Beatles News

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

Airbnb is offering four lucky guests a free overnight stay in the most famous townhouse in North London — the iconic Abbey Road Studios.

The split-level Studio 3 in St. John's Wood — where many of music’s greatest artists have been discovered — will be converted into a temporary bedroom for one night only on October 15.

After being greeted with Champagne by London-based musician and producer Mark Ronson, who will act as a host, guests will be given a tour and full access to all areas of the studio.

This will include a chance to play on The Beatles’ piano (with cigarette burns that date back to the recordings of "The White Album"), to mix a track on the world’s largest mixing board, and to even record a song with the help of Ronson.

They will also be treated to dinner, snacks, beverages, and two nights in a nearby Airbnb listing nearby before and/or after the stay.

The "house rules" simply state things like "leave your mark" and “turn it up to 11 – we’ve got sound-proofing."

"I was born and grew up 'round the corner from Abbey Road Studios, one of the greatest studios ever," Ronson said. "Over the years working at Abbey Road, I& details

The Beatles’ career as a live band came to a — literally — screeching halt in August 1966, when on their final American tour, the howling of frenzied female fans became so deafening they could no longer hear themselves play. Author Tom Wolfe, describing a San Francisco stadium gig, wrote of “great sheets of scream like sheets of rain in a squall … and that sound he thinks cannot get higher, it doubles, his eardrums ring like stamped metal with it until suddenly Ghhhhwoooooowwww, it is like the whole thing has snapped … a writhing, seething mass of little girls.”

Wolfe was one of the few writers to pick up on the sometimes terrifying mass-hysteria aspect of Beatlemania, but it was clear enough to John, Paul, George and Ringo, whose reaction to this extreme adulation went from amazement to burnout in a few short years — so much so that they stopped playing live.

Those screams are all over director Ron Howard’s “The Beatles: Eight Days a Week — The Touring Years,” a rockumentary that follows the whirlwind first half of the Fab Four’s career, from 1962-1966, when the Beatles were fresh-faced mop-tops playing amped-up rock ‘n’ details

Most days we quarrel about her screen time. Dripping with condescension, she claims that her contractual two hours (de facto four hours) are way less than everyone else’s – and, just to be clear, that’s everyone else in the world.

Yet, in spite of these daily dustups, the mad disorder of her bedroom and her vertiginous descents into self-loathing that choke my heart and poison my sleep, my 15-year-old daughter is the most wonderful person in my life. Like any self-respecting neurotic mother, I spend most of my days thinking about her – her happiness and the smoking threat of her unhappiness. The female tinder of body image/complexion/friends can erupt into a conflagration at any time, consuming her fledgling self-esteem as I stand by helplessly.

I chant to myself: She just has to survive the slings and arrows of the teenage present; get through this and the future will reveal itself. I physically cringe when thinking about my own lonely passage through those years. I know there are no words, no advice to save her – I know that she has to save herself.

And yet, I think a familiar but unexpected rescue might be on its way.

Like many of us did at her age, she is living details