Beatles News

Unconventional clothing designs by Yoko Ono--given as a wedding gift to John Lennon—have been turned into a menswear line.  Says Yoko: I was inspired to create Fashions for Men, amazed at how my man was looking so great. I felt it was a pity if we could not make clothes emphasizing his very sexy bod." The collection of menswear for Opening Ceremony is available the company's U.S. stores in New York, Los Angeles and London now, and its Tokyo flagship store on Dec. 9. The collection includes jersey blazers, suit pants and hoodies, starting at $75.

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Paul McCartney will make his fourth appearance as the musical guest on "Saturday Night Live" in the US on December 15th--the series' Christmas episode.  Perhaps he'll be singing his version of "The Christmas Song", from the compilation Holidays Rule.  That song is also being released as a single called Christmas Kisses, with 1979's "Wonderful Christmastime" as the flip side.  The single is due in independent record stores in the US December 4th.

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Sean Lennon has provided the score for another independent film—this time acting in it, as well.  In the quirky superhero romantic comedy, Alter Egos, Sean plays a super-villain called Electric Death.  Sean has released the soundtrack to the film on his personal label, Chimera Records, and the songs are also available for download.  The album will not be in stores until January 15th.

 

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In a pre-Thanksgiving show at New York's Madison Square Garden, Sean Lennon joined Aerosmith to play "Come Together".  John's younger son traded vocals with Steven Tyler and guitar licks with Joe Perry and Brad Whitford. The band recorded the song for the 1978 movie, "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Heart's Club Band", which starred Peter Frampton and the Bee Gees.  John himself famously played the song on statge at Madison Square Garden for the One to One benefit concert in 1972. 

Julian Lennon appears on Aeorsmith's new album, Music from Another Dimension.

 

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In a new interview with The Independent in the UK, Paul McCartney says that John Lennon's public image as tough and sarcastic is a very incomplete picture of the man. Says Paul: “There is this period of John which is all pre-Beatles, pre-huge fame, pre-drugs – and it is another John completely – that was always there right until the end. He got much sweeter, too, once he settled in New York. Once he was reunited with Yoko, and they had Sean, he became this sweet personalty again then when he was more comfortable with himself. But the acerbic John is the one we know and love, you know, because he was clever with it, so it was very attractive. But, for me, I have more than a slight affection for the John that I knew then, when we were first writing songs, when we would try and do things the old songwriters had done. I slightly regret the way John's image has formed, and because he died so tragically it has become set in concrete. The acerbic side was there but it was only part of him. He was also such a sweet, lovely man – a really sweet details

Academy Award-winning director Robert Zemeckis has dropped plans to remake Yellow Submarine in 3D. 

While promoting his current film, Flight, starring Denzel Washington, Zemeckis told The Hollywood Reporter: "I'm not going to do Yellow Submarine. My champion to do it was [former chairman of the Disney studio] Dick Cook. And I don't want to do any remakes. You're behind the eight ball from the get-go. And how many movies have I got left in me, really? I'm getting kind of old. So I don't think I should take those years out of my life and do a remake."

The potential for a remake of the 1968 animated film has been around since 2009, when Zemeckis was first mentioned as wanting to employ the technology he had used in movies such as Beowulf and The Polar Express to update the Beatles' muscial tale.

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If you were lucky enough to see the Beatles in concert, Apple wants to hear from you about your experience.  The Beatles' company is collecting stories and personal video footage from fans around the world, looking to put together a feature-length documentary film about the band's travels during the Beatlemania period--officially October 1963 (when the phrase was first coined) until the Beatles' final concert in August 1966. 

The company describes its goal as combining "footage, images, music interviews, and stories in a definitive, emotional and visceral feature film about Beatlemania." Research is underway through December of this year.

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A 70-year-old private equity big shot invited his contemporary, Paul McCartney, to play for his birthday party in Las Vegas.

David Bonderman threw a party for himself and 700 guests at the Wynn resort in Las Vegas.  Bonderman also hired John Fogerty and comedian Robin Williams for the occasion.

Bonderman is a founding partner of the firm TPG.  Of course, Paul turned 70 this June.  Paul's asking price for such a gig has not been disclosed.

 

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Counterculture reporter Howard Smith's 1972 interview with John Lennon & Yoko Ono can be heard in its entirety now on Amazon and iTunes.

The conversations--with John and Yoko, and many other prominent figures of the 60's and 70's such as Jim Morrison, Frank Zappa and Eric Clapton--have been sourced, dated, indexed, and digitally re-mastered by researcher and documentarian Ezra Bookstein. 

At the time of the interviews, Smith hosted an overnight weekend show on album-oriented FM rock station WPLJ in New York City, and wrote a regular column for alternative weekly newspaper, The Village Voice.  In their February 1972 conversation, Smith got John and Yoko to discuss the breakup of the Beatles, among many other topics.

 

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Sir Paul McCartney and his wife Nancy Shevell were just 2ft away from a helicopter crash when their pilot narrowly avoided hitting trees, it has emerged today.