John Lennon's Record Collection: Derek Martin - Daddy Rollin' Stone

Beatles News

• Cast for Beatles' 'Yellow Submarine' remake reported to be set (Los Angeles Time)
• Ringo Starr turning 70: Fab drummer talks about life, music (USA Today)
• Secret wedding for Beatle? (iAfrica.com)
• Hanks and Roberts Team for 'Larry Crowne,' 'Yellow Sumbarine' Gets Its Beatles: Movie Casting (Moviefone)
• George Harrison's son Dhani denies sons of The Beatles are to form band (Monsters and Critics.com)

John Lennon on the Album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band and "A Day in the Life"

"Sgt. Pepper is the one. It was a peak. Paul and I were definitely working together, especially on 'A Day in the Life,' that was real . . . The way we wrote a lot of the time: you'd write the good bit, the part that was easy, like 'I read the news today' or whatever it was, then when you got stuck or whenever it got hard, instead of carrying on, you just drop it. Then we would meet each other, and I would sing half, and he would be inspired to write the next bit and vice versa. He was a bit shy about it because I think he thought it's already a good song. Sometimes we wouldn't let each other interfere with a song either, because you tend to be a bit lax with someone else's stuff, you experiment a bit. So we were doing it in his room with the piano. He said, 'Should we do this?' 'Yeah, let's do that.'

"I keep saying that I always preferred the double album, because my music is better on the double album. I don't care about the whole concept of Pepper, it might be better, but the music was better for me on the double album, because I'm being myself on it. I think it's as simple as the new album, like 'I'm So Tired' is just the guitar. I felt more at ease with that than the production. I don't like production so much. But Pepper was a peak all right."

Pictures of Pattie Boyd + George Harrison

Beatles News

• What the critics say: Chris Evans' Radio 2 breakfast show debut (BBC News)
• Yoko Ono to pen autobiography, promises Beatles' details (Consequence of Sound)
• Ringo Starr Says 'Y Not' For New Album, Tour (Billboard)
• The Franklin Institute Presents 'Larry Kane's Ticket to Ride' Beginning March 5 (PR Newswire)

George Harrison on Being a Musician

"I'm a musician. I don't know why. This is a thing that I've looked back on since my birth. Many people feel that life is pre-destined. I think it is vaguely, but it's still up to you which way your life's going to go. All I've ever done is to keep being me and it's just all worked out. It just did it all . . . magic . . . it just did it. We never planned anything. So it's obvious--because I'm a musician now, that's what I was destined to be. It's my gig."

Paul McCartney on "Strawberry Fields Forever"

"There's a lot of random in our songs -- 'Strawberry Fields' is the name of a Salvation Army School -- by the time we've taken it through the writing stage, thinking of it, playing it to the others, writing it, and letting them think of bits, recording it once and deciding it's not quite right and do it again and then find, 'Oh, that's it, the solo comes here and that goes there,' then bang, you have the jigsaw puzzle.

"That happens with all our songs, except the ones we want to keep really simple, like 'When I'm Sixty-Four' and 'Fixing a Hole.'

"That wasn't 'I buried Paul' at all, that was John saying 'cranberry sauce.' It was the end of 'Strawberry Fields.' That's John humour. John would say something totally out of sync, like 'cranberry sauce.' If you don't realise that John's apt to say 'cranberry sauce' when he feels like it, then you start to hear a funny little word there, and you think, 'Aha!'"