics, people seem to become more responsive to this," said the psychedelic researcher Mendel Kaelen. "Emotion can be processed more deeply. It's a beautiful narrative. It's like a snake biting itself in the tail."
All that said, psychedelics can be as dangerous as the archetypal live-fast-die-young rock and roller's average lifestyle. They can destabilize already fragile minds and can encourage further drug abuse and reckless behavior. Often, psychedelic revolutions have coincided with colonialist fetishizations, apocalyptic visions, and appropriations of Eastern culture.
However, sometimes psychedelics and musical talent can come together in a synergy so perfect that it can literally create transcendent and healing experiences. Hallucinogens affected each of these following musicians in a unique way, but their experiences with hallucinogens produced some of the greatest music of all time.
Harry Styles — She
In his revelatory Rolling Stone profile, Harry Styles spoke out about how magic mushrooms inspired his most recent album, Fine Line. Inspired by Fleetwood Mac, the 25-year-old apparently spent a lot of time at Shangri-La Studios in Los Angeles tripping and listening to the old psychedelic greats.
"Ah, yes. Did a lot of mushrooms here," he said in the interview during a tour of the studio. "We'd do mushrooms, lie down on the grass, and listen to Paul McCartney's Ram in the sunshine."
Things even got a little violent, as they often can when dealing with hallucinogens. "This is where I was standing when we were doing mushrooms and I bit off the tip of my tongue. So I was trying to sing with all this blood gushing out of my mouth. So many fond memories, this place," he reminisced affectionately.
Kacey Musgraves' dreamy song "Slow Burn" was apparently inspired by an acid trip. Listening to the lyrics, you can hear the influence of psychedelics twining with country and singer-songwriter tropes. "I was sitting on the porch, you know, having a good, easy, zen time," she said of the songwriting experience, which she said happened out on her porch one evening. "I wrote it down on my phone, and then wrote the songs the next day with a sober mind."
LSD, she said, "opens your mind in a lot of ways. It doesn't have to be scary. People in the professional worlds are using it, and it's starting to become an option for therapy. Isn't that crazy?" Her affection for the drug also appears in her song "Oh What A World," which contains the lyric, "Plants that grow and open your mind."
A$AP Rocky — L$D
While A$AP Rocky's affection for LSD isn't a surprise given his propensity for writing about the drug, apparently the rapper has an intellectual approach to his psychedelic experimentation.
"We was all in London at my spot, Skeppy came through," he told Hot New Hip Hop about his experience writing LSD. "I have this psychedelic professor, he studies in LSD. I had him come through and kinda record and monitor us to actually test the product while being tested on. We did the rhymes all tripping balls."
Apparently his first acid trip happened in 2012. "Okay, without getting anyone in trouble, I was with my homeboy and some trippy celebrity chicks and…" he said in an interview with Time Out. When asked how long it lasted, he said, "Too long, man. Twenty-three hours. I was trippin' till the next day. When I woke up, I was like, Damn! I did that shit! That shit was dope. It was so amazing. It was a-ma-zing. Nothing was like that first time."
Acid changed his entire approach to music and success. "I never really gave a f*ck, man, but this time, I really don't give a f*ck," he said. "I don't care about making no f*cking hits." Instead, he focuses on creating. "It's so hard to be progressive when you're trippin' b*lls," he said. "You make some far-out shit!"
The Beatles' later music is essentially synonymous with LSD, and the band members often spoke out about their unique experiences with the drug. According to Rolling Stone, the first time that Lennon and Harrison took it was actually a complete accident. A friend put LSD in their coffee without their knowledge, and initially Lennon was furious. But after the horror and panic faded, things changed. "I had such an overwhelming feeling of well-being, that there was a God, and I could see him in every blade of grass. It was like gaining hundreds of years of experience in 12 hours," said Harrison.
Paul McCartney had similar revelations. LSD "opened my eyes to the fact that there is a God," he said in 1967. "It is obvious that God isn't in a pill, but it explained the mystery of life. It was truly a religious experience." Of LSD's effect, he also said, "It started to find its way into everything we did, really. It colored our perceptions. I think we started to realize there wasn't as many frontiers as we'd thought there were. And we realized we could break barriers."
Using the drug not only helped the band create some of the most legendary music of all time—it also brought them closer together. "After taking acid together, John and I had a very interesting relationship," said George Harrison. "That I was younger or I was smaller was no longer any kind of embarrassment with John. Paul still says, 'I suppose we looked down on George because he was younger.' That is an illusion people are under. It's nothing to do with how many years old you are, or how big your body is. It's down to what your greater consciousness is and if you can live in harmony with what's going on in creation. John and I spent a lot of time together from then on and I felt closer to him than all the others, right through until his death."
Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds (Remastered 2009)
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Ray Charles — My World
The soul music pioneer allegedly once described acid as his "eyes." Charles was blind, but LSD is said to have allowed him some version of sight. Though he struggled with addiction, Charles eventually got clean, though his music always bore some markers of his experiences with the subconscious mind.
Actually, blind people on LSD and hallucinogens can experience hallucinations of different kinds, though it's somewhat rare. According to a study in the journal Consciousness and Cognition, this happens because during a trip, "the plasticity of the nervous system allows the recognition and translation of auditory or tactile patterns into visual experiences."
Clapton struggled with drug abuse throughout his life, and LSD certainly had an influence on him. While he was a part of Cream, he frequently played shows while tripping, and according to outontrip.com, he became "convinced that he could turn the audience into angels or devils according to the notes he played."
Before he was creating the ultimate dad rap, Chance the Rapper was an acidhead.
"None of the songs are really declarative statements; a lot of them are just things that make you wonder...a lot like LSD," said Chance the Rapper of his hallucinogen-inspired album, the aptly named Acid Rap. "[There] was a lot of acid involved in Acid Rap," he told MTV in 2013. "I mean, it wasn't too much — I'd say it was about 30 to 40 percent acid ... more so 30 percent acid."
But the album wasn't merely about acid; like much of the best psychedelic music, it was more about the imagery and symbolism associated with the drug than the actual drug itself. "It wasn't the biggest component at all. It was something that I was really interested in for a long time during the making of the tape, but it's not necessarily a huge faction at all. It was more so just a booster, a bit of fuel. It's an allegory to acid, more so than just a tape about acid," he said.
Jazz great John Coltrane was a regular LSD user who used the drug to create music and to have spiritual experiences. Though he struggled with addiction throughout his life, LSD was one drug that had a major artistic influence on him. While it's not known for sure if the album Om—which includes chanted verses of the Bhagavad Gita—was recorded while Coltrane was on LSD, many rumors theorize that it was.
"Coltrane's LSD experiences confirmed spiritual insights he had already discovered rather than radically changing his perspective," wrote Eric Nisenson in Ascension: John Coltrane and His Quest. "After one early acid trip he said, 'I perceived the interrelationship of all life forms,' an idea he had found repeated in many of the books on Eastern theology that he had been reading for years. For Coltrane, who for years had been trying to relate mystical systems such as numerology and astrology, theories of modern physics and mathematics, the teachings of the great spiritual leaders, and advanced musical theory, and trying somehow to pull these threads into something he could play on his horn. The LSD experience gave him visceral evidence that his quest was on the right track."
Rilo Kiley frontwoman Jenny Lewis wrote the song "Acid Tongue" about her first and only experience on LSD, which happened when she was fourteen. She told Rolling Stone, "It culminated in a scene not unlike something from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas—the scene where Hunter S. Thompson has to lock the lawyer in the bathroom. I sort of assumed the Hunter S. Thompson character and my friend – she had taken far too much – decided to pull a butcher knife out of the kitchen drawer and chase me around the house… At the end of that experience, my mom was out of town on a trip of her own and she returned to find me about 5 lbs lighter and I had—I was so desperate to get back to normal I decided to drink an entire gallon of orange juice. I saw that it was in the fridge and decided that this would sort of flush the LSD out of my system, but I didn't realize that it did exactly the opposite."
The Beach Boys' mastermind Brian Wilson was famously inspired by psychedelics, which both expanded and endangered his fragile and brilliant mind. After his first acid trip in 1965, an experience that he said "expanded his mind," Wilson wrote "California Gurls." After the trip, however, Wilson began suffering from auditory hallucinations and symptoms of schizophrenia, and though he discontinued use of the drug, he continued to hear voices; doctors eventually diagnosed him with the disease. Wilson later lamented his tragic experiences with LSD, stating that he wished he'd never done the drug.
Though it led Wilson on a downward spiral, LSD inspired some of his band's greatest work—namely the iconic Pet Sounds, which launched half a century of "acid-pop copycats."
The Flaming Lips — Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots
The Flaming Lips' "Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots" is widely believed to be the product of lead singer Wayne Coyne's LSD experimentation. This theory is corroborated by the fact that the album's cover features the number 25 (and LSD is also known as LSD-25). They also frequently reference LSD in their music, which includes an album called Finally, the Punk Rockers Are Taking Acid.
the flaming lips yoshimi battles the pink robots part 1
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Jimi Hendrix — Voodoo Child
While there is still some general contention on whether Jimi Hendrix hallucinated frequently, nobody really doubts that he did. According to rumors, the legendary musician even used to soak his bandanas in acid before going onstage so the drug would seep through his pores.
According to one source, Hendrix did more than just play music while tripping. He was also an expert at (of all things) the game of Risk.
"Jimi would play Risk on acid, and I never — and me personally — ever beat him at all," said Graham Nash in an interview. "He was unbelievable at it. He was a military man, you know, he's a paratrooper, and I don't know whether you know that about Jimi, but no one ever beat him at Risk."
Jim Morrison was a documented LSD user, and it eventually led him out of his mind. "The psychedelic Jim I knew just a year earlier, the one who was constantly coming up with colorful answers to universal questions, was being slowly tortured by something we didn't understand. But you don't question the universe before breakfast for years and not pay a price," said John Desmore in Riders on the Storm: My Life With the Doors.
Morrison used many different drugs during his lifetime, but apparently LSD had a special place and he avoided using it while working. "LSD was a sacred sacrament that was to be taken on the beach at Venice, under the warmth of the sun, with our father the sun and our mother the ocean close by, and you realised how divine you were," said Ray Manzarek. "It wasn't a drug for entertainment. You could smoke a joint and play your music, as most musicians did at the time. But as far as taking LSD, that had to be done in a natural setting."
Morrison himself—a visionary who was also a drug-addled narcissist—was kind of the prototypical 1960s LSD-addled rock star. Alive with visions about poetry and sex but lost in his own self-destruction, he perhaps touched on something of the sublime with his art, but in the end he went down a very human path towards misery and decay.
Like many of these artists' stories, Morrison's life reveals that perhaps instead of using hallucinogens and psychedelics as shortcuts to a spiritual experience, one should exercise extreme caution when exploring the outer reaches of the psyche. When it comes to actually engaging with potent hallucinogens, that might be best left to the shamans, or forgotten with the excesses of the 1960s.
On the other hand, we might do well to learn from the lessons that people have gleaned from hallucinogens over the years—lessons that reveal just how interconnected everything is, that show us that music and memory and nature may just all stem from the same place.
After witnessing the success of K-Pop groups such as BTS, Simon Cowell has decided to start a show intended to launch a "new wave" of music entitled "UK-Pop."
Naturally, this has incensed K-pop fans, who accused Cowell of "taking the title from the biggest group on the planet" and attempting to "make it white."
Simon Cowell's new UK-Pop group debuts with their song "Make It White"
Cowell's comments came in the wake of the news that he's launching a new show entitled X Factor: The Band, which will attempt to create the next major musical super-group. The show's announcement also angered Lil Mix fans, as the group has a show that is based on the same premise, entitled The Search.
Regarding X Factor: The Band, Cowell said, "K-pop is ruling the world. This is a show to find a band to launch UK-pop," he said. "It's more than winning a record contract, it's starting a new music wave."
Maybe Simon Cowell needs to take a step back. "UK-pop" is not a brilliant innovation of Simon Cowell. The UK has been churning out pop artists since the inception of the modern music industry, and you can see its success in everything from The Beatles to One Direction. On the other hand, between the Macarena in 1996 and Psy's "Gangnam Style" in 2012, not a single non-English-language track hit Billboard's Top 10.
Non-English speaking artists have always been creating popular music, though, and in recent years they're finally pushing out English-speaking groups from the upper echelons of the mainstream. This week, BTS's Love Yourself: Answer broke records after becoming the first K-pop album to stay in the Billboard Top 200 for a year, and it's not like Billboard is the arbiter of all the world's music tastes. According to one study of YouTube's charts, for example, the top four biggest acts in the world are non-English speaking acts.
In light of this, Simon Cowell's comments display a marked ignorance and an apparently elevated view of the importance of the English language, hegemonic whiteness, and his own power. K-pop and Lil Mix fans know that what really matters in the end, is the relationship between the artists and their fans, and they know that K-pop is on top, no matter how many washed-up white music industry executives try to capitalize on it.
"Right now, K-pop, you could argue, is ruling the world. Now, it's time for UK-pop."
Simon Cowell announces his ne… https://t.co/QJIEEUiuV8
Today, September 27th, marks the 50th anniversary of the release of The Beatles' final album, Abbey Road.
The iconic project—whose cover bears the even more iconic image of Paul McCartney, John Lennon, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr striding across Abbey Road in London in 1969—received mixed reviews upon its release, but it's ultimately remembered as one of the best albums ever made.
To celebrate the anniversary, Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr reunited at the famous Abbey Road Studios, where they were met with hordes of frantic press and fans. A reissued version of the album was also released today, featuring a new mix by Giles Martin from the original master tapes produced by his father, George Martin. The reissue, which will undoubtedly sell millions of copies around the world, also comes with 23 demos and alternative recordings of songs produced for Abbey Road during the original recording process.
Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr are reunited at Abbey Road StudiosGetty
Not only do fans love to honor The Beatles on days of commemoration, they also continue to consume their music in record numbers. Every member of The Beatles, living or dead, continues to earn millions of dollars in royalties each year from the sale of music released as early as the '60s—music that's still being bought, streamed, covered, and inserted into movies and TV, with unprecedented regularity. In fact, all these years later, we still haven't seen a musical phenomenon consume the American consciousness quite like The Beatles, who sold 177 million albums in the USA alone, according to the Recording Industry Association of America.
For a western audience raised on music inspired by The Beatles, their music is melodically pleasing, lyrically creative, and extremely listenable. From "Yellow Submarine" to "Blackbird," they manage to create tableaus through music and melody that have lasted in society's memory: images that have seeped into countless other works of art across mediums. But that doesn't mean their music is any more special than that of their contemporaries, or any more culturally significant than music that's been made since. Yet, is there any other band, active or disbanded, whose every landmark anniversary is met with this level of commemoration, whose every 50+ year-old song is still at the forefront of people's minds? In short, no. While it's impossible to deny The Beatles' talent, why, after all this time, are they still the world's favorite band?
One of the first pictures ever taken of the band
Darrin Duber-Smith, a marketing professor at Metropolitan State University of Denver, said of The Beatles' longevity, "It's remarkable for a band that stopped recording in 1970, they still have such interest." He attributes their popularity to their timing: They were the first in their category and came to represent a moment in time. "They represent the British musical invasion and the change in music that came with it," he said. "We've had other moments, like with Pearl Jam and Kurt Cobain, but nothing like the Beatles did for their time. They were a transformative band, and that has longevity." This is undoubtedly true, but there have been other transformative artists before and after The Beatles reigned, but not even Sinatra, The Rolling Stones, or Dr. Dre are honored with quite the same fervency The Beatles continue to inspire.
One of the last photos ever taken of the four band members
Many argue that the staying power of the four lads from Liverpool can be attributed to the way their music holds a mirror up to an era we long to revisit: an era of conflict, sexual revolution, social movement and, most of all, hope for better things to come. Others believe that we can credit John Lennon and Paul McCartney's partnership with the birth of modern songwriting, and it's that ability to set a story to music that continues to enthrall. Still others think it's the cult of personality surrounding the members of the band themselves that continues to draw us in, a fascination that was only heightened by John Lennon's dramatic, untimely death.
Most likely, the answer is less concrete, something more poetic, like answering the world's brokenness with the simple invitation to "Come together, right now. Over me." Maybe our fascination with The Beatles is simply a result of the innate human desire to share things with other people, to find something—anything—we can all agree on. Maybe we still love The Beatles because, in a divided world, it's what we have in common.
Comedians In Cars w. Jerry Seinfeld & Eddie Murphy ‑ LA Tastemaker
LUCAS GRABEEL
Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr are reunited at Abbey Road StudiosGetty
One of the first pictures ever taken of the band
One of the last photos ever taken of the four band members
