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A new report has emerged that reveals some of the stars who will be featured on the recently-announced CBS special celebrating the 50th anniversary of the night The Beatles first performed on the legendary TV variety program, The Ed Sullivan Show.

 According to the Australian television blog TV Tonight, surviving Beatles Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr both will appear on the show, which is titled The Night That Changed America: A Grammy Salute to The Beatles. In addition, John Lennon‘s and George Harrison‘s widows, Yoko Ono and Olivia Harrison, reportedly will be featured on the program, as will pop superstars Justin Timberlake, Lady Gaga, Adele, Bruno Mars,Pink and Katy Perry.  TV Tonight claims that an Australian cable TV executive revealed the lineup while announcing the special. As previously reported, The Night That Changed America will feature today’s top artists performing the sam details

Around 300,000 residents were evacuated from the area around the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant in March, 2011 after a deadly earthquake and tsunami caused equipment failures at the site and led to the release of radioactive material.

McCartney is currently touring Japan, and he met with 10 survivors of the Fukushima disaster after inviting them to watch his concert at the Tokyo Dome on Monday night (18Nov13). The Beatles star shook hands with the lucky attendees and listened to their stories, while also insisting he hopes his music can help the country heal. He says, "At this time, we are focused on a lot of the problems that Japan has had, particularly in the last year or two. So, I always like to think that our concerts can have a healing effect, that they can help people through crises."

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Yoko Ono has been slapped with a breach of contract lawsuit from a disgruntled designer amid allegations she blocked a licensing deal for JOHN LENNON-branded products.

Larry Myerson claims he was approached about licensing the late Beatle's artwork for Bag One Arts Inc., the company Lennon's widow Ono created to promote the late icon's work, by representative Susan Valero in 2007. He spent the next two-and-a-half years creating and developing a vast collection of items from "pet products to jewelry and everything in between" for the line, and poured more than $55,000 (£36,700) into the venture, which won rave reviews from Valero at a trade presentation in 2008. He was also allegedly referred to as a "licensee" in an email from Bag One's vice president Lynn Clifford, but according to the legal papers, Myerson was subsequently informed that Ono would not approve his licensing agreements because he had been in business for less than three years.

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It’s been over forty years since the Beatles recorded their last music video. But a previously unseen clip of a cover of Words of Love by Buddy Holly is set to delight and intrigue fans. The video was recorded live at the BBC Radio studios a year before the band released the song on the album Beatles for Sale.

The video, which mixes psychedelic animations with black-and-white footage, features the Fab Four as they perform on stage and in the recording studio. The boys are seen driving in a van through the countryside, in the city and and watching fireworks, with a glimpse of the Queen Mother. The video also evokes Beatlemania, with screaming fans and a girl passing out after glimpsing her idols. She also reveals that she used to take the band's castoff clothing to give to fans. She said: 'I didn't steal them but if a shirt was ripped and they didn't want it, I'd go round there and take it. I'd always say to Louise Harrison [George's mother] 'Can I have that?' and I'd just cut the shirts up and send them out.'

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Some families form a special bond through a common interest  --  whether it's over a meal, a sport or a hobby. In the case of Brooklyn, N.Y.-based Jere Hester and his family, their bond is a love for all things related to the Beatles.

After all, it was the music of the Fab Four that connected Hester with his then-girlfriend Theresa Wozunk, who later became his wife. And when they gave birth to their only child, Ella, the couple introduced to her to the Beatles' music and she got hooked -- it led her on the path towards being an aspiring musician. How the Liverpool legends touched the lives of Hester and his family forms the basis of his recently-published book, "Raising a Beatle Baby." Both a personal memoir and a travelogue, the book documents such things as Hester's love for the music from his youth; the trip that he, Theresa and Ella (who was then 8) took in London and Liverpool in 2005 to visit several Beatles-related sites, including Ringo Starr's former house; and Ella's brush with fame when she met Paul McCartney at a details

YOKO Ono has invited Sydney to collaborate with her on eight art works, starting today. "I would like you to join me and show your creative power in these works," the artist, activist and widow of Beatle John Lennon said at the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia yesterday.

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

Beatles named and dated - Wednesday, November 13, 2013

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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