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...A mono-sound copy Two Virgins, which he recorded with Yoko Ono, is expected to fetch at least £2,500. When the avant-garde LP was released in November 1968 it was notable for being sold in brown paper bags because the sleeve controversially featured a naked picture of the famous couple on the cover. Although a limited release of 5,000 stereo versions of the album were available in shops, fans had to write to the record label to purchase a mono copy of the record. The exact number of mono copies sold is not known, but auction organisers say it is likely...

Ringo Starr kept his 70th birthday celebration going on Tuesday night (July 7) with a concert at New York's Radio City Music Hall that was positively star-studded, thanks in part to "a little help from his friend," Paul McCartney. The former Beatles bandmates topped off the show by surprising audience members with a performance of "Birthday" from "The Beatles [White Album]," and appropriately so. With McCartney on lead vocals and Starr behind the drum kit, the duo performed with classic rock 'n' roll flair. "Birthday" was preceded by another all-star collaboration, when Ringo Starr & His All-Starr Band played "With...

THE shocking images of oil-covered wildlife and ruined beaches across the Gulf of Mexico have horrified millions. But passionate green campaigner Sir Paul McCartney believes the environmental disaster may have a silver lining, with the search for clean, renewable energy now being pushed forward. The Beatles legend said: "Sadly we need disasters like this to show people. Some people don't believe in climate warming - like those who don't believe there was a Holocaust. "But the facts indicate that there's something going on and we've got to be aware of it if we want our kids to inherit a decent...

Each Sunday I post a music clip at our site and detail some of the history behind the song and the artist. I haven't posted them here before, because I'm still not sure of the protocol with regard to linking back to the site I post at. Today's song is 'Let It Be' from The Beatles, and even though it's probably a song we have all heard hundreds of times, if not more, most of us are unaware of the history of the song, in its many different versions.

In some ways Yoko Ono is still an amateur. At “We Are Plastic Ono Band,” mixing concert and tribute at the Brooklyn Academy of Music on Tuesday night, her voice could be shaky and her stage patter giggly and unplanned. She looked genuinely surprised when the audience interrupted her and sang “Happy Birthday.” (She turns 77 on Feb. 18.) She’s also untamed. She can still let loose the bleats, wails, yips, howls and shrieks that alienated Beatles fans in the 1960s and inspired avant-rockers soon afterward. Ms. Ono’s well-preserved air of naïveté — and the license it gives her to...

One of Abbey Road Studios’ most famous clients hopes that the facility, which has reportedly been put up for sale, can be saved. Paul McCartney, speaking to the BBC’s Newsnight television show on Tuesday, said there have been efforts to save Abbey Road by “a few people who have been associated with the studio for a long time,” although he did not name those people or include himself among them. “I have so many memories there with the Beatles,” he added. “It still is a great studio. So it would be lovely for someone to get a thing together to...

..former Beatles drummer, Ringo Starr has found God at nearly 70 years of age. This was revealed in a story written by Ben Todd who said, “John Lennon caused a worldwide storm by claiming that the Beatles were more popular than Jesus. “Now, more than four decades on, it seems his former bandmate Ringo Starr has acknowledged a humbler place in the grand scheme of things.

It's easy to understand musician Dhani Harrison's antipathy toward the general concept of being in a rock band. After all, he got loads of priceless firsthand information from his father about the ups and downsides of making it to the absolute peak of pop music success during his tenure with the Beatles. It was George Harrison who famously said, "The biggest break in my career was getting into the Beatles in 1962. The second biggest break since then is getting out of them." He also once observed that "I wanted to be successful, not famous..." It's a group that includes...

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,...

Introduction this week of the new video game "The Beatles: Rock Band" reminds us of an odd fact about these music artists who were once widely considered to be the definition of avant garde: the Beatles have often been, really, one beat behind. Believe it or not, up until now music by the Beatles has not been available for sale on the Internet. With "The Beatles: Rock Band," players will be able to download up to 45 songs that they can perform with the Fab Four in such reproduced settings as "The Ed Sullivan Show," Shea Stadium and the Abbey...

Forty years ago on Saturday, one of the pop world's most infamous and imitated album covers was shot in a little side street in north London... On the 8 August 1969 that the Fab Four walked out of No 3 Abbey Road, having finished basic work on what would be - and they subsequently said they knew would be - their last album. A policeman held up the traffic, the band walked back and forth a few times and that was that ...A lesser noted curiosity is that the album cover has no writing on it and is just the...

LONDON (AFP) — Beatles legend and famous vegetarian Paul McCartney was joined by John Lennon's widow Yoko Ono Monday to launch an appeal for "meat-free Mondays." McCartney said going vegetarian, even for just one day a week, was good for the environment because of research suggesting it cuts greenhouse gas emissions from the world's livestock population. "I thought this was a great idea. To just reduce your meat intake maybe by one day a week and this would seriously benefit the planet," he told reporters, alongside Ono and a bevy of other stars including Kelly Osbourne and Moby. Lennon's widow...

"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...

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...

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...

He's already painted himself as the most avant garde Beatle, now in what seems like another attempt to rewrite history, Sir Paul McCartney claims he was responsible for radicalising their their political views In a statement that forces us to read Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da as a commentary on American neo-colonialism, Sir Paul has said that it is he who turned the Beatles on to politics, introducing John, Paul and Ringo to the evils of the Vietnam war. Whereas John Lennon is widely considered the "political one", penning songs like Revolution and Give Peace a Chance, sweet Sir Paul is now presenting...

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.