Beatles News

The works are the "participatory" pieces in Ono's first major Australian survey exhibition, War is Over! (if you want it). They include Wish Tree For Sydney, in which visitors to the MCA can write their hopes on slips of paper and tie them to a eucalyptus sapling on the gallery's sculpture terrace. In My Mummy is Beautiful, paper and pencils are provided for visitors to write special messages to their mothers and pin them on the gallery wall. "This was inspired by the fact that my mother passed away and I could not say anything to her now," Ono said. "I would say 'I'm sorry I didn't understand what you were going through'." Another participatory work is Play It By Trust, where two people play with an all-white chess set.

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Photographer Harry Benson’s career spans six decades with work that includes some of the most influential figures in popular culture and politics, but it was a nearly missed chance to shoot the Beatles that launched his career. 

The Glasgow-born journalist got his start shooting weddings in 1949, but it wasn’t until 15 years later that his career skyrocketed. “The Beatles were going to Paris and I was going to Africa to cover a news story,” Benson said in an interview with CBC News on Thursday. “I took myself for a serious journalist and I didn’t want to cover a rock 'n' roll story,” he said. Benson did, however, take the Beatles assignment at the insistence of an editor at the London Daily Express newspaper, and the timing could not have been better. vShortly after he took a photo of the Fab Four mid-pillow fight in their Paris hotel room – the photograph he described as the defining image of his career – their hit song I Want To Hold Your Hand became the band’s first U.S. c details

The former Beatle has published a letter written in October to the Russian president about the Greenpeace protesters. Paul McCartney has posted a letter he has written to Vladimir Putinonline, which urges the Russian president to release the 28 Greenpeaceactivists and journalists who were arrested after a protest at an oil-drilling rig in September.

Posting on his personal blog, the former Beatle expressed his hope to have the "misunderstanding resolved" and requested that the protesters, who face charges of hooliganism, be home in time for Christmas. He assures that Greenpeace are peaceful protesters, stating that "non-violence is an essential part of who they are". Originally sent on 14 October, McCartney, who expresses his concerns in a polite and restrained tone, shares his concerns that the Arctic 30, who were this week moved from Murmansk to pre-trial detention centres in Saint Petersburg, are being "portrayed in some quarters as being anti-Russian, that they were doing the bidding of western governments, and that the details

Top off your Thanksgiving weekend with a concert by the Everett Philharmonic Orchestra for “kids from 3 to 103.” “IMAGINE!”, led by director Paul-Elliott Cobbs, will be at 3 p.m. on Sunday, Dec. 1, at Everett Civic Auditorium, 2415 Colby Ave. in Everett. This is the orchestra’s second performance of the season.

The program will feature “The Beatles Guide to the Orchestra” arranged and orchestrated by Sam Hyken. The show was well-received in Miami, Fla. and is modeled after Benjamin Britten’s popular “Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra.” The instruments of the orchestra will be introduced by individual Beatles tunes, and then the orchestra will all “come together” in a performance of “Hey Jude.” Jannie Meisberger will narrate the performance. In addition, Pianist Nathaniel Cutshall, winner of the Snohomish County Music Teachers Concerto Competition, will perform the “Allegro Con Brio” movement of Beethoven’s “Piano Concerto No. 3” in c minor. details

The picture, made up of a few wavy lines drawn in a childlike manner, was created for his wife Yoko Ono's conceptual art book Grapefruit. 
The Imagine singer also drew a picture of his partner for the 1970 printing of the book. 

Alongside the drawings there is an introduction which said: "Hi my name is John Lennon. I'd like you to meet Yoko Ono." The drawings and the 13 word introduction to the book is expected to sell for £6,000 at London auctioneers Bloomsbury. The three pieces were originally bought by a British collector in the early seventies who is now selling them. 
Max Hasler, from Bloomsbury, said: "To be honest it is difficult to tell out of the two drawings which one is John Lennon and which one is Yoko Ono. "Yoko Ono published Grapefruit in Japan in 1968 and it was published for first time in the UK and US in 1970. "To make it more appealing to Western buyers, the publishers asked John Lennon to do a little introduction for it.< details

The Art Vinyl prize recognises the year's best music artwork, with The Temper Trap, Keane and Muse triumphing in 2012. Fashion designer Vanessa Da Silva is nominated for her cover for Turbines by Tunng, while Edwyn Collins, Goldfrapp and Sir Elton John are also shortlisted.

Art Vinyl founder Andrew Heeps said the nominees include everything from "mass market appeal to the weird and wonderful". 
Daft Punk's single 'Get Lucky', Elton John's album The Diving Board and McCartney's New are among the more high-profile records nominated. The full list of 50 nominees for this year's prize will be displayed in the Art Vinyl Gallery in East London's Broadway Market. 
The overall winner will be announced on January 3, 2014.

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The Grammy Awards will commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Beatles' landmark performance on The Ed Sullivan Show with a two-hour special that will air on CBS. The program, titled The Night That Changed America: A Grammy Salute to the Beatles, will be broadcast at 8 p.m. EST on February 9th, 50 years to the day, date and time that John, Paul, George and Ringo made their U.S.

TV debut on Sullivan's show. More than 70 million viewers tuned in to that broadcast to watch the band play five songs, including "I Want to Hold Your Hand" and "She Loves You." The band won seven Grammys in their career. The program will be filmed on January 27th, the day after the Grammy Awards, and it will feature "today's top artists" performing the songs the group played on the Sullivan broadcast, as well as their hits through the years. Presenters, who are yet to be announced, will provide commentary and context about the group's impact at the time. The show will also include archival clips and rebroadca details

The British Library has been given letters and lyrics by John Lennon under a program that accepts donations of art and cultural artifacts in place of tax.

The Arts Council said Thursday that the papers include a letter adorned with sketches and verses written by Lennon to his friend and bandmate Stuart Sutcliffe. Sutcliffe died of a brain hemorrhage at age 21 in 1962, before The Beatles achieved global fame. Also donated were Lennon's handwritten lyrics to Beatles songs including "In My Life" and "Strawberry Fields Forever." The items were donated by Beatles biographer Hunter Davies in place of 120,000 pounds ($190,000) in taxes. Davies said he was happy to see the Beatles' papers in the library "next to the Magna Carta and works by Shakespeare and Beethoven, because that's where I honestly think they belong."

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The Beatles’ highly anticipated new collection of BBC recordings has only been out for one day, but one of the producers of On Air - Live at the BBC Volume 2 is already hinting at a new “secret” Beatles project.

"There is something, but I don't think we're allowed to talk about it yet,” said Kevin Howlett, who compiled the BBC collection with Mike Heatley. “If you're involved in these Beatles projects, you have to be very discreet. It's all top secret." Talk about a cruel tease! But there is one thing Howlett CAN disclose: there probably won’t be a third installment of BBC recordings. “There are no plans at the moment,” Howlett admitted. “I think these two albums are wonderful from the point of view of presenting the real highlights of the Beatles' BBC sessions. The Beatles completists out there may want to own every version of 'Twist And Shout,' and I can understand that because every version of 'Twist And Shout' is really good, but I d details

A BEATLES fan has solved the mystery of the band’s change of name. Ken Harrison – no relation to George – says he foundout when the Silver Beetles changed their name to become the Beatles. Eagle-eyed Ken found the answer in Liscard’s Grosvenor Ballroom, as he looked though old newspaper cuttings from the Wallasey News hidden away in a drawer.

Ken now manages the building, where the Beatles regularly played in the 1960s. He said: “It’s amazing what you find in old newspaper cuttings.“These were just small advertisements in the paper which I happened to come across, but they say a lot about Beatles history. “This proves they were called the Beatles and Silver Beetles before they went Germany. “I’ve now enlarged the adverts and will be getting them framed to put on the wall.” Fellow Beatles fan Robin Bird said: “Historians have said the Silver Beetles changed their name to the Beatles when they left for Hamburg on August 16, 1960 – starting a new chapter in their amazing musical career.

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Ex-Beatle Ringo Starr will return to Mexico with his All-Starr Band to give three concerts in the Mexican capital on Nov. 13, 14 and 19, the National Auditorium said Saturday. “This is the second time the ex-Beatle, considered by many to be the best rock drummer of all time, presents his show ‘Ringo Starr and his All-Starr Band’ at the auditorium on Avenida Reforma,” the company said in a communique.

It said that on this occasion the British artist, who became a legend as part of the band that transformed pop music in the 1960s, will be accompanied by a different lineup of musicians in his All-Starr Band. The musicians accompanying him are guitarist Steve Lukather, Richard Page on bass, keyboard player Gregg Rolie, guitarist and multi-instrumentalist Todd Rundgren, saxophone player and percussionist Mark Rivera, and drummer Gregg Bissonette. The appearance in Mexico is part of a Pacific tour that in October began visiting various Latin American countries. The repertoire of the concerts includes numbers from the time of the Beatles and fr details

Aside from selling millions of records, the success of The Beatles was often defined by the hordes of fanatical fans who would follow them around the world. Fast-forward fifty years on and little has changed. 

Sir Paul McCartney and his wife Nancy were mobbed by a sea of supporters at they arrived at Kansai International Airport in Osaka, Japan, today. The acclaimed singer is there as part of his Out There tour, which will see him play two dates in Osaka, one in Fukuoka and three consecutive nights at the Tokyo Dome. Wearing a black and white kimono in honour of Japanese culture, both the 71 year-old rocker and his wife appeared colour co-ordinated in matching trousers and black shoes. The star waved at fans as they walked through the arrivals gate, causing screams of excitement from across the terminal.

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When Paul McCartney put out a solo album titled “Memory Almost Full” in 2007, veteran British Broadcasting Corp.producer Kevin Howlett might well have smiled.