Though Willie Nelson never directly collaborated with any of the Beatles, some members had a special connection to him and his music. “The people that impressed me when I was starting to listen to music in my early teens were Hank Williams and a lot of the country [musicians],” said Ringo Starr, who released two of his own country albums—Beaucoups of Blues (1970), and Look Up in 2025. Drawn to he music of country bluesman Lightnin’ Hopkins, Starr nearly moved to Nelson’s home state of Texas when he was 19.
“John and I went down to the embassy and filled in all these forms, and you know, we were just teenagers then,” added Starr. “We even had a list of factories where we wanted to apply for jobs because I was working in a factory at the time. But then, when we went back to the embassy, we were given more paperwork with more questions. We then turned back into teenagers and just ripped them up. Sod it. That would have been an interesting move if I’d have done that.”
Always the more country-leaning of the Beatles, Starr also wrote and co-wrote some of the band’s more country and western-influenced songs, including “Don’t Pass Me By” from their ’68 White Album and “What Goes On,” off Rubber Soul in 1965. The Beatles also recorded and released a cover of “Act Naturally” by the late country legend Buck Owens as the B-side to “Yesterday” in the U.S., which features Starr on lead vocals.
Nelson also had a fondness for the band’s music, first covering the Beatles in 1966 and revisiting their songbook for nearly 60 more years, and also covered George Harrison‘s “All Things Must Pass,” and with John Lennon‘s “Watching the Wheels” and “Imagine.”
Here’s a look behind three Beatles songs Nelson covered from the mid-’60s through the early 2020s.
“Yesterday” (1966)
Nelson’s 1966 live album, Country Music Concert, which included his earlier hit “Night Life,” which he wrote for D Records the same week as Patsy Cline‘s 1961 hit, “Crazy,” while traveling from his home in Pasadena, Texas, to perform at the Esquire Ballroom in Houston.
More than 20 years after first covering “Yesterday,” Nelson revisited the song on a duet with lifelong Merle Haggard on their second collaborative album, Seashores of Old Mexico, in 1987.
“One After 909” (1995)
The 1995 tribute album, Come Together: America Salutes The Beatles, featured covers of Beatles classics performed mostly by country artists. The album features Kris Kristofferson’s rendition of “Paperback Writer,” Tanya Tucker’s “Something,” and Randy Travis’ cover of”Nowhere Man.” Nelson chose the Beatles’ Let It Be track, “One After 909.”
Originally recorded in 1963 and later released on the Beatles’ final album, Let It Be, in 1970, “One After 909” was also part of the band’s early live sets. Lennon first wrote the song, about a woman who leaves her boyfriend on the 909 train, in 1959 while visiting his grandparents, with whom he lived for the first five years of his life, in Liverpool.
“With a Little Help From My Friends” (2022)
In 2022, Willie Nelson released his 97th studio album, A Beautiful Time, on his 89th birthday with a collection of new songs and a few covers, including Leonard Cohen’s “Tower Of Song” and the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band classic, “With a Little Help From My Friends.” Musically, Nelson’s harmonica-charged version is not as faithful to the original.
Photo: Darlene Pfister/Star Tribune via Getty Images