Collaborations between ex-Beatles

• 1. Introduction

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  Collaborations between ex-Beatles began before the ink was dry on the band's break-up in April 1970. John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr went on to build remarkable solo careers. Yet the pull they felt toward each other never entirely disappeared. What's striking is how the story of their post-Beatles work together is not a single reunion but a scattered, decades-long web of appearances, studio sessions, and recorded tributes. Three songs stand apart from all the rest. "Free as a Bird," "Real Love," and "Now and Then" are the only recordings that brought all four men together as credited collaborators after 1970. Every other pairing or grouping fell short of that full quartet. Who worked with whom, and who pointedly avoided whom, turns out to say a great deal about the friendships and fractures that outlasted the band itself.

• 2. The Ringo Exception

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  Ringo Starr's 1973 album Ringo occupies a singular place in Beatles history. It is the only album released while John Lennon was still alive to feature compositions and performances by all four ex-Beatles, though they contributed to separate songs rather than recording in the same room together. That distinction mattered enormously. The album did not announce itself as a reunion; it simply assembled the four men track by track, song by song, each lending his voice or craft to a bandmate's solo project. The feat was not repeated in Lennon's lifetime. Starr's follow-up, Ringo's Rotogravure in 1976, came close: all four former bandmates contributed compositions, but Harrison did not play on the album. A Carl Perkins tribute record released in 1996, Go Cat Go!, drew contributions from McCartney, Harrison, and Starr individually, and included a Lennon recording that dated back to 1969.

• 3. Early Alliances and One Absence

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  In the early 1970s, a clear pattern emerged in who was working with whom. Harrison and Starr collaborated frequently, and Lennon crossed paths with either Harrison or Starr on multiple projects. McCartney was conspicuously absent from all three. None of the other three worked with him during that period. The Concert for Bangladesh, which Harrison staged in New York City in August 1971, drew Starr into the fold as a participant. Harrison and Lennon also collaborated on projects extending into that same era. For McCartney's part, the studio door that once connected him to Lennon remained shut after an unreleased jam session on the 28th of March 1974, later bootlegged under the title A Toot and a Snore in '74. That session was never formally released in Lennon's lifetime and the two men never recorded together again.

• 4. Lennon's Legacy in Sound

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  John Lennon's death in 1980 did not erase his presence from subsequent collaborations between the surviving three. "Free as a Bird" in 1995 and "Real Love" in 1996 were released as Beatles recordings, with Lennon's original demo recordings forming the foundation and the remaining three adding their parts. "Now and Then" followed in 2023, again using a Lennon recording from 1979 as its basis. The Go Cat Go! Carl Perkins tribute album, also released in 1996, similarly threaded a Lennon recording from 1969 alongside new contributions from McCartney, Harrison, and Starr. Harrison's own 1981 single "All Those Years Ago" brought Starr and McCartney into the studio together for a tribute track recorded in the wake of Lennon's death. That single represents one of the first times all three surviving members united on a recording after losing their bandmate.

• 5. After Harrison

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  George Harrison died in 2001, and his absence reshaped the remaining collaborations as fundamentally as Lennon's had. Since Harrison's death, McCartney and Starr have performed and recorded together on several occasions. Starr's albums from the 2000s onward reflect this continued connection. His 2009 album Y Not, his 2017 Give More Love, and his 2019 What's My Name all included McCartney's contributions. The two men appeared together on Ringo Starr singles through the 2020s, including "Here's to the Nights" in 2020 and "Feeling The Sunlight" in 2023. In that same year, McCartney and Starr were among the contributors to a Dolly Parton album, Rockstar, on a version of "Let It Be." McCartney's own album The Boys of Dungeon Lane, recorded between 2021 and 2025 and scheduled for 2026 release, also includes Starr's participation, extending the thread of their partnership well into the current decade.

• 6. The Three All-Four Recordings

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  "Free as a Bird" was recorded using a Lennon demo from 1977 and released in 1995. "Real Love" drew from a 1979 Lennon recording and came out in 1996. "Now and Then" arrived in 2023, again built around a 1979 Lennon home recording. These three are the only post-break-up recordings credited to all four members of the Beatles. Every other project in the decades-long catalogue of ex-Beatles collaborations involved three, two, or one of the former bandmates. The span from 1995 to 2023 means the quest to assemble all four voices on a single release stretched across nearly thirty years, even if posthumously. "Now and Then" closed that chapter, at least for now, as the last recording to bring the complete group's work together under the Beatles name.