The sons of the Beatles are teaming up to carry the legacy forward.
John Lennon’s son Sean Ono Lennon, Paul McCartney’s son James McCartney, and Ringo Starr’s son Zak Starkey joined forces on a new track titled “Rip Off,” as teased by Starkey on social media.
Starkey, 59, is part of the supergroup Mantra of the Cosmos, alongside Oasis guitarist Andy Bell and Happy Mondays’ Mark Berry and Shaun Ryder. James McCartney, 47, and Sean Ono Lennon, 49, previously collaborated on the 2024 track “Primrose Hill.”
Sean Ono Lennon, who has pursued a solo music career and is the son of Yoko Ono, has said that living in the spotlight is part of his family’s legacy.
“When you’ve never experienced anything else, it’s not weird — it’s simply your life,” he told Rolling Stone in 1998. “I never knew that doing interviews and having press was weird. You take it as it comes. You don’t choose your name, you don’t choose your parents. You’re hurled into this earth, and life hits you like a slap on the ass. Boom, you’re born. Now deal with it.”
James McCartney previously opened up about the pressure of living up to the Beatles in a 2013 interview.
“It’s hard to live up to the Beatles,” he said at the time, according to The Guardian. “When Wings toured they got slated. Even Dad found it hard living up to the Beatles. I started out playing under an alias because I wanted to start quietly. I had to serve my time as a musician and wait until I had a good body of songs and for a time when both myself and my music were ready. I don’t want to sit around. I want to earn my own living.”
The Beatles’ final track, “Now and Then,” was released in November 2023, marking their first new song in decades. Based on a demo recorded by John Lennon before his death in 1980, the song was initially revisited by the remaining members, including the late George Harrison, who died in 2001, in the 1990s.
It was ultimately completed in 2022 with the help of advanced audio restoration technology, developed during the making of Peter Jackson’s Disney+ documentary “Get Back.”
“There it was, John’s voice, crystal clear.” Paul McCartney said in a news release at the time, according to Entertainment Weekly. “It’s quite emotional, and we all play on it. It’s a genuine Beatles recording. In 2023 to still be working on Beatles music, and about to release a new song the public haven’t heard, I think it’s an exciting thing.”
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