Students will examine the lasting legacy of the Beatles
BBC
Beatles enthusiasts around the world will soon be able to "come together" to study the Fab Four.
The University of Liverpool is set to bring back its MA course entitled The Beatles, Heritage and Culture as an online programme.
The part-time course, which is due to launch in September 2026, will examine the enduring cultural and economic impact of the band on Liverpool and the surrounding city region.
Programme director Dr Holly Tessler said the course would "enable people from all around the world to study Liverpool's unique Beatles environment, history and heritage from scholars and practitioners who are immersed in this work".
An optional course module will allow students to spend two weeks in Liverpool, attending daily lectures and site visits linked to the Fab Four's history, culture and heritage.
Applications for the course are due to open in October 2025.
Steve Bradley, who graduated in 2023 from the course, said two things had attracted him to sign up.
He said he wanted to "approach their story in a different way" after being a fan for many years.
"I didn't go to university as a young man," he added.
"I was in my 50s and it was a case of 'can I give myself a new challenge' to see if I could do a master's [degree]."
Mr Bradley juggled working as an operations manager for a law firm while studying for the course.
For those interested in signing up, he said it was "important to understand" the course was "not going to teach you the story of the Beatles".
"It's about dismantling the story and working out why it happened, where and how and what caused it to happen."
It’s now been announced. Here is the official press release with all the details on the Anthology Collection audio releases, the Beatles Anthology documentary series on Disney+, and The Beatles Anthology book:
THE BEATLES ANTHOLOGY
Award-winning Documentary Series, Music Releases and Iconic Book
All Together Now for Release this Autumn. The Beatles Story… by The Beatles. On screen, on record, and in print.
London – August 21, 2025 – First released three decades ago, The Beatles’ eight-part Anthology series reinvented the music documentary. Instead of a standard treatment centred on an outside narrator and talking heads, The Anthology featured John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr candidly telling their own story, with all its complexities and contradictions. It introduced The Beatles to new generations of viewers and listeners and marked the start of a creative and commercial afterlife that continues to this day.
Now, The Beatles Anthology returns in its ultimate form for a comprehensive global release campaign—on screen, on record, and in print.
THE BEATLES ANTHOLOGY DOCUMENTARY SERIES
Now a Nine-Part Series Featuring a Brand-new Episode Nine
Streaming Exclusively on Disney+ Beginning November 26
The Beatles’ landmark Anthology documentary series has been restored and remastered.
The series’ original eight episodes trace the legendary journey that began in Liverpool and Hamburg and soon captivated the world. They bring to life the timeless stories — of Beatlemania, the band’s groundbreaking arrival in the USA, their role at the forefront of the 1960s counterculture, their spiritual exploration in India, and their eventual breakup. And through it all, the constant thread: the music, always the music.
There is now a completely new Episode Nine, including unseen behind-the-scenes footage of Paul, George and Ringo coming together between 1994 and 1995 to work on The Anthology and reflecting on their shared life as The Beatles.
The restoration has been overseen by Apple Corps’ production team, working with Peter Jackson’s Wingnut Films & Park Road Post teams along with Giles Martin, who has created new audio mixes for the majority of the featured music.
THE BEATLES ANTHOLOGY MUSIC COLLECTIONS
Restored & Expanded to Four Volumes: 12LP Vinyl, 8CD & Digital Collections
Out November 21
The musical side of The Anthology Collection, originally curated by George Martin, now remastered by Giles Martin, in the form of three double albums of rare material, a shadow story to the one told in the documentaries. They are an enthralling insight into the early development of songs that became the recorded masterpieces that resonate just as loudly today as they did when they were first recorded.
It also has an important new element. Anthology 4, newly curated by Giles, includes 13 previously unreleased demos and session recordings and other rare recordings. It also includes new mixes of The Beatles’ Anthology-associated hit singles: the GRAMMY-winning “Free As A Bird” and “Real Love,” given new life by their original producer, Jeff Lynne, using de-mixed John Lennon vocals.
The original “Free As A Bird” music video has also been beautifully restored:
Both new mixes are placed alongside the band’s most recent UK No. 1 hit single, 2023’s GRAMMY-winning “Now And Then,” the last Beatles song. All three singles were created from rudimentary home demos John recorded in the 1970s, later completed with vocal and instrumental parts recorded by Paul, George and Ringo.
Across all the Anthology albums, there are 191 tracks which will be released on November 21 by Apple Corps Ltd./Capitol/UMG for digital purchase and streaming, and in deluxe 12LP 180-gram vinyl and 8CD box sets. Both box sets include the original sleeve notes for Anthology 1, 2 and 3; the new Anthology 4 includes track notes written by Kevin Howlett and an introduction compiled from 1996 interviews recorded with The Beatles’ close friend and adviser Derek Taylor. The Beatles Store’s exclusive editions for both box sets add four 12-inch band photo art cards in a numbered envelope.
THE BEATLES ANTHOLOGY BOOK
The 25th Anniversary Edition
Out October 14
Finally, the 25th Anniversary Edition of The Beatles Anthology book will be released on October 14th by Apple Corps Ltd. and Chronicle Books. Throughout its pages, John, Paul, George and Ringo share their honest, intimate and revelatory recollections of the band’s journey. Their memories are accompanied by impressions from their closest colleagues, including Neil Aspinall, George Martin, Derek Taylor and others. The bestselling 368-page book is beautifully illustrated with more than 1,300 photos, documents, artwork, and other memorabilia from the band’s archives.
Everything The Beatles did involved change. Listening to their songs and watching their story unfold brings us closer to the shifts in culture, ideas and music that they helped shape—and which continue to resonate today. The Anthology was always about their past, but this new edition confirms its enduring place in the present and future. (ends)
The packaging of the 12LP and 8CD has come in for criticism as being a “low rent” looking for a proper Beatle release. It turns out that they are indeed using Klaus Voormann’s amazing original montage for the box on all editions. The image with the black and white photo of the band is a “belly band” or “O” card which slides over the outer case and wraps around the whole box. Here are some high res images:
The four art photos shown in the pack-shot above come in a numbered envelope and are exclusive to the Beatles Store (or if you order through Universal Music). The photo pack:
The 12LP exclusive is limited to 8,500 in the UK and 8,500 in the U.S.
Other editions come without that photo pack:
And here it is with the “belly band” in place:
Here’s the 8CD set with art photos only available from the official stores. This is limited to 8000 copies in the UK and 8,000 in the U.S. (The UK Beatles store is already indicating this as SOLD OUT):
And the standard issue, minus the photo pack. (Clickhere for the full track listing):
As he promised months ago, Sean Lennon and the Lennon Estate have this week formally announced they’ll releasing (on 10 October, 2025) a mega box set focusing on John Lennon playing live in New York in the year 1972.
It’s called Power To The People (The Ultimate Collection) and is released in time to celebrate John Lennon’s 85th birthday.
The big box set comprises 9 CDs and no less than 3 Blu-Ray audio discs, all packaged in the 10-inch sized slipcase that has been the hallmark of all the John Lennon super-deluxe re-issues so far. This one will come with a cool lenticular cover of John & Yoko’s faces presenting a “dynamic 3D effect”.
The box set will be accompanied by a 204-page hardback book designed and edited by long-time Lennon Estate historian and archivist, Simon Hilton and features an oral history about all the included music through the words of John & Yoko and those involved, sourced from both archival and new interviews.
The book will be illustrated with unseen photos, lyrics, drawings, tape boxes and memorabilia. Additionally, the set includes a newspaper print poster, sticker sheets and a VIP envelope containing replica concert tickets plus backstage and after-show passes that have all been uniquely reproduced with textured, archival materials.
The centerpiece of Power To The People is the ‘One To One Concerts’, which were Lennon’s only full-length concerts after The Beatles, and his final shows with Yoko Ono, raised more than US$1.5 million (2025 equivalent of $11.5 million) to support children with intellectual and developmental disabilities. Both the afternoon and evening performances are being released together for the first time.
Alongside those two concerts, Power To The People (Super Deluxe Edition) offers an aural time capsule of John & Yoko’s first NYC era, when they traded Tittenhurst Park, their estate in Ascot, England, for a small apartment located at 105 Bank St. in Greenwich Village in Manhattan, and includes the music they were inspired to make during a time of great civil unrest and the deeply unpopular Vietnam War.
Paramount to their recorded musical endeavors at this time was their 1972 political blockbuster album, Sometime In New York City, recorded by John & Yoko with Jim Keltner and New York’s finest rock ‘n’ roll protest street band, Elephant’s Memory.
For this special collection, songs from the album have been completely remixed from scratch, stripped of the overly heavy production sound that constrained such inspired and inspiring songs as ‘Attica State’, ‘Angela’, ‘New York City’, and ‘Born In A Prison’. Noticeably missing is the controversial song (back then and perhaps now even mores), ‘Woman Is The N***** Of The World’. Some fans are upset about that but the song is still easily available on streaming services and on CD if you want it. Live versions from the ‘One To One’ concerts can also be had on the Lennon Anthology collection from 1998, and on John Lennon – Live in New York City released in 1986.
For this box set the tracks from Sometime In New York City have been reordered, rejuvenated and completely re-imagined as a new set of Ultimate Mixes, simply entitled New York City, which also includes extended versions of ‘John Sinclair’ and ‘Sunday Bloody Sunday’.
In addition to the Deluxe 9 CD/3 Blu-Ray box there will be a four LP version with the afternoon and evening ‘One To One’ concerts:
There’ll also be a 2LP edition on black vinyl featuring a “hybrid” best-of from both live shows:
This “hybrid” best-of will also be available as a Limited Edition 2LP in transparent green vinyl:
Both the afternoon and evening ‘One To One’ shows will available as a 2CD Deluxe Edition housed in a triple gatefold digisleeve:
And there will be a 1CD Edition containing the “hybrid” best-of which, like the 2LP edition combines the two shows to create a one show best-of in a digisleeve:
How an unreleased John Lennon demo saw three-quarters of the Beatles write a song together, 40 years after Lennon's death
By Phil Weller
Guitar Player
published Ago 13 , 2025
Starr was shocked to hear what Lennon said in the original demo tape, and saw it as a sign to get the Beatles back together in a roundabout way
Ringo Starr & John Lennon, playing a Gibson J160E acoustic guitar, performing during the filming of "A Hard Day's Night", at the Scala Theatre (Image credit: Getty Images)
It hasn’t been hugely uncommon for Beatles members to collaborate together in the wake of the band’s demise in 1970 – that infamous rooftop concert was their final public appearance. They have, however, usually been a little limited in their scope.
Ringo Starr guested on George Harrison's third album, “All Things Must Pass”, soon after the group’s split and Ringo's solo career – which has yielded an exhaustive 21 studio albums since "Sentimental Journey" (1970) – has seen the drummer frequently join forces with the rest of the Fab Four.
But rarely did more than two Beatles get together for a song. Sure, many of Starr’s albums have featured contributions from Harrison, Paul McCartney, and John Lennon, but on separate tracks. Harrison’s 1981 single, "All Those Years Ago", reconfigured as a tribute to John Lennon after his murder the year before, featured Starr on drums and McCartney's backing vocals. But Starr's "Grow Old With Me" shattered that precedent in a remarkable way.
Released in 2019 as part of his 20th album, “What’s My Name”, the song started life in Lennon’s imagination. Little came of the demo until it serendipitously ended up in Starr's hands years after Lennon's passing.
“John wrote it,” he told TMS Global Entertainment during the record’s press tour. “And I like to mention this because Jack Douglas [the record’s producer], sent it to me out of the blue. That's why I love life. Things just arrive.
“Jack Douglas said, ‘Did you ever hear what John said on the Bermuda tapes?’”
As the name suggests, the Bermuda tapes relate to a series of demo recordings made by Lennon in Bermuda. Most songs would end up on his 1980 album “Double Fantasy” with Yoko Ono, the last record he released before his death. This idea, however, remained untouched nearly 40 years later.
“At the beginning of the cassette – I have to well up, I can’t help it. I’ve told this story nine times today – he says, “Oh, that would be good for Richard Starkey. This would be great for you, Ringo!’
“I thought, ‘It’s so beautiful.’ We’ll never know why he didn’t finish it, but we did a lot of the track. Paul was coming into town, and I said, ‘I’d love for you to play on this track.’ I thought he'd be just perfect because he's so melodic and he can only enhance the track. That's all he does when he plays, every time.”
And so, three-quarters of the Beatles featured on the track, with a touching guitar solo coming courtesy of Joe Walsh. But, with the memory of another fallen Beatle in mind, Douglas had one final touch in mind.
“Jack, who did the strings, does a George line. He plays a title of one of George's song in the with the strings, and if you listen to it carefully, you'll hear it.”
(Image credit: Getty Images)
The melody in question – spoiler alert – is from Harrison’s resplendent Beatles hit, “Here Comes the Sun”. It's a delicate, heartfelt touch
“So it’s like George is on it, too,” Starr smiles, a look of disbelief visible despite his aviator shades covering much of his face.
In related news, Derek Shulman has revealed how his pre-Gentle Giant band secretly recorded an album with Beatles gear, and, following Ozzy Osbourne's passing, comments on how the Beatles saved his life have resurfaced. He compared crossing paths with Paul McCartney in 2001 to meeting Jesus.
Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr talking about John Lennon
‘Condensed Cream of the Beatles’: Future generations will watch this psychedelic rollercoaster to understand Beatlemania
Richard Metzger
Dangerous Minds
Sun 10 August 2025
(Credits: Dangerous Minds / ABC Television)
Animation director Chuck Braverman won an Oscar in 1974 for Braverman’s Condensed Cream of the Beatles, his 14-minute animated history of The Beatles and their preeminent place in the turbulent decade of the 1960s.
It’s a celebration of Beatlemania that is moving, amazing and inspiring.
I saw this three times when I was a kid. It used to come around once a year in the mid-1970s as part of a weekend matinee movie “roadshow” that was four hours of Beatles films for $4. Magical Mystery Tour, The Beatles at Shea Stadium, and Japan ‘66 were some of the other films I recall seeing, but the clear highlight of the show each time was Braverman’s Condensed Cream of the Beatles, which used footage of the group combined with flashy pop art photo-montage animation.
Trust me, this was a pretty astonishing thing to see at the time. Produced by Apple (who else could have gotten all the rights to this material?) and Braverman Productions, it aired on TV one time on Geraldo Rivera’s late-night ABC program Good Night America, which his also where the ‘Zapruder Film’ was first seen on television in 1975.
It’s a seriously cool film, but for whatever reason, it’s practically disappeared off the face of the earth.
Even in the internet age – where it feels like every grainy bootleg, every fan project, and every mid-70s oddity has been uploaded to YouTube in five different qualities – this thing has remained stubbornly elusive. You’ll find people swearing they saw it on a battered VHS in the ‘80s, or catching a blurry nth-generation copy at a fan club screening, but pristine versions? Forget it.
(Credits: Dangerous Minds / Apple Corps LTD)
A minor footnote to this film’s history is that it was picked apart for clues to the whole dumb “Paul is Dead” theory at the time. Braverman also made the opening montage to the dystopian sci-fi cult favourite, Soylent Green.
Braverman’s style in Condensed Cream is a collision of art school audacity and TV commercial slickness. He crams the entire Beatles saga—Hamburg grit to rooftop swan song—into a rapid-fire visual essay, using collage, colourised stills, kaleidoscopic animations, and snippets of archival film. The editing is brutal in its pace; the whole thing feels like it’s been cut together by someone mainlining the nervous energy of the 1960s itself.
One of its most striking achievements is how it nails the emotional arc of Beatlemania without a single talking head. You see the leather-jacketed rockers morph into cheeky mop-tops, then into psychedelic visionaries, then finally into the slightly weary, long-haired cultural elders of the late ‘60s. Braverman captures the screaming, the joy, the fatigue—the way the band became a mirror for the decade’s own growing pains.
Maybe that’s why its absence feels so strange. In an era where Beatles nostalgia is practically its own industry, Condensed Cream of the Beatles was a reminder that their story can still be told in ways that feel fresh, strange, and a little bit dangerous. Braverman distilled the madness, the beauty, and the pop-art energy of the Beatles into 14 minutes, and then—poof—it was gone. If someone at Apple has a clean print, here’s hoping they one day let it see the light again. Until then, it remains a phantom from a time when even nostalgia felt cutting-edge.
The Haunting George Harrison Song That Opens Mystery Horror Movie ‘Weapons’
Bryan Rolli
Ultimate Classic Rock
Published: August 10, 2025
Ian Showell, Keystone, Getty Images / New Line Cinema
Weapons debuted at No. 1 at the box office this weekend — what's the haunting classic rock song that opens the chilling new mystery horror film?
The movie — written and directed by Zach Cregger and starring Josh Brolin, Julia Garner and Alden Ehrenreich, among others — follows the baffling case of 17 children from the same classroom who all run away on the same night, seemingly abducted by an unseen force.
"Last night at 2:17 a.m. every child from Mrs. Gandy's class woke up, got out of bed, went downstairs, opened the front door, walked into the dark," the Weapons release poster says. "... And they never came back."
Weapons begins, accordingly, with the kids running out of their houses in the middle of the night. (Not a spoiler!) And their mysterious exodus is soundtracked, fittingly, by George Harrison's "Beware of Darkness."
What to Know About George Harrison's "Beware of Darkness"
"Beware of Darkness" appeared on Harrison's 1970 triple album All Things Must Pass, opening its second disc. As with many Harrison songs from that era, it's achingly beautiful but vaguely foreboding — and it's in that second light that the lyrics perfectly suit the premise of Weapons.
"Take care, beware of the thoughts that linger / Winding up inside your head / The hopelessness around you / In the dead of night / Beware of sadness," Harrison sings in the second verse. In the following verse he warns: "Watch out now / Take care, beware of soft shoe shufflers / Dancing down the sidewalks / As each unconscious sufferer / Wanders aimlessly / Beware of Maya."
"Beware of Darkness" warns against allowing illusion to get in the way of one's true purpose, reflecting the philosophy of the Radha Krishna Temple and its influence on Harrison's own life. The ex-Beatle wrote the song around the time he invited some members of the Hare Krishna movement to stay at his Friar Park estate in spring 1970, helping him restore the house and gardens to give the home a new spiritual atmosphere.
"'Beware Of Darkness' was written at home in England during a period when I had some of my friends from the Radha Krishna Temple staying: 'Watch out for Maya'," Harrison wrote in his 1980 memoir I, Me, Mine. (In Hinduism, "Maya" is the supernatural power wielded by gods and demons to create illusions.) "The lyrics are self-explanatory."
Plenty of uninitiated listeners will get acquainted with "Beware of Darkness" if Weapons' box office receipts serve as any indication. The film opened with an estimated $42.5 million this weekend, beating the other new release Freakier Friday, which bowed with $29 million.
