It’s been quite a while since we’ve seen a decent Beatle and Beatle-related auction held in our own hometown by a small auction house, but one happened about a week ago and it turned up quite a rare Paul McCartney/Fireman double LP from 1993, Strawberries Oceans Ships Forest.
We’ve had the CD version of this for a long time, but the vinyl has always been elusive. The problem is that you hardly ever see it for sale, and when it does come up it’s usually very pricey.
The standard edition is in a bright red/green cover with clear vinyl. But there’s an even rarer, limited edition in a white cover. And this is why we were very interested when a copy came up for grabs at a local auction place here in Sydney, Australia.
We made a single bid – and got it!
This rarer 2LP vinyl edition comes in a very plain white outer sleeve:
The album title wraps around the cover onto the rear, where there’s a limited edition number stamped in black in the centre (ours is No.263).
Apart from that, there’s no other info on the outside, except on the spine there is the catalogue number FIRE 1:
Inside there are two clear vinyl records. Both come in plain white, non-poly-lined paper sleeves:
And here are the labels in close-up. These too are different to the standard release:
So, this has been something of a grail find and Strawberries Oceans Ships Forest on vinyl can at last take its rightful place in the collection.
At the same auction we nabbed a selection of Dark Horse Records singles. These were Australian pressings from some of the more obscure bands that were signed to the label in the 1970s. More on that next time.
NOTE :
Paul McCartney's "Fireman" persona refers to his experimental music duo with producer Youth (Martin Glover), a project for ambient, electronic, and psychedelic music, exploring creative freedom away from his mainstream work, named partly after his father being a WWII fireman and his own fire-making skills. They released instrumental albums like Strawberries Oceans Ships Forest (1993) and Rushes (1998), and Electric Arguments (2008), which featured vocals and McCartney's name, showcasing his interest in soundscapes and different musical textures
Paul McCartney and George Harrison on Brodersweg in Hamburg, 1960 (Photos by Astrid Kirchherr).
faroutmagazine.co.uk
The best day Paul McCartney ever had with George Harrison: “We were kids”
Paulina Subia
Tue 9 December 2025
(Credits: Far Out / Alamy)
Before The Beatles became the Fab Four, revolutionising popular music forever, they were just school kids in Liverpool, absorbing all the rock music they could find and picking up their instruments for the first time.
Paul McCartney and George Harrison met, naturally, on the school bus. Both recognised a shared love of music: Harrison said that he played the guitar and learned that McCartney, a trumpet player, was going to pick up the guitar, too. They also found a mutual appreciation of the British ‘King of Skiffle’, singer-songwriter Lonnie Donegan, whom the two realised they’d both seen at Liverpool Empire, the same night, before they met.
The earliest colour photograph of The Beatles, showing Paul McCartney, John Lennon and George Harrison, along with Dennis Littler, a friend Credit: Mike McCartney
McCartney invited Harrison to his house to learn the chords to ‘Don’t You Rock Me Daddy O’, and the two became bonded for life, solidified when McCartney brought along Harrison to audition for John Lennon’s group, The Quarrymen. McCartney vouched for his friend to a sceptical Lennon, who was unsure due to Harrison’s age, and Harrison’s guitar skills proved stronger. As they say, the rest is rock ‘n’ roll history.
While the bond between McCartney and Harrison would fray as the former’s with Lennon grew stronger, creative tensions posing a frustration to Harrison, the two would slowly reconcile, albeit not quite the same as before, when they were two kids, practising guitar chords in McCartney’s home.
But it is moments such as these that remain in McCartney’s mind all these years later, looking back on his memories with Harrison, who passed away from lung cancer in 2001. In the 2011 documentary George Harrison: Living In The Material World, McCartney reminisces on his “best times with George”, thinking back to a hitchhiking trip the pair took to Wales in the summer of 1959.
“We hitchhiked to a place in Wales called Harlech; we were kids, before The Beatles,” McCartney remembers. “We’d heard a song, ‘Men of Harlech’, and saw the signpost, and said, ‘Yeah!’ There was a big castle, and we just went there.”
Credits: Far Out / Public Domain / ingen uppgift)
The two young musicians, with little plan outside of sheer curiosity, roamed Harlech and met a cast of characters along the way. “We had our guitars [and] took them everywhere,” McCartney says. “We ended up in this cafe; we’d try and go to a central meeting place… they had a jukebox, so this was ‘home’. So we sat around there, we met a guy, and he started talking. He was into rock ‘n’ roll, and we went and stayed at his house, so it was great! Me and George, top-and-tailing it in a bed.”
The pair would stay at the man’s mother’s bed-and-breakfast, where, as McCartney remembers, they forgot to pay. Years later, they received a letter from the woman requesting payment, now that they were “famous and rich,” in McCartney’s words.
“We said, ‘Oh, sorry!’” McCartney says and, mimicking the writing of a letter, responded, “‘Here, with payment.’” McCartney continues to remember the kindness of everyone he and Harrison crossed paths with. “We just had so many laughs with these Welsh guys,” he recalls. “We sat in with their band, one drunken night in a Welsh pub.”
As McCartney reflects, the bed-and-breakfast was unlike anywhere they had been before. Going from their estate in Liverpool, Wales, was another world of surprises. “Now, we were in the country, Wales, and there were these spiders, daddy longlegs, in the room,” McCartney remembers with a mock-scared gasp.
Adding, “‘The menace, the spiders!’ So, me, George, or both of us, took a rolled-up newspaper and got them. Then we could sleep safely. We went down to breakfast the next morning, and the mum said, ‘How did you sleep? Alright?’ We said, ‘Yeah, fine, thanks, great.’ She said, ‘Did you see Jimmy and Jemima?’ ‘Pardon?’ ‘Two little spiders!’”
McCartney and Harrison, pretending not to know a thing, responded, “‘No! Jimmy and who?’ Oh my God, so we had many a laugh over that,” McCartney says with a laugh.
Harrison, too, reflected on his and McCartney’s hitchhiking adventures in The Beatles Anthology, remembering such trips as a time with little food or money, yet filled with kind strangers whom they would later immortalise in The Beatles’ songs.
“It’s something nobody would dream about these days,” Harrison said of their decision, but still, it is one that the two men would reflect on for the rest of their lives, transporting them back to boyhood.
The one singer John Lennon and Paul McCartney called their greatest hero
Tim Coffman
Mon 8 December 2025
(Credits: Far Out / Alamy)
Any pop singer of the past 50 years who says that they haven’t taken at least a few cues from John Lennon and Paul McCartney is either lying or working with someone influenced by them.
The songwriting duo behind The Beatles have written the entire rule book of what pop music should sound like, and even if some of their songs can seem dated to younger ears, there’s no doubt that pop music would have changed for the worse had they not started everything back in the early 1960s. But they were rock and rollers, too, and they would do anything to follow in their heroes’ footsteps.
Then again, it wasn’t clear whether or not rock and roll was a fad by the time that the Fab Four started making music. Elvis Presley had turned the genre into a mecca from the moment he started shaking his ass, but that didn’t give rock legitimacy. It only proved that it could make money, but Lennon and McCartney felt that they could make high art if they worked together on making the right songs.
It’s not like ‘Love Me Do’ or ‘Thank You Girl’ were brilliant pieces of poetry or anything, but when listening to the way that the melody lands, they were already understanding what made people like the same rock songs they love. And even when they started venturing into new territory on records like Revolver or Abbey Road, there were still the lingering sounds of people like Chuck Berry off in the background.
Because if you talk to any other rocker from around their time, there’s no question that Berry was the beginning of everything. Before him, the sounds of rock and roll had been the likes of rockabilly and blues, but when Berry kicked up the tempo and started singing about kids that loved to play the guitar all night long, those lads from Liverpool had a greater purpose in life. Most people wouldn’t have made it out of Liverpool, but McCartney knew he wanted to follow Berry’s lead.
Aside from the energetic songs, McCartney felt that hardly anyone could match what Berry did, saying, “It was so thrilling. It was a world we didn’t know existed. You couldn’t imagine a time when oldie rock and roll was brand new, but there it was. He was a huge influence on us and we copied a lot from his guitar style. I always saw him as a poet. He continued to influence us for years and years and years.”
And despite Lennon wanting to move on from traditional rock and roll during his solo career, he could never bring himself to give up Berry’s influence, saying, “Berry is the greatest influence on earth. So is Bo Diddley and so is Little Richard. There is not one white group on earth that hasn’t got their music in them. And that’s all I ever listened to.” But when looking at their vocal styles in the band, Lennon was clearly more of a Berry acolyte.
Whereas Macca could reach up into the same stratospheric range that Little Richard got so effortlessly, Lennon had the kind of voice that could tell a story over top of those bluesy chords. He was still at the height of his revolutionary phase back in the mid-1970s, and even on an album that was trying to be as progressive as Some Time in New York City, ‘New York City’ is the kind of record that Berry could have easily written himself had he been born in the middle of Manhattan.
So while everyone can debate on how Elvis Presley changed the world and Jerry Lee Lewis showed everyone what a wild man could be, there’s always only going to be one person that’s credited with starting rock and roll. Others may have had rock and roll songs before Chuck Berry, but if you look at the template for the genre, it was all there before a song like ‘Johnny B Goode’ was even finished.
Paul and Linda McCartney at the launch of her vegetarian food range in 1991 Credit: PA/Alamy
www.theguardian.com
Let it be: Paul McCartney urges EU to drop ban on veggie ‘burgers’ and ‘sausages’
Former Beatle argues use of terms for meat-free products ‘encourages attitudes essential to our health’
Jasper Jolly
Sun 7 Dec 2025
McCartney says describing burgers and sausages as vegetarian or vegan ‘should be enough for sensible people to understand’. Photograph: Maja Smiejkowska/Reuters
Paul McCartney has joined calls for the EU to reject efforts to ban the use of terms such as “sausage” and “burger” for vegetarian foods.
The former Beatle has joined eight British MPs who have written to the European Commission arguing that a ban approved in October by the European parliament would address a nonexistent problem while slowing progress on climate goals.
The new rules would spell the end the use of terms such as steak, burger, sausage or escalope when referring to products made of vegetables or plant-based proteins. Suggested alternatives include the less appetising “discs” or “tubes”.
McCartney said: “To stipulate that burgers and sausages are ‘plant-based’, ‘vegetarian’ or ‘vegan’ should be enough for sensible people to understand what they are eating. This also encourages attitudes which are essential to our health and that of the planet.”
The musician is one of the world’s most prominent advocates of a vegetarian diet. He and his late wife founded the Linda McCartney plant-based foods brand in 1991 and he and their daughters Mary and Stella launched the global “Meat Free Monday” campaign to encourage people to eat less meat.
The EU is set to decide whether to ban wording for plant-based and vegetarian foods following lobbying by the meat industry. Photograph: Vuk Valcic/ZUMA Press Wire/Shutterstock
Linda McCartney sausages and burgers have been part of a global trend of increased interest in products to replace meat, even if investment has waned since a bubble during the coronavirus pandemic.
Yet with the growth of plant-based products has come a backlash, particularly from the politically powerful farming and meat distribution industries, which are worried about the potential effects of lower demand on jobs.
The European parliament voted 355–247 to ban “meat-related” names from being used on plant-based products. According to Euronews, Céline Imart, a French member of the centre-right European People’s party and proponent of the ban, told the parliament: “I accept that steak, cutlet or sausage are products from our livestock farms. Full stop. No laboratory substitutes, no plant-based products.”
The letter signed by the McCartney family and the British MPs argued that the EU rules could force Britain into changes as well, because the markets and regulation are still so intertwined despite the UK’s departure from the EU.
Paul McCartney and Linda McCartney launching National Vegetarian Day (PA)
The EU has a longstanding “geographical indication” system of preventing businesses from trading off the names of products associated with specific places, such as champagne (north-east France), Kalamata olives (southern Greece) or Parma ham (northern Italy). But the attempt to limit the use of generic terms is more controversial.
Many of the terms that would be banned have malleable meanings. For instance, the Collins dictionary defines a sausage firstly in relation to meat but secondly as “an object shaped like a sausage”. Even more problematically for a ban, the primary definition of “burger” is given as a “flat round mass of minced meat or vegetables”.
The eight MP signatories to the letter include the former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn and the former Green party co-leaders Carla Denyer and Adrian Ramsay.
“To stipulate that burgers and sausages are ‘plant-based,’ ‘vegetarian’ or ‘vegan’ should be enough for sensible people to understand what they are eating,” the former Beatles star, who became a vegetarian in 1975, told The Times of London. | Doreen Spooner/Mirrorpix/Getty Images
The Fab Four, aka The Beatles, pose by the drum kit at Exeter ABC in November 1963 - left to right, Ringo Starr, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and John Lennon
(Image: Mirrorpix)
www.bbc.com
Beatles' autographs and Four Weddings hat for sale
Richard Green and Georgina Barnes, South West
BBC News
December 03 2025
Paul McCartney and George Harrison are two of the signatures in the 1963 booklet
BBC
Autographs of members of The Beatles and a hat from the 1994 film Four Weddings and A Funeral are among the music and film memorabilia due to go under the hammer in Exeter next week.
The hat worn by American actress Andie MacDowell in the box office hit was given to a local resident who had worked on the set, said Bearnes Hampton & Littlewood auction house.
The Beatles' autographs - signatures of Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr and George Harrison, but missing John Lennon - were collected when the group toured the county and performed in Exeter.
Auctioneer Brian Goodison said the signatures should draw a lot of interest: "It was part of their 1963 autumn tour and it was the height of Beatlemania."
He added: "They've got an estimate of £400-£600, but, because of the provenance, they should reach the top end of that."
Andie MacDowell wore the hat in the 1994 movie Four Weddings and a Funeral/Polygram Film Production/Working Title/Mike Newell
Mr Goodison said the hat was given to Catherine Foxcroft who worked for the BBC, but was also working on the set.
He said: "She was also sometimes asked to do elocution on movie sets and films so she dealt with actors and actresses and one of the actresses she dealt with was Andy McDowall.
"This was given to her as a thank you for all the elocution lessons."
The sale is being held on 9-10 December.
All smiles, The Beatles looking relaxed backstage before their gig at the ABC Cinema, Exeter, in November 1963 - left to right, George Harrison, Paul McCartney, John Lennon, and Ringo Starr
Toto Guitarist Steve Lukather, who also plays in Ringo Starr & His All-Starr Band, knows lots of musicians. Here he remembers his friendships with Eddie Van Halen and Jeff Beck.
(MANDATORY CREDIT Koh Hasebe/Shinko Music/Getty Images) Steve Lukather live at Rock In Karuizawa 1986 with Jeff Beck, Carlos Santana, Nagano, July 1, 1986. (Photo by Koh Hasebe/Shinko Music/Getty Images)
GETTY IMAGES
In Part 1 and Part 2 of this interview series with Toto guitarist Steve Lukather , we covered his thoughts on playing guitar in Ringo Starr & His All-Starr Band.
In Part 3, learn a bit more about Ringo. Following are edited excerpts from a longer conversation.
LOS ANGELES, CA - JULY 19, 2014: Guitarist Steve Lukather (L) and Ringo Starr perform onstage at The Greek Theatre. (Photo by Paul R. Giunta/Getty Images)
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Jim Clash: Let's start with your take on recording in the studio versus say, playing a live gig.
Steve Lukather: When you're playing live, the song has already been produced so you know exactly how it's going to go. You just need to learn how to do it right. In the studio, it's all precision and creativity.
When you're creating from nothing but a piece of paper that has E, G, A-minor, F, G-major-seventh, etc., you need to have an arranger's ears and not just play the chords - that would be boring. You have to find little things like where to put an arpeggio, something that adds to the end of a phrase that the artist wouldn't think of but isn't hokey. If you do that consistently, people in the business notice, and you get called back for other studio work. We all have ears for stuff like that.
Now we explore his tenure with Ringo Starr & His All-Starr Band.
Jim Clash: Let's start with your long-time involvement with Ringo Starr's all-star band.
Steve Lukather: I'm heading into my 14th year now. It's the greatest gig in the world. Ringo is a dear friend. We live close by and hang out. He came over to the house for my birthday. He called me on Thanksgiving. If you would have told me that, when I was 10 years old Ringo will be a close friend when I was 68, I would have said, "C'mon man," like I would be the first man on Venus [laughs].
I've had a chance to work with Paul and George, but Ringo was my last Beatle. When I saw the band on The Ed Sullivan Show in 1964, my life went from black and white to color, the Wizard Of Oz. I said to myself, I have to do that, be George, make that twangy sound like his solo in, "I Saw Her Standing There." I got to tell George the whole story later when I met him [laughs]. We hung out for a few years, then sadly you know what happened.
I've had an extraordinary life I'm grateful for. I've done things that nobody even believes when I say them out loud. It's not lost on me. I'm not jaded. I shake my head and think, "Did I really do all of that?"
Clash: We touched upon Ringo earlier. What’s it been like playing in his band for the last dozen years?
Lukather: I adore the man. Yeah, he's a Beatle. At first, you're like, "Holy crap, this is Ringo from The Beatles." You can't help it when you're around these guys. After chilling and becoming friends, though, some of that wears off. But there's always a respect that I will never lose. I'm siting there with friends, and all of a sudden I get a FaceTime from Ringo. "Damn, really?" [laughs]. Sometimes, I can't believe it myself.
PARIS, FRANCE - MARCH 04, 2024: Ringo Starr attends the Stella McCartney Womenswear Fall/Winter 2024-2025 show as part of Paris Fashion Week. (Photo by Arnold Jerocki/Getty Images)
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Clash: How does Ringo choose which musicians he rotates into the group year-in and year-out?
Lukather: It used to be more of a rotation. At this point in Ringo's life, he chooses a group of people more on a friendship level. He has fun. He knows it's easy for him. I mean, the cat's going to be 86 and still wants to go on the road [laughs]. He's a human anomaly. And there's his wife Barbara [Bach]. She looks as beautiful as ever. They've got a groovy family, man. It's a joy to be around them.
The Pre-Christmas Beatles Release List – Even More To Add!
by Beatlesblogger
Posted on December 1, 2025
In late October we published a graphic titled “If You Want To Keep Up, Here’s Everything You’ll Need To Order” showing what we then thought was every Beatle, solo, or Beatle-related title released (or about to be released) this holiday season.
It didn’t last long. Some helpful readers pointed out we’d left out Ringo’sStop & Smell The Roses – the numbered, liquid vinyl edition – limited to 400 copies.
This was due November 14, but seems to have been delayed. It is currently looking like December 5 now.
And the other Ringo Starr was a red vinyl re-issue of his 14th studio album, Choose Love from 2005. This had first been slated for Record Store Day Black Friday, but was quietly removed from official lists prior to the day. It’s popped up again on the Friday Music site, this time with a late January 2026 release date (though knowing Friday Music that is extremely likely to change):
Then came news of the John Lennon and Yoko Ono ‘War Is Over (If You Want It)’ 12″ Zoetrope pressing issued to coincide with the release of the children’s hardback book and the premiere of the short animated film of the same name on YouTube.
Then Dark Horse Records announced it would be issuing a further title from the Yusuf/Cat Stevens back catalogue that the label now has the rights to. It’s called Tell ‘Em I’m Gone and it will be on yellow vinyl:
So, each of these were duly added into a revised graphic and we were just about to re-publish when last Friday came news of yet another collectable, this time linked to the Beatles’Anthology re-issue – and in particular Anthology 4. On it are the 2025 re-mixes of ‘Free As A Bird’ and ‘Real Love’ and they are now being released as a limited edition, double A-side 7″ translucent milk white vinyl single. This is the 2025 mix of both songs.
There’s been no indication of a CD version of the single being made available (except for Japan where there’s been an exclusive Japan-only CD announced). Nor has there been any talk of updated versions of the ‘Free As A Bird’ and ‘Real Love’ EPs (or “maxi-singles”) which were originally released to accompany Volumes 1 and 2 of Anthology back in 1995 and 1996. That means all of the extra tracks on those EPs will remain unavailable, with the exception of the song ‘This Boy’, which has been added to the Anthology Volume 4 discs.
The ‘Free As A Bird’ (2025 Mix)/’Real Love’ (2025 Mix) 7″ coloured vinyl single is only available from Beatles official stores (e.g. in the UK or the US), or from certain Universal Music online stores (eg. this one in Germany).
So, it has been a most busy time for any Beatle collector who is a completist. There’s been so much product so fast it’s been difficult to keep up.
To help, here’s our updated visual. If you want everything, this is what you’ll need to order. There are no fewer that 51 items here! This has got to be unprecedented in the run-up to Christmas:
