Beatles News

It's the time of year when leaves are changing, it's getting darker earlier, and just about everything appears to have a pumpkin-flavored version in stores.

It's also the time of year when I tend to pull out some Julian Lennon albums.

I don't quite know why it is, but records "Valotte" (his first, released Oct. 15, 1984) and "Help Yourself" (his fourth, released Aug. 20, 1991) are perfect fall soundtracks for me. I own all of Julian's albums (and I've got Sean Lennon's music, too; John's kids are both musically gifted), and I enjoy them all. "The Secret Value of Daydreaming," "Mr. Jordan," "Photograph Smile" and "Everything Changes" all are worthy records and suit different moods.

But here I am, smelling burning leaves and feeling that prickly hint of winter wind and it gets me to thinking of songs like "Valotte," "Space," "Well I Don't Know," "Too Late for Goodbyes" and "Lonely" (all from "Valotte"), and "Rebel King," "Saltwater," "Help Yourself," "Other Side of Town" and "Take Me Home" (all from "Help Yourself").

Part of it no doubt goes back to junior high and high school. I got "Valotte" as a Christmas present around eighth grade, and I bought "Help Yourself" probably around my freshman year details

“The Lennon Report” is a brisk, low-budget drama that re-creates the events of Dec. 8, 1980, as experienced by the police, doctors and reporters involved. The assassination of John Lennon was an earthquake — the whole country stopped and mourned for days — but the epicenter was New York City, where Lennon lived and where Mark David Chapman committed the murder.

Honestly, I can’t tell for sure how younger people will react to this film. After all, it is almost impossible, and it should be impossible, to truly mourn tragedies that took place before you were born. To do so would be akin to rejecting the world, when the business of each generation is to embrace the world and move life forward.

But the public tragedies that take place during our own lives can be lasting and unshakeable, and for many of a certain age, the death of John Lennon is not something we’ve ever quite gotten over. Every Beatles song brings an undertone of mourning. Every film or newsreel brings an underlying pain.

So I can’t tell if this movie is for everybody, or rather just for people old enough to remember John Lennon as a living person. In any case, it’s a satisfying drama that invert details

Forty years ago, Paul McCartney and Denny Laine toured America as part of Wings, bringing classic songs such as "Band On The Run" and "Jet" to life. On Sunday night, Laine and his own band will bring those songs to audiences once again, performing the album in its entirety at the Iron Horse Music Hall.

"The show is the 'Band On The Run' album plus another nine numbers that I'm associated with outside the album" said Laine, who wrote his first hit song, "Go Now," with the Moody Blues in 1964 and co-wrote Wings hit "Mull of Kintyre" with McCartney in 1977. "There will a couple 'Moodys' in there, some other Wings material from other albums and sometimes I'll put acoustic songs in the middle and play what comes to mind," he said.

Laine said that being the 40th anniversary of the band's "Wings Over America" tour – coupled with feedback he received from various clubs – it felt appropriate to bring the album's music to life once again – but a creative twist courtesy of Laine, who together with McCartney, recorded the entire album themselves.

"The thing about 'Band On The Run' was that it was just Paul and I," said Laine, citing the group's six-week recording session in Lagos, Nigeria just one details

Yoko Ono is on her way to Iceland to relight the Imagine Peace Tower, which is located on the island of Viðey in Reykjavík, in memory of her late husband John Lennon, on the occasion of his 76th birthday on 9 October.

On the same day Yoko will present The Lennon Ono Grant For Peace Award at Harpa Music and Conference Hall in Reykjavík. The award has been handed out every two years since 2002 and is presented to individuals who symbolize the continuing campaign for world peace. This year’s recipients are Chinese artist and activist Ai Weiwei (1957), British-Indian artist Anish Kapoo (1954), Hungarian composer, performance artist and actor Katalin Ladik (1942) and Danish-Icelandic artist Ólafur Elíasson (1967).

Previously the award has been given to Lady Gaga, Pussy Riot, Jann S. Wenner, co-founder of Rolling Stone Magazine and Jón Gnarr, comedian and former mayor of Reykjavík to name just a few.

Imagine Peace Tower is an artwork created by Yoko Ono and dedicated to the universal struggle for peace, as embodied by her late husband John Lennon. The name is a reference to Lennon's song "Imagine".

The tower is located on a Viðey island on Kollafj details

She debuted her Spring/Summer 2017 couture collection at Paris Fashion Week to rapturous applause on Monday. And Stella McCartney chose to celebrate her success later that day with her number one fans - her family. The 45-year-old designer looked completely relaxed and carefree as she headed home from her show with hubby Alasdhair Willis and daughter Reiley, 6, in a coat and culottes combo as chic as her own catwalk designs.

The designer proved her worth at the world's most prestigious fashion season, as she headed home from her display in a chic grey coat. 

The jacket was of an oversized style, featuring a sleek zip which ran all the way down the front and quirky contrasting knitted sleeves. Adding her trademark fashionable edge, the mother-of-four paired the coat with a pair of trendy tan culottes, which stylishly fell to just above the ankle. 

The icon added a pair of black patent heels and a luxurious oxblood handbag to her look, displaying her fashionable prowess as she took a break after the much-anticipated show. It's clear that a good sense of style runs in the family, with her husband Alasdhair and youngest child Reiley also looking equally as glam. Her hubby of thirteen years cut a ve details

Howard Stern will celebrate the 50th anniversary of Revolver, his favorite Beatles album, with an all-star episode featuring over a dozen artists covering the 1966 LP's tracks. "Revolver to me is the best album the Beatles ever did; there was nothing like it when that album came out," Stern said of the album on his show.

Earlier in the week, Stern broadcast 15-second snippets of his Revolver tribute, which features Cheap Trick tackling "She Said She Said," James Taylor performing "Here, There and Everywhere" and Nathaniel Rateliff & The Night Sweats covering "Got to Get You Into My Life."

Dinosaur Jr's J Mascis ("Doctor Robert"), Gov't Mule ("And Your Bird Can Sing"), Jewel ("Eleanor Rigby"), Grouplove ("For No One") and Living Colour ("Tomorrow Never Knows") are also among the artists that take part in "Howard Stern's Tribute to the Beatles' Revolver," scheduled to premiere on SiriusXM's Howard 101 on October 7th.

Grace Potter, the Milk Carton Kids, Joe Bonamassa, O.A.R., Rachael Yamagata, Madisen Ward and the Mama Bear round out the episode's lineup. According to Billboard, the recordings for Stern's Revolver tribute were made in various locations. Some acts, like O.A.R. and Living Colour, laid dow details

There has never been a mega-festival quite like Desert Trip. There are just six acts and only one stage. No art installations, no dance tent, no bands you never heard of serenading you in the distance while you stand in line at the beer garden. Just a half-dozen rock & roll legends — The Stones, Bob Dylan, Neil Young, Paul McCartney, Roger Waters and The Who — doing what they've all been doing for over 50 years.

There is, of course, a morbid corollary to the "over 50 years" part of the Desert Trip equation. Not counting each act's small army of (relatively) younger backing musicians, the average age of the performers is 72. In 10 years' time, or less, they will nearly all be retired. And more than a few, to indelicately state the obvious, will probably be dead.

If 2016 has taught us anything, it's that the generation that popularized rock & roll won't be around playing it much longer. In one bleak four-month span leading up to Desert Trip's May 3 lineup announcement, we lost David Bowie, Glenn Frey, Lemmy Kilmister, Paul Kantner, Keith Emerson, Maurice White, George Martin and Prince. No wonder there was such a feeding frenzy over Desert Trip tickets — against that macabre backdrop, it details

Being a Beatle was the best — except for when it wasn't. Ron Howard’s new documentary Eight Days a Week: The Touring Years (now on Hulu; expands to additional theaters Friday; out Nov. 18 on Blu-ray/DVD) captures the exhilarating highs of Beatlemania, while being fairly frank about the mortifying lows.

A few of the latter that were shared with USA TODAY:

1: Strangers were constantly in their hair. Literally.

“There were always people like this as we went into the gate,” says Ringo Starr, crooking his fingers through a pretend chain-link fence. In Wales, “I remember it so well,” one determined fan resolutely grabbed hold of the drummer’s shaggy locks. The crowds in Washington were even bolder. At a reception at the British ambassador’s house in 1964, a woman wielding a pair of scissors famously helped herself to a lock of Starr’s hair. “And we thought, ‘No, no, NO,’ " says Paul McCartney. “We thought it would be quite a cool crowd,” he adds. “But they weren’t cool at all.”

2: Sonically, Shea Stadium was one of the most frustrating venues of their career. So they played there again the next summer. details

It’s amazing the scorn for the Beatles solo work that the release of the new Live at The Hollywood Bowl has unleashed on the web. Okay, so the sum of the parts was undoubtedly better than the individual voices. But once the band broke up, the break was irrevocable. No matter how much anyone wished or still wishes, The Beatles were finished. No one’s ever said it better than George Martin in the original back cover liner for the original LP issue of the Hollywood Bowl record:

"Those who clamour for a Beatle reunion cannot see that it can never be the same again.”

So John, Paul, George and Ringo moved on, into solo careers, that despite some of the dismissive maligning now sloshing around on websites–often in the comments after reviews of the new Hollywood Bowl release–had more than a few highlights. To my ears, the masterpieces of the solo careers are obvious.

In John’s case, the raw intimacy of the Plastic Ono Band and the sweet tunefulness of Imagine are his solo masterworks. George Harrison’s initial solo release All Things Must Pass despite containing a record of jams that no one ever listened to among the three LPs that made up the set is still a fabulous col details

Even The Beatles wore smog masks when they visited Manchester in the era of the thick pea-soupers.

The Fab Four tried the latest mask on for size when they played the Ardwick Theatre in December 1965 – but it probably wasn’t designed to cope with George Harrison’s cigarette!

Smogs were common in Manchester in the 1950s and early 1960s. The Clean Air Act was passed in 1956 to reduce air pollution, but it took some years to reach its full effect.

Smoke continued to belch from factory chimneys and home coal fires, combining with fog and poor weather to turn day into night – quite literally. You could be forgiven for thinking that the photograph taken in Oxford Street in November 1953 was shot in the late evening – it was midday.

The same is true of the picture of the Hyde-bound double-decker bus ploughing through the fog in the same month. The time, believe it or not, is 1.30pm.

New kinds of masks were not the only way to beat the smog. Bus companies introduced motorcycle combinations kitted out with batteries of bright lights to blaze a trail through the fog. Local residents would sometimes walk in front of buses to guide them as they knew the neighbourhood wel details