Beatles News

A Beatles fan travelled across the country for eight years taking photographs of all 131 Abbey Road street signs in England. From rural lanes to inner-city estates and motorway sidings, Bryan Eccleshall, 48, crossed the length and breadth of the country to document each location where the famous street name could be found. 

The centrepiece of his collection is a picture from Abbey Road in St John’s Wood, London, made famous by the 1969 Beatles album of the same name. Mr Eccleshall said inspiration for the project did not come from the iconic album cover, which features the Fab Four using the famous zebra crossing, but rather the Abbey Wood area near his home in south-east London. He said: 'I was living near an Abbey Road. I’ve been a fan of the Beatles since my late teens and to be living near to an Abbey Road - not the one made famous by the album, but a different one - tickled me. I began to wonder how many there were in England, and thinking about how the Abbey Road made famous by the Beatles is a "first among equ details

On the list of the top 10 most valuable living autographs, Ringo Starr comes in on the list at number 9, with a value of $750, the least valuable of the four Beatles, yet rising at a rapid pace, climbing by 20.6% in value in 2013. Paul McCartney places number 3 on the list, with his autograph currently going for $3,275.

The Queen of Pop performs to sell out crowds around the world. Madonna is listed by the Guinness Book of Records as the most successful female recording artist of all time. Her autograph has grown in value by 7.8% per annum since 2000.

9. Ringo Starr - £1,200 ($750) The much-loved drummer's autograph remains the least valuable of the four Beatles, yet is rising at a rapid pace, climbing by 20.6% in value in 2013.

8. JK Rowling - £1,250 ($1,875) In 2009, a second-hand chair set an auction room alight.
The auctioneer commented: "It's a chair you would normally pay a tenner for in a junk shop", yet it sold for £20,000 ($30,000). A good investment for the owner.

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Paul remembers musician Phil Everly who passed away last week: "Phil Everly was one of my great heroes. With his brother Don, they were one of the major influences on The Beatles.

When John and I first started to write songs, I was Phil and he was Don."Years later when I finally met Phil, I was completely starstruck and at the same time extremely impressed by his humility and gentleness of soul. "I will always love him for giving me some of the sweetest musical memories of my life." - Paul McCartney

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To paraphrase a Fab Four favorite, it’s getting better all the time for Beatles nut Steve Lukather. He’s already performed with Paul McCartney, George Harrison and (most recently) Ringo Starr, and he’s not done yet.

Lukather will appear with Starr again as part of the 56th annual Grammy Awards show this year, to air Sunday, January 26. He’ll also take the stage the next evening for a special salute to the Beatles on the 50th anniversary of their arrival in the U.S. The longtime Toto guitarist confirmed his invitation just moments ago, saying: “I’m deeply honored.” The Night That Changed America: A Grammy Salute to the Beatles will feature the reunited Eurythmics, Alicia Keys, John Legend, Keith Urban and John Mayer, among others. The concert will air on CBS on Sunday, February 9. Annie Lennox and Dave Stewart haven’t toured together since 2000. Meanwhile, Lukather has been at work with David Paich on the first new Toto studio effort since 2006. He began working details

Campaigners hoping to erect a statue in honour of Beatles manager Brian Epstein are recruiting a host of Merseyside celebrities to help. Bob Pitt, a presenter on community radio station Mersey Radio, has written a song celebrating the life of the man credited with discovering the Beatles.

He said he has already enlisted the help of stars including Brian Nash from Frankie Goes to Hollywood, Gary Christian and Mike McCartney to record the song, with proceeds going towards the £70,000 needed to build the statue. Bob said: “I was on the radio show interviewing Sam Leach, who got The Beatles their early gigs before Brian Epstein, and afterwards he asked me if I could help out. “I decided to write a song celebrating Brian’s life and see if we could get the great and the good to sing it. “Then it started to take on a life of its own.”

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The Recording Academy announced Monday that Annie Lennox and Dave Stewart will perform as a duo for "The Night That Changed America: A Grammy Salute to the Beatles." The event will be taped at the Los Angeles Convention Center on Jan. 27, a day after the Grammy Awards.

Longtime Grammys producer Ken Ehrlich, who is also producing the Beatles special, thought the Eurythmics would be ideal to honor the iconic group. "When it came around to booking this show, what I felt was important was to try and find those artists who not only would be able to interpret Beatles songs, but would also have an ... understanding of what they meant," he said in an interview. The Eurythmics, who sold millions of albums and whose hits include "Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)," released their debut in 1981. Ehrlich said Lennox and Stewart, who have launched successful solo careers, are thrilled to perform in tribute to the Beatles. Ehrlich wouldn't say which Beatles tune the British duo would perform, but John Mayer and Keith Urban will pair up to perform "Don't Let Me Down," while Alici details

The world is mourning US rock and country musician Phil Everly, the younger of The Everly Brothers, who has died in California aged 74. His wife Patti told The Los Angeles Times her husband had died following complications from lung disease after a lifetime of smoking. "We are absolutely heartbroken," she said. "He fought long and hard."

His son Jason Everly said his father had been in the hospital in Burbank for about two weeks before he passed away. Everly's last public performance came in 2011, but he had been actively writing music after this, his son added. Everly and his brother Don had 19 top 40 hits between 1957 and 1962 and a musical career spanning five decades. Their music influenced the Beatles, the Beach Boys, the Byrds and many other rock, country and folk singers. Their hits included "Cathy's Clown", "Wake Up Little Susie", "Bye Bye Love", "When Will I Be Loved" and "All I Have To Do Is Dream". The Beatles once referred to themselves as 'the English Everly Brothers' and Dylan, pop culture's poet laureate, once said: "We owe these guy details

In the second of two Memory Lane specials we publish more extracts from The Blackpool Hippodrome/ABC Story, a fascinating new book from show business historian Barry Band which can be viewed in the Blackpool Local History Room at Central Library

The ABC was redeveloped in 1962-63 within the massive walls of the old Hippodrome, built in 1895. The new chequerboard frontage and large illuminated marquee shouted show biz and the interior of the 1,934-seat venue made even the resort’s spacious Opera House look ordinary. It certainly lived up to the company’s claim of Europe’s most luxurious theatre. Indeed, every night at the ABC was a night of a thousand stars. Well, hundreds, because the entire ceiling was covered in tiny embedded lights. The ABC was built as a cinema-theatre-TV studio by the company that had the weekend ITV franchise for the North and Midlands. In addition to its summer show, the ABC transmitted live Sunday shows on the ITV network under the title Blackpool Night Out for four summers from 1964. But the Sunday TV shows ended when ABC TV lost its details

Iconic city centre pub The Jacaranda reveals new look in video and pictures, ahead of 2014 reopening. The Jacaranda, the iconic Liverpool bar, best known for being the first venue to host The Beatles, is to reopen this year.

The Jacaranda closed down in mysterious surroundings on 31 October 2011, however, it has been revealed through the pub's  official Facebook page  the popular Slater Street venue is to return in spring/summer 2014. Rumours concerning its reopening first started circulating in December, before Liverpool city bar Heebie Jeebies, run by Graham Clarke, who also owns the Jacaranda, leaked the news via its social media accounts. The Jacaranda, or the Jac as it is popularly known, has a rich history linked with The Beatles. It was founded in 1957 by Allan Williams, the Fab Four's first manager and "the man who gave them away". Williams leased an old watch repair shop which he converted into a coffee bar. He named the venue the Jacaranda after an exotic species of ornamental flowering tree.

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FEW people can claim to know as much about The Beatles as Ainsdale author Spencer Leigh. His On The Beat music programme has been a fixture on BBC Radio Merseyside since 1985 and over that time, he’s conducted more interviews about the Fab Four – all captured on tape – than anyone in the world.

Spencer has also written more than 25 books, including biographies of Lonnie Donegan, Billy Fury and Buddy Holly, but his latest offering sees him return to his favourite subject as he tackles The Beatles career Stateside, in The Beatles in America. “It's the third one in a series after The Beatles in Liverpool and The Beatles in Hamburg and both have done very well,” said Spencer. “With the 50th anniversary of the Ed Sullivan TV show coming up, my publishers and I agreed it was a good time to do it and, of course, it is a great story.” He’s not wrong. In 1962, The Beatles were still just a band from Liverpool but by January 1964, they were top of the US charts, having sold 1.5m copies of I Want To Hold Your details

Before the Beatles took America by storm, Paul, John, Ringo and George were featured on BBC radio programs 53 times. Those Beatles performances, recorded between 1962 and 1965, have now been released. Jeffrey Brown talks to Kevin Howlett of BBC about his laborious search for many of these live, early, pre-Beatlemania recordings.

Between 1962 and 1965, the Beatles performed 88 songs on the BBC, many of them multiple times in hundreds of radio broadcasts. In the worldwide Beatlemania that followed, those radio performances were largely forgotten in Britain and mostly unheard of in the U.S., until 1994, when the first collection of BBC recordings was released. Now a new album is out, this one capturing some 40 songs from those early radio broadcasts, including several never before available on record or disk. Many are by now long familiar Beatles standards delivered with the energy and verve of the live performances the young band was famous for. Others are covers of then lesser known American titles, R&B songs, country music, details

Pattie Boyd shot to international fame when she married George Harrison in the 1960s. Although Boyd had sparked interest and admiration during her modeling heyday in the early 60s it was her marriage to the “quiet” member of the Beatles that generated the most headlines and controversy.