Beatles News

Fifty years after an iconic performance at the Ed Sullivan Theater, the surviving members of The Beatles could stage a reunion in the same venue where the magic began. Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr are in talks with producers from "The Late Show with David Letterman," which films in the Ed Sullivan Theater, to stage a reunion on the show, according to Showbiz411.

Early reports pinpoint the first week of February as a potential Beatles blowout week for "The Late Show," with McCartney and Starr potentially appearing on Friday, Feb. 7, the day the group arrived in the United States in 1964. What the rest of Letterman's weeklong extravaganza would include has yet to be revealed. There's no doubt an endless number of artists who'd jump at the opportunity to cover a Beatles classic on the program, and the show could also recruit survivors who were associated with the band: Yoko Ono, original manager Allan Williams, original drummer Pete Best, "A Hard Day's Night" director Richard Lester, plus George Harrison's and John Lennon's children (Dhani Harrison, Julia details

On Thursday The Beatles' U.S. Albums Set For Release was a top story. Here is the recap: Apple Corps Ltd. and Capitol Records have announced that they will be celebrating the 50th anniversary of The Beatles' first U.S. visit and the band's history-making debut on "The Ed Sullivan Show," with the digital release of The U.S. Albums.

The new 13-album Mastered for iTunes LP collection spans The Beatles' U.S releases from 1964's Meet The Beatles! to 1970's Hey Jude. We were sent over the following details: The collection includes a 64-page booklet with Beatles photos and promotional art from the time, as well as a new essay by American author and television executive Bill Flanagan, is available now for digital pre-order exclusively on iTunes. All of the Mastered for iTunes albums (with the exception of The Beatles' Story, an audio documentary album) are also available now for individual pre-order on iTunes. The Beatles' U.S. albums differed from the band's U.K. albums in a variety of ways, including different track lists, song mixes, album titles, and art. The albums are details

If your vibe is 1960s Fab icons and cool animation, tune in to Cartoon Network on January 20th for a special Powerpuff Girls event featuring Ringo Starr! The Beatles drummer will appear as a "flamboyant mathematician" named Fibonacci Sequins. The original series aired from 1998-2005 and featured an irresistible cocktail of retro-style animation and fast-paced heroics and hilarity inspired by Japanese Anime.

The new episode, Dance Pantsed, will reunite all of the voice actors under the directorial helm of original series storyboard artist and writer, Dave Smith (Craig McCracken is currently working on Wonder Over Yonder). Spy Vibers will be especially pleased to learn that local-hero Kevin Dart (Yuki 7) came aboard the Powerpuff Girls reunion as art director and character designer. Kevin's love for retro-spy illustrations and movie posters always brings an exciting flair to his projects. He sat down with me today for a brief interv details

A few months after first meeting her, John Lennon tried to commission Yoko Ono to build a "light house" in his garden. "Oh, that was conceptual," Ono demurred, referring to a structure she'd built in her imagination with beams of refracted light emanating from hypothetical prisms.

In the 47 years that have ensued since that conversation, Ono has constructed a legacy as the world's penultimate conceptual artist.
If Ono had her druthers, people entering the Bob Rauschenberg Gallery on Friday, January 24 to see Yoko Ono: Imagine Peace (YOIP) would be handed a set of instructions and asked to fill the exhibition hall's blank walls with magnificent artworks projected from their individual and collective imaginations. YOIP does not go quite that far, but there will be no viewers or spectators at the exhibit. Everyone who passes through the Rauschenberg Gallery's doors will be magically converted into an active collaborator the instant they are handed an Onochord and encounter works such as Wish Tree, Map Piece and Play It By Trust.

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Pop veteran Tommy Roe is set to relive the night he supported The Beatles at their very first concert in America by recreating the event for its 50th anniversary with a Fab Four tribute band.

The Dizzy singer, 71, opened for the Let It Be hitmakers at their iconic Washington Coliseum show in Washington, D.C. on 11 February, 1964, two days after the great Brits made their U.S. performing debut on The Ed Sullivan Show. Now Roe has signed up to take part in a re-enactment of the landmark gig to celebrate the historic occasion next month (Feb14). He will take the stage for an acoustic set at the same venue on 11 February (14), before cover band Beatlemania Now perform the same setlist Paul McCartney, John Lennon, Ringo Starr and George Harrison delighted fans with five decades ago. Photos of the original concert, snapped by a young Mike Mitchell, will also be exhibited at the event, which has been put together by officials at the DC Preservation League and Douglas Development Corporation. 

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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