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The two remaining Beatles have teamed up for a duet on Starr's forthcoming solo album, Y Not. It's a band renuion! Sort of ... Paul McCartney appears on two tracks... "Paul was doing the Grammys, so he came over to the house and was playing bass on [new song] Peace Dream," Starr explained. "I played him this other track and Paul said, 'Give me the headphones. Give me a pair of cans'. And he went to the mic and he just invented that part where he follows on my vocal. That was all Paul McCartney, and there could be nothing...

LONDON – Lucy Vodden, who provided the inspiration for the Beatles' classic song "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds," has died after a long battle with lupus. She was 46. Her death was announced Monday by St. Thomas' Hospital in London, where she had been treated for the chronic disease for more than five years, and by her husband, Ross Vodden. Britain's Press Association said she died last Tuesday. Hospital officials said they could not confirm the day of her death. Vodden's connection to the Beatles dates back to her early days, when she made friends with schoolmate Julian Lennon,...

"This history of American popular music culminates with the splintering of music culture by the Fab Four." ...Critiquing critics "It is often said that history is written by the victors, but in the case of pop music, that is rarely true," Wald writes. "The victors tend to be out dancing, while the historians sit at their desks, assiduously chronicling music they cannot hear on mainstream radio." It's a valid conceit, yet it's hardly revolutionary. In fact, it was much more clearly articulated 30 years ago, when the sage philosopher David Lee Roth noted: "Rock critics like Elvis Costello because rock...

Just weeks after Bob Dylan announced he wanted to collaborate with fellow legend Sir Paul McCartney, moves are afoot to bring the two superstars together. Industry insiders say Macca is set to team up with Dylan in California over the summer, where the pair are expected to work on new songs as a duo. The news comes after Dylan declared this month that he found the idea of working with the former Beatle “exciting”. McCartney’s spokesman then declared their man would be “very interested” in a collaboration. “Paul has a home in California not too far from Bob’s so the...

On September 9, 2009, after a nearly 22-year wait, digitally remastered versions of all of the Beatles studio albums will be released, a press release has confirmed. Each album will feature the track listings and artwork as it was originally released in the U.K. and come with expanded booklets including original and newly written liner notes and rare photos. For a limited time, each of the Fab Four’s 12 proper albums will be “embedded” with a brief documentary about its making. The rereleases will include the Beatles’ 12 studio albums and Magical Mystery Tour as well as Past Masters Vol....

It's official: The Beatles will come together digitally this September for their much anticipated Rock Band debut. MTV Games has announced a September 9 launch date for the worldwide release of the Fab Four's interactive adventure, to be titled The Beatles: Rock Band... With a little help from their friends at Harmonix--the company that created the Rock Band concept--the Liverpool quartet will let you sing and play your way through all eras of its career. You'll be able to take on the role of John, Paul, George or Ringo, using either your Rock Band instruments or special Beatles-like instruments that...

The former Beatles will headline the Radio City Music Hall concert on April 4 for the David Lynch Foundation The David Lynch Foundation provides funds to teach students how to meditate so they can "change their world from within."

A previously unreleased version of The Beatles' 'Revolution 1' has found its way online. The recording, which is supposedly 'Take 20' of the song, is available to listen to via a YouTube link below. 'Take 20' of the song is notable, as it appears to bridge the gap between The Beatles' 'Revolution 1' and 'Revolution 9'. The main difference in the 'new' version of 'Revolution 1' and the version of the same song that appeared on 'The Beatles' (commonly known as 'The White Album') is the track's length. The unreleased version is a full seven minutes longer than its released...

A cassette tape of a "drunk" John Lennon recording a cover version of a rock 'n' roll song has sold at auction in Los Angeles for $30,000 (£20,200). The six-minute recording, made in autumn 1973, is of Lennon performing Lloyd Price's Just Because. "Debauched lyrics" improvised by "a drunk Lennon" include "just a little cocaine will set me right", auction house Bonhams and Butterfields said... Lennon's "slurred warbling" included, "I wanna take all them new singers, Carol and the other one with the nipples, I wanna take 'em and hold 'em tight," Bonhams and Butterfields said. "The background band speeds...

Since the song was released in 1967 the identity of the "pretty nurse selling poppies from a tray" has remained a mystery. But a schoolfriend of John Lennon's, who has written a book about growing up in Liverpool, claims to have the answer. Lennon will have known Beth Davidson (left) from childhood According to Stan Williams, she is Beth Davidson, who Lennon would have known from childhood. The moment which provided the inspiration came when Miss Davidson was selling poppies on Penny Lane, dressed in a cadet nurse's uniform. Some boys, including Lennon, saw her near Bioletti's barber's shop -...

London, England (CNS) - Sir Paul McCartney's head has been found in a bin by a homeless man. Anthony Silva has found the waxwork of the Beatle legend's head and earned himself a reward of 2,000 pounds [around $3,200]...The head, made in the 1960s and displayed at the Louis Tussauds museum in Great Yarmouth, is expected to sell from 5,000 pounds to 10,000 pounds, or around $8,000 to $16,000, at Carters Entertainment auctioneers.

Sculpture Starr, who released his most recent album Liverpool 8 in January, recently completed a tour of the US and Canada. The musician currently divides his time between Los Angeles, the South of France and his UK home in Surrey. In April, a foliage sculpture of Starr outside a railway station in Liverpool was beheaded by vandals. The performer had reportedly angered some locals when he told the BBC's Jonathan Ross he missed nothing about the city.

John Lennon's widow Yoko Ono and EMI Records, the world's fourth largest music company, dropped copyright infringement lawsuits against the makers of a documentary that used the portion of the song "Imagine" without permission. The news was made public on Tuesday by a Stanford Law School's Fair Use Projects release. The dismissal follows unsuccessful attempts by Yoko Ono in federal court and EMI Records in state court to enjoin Premise Media Corp's documentary, "Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed," because it uses a 15-second clip of the song. "We think it was clear from the beginning that our clients had every right...

Former Beatle Sir Paul McCartney has played his first gig in Israel in front of an estimated 40,000 cheering fans. The 66-year-old singer kicked off the historic concert with the familiar Beatles' song Hello, Goodbye at Tel Aviv's Yarkon Park. Some fans turned up wearing "I love Paul" and Beatles T-shirts. Earlier the star said he was "not nervous, but excited" ahead of the gig, which comes 43 years after The Beatles were banned from performing in Israel. Back in 1965 The Beatles were scheduled to perform, but were prevented taking the stage because of fears they could "corrupt the...

San Francisco Chronicle columnist Mark Morford has perhaps the kookiest explanation for Barack Obama’s rise that I’ve yet seen. No, it’s not merely his youthful vigor, or handsomeness, or even inspiring rhetoric. It is not fresh ideas or cool charisma or the fact that a black president will be historic and revolutionary in about a thousand different ways. It is something more. Even Bill Clinton, with all his effortless, winking charm, didn’t have what Obama has, which is a sort of powerful luminosity, a unique high-vibration integrity. Dismiss it all you like, but I’ve heard from far too many enormously...

Honors Moral Equivalency for Palestinian Terrorism - Remember these two drug-addled citizens of Greater Hirsutia and their famous advertisement for bed sores, AIDS, and how to help Communism succeed in its tyranny? They called it a "Peace Bed-In." Well, homely actress Maggie Gyllenhaal--who famously told us that America is to blame for 9/11 and that we deserved it--is teaming up with "peace activists" (I call them the capitulation team) and Ben & Jerry's at the ice cream company's New York to re-create the John Lennon and Yoko Ono Peace Bed-In of 1969. Joining Ms. Gyllenhaal will be photographer Roy Kerwood,...

The Beatles, Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band Nominated by Billy Childish, prime mover of British garage rock I had a Beatles wig Beatles guitar when I was four - so I know what I'm talking about, but Sgt Pepper signalled the death of rock'n'roll. Rock'n'roll is meant to be full of vitality and energy, and this album isn't. It sounds like it took six months to **** out. The Beatles were the victims of their success. This is middle-of-the-road rock music for plumbers. Or people who drive round in Citroens - the sort of corporate hippies who ruined rock...

LONDON (AFP) - Fans have rushed to buy the first "new" Beatles album for a generation -- a radical remixing of some of the group's most famous songs -- more than 35 years after the break-up of the iconic band. "Love", which has the backing of surviving Beatles Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr, comprises 26 of the Fab Four's hit songs, but many of them mixed together using previously unheard material from the studio. "I hope this will help people to hear Beatles music again," said Giles Martin, son of the group's original producer Sir George Martin who is often...

Former Beatle Sir Paul McCartney won the Man of the Year title at the GQ magazine awards held in London. Sir Paul was honoured for his latest album and his successful US tour. "Paul McCartney is not only one of our greatest living legends, he's also probably the most dignified," said GQ editor Dylan Jones. Other winners included Extras creator Ricky Gervais, presenter Jonathan Ross and singer Rod Stewart - who was given the outstanding achievement award. Embraced By PublicTop Gear presenter Jeremy Clarkson won TV personality of the year, and received his award from Stewart's fiancee Penny Lancaster. GQ...

We live, as the pundits say, in the United States of Amnesia. Even so, did the makers of "The U.S. vs. John Lennon," an inquiry into our government's bizarre attempt to neutralize the perceived political juice of that famed English singer-songwriter, really need to spend half the movie explaining the Vietnam War and the anti-war movement to viewers? If things are really that bad, then perhaps the filmmakers should explain who John Lennon is. After all, the Beatles date back over 40 years. For those who do remember or are aware of the zeitgeist of the counterculture, this lengthy regurgitation...

COLONIE, N.Y. -- As the live beat of Beatles classics begins bouncing off the walls of the Elks Lodge, a man with a gray mustache stands before his drum set and speaks up in a Liverpool lilt. "Let's take you back," he tells the crowd, "to the days when I used to play with a bunch of guys by the names of John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison." Ringo Starr's playing the Elks club? No. Meet Pete Best, the drummer booted from the band just before Beatlemania exploded. John, Paul, George and new guy Ringo went on to become voices...

LONDON - "When I get older, losing my hair, many years from now," sang Paul McCartney on "When I'm Sixty-Four," a jaunty tune from The Beatles' "Sgt. Pepper" album. A spokesman would not say how McCartney planned to spend the day, but he could be excused for skipping a party. It has been a traumatic year, in which the former Beatle split from his wife of four years, Heather Mills McCartney, amid lurid headlines about their relationship and her past. "People seem to be interested in him as a celebrity, but not as a musician," said Beatles historian Peter Doggett...

N.L. premier, ex-Beatle to spar on seal-hunt on Larry KingCBC News March 3, 2006 The premier of Newfoundland and Labrador will be on Larry King Live on Friday night to oppose the anti-seal-hunt views of rock legend Paul McCartney. Danny Williams's appearance on the CNN talk show was to be taped in advance. He was to defend the hunt, which McCartney and his wife, Heather, have been protesting this week during a visit to Prince Edward Island. McCartney, who visited seal pups in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, claimed Thursday that 95 per cent of the seals killed in Canada...

The Cuban President, Fidel Castro, has paid homage to John Lennon at the unveiling of a statue of the late pop singer in Havana. The ceremony in the Cuban capital's El Vedado Park coincided with the 20th anniversary of John Lennon's murder in New York. President Castro praised Lennon as a revolutionary, whose thinking and ideas made him great. In the 1960s, when Lennon's band The Beatles topped the charts throughout the world, the Cuban authorities denounced their music as decadent. But an official statement said recently declassified US documents showed how Lennon had suffered for his opposition to the...

First came Paul vs. John, which begat Dirk vs. Nasty, which begat Eric vs. Neil. Monty Python member Eric Idle and comedic songwriter Neil Innes were the close friends and collaborators who created the Rutles three decades ago as a parody of the Beatles -- a very popular band, you may recall, whose bitter breakup left close friends/collaborators Paul McCartney and John Lennon at each others' throats. In the wake of the recently released straight-to-DVD "The Rutles 2: Can't Buy Me Lunch," Idle, who plays McCartney stand-in Dirk McQuickly, and Innes, who plays Lennon stand-in Ron Nasty and wrote the...

A roll of toilet paper that was criticised by the Beatles is up for auction on Ebay. The snubbed toilet roll was not received with appreciation by the members of the band, who noted with disgust that it was "too hard and shiny". Despite it giving them something to read during their visit to the toilet, they were also unimpressed with the fact that each sheet had "EMI LTD" stamped on it. The toilet paper, which once sat in an Abbey Road lavatory, has been kept in a glass box since being auctioned at a 1980 Abbey Road sale, reports...

Greg Hassall and Charles Purcell do battle over the fab four. FOR OK, Ob-la-di Ob-la-da is the most annoying song ever written. And you won't find Revolution No 9 on too many iPods. But how many bands' dud tracks can you count on one hand? The Beatles deserve their place in the pop pantheon. They revolutionised the way pop music was written, recorded and talked about. They were funny, charismatic, hungry to learn and unafraid of controversy. They matured spectacularly over seven tumultuous years, then quit on a high note with the peerless Abbey Road. They were a genuine band,...

Lennon, the new musical about John Lennon's life set to open next August, will have two unpublished songs that Yoko Ono, Lennon's widow, has given to Don Scardino, writer and director of the production. The songs, India, India and I Don't Want to Lose You, exist only on private recordings that Lennon made in his last years. I Don't Want to Lose You, a slow, introspective ballad, was one of three songs Ono gave to the surviving Beatles when they reunited in the early 1990s to complete a few Lennon songs for The Beatles Anthology. An electronic hum in the...

AT THE very height of Beatlemania, the Fab Four played to an astonishing 500,000 people during a 1964 whirlwind tour of the US. Today, 40 years on, Sir Paul McCartney will be seen by more than 700,000 fans in a 13-date European tour. Not bad for a man who turns 62 this month. But even though he is in numerical terms a bigger draw than the Beatles ever were, he is not about to play down the debt he owes to his years in the biggest pop group of all time. In his most revealing interview ever, McCartney has talked...

McCartney speaks out against war Sir Paul wrote a song, Freedom, after the 11 September attacks Former Beatle Sir Paul McCartney has criticised the UK government for being too hasty in going to war in Iraq. "Maybe our government went in too fast with the Americans," he told the weekly Portuguese magazine Visao on Thursday. "It would have been better if the UN had been together," the 61-year-old singer continued. "Now it's become very bloody with Iraq, it's very difficult." The singer, who is currently touring Europe, opens the Rock in Rio music festival in Lisbon on Friday. Sir Paul...

Beatlemania!40 years ago today, the Beatles changed America foreverBy David Fricke Cover photo by John Dominis Shortly after 8 p.m. on Sunday, February 9th, 1964, a short, stiff man with rubbery bloodhound features -- Ed Sullivan, the host of the highest-rated variety hour on American television -- addressed his New York studio audience and the folks tuned in at home over the CBS network. "Yesterday and today, our theater's been jammed with newspapermen and hundreds of photographers from all over the nation," Sullivan said in a nasally chuckling voice. "And these veterans agreed with me that the city never...

<p>YOKO Ono still knows how to get a man to take his clothes off. Peter Jennings was interviewing Ono at last week's ArtWalk event for the Coalition for the Homeless when she somehow talked the news anchor into getting inside a giant black bag with her in front of 500 people at Cooper Union's Great Hall. A few moments later, both emerged with Jennings struggling to put his shirt back on and Ono's own garb disheveled. While no one's quite sure what happened in the bag, everyone was craning their necks to get a glimpse of Jennings bare-chested - including his wife, Kayce Freed, seated in the front row with her mother.</p>

Hi all. I have just read the most amazing political novel. It's called The American Beatles, and it's by a kid named Jon Bell at N.C. State. It's about what might happen if the Beatles existed today, in America: but it's also a ruthless and hilarious critique of the modern media and the American right-wing community. It's a damn good book. You can read it online in e-book form at BeatlesNovel.com.

Beatles Strip 'Let It Be' for 'Naked' Release The surviving members of rock legends The Beatles are releasing a new version of their last ever album, "Let It Be" - with a different name. Sir Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr have spent months working on the album, which includes classics "Long and Winding Road" and "Get Back" - and are promising an entirely new sound for fans. The pair have stripped back the Wall Of Sound effect put on the LP by producer Phil Spector, so just the Fab Four themselves can be heard. The new release - called "Let...

Sir Paul McCartney, 61, who had a hit with Band on the Run, was out in London.

Q: The first song on "Ringo Rama" is Eye to Eye. A: Eye to Eye. Q: It sets the tone for what the album and Ringo Starr are all about, peace, love… A: …and love, yeah. It's -- you know I am a product of the '60s. And if you've ever seen my live tours, you know, the All-Starr tours, I'm -- every song is peace and love. I've got the peace sign going there and I've still got it going because, you know, it's, it's what I'm about. I am about peace and love. I am about non-violence....

Did McCartney's Yesterday get a nudge from Nat? Times of London Sunday, July 06, 2003 Music experts say Sir Paul McCartney subconsciously borrowed the melody of his classic ballad Yesterday from a Nat King Cole record. The origins of Yesterday, which has been recorded by more than 2,000 artists and played on the radio more than six million times, has always been a mystery -- not least to McCartney himself. He woke up in his flat in London in May 1965 with the song in his head. He realized that he might have borrowed the arrangement from another song and...

<p>PHILADELPHIA — Four teenagers charged with beating a 16-year-old boy to death plotted the killing for weeks and listened to the Beatles song "Helter Skelter" (search) several dozen times before the murder, according to an alleged confession read in court.</p>

Gimme money, it’s what I want AFTER 40 years in the charts the Beatles have reached No1 again. But this time they are topping the business charts: the music-rights company they started has been named as the firm with the fastest-growing profits in the Sunday Times Profit Track table, write John O’Donnell and Zoe Brennan. Their business, Apple Corps, heads the table ranking Britain’s top 100 private companies based on profit growth. The list also includes Paul Smith, the clothes designer, and Travelex, the foreign-exchange operator. The table, co-sponsored by Price Waterhouse Coopers, appears today in the print edition as...

Shatner's dubious honourMay 05, 2003STAR Trek legend William Shatner's version of Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds has been voted the worst Beatles cover of all time. The former Captain Kirk, 72, beat children's TV pigs Pinky and Perky, who did a version of All My Loving, and Will Young and Gareth Gates with The Long and Winding Road. Viewers voted in a BBC online poll to mark the 40th anniversary of The Beatles' first No 1, From Me to You. Other flops in the BBC online poll included grand prix champ Damon Hill's Drive My Car; Bananarama with French...

{snip} At a conservative estimate, the lad from a Liverpool council estate who left school at the first opportunity is worth £700million. Last year, when his US tour grossed £70million, no other performer earned more than him. And it is something he is immensely proud of. When I read about things like that I think, that's not me. [My wife] said to me this morning, 'I don't think of you as rich, you know.' And I said, 'I don't either.' But I am. And the best thing about it is being able to help friends and relatives with health...

Ringo Starr's Double Life Since 1989, when he decided to give up various forms of substance abuse and rekindle his performing career, Ringo Starr has lived a double life, musically. In one, he is the principal attraction of the All-Starrs, a nostalgia band in which members of defunct groups from the 1960's and 1970's (this year's model will stretch into the 1980's) join Mr. Starr to take turns singing their hits. In the other, he pops into the studio every few years to record an album of new material. The two lives rarely meet: very few of Mr. Starr's post-1989...