More than 50 years after their iconic rooftop concert, The Beatles won the 2024 Grammy’s Best Music Video for I’m Only Sleeping.
The iconic track’s music video went up against In Your Love by Tyler Childers, What Was I Made For by Billie Eilish, Count Me Out by Kendrick Lamar, and Rush by Troye Sivan.
The single was for The Beatles’ 1966 studio album Revolver. According to Rolling Stone, George Harrison’s well-known eight-measure guitar solo for the song was inspired by a mistake. It was noted that after a music engineer threaded the multitrack tape incorrectly, the bandmates heard the “familiar blurred, slurping sound.”
Paul McCartney recalled hearing the sound and everyone in the room was notably floored. “My God, that is fantastic,” he recalled everyone saying. “Can we do that for real?”
Music engineer Geoff Emerick described the recording day as being an “interminable day” and it lasted nine hours. “I can still picture George hunched over his guitar for hours on end,” Emerick explained in 2006. “Headphones clamped on, brows furrowed in concentration.”
Meanwhile, the latest Grammy award is being presented to The Beatles’ surviving bandmates Ringo Starr and Paul McCartney. John Lennon was assassinated in Dec. 1980 by one of his former fans, Mark David Chapman. More than 20 years later, George Harrison died of lung cancer in Nov. 2001.
Paul McCartney Says Deaths of Beatles Bandmates Still a ‘Bitter Pillow to Swallow’
During a Nov. 2023 interview with The Times, Paul McCartney opened up about how he struggles with the losses of both his The Beatles bandmates John Lennon and George Harrison. He also said looking at photos of the late musicians is still bittersweet.
“The sweet is ‘How lucky was I to have those men in my life,’” McCartney explained. “But the fact that they’re not here is bitter. I see photos of George and remember how we went hitchhiking, sitting by the road, buying ourselves creamed rice. John and I went hitchhiking too. We ended up in Paris.”
McCartney also said that pictures make all the memories flood back. “But, oh God, it’s sad these guys are not here,” he continued. “It’s a bitter pill you just have to swallow and then get on with the sweetness, you know? That’s the way I do it.”
The music video for The Beatles’ “final” single Now and Then was released in early Nov. 2023. McCartney first spoke about the track in June 2023.