{"id":246348,"date":"2025-09-22T13:01:13","date_gmt":"2025-09-22T13:01:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/246348\/"},"modified":"2025-09-22T13:01:13","modified_gmt":"2025-09-22T13:01:13","slug":"3-songs-by-the-beatles-covered-by-willie-nelson-1966-2022","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/246348\/","title":{"rendered":"3 Songs by The Beatles Covered by Willie Nelson (1966-2022)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Though Willie Nelson<\/a> never directly collaborated with any of the Beatles<\/a>, some members had a special connection to him and his music. \u201cThe 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],\u201d said Ringo Starr<\/a>, who released two of his own country albums\u2014Beaucoups of Blues (1970), and\u00a0Look Up in 2025. Drawn to he music of country bluesman Lightnin\u2019 Hopkins, Starr nearly moved to Nelson\u2019s home state of Texas when he was 19.<\/p>\n

\u201cJohn and I went down to the embassy and filled in all these forms, and you know, we were just teenagers then,\u201d added Starr. \u201cWe 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\u2019d have done that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Always the more country-leaning of the\u00a0Beatles, Starr also wrote and co-wrote some of the band\u2019s more country and western-influenced songs, including \u201cDon\u2019t Pass Me By\u201d from their \u201968\u00a0White Album\u00a0and \u201cWhat Goes On,\u201d\u00a0off\u00a0Rubber Soul\u00a0in 1965. The Beatles also recorded and released a cover of \u201cAct Naturally<\/a>\u201d by the late country legend\u00a0Buck Owens<\/a>\u00a0as the\u00a0B-side\u00a0to \u201cYesterday\u201d in the U.S., which features Starr on lead vocals.<\/p>\n

Nelson also had a fondness for the band\u2019s music, first covering the Beatles in 1966 and revisiting their songbook for nearly 60 more years, and also covered George Harrison<\/a>\u2018s \u201cAll Things Must Pass,\u201d and with John Lennon<\/a>\u2018s\u00a0\u201cWatching the Wheels\u201d\u00a0and \u201cImagine.\u201d<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s a look behind three Beatles songs Nelson covered from the mid-\u201960s through the early 2020s.<\/p>\n

[RELATED: The Willie Nelson Song That Helped Ray Price Introduce the \u201cCountrypolitan\u201d Subgenre in the Early 1960s]<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cYesterday\u201d (1966)<\/p>\n

Nelson\u2019s 1966 live album, Country Music Concert, which included his earlier hit \u201cNight Life,\u201d which he wrote for D Records the same week as Patsy Cline<\/a>\u2018s 1961 hit, \u201cCrazy,\u201d while traveling from his home in Pasadena, Texas, to perform at the\u00a0Esquire Ballroom\u00a0in\u00a0Houston.<\/p>\n

More than 20 years after first covering \u201cYesterday,\u201d Nelson revisited the song on a duet with lifelong Merle Haggard<\/a> on their second collaborative album, Seashores of Old Mexico, in 1987.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cOne After 909\u201d (1995)<\/p>\n

The 1995 tribute album, Come Together: America Salutes The Beatles, featured covers of Beatles classics performed mostly by country artists. \u00a0The album features Kris Kristofferson\u2019s rendition of \u201cPaperback Writer,\u201d Tanya Tucker\u2019s \u201cSomething,\u201d and Randy Travis\u2019 cover of\u201dNowhere Man.\u201d Nelson chose the Beatles\u2019 Let It Be track, \u201cOne After 909.\u201d<\/p>\n

Originally recorded in 1963 and later released on the Beatles\u2019 final album, Let It Be, in 1970, \u201cOne After 909\u201d was also part of the band\u2019s 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. <\/p>\n

\u201cWith a Little Help From My Friends\u201d (2022)<\/p>\n

In 2022, Willie Nelson released his 97th studio album,\u00a0A Beautiful Time, on his 89th birthday with a collection of new songs and a few covers, including Leonard Cohen\u2019s\u00a0\u201cTower Of Song\u201d and the Beatles\u2019 Sgt. Pepper\u2019s Lonely Hearts Club Band classic, \u201cWith a Little Help From My Friends.\u201d Musically, Nelson\u2019s harmonica-charged version is not as faithful to the original.<\/p>\n

Photo: Darlene Pfister\/Star Tribune via Getty Images<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Though Willie Nelson never directly collaborated with any of the Beatles, some members had a special connection to…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":246349,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[59452,171,975,67,132,68,27470],"class_list":{"0":"post-246348","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-beatles","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-music","11":"tag-united-states","12":"tag-unitedstates","13":"tag-us","14":"tag-willie-nelson"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115248082785111583","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/246348","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=246348"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/246348\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/246349"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=246348"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=246348"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=246348"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}