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© COPYRIGHT JORIE GRACEN
Beatlefan #165 is out, and in it readers will find:
We follow the long and winding road from CDs to downloads as we mark the 20th anniversary of The Beatles' albums coming out on compact disc. Included are looks at Beatles bootlegs on CD, the short-lived CD3 singles, and a look at what fans would like to see done with the solo catalogs. Plus a critical examination of the state of John Lennon's albums on CD.
Also in this issue is a new interview with Yoko Ono; a detailed, illustrated look at one of fans' favorite collectibles over the years, the Beatles trading cards; and reports on recent Beatles-related performances, including the Fab Faux doing the Beatles Album That Might Have Been.
And in this issue's Beatlenews Roundup, we report on the Macca Starbucks deal, the Traveling Wilburys reissues, upcoming Ringo releases, a new Lennon tribute, the latest bootlegs and have our usual roundup of new and upcoming releases. Plus fresh Beatlejuice from Norm and Shake in Devil's Radio.
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COMING IN
ISSUE #166:
Is "Sgt. Pepper"
The Beatles' greatest album? A 40th anniversary look the acclaimed
work through the eyes of the "Pepper" generation.
Check
it out!
THE BRITISH
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Issue #24
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articles on:
The Smithereens New Beatles
CD and Interview with Pat DiNizio
· The Quarrymen Open The Casbah
· Silver Beetles Tour of Scotland 1960 Part 2
· EBAY Hall of Shame
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Here's three 'cool'
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THE BEATLES AS YOU'VE NEVER HEARD THEM BEFORE
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The new album "LOVE" is coming - and to coincide with the release, you can hear an exclusive preview of four of the tracks at TheBeatles.com!
Strawberry
Fields Forever
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ABOUT THE
ALBUM
The album features 26 tracks re-worked by George and Giles Martin for the "LOVE" show in Las Vegas, an incredible music and visual experience created out of the collaboration between The Beatles and Cirque Du Soleil. The result is an unprecedented approach to the music.
"LOVE" will be released on Monday November 20th (UK). The stereo CD will contain 78 minutes of music, and features 26 tracks.
Simultaneously released will be a special 2 disc edition that will include the stereo CD and an Audio only DVD containing a slightly extended version in amazing 5.1 surround sound.
CLICK HERE TO PREVIEW THE FOUR EXCLUSIVE TRACKS
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May 20, 2007
-- The Wall Street Journal
It Was 40 Years Ago Today (June 1)
With 'Sgt. Pepper,' the Beatles indulged their whims -- and changed
rock forever
It's possible for two reasonable adults, probably older than 45, to argue for hours about the most significant pop music event of the 1960s. My own vote would be cast in favor of The Beatles' first appearance on "The Ed Sullivan Show" in February 1964, but a very close second is the release of their "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band," the majestic album that will be 40 years old in early June. It's not that "Sgt. Pepper" is my favorite record from that era -- Bob Dylan's "Blonde on Blonde" is -- but there's no denying the extraordinary influence that the Beatles' most famous achievement had not only in the music industry but this country's popular culture as well.
"Sgt. Pepper," the group's first album that wasn't supported by a world-wide tour, captured, to use a word that didn't become a cliché for years afterward, the "zeitgeist" then, impeccably in sync with the "Summer of Love," "flower power," psychedelia and the youthful lifestyle of sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll. That the Beatles, weary of avoiding hordes of fans and tabloid reporters, abandoned live concerts was in itself a radical shift of gears, but spending more than four months in a recording studio on a single project, and a "concept" album at that, was unheard of. Revisionists today, when critiquing the Beatles' discography, aren't quite as rapturous about "Sgt. Pepper" as millions of fans were in 1967, but the immediate impact of the album can't be overstated.
When "Sgt. Pepper" appeared, it was as if a massive block party had appeared outside your window. I was nearly 12 years old at the time and when one of my four older brothers came home with the highly anticipated new Beatles record, we listened to it over and over, marveling at the sheer audacity of songwriters John Lennon and Paul McCartney. Doug, overwhelmed by enthusiasm and hyperbole, declared, matter-of-factly, "The band has changed its name forever and rock 'n' roll will never be the same."
And it wasn't just the music. The album cover itself was breathtaking, a puzzling and colorful collage by Peter Blake that showed the band, in gaudy mock-military costumes, presiding over the burial of the "old" Beatles, with scattered mug shots of high and low cultural icons hovering in the background. You'd go cross-eyed trying to figure out just how many notables were depicted -- a mass of pop art that included Marilyn Monroe, Karl Marx, Aldous Huxley, Marlene Dietrich, Sonny Liston, Laurel and Hardy, Oscar Wilde, Marlon Brando, Leo Gorcey, Bob Dylan, Lenny Bruce and Mae West.
The presentation was a triumph of packaging, and included for the first time the printing of lyrics on the back cover. That the group had reached this point a mere three years after the first rush of "Beatlemania" was astonishing, and the songs simply ratcheted up the sense of momentousness provided by the record sleeve.
Relieved from the pressure of performing live, the Beatles were able to record songs that were, even in a relatively primitive studio, filled with overdubs, backward tape loops, snippets of orchestral crescendos, a cowbell here, a tin horn there, creating a sound and style that was quickly, for better or worse, aped by the band's peers and imitators. Aside from the technical innovations, the 13 songs ushered in yet another phase for the Beatles, one that was far more introspective, grandiose and certainly informed by their recreational use of drugs.
Forty years later, it's easy to dismiss such lyrically slight songs as Mr. McCartney's "When I'm Sixty-Four" or George Harrison's meandering, sitar-driven "Within You Without You," but the bulk of "Sgt. Pepper" stands the test of time. For example, John Lennon's "Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite!" is about an evening vaudeville romp where "Henry the Horse dances the waltz" and men leap through "a hogshead of real fire!" Another standout is Mr. McCartney's "Fixing a Hole," a dreamy and druggy meditation about fame and drudgery. He sings about "filling the cracks" in his door that "kept [his] mind from wandering," and chastises those who "disagree and never win and wonder why they don't get in my door."
It's not exactly T.S. Eliot, as some said at the time, but it's a long way from "I Want to Hold Your Hand."
On one point there is almost universal agreement: "A Day in the Life," a five-minute Lennon-McCartney collaboration that concludes "Sgt. Pepper," is the group's most accomplished song. Combining references to British current events and the narrator's utter boredom with urban routines, the song endorses the notion of dropping out of society, as Mr. Lennon sings, dreamily, "I'd love to turn you on."
Although "Sgt. Pepper" received almost unanimous raves when it was released, a significant dissident was Richard Goldstein, who panned the album in the June 18, 1967, New York Times. Mr. Goldstein, roundly pilloried after the review was published, complained the new release was "busy, hip and cluttered." He concludes: "We need the Beatles, not as cloistered composers, but as companions. And they need us."
As was soon evident, however, the Beatles didn't "need us," and, in fact, didn't need each other. The group disbanded just three years later. Mr. Goldstein was partially correct in saying that "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" was "precious," but 40 years later I can't think of a single album that was more influential in changing the way that lyricists, producers and fans went about making and consuming popular music.
It's said that Mr. McCartney
in particular was inspired by the Beach Boys' 1966 landmark album
"Pet Sounds," in which leader Brian Wilson labored in
the studio to create a unified set of songs that challenged the
listener -- and his competitors -- with its musical complexity.
But it was the Beatles, so popular and wealthy that their record
label had to cater to what were considered "whims,"
who topped Mr. Wilson (artistically and commercially) with "Sgt.
Pepper." It was no longer a given that a rock/pop group would
dash off an album as quickly as possible to minimize cost, and
talented young men began to exert more control over studio production,
a process of increased sophistication. The release of "Sgt.
Pepper" marked the shift of power in the music industry --
not all that dissimilar to the advent of free agency in Major
League Baseball -- from the "suits" to the stars, and
to this day the balance hasn't changed.
April 14, 2007 -- New
York Times
Magical Mystery Tour Ends for Apple Corps Executive
By ALLAN KOZINN
There has been a good deal of irrational exuberance in the virtual
world of Beatles chat sites since Tuesday. That morning
Apple - the Beatles' company, not the computer
maker - announced that Neil Aspinall,
its chief operating officer nearly from the start, "has decided
to move on," and that his chair would be filled by Jeff Jones, a vice president at Sony/BMG whose focus
over the past dozen years has been catalog reissues.
To read some of the comments posted on the Internet, you would think that Mr. Aspinall has single-handedly delayed everything from upgrades of the standard Beatles catalog to the release of video projects like the restored and expanded versions of "Let It Be" and the 1965 Shea Stadium concert, which have languished on Apple Corps shelves since the 1990s.
But that's not how it is. Mr. Aspinall is answerable to Apple's board, which is to say the Beatles or their representatives (who in turn are answerable to the Beatles who appointed them), and he could not move forward on any of these projects without their approval.
He was the Beatles' alter ego, often the bad cop to their good cop. The Beatles themselves could publicly say anything: that everything anyone could want to hear would eventually be released or that they enjoyed collecting bootlegs themselves. But the Beatles have the last word on what will be released, and when and whether to pursue bootleggers or even authors who write about bootlegs. Mr. Aspinall and Apple's lawyers simply do their bidding.
That's why the wording of the announcement was so odd. Saying that Mr. Aspinall "has decided to move on," with none of the usual platitudes about spending time with his family or pursuing other interests, makes it sound like something's up. Did he suddenly quit? Was he fired? Was there something to the illogical rumors that the Beatles were dissatisfied with the February agreement between their Apple and the computer company?
People close to Apple say that Mr. Aspinall is simply retiring. He turns 65 in October and had heart problems in the 1990s. Perhaps, having spent 46 years at the Beatles' beck and call, he wanted to reduce his stress.
For Mr. Aspinall, his work with the Beatles has been a handful - literally at first. He became the group's road manager in 1961, which means that he has been part of the Beatles entourage longer than 50 percent of the surviving Beatles: Ringo Starr didn't join the group until August 1962. (Mr. Aspinall came to the Beatles through Mr. Starr's predecessor, Pete Best, and remained with them after Mr. Best was booted out.) When the Beatles were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, in 1988, George Harrison said that if anyone deserved to be known as the fifth Beatle, it was Mr. Aspinall.
Having driven their van and hauled their equipment during the touring years, he became a sort of general factotum when the Beatles stopped touring in 1966. When the Beatles, holed up in the recording studio till the wee hours, needed anything from tea and sandwiches to arcane noisemakers, it was Mr. Aspinall's job to round it up. The Beatles' decision to start Apple Corps led to all sorts of turmoil, which was exacerbated by their growing internal divisions: not least among them, who should run the company.
When the smoke cleared, Mr. Aspinall had been thrust behind a desk as chief executive officer and put in charge of a number of thankless tasks. First there was a stack of lawsuits among the Beatles themselves, and between the Beatles and EMI, that needed to be settled. That took 20 years.
In the meantime Mr. Aspinall began assembling film clips for a history of the Beatles, originally to be called "The Long and Winding Road." There was no possibility of doing much with this project until the lawsuits were settled, but when they were, in 1989, Mr. Aspinall revived the project and persuaded the surviving Beatles (and Yoko Ono, representing John Lennon) to sign on.
The result was "The Beatles Anthology," which turned out to be a huge trove of previously unreleased audio and video material as well as a book. The six discs of the CD "Anthology" (1995-96), taken together with the double CD "Beatles Live at the BBC" (1994), just about doubled the size of the Beatles official catalog.
Mr. Aspinall's accomplishments notwithstanding, Mr. Jones's appointment may be a good sign. If there's one thing the Beatles need, it's someone savvy about reissues and how to properly remaster, package and market them.
But another thing Apple needs is someone who comes to the job without the baggage of 46 years of subservience to the Beatles. We can probably assume that someone like Mr. Jones, who has been in the record business since the 1970s, did not just hear of Apple and the Beatles last Wednesday and knew all about how demanding the Beatles and their representatives can be. If we can assume that he has negotiated a measure of independence and freedom to navigate, his tenure may be refreshing.
How many Beatles collectors,
after all, have looked at the Sony Legacy reissues of recordings
by the Byrds, Janis Joplin and Miles Davis and thought, "If
only the Beatles archive were treated this way"?
April 14, 2007 -- The
Daily Telegraph
Beatles join the iPod revolution
The Beatles have settled a £30 million ($60 million) row over royalty payments with record company EMI, clearing the final obstacle to the release of the band's entire back catalogue over the internet, The Daily Telegraph can reveal.
Executives at the group's company Apple Corps Ltd and EMI can now sit down and work out a new royalties deal to cover music downloads of their hit singles and albums by websites like iTunes.
The highly anticipated internet release is likely to net millions for surviving members of the band and their relatives and propel former Beatles' hits to the top of the download charts.
The band issued legal proceedings against EMI in December 2005 in the High Court in London and the Supreme Court in New York to recover the alleged missing cash.
Sir Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr and relatives of John Lennon and George Harrison had alleged that EMI underpaid £30 million in record royalties on sales of Beatles' records between 1994 and 1999.
The Daily Telegraph has learned that EMI and Apple agreed to settle at the end of last month. The details of the settlement are confidential. However, it is thought that surviving Beatles and relatives of Harrison and Lennon will now receive a multi-million pound sum as part of the settlement.
The band members were entitled to a percentage of the wholesale price of every record supplied by EMI to record outlets. But an alleged deficit was uncovered during an audit of Apple's accounts.
The claim related to every album recorded by The Beatles as a group and later as solo performers between 1963 and 1976, including Help!, Rubber Soul, Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band and Abbey Road, as well as John Lennon's Imagine.
The royalty settlement means that EMI and Apple can agree new royalty terms for the sale of The Beatles' songs over the internet via download sites such as the popular iTunes music service.
That prospect was first raised when The Beatles ended another high profile legal wrangle in February by ceding ownership of the famous apple logo to computer company Apple Inc.
Apple Inc, the company behind the iPod, will now own all the trademarks related to "Apple'', licensing some back to the Beatles' company for continued use.
Separately it emerged that Neil Aspinall, the chief executive of Apple and a former school friend of Sir Paul McCartney, is quitting the company after 40 years as keeper of The Beatles' flame.
Neil Aspinall, a school friend of Sir Paul McCartney and the late George Harrison, yesterday stepped down as chief executive of Apple Corps.
A source said the 64-year-old, known as the Fifth Beatle, was disillusioned by the company's board of directors, who 'just wanted to make money'.
Aspinall is thought to have disagreed with moves to allow legal downloads of the Beatles' music on the Apple iTunes site.
The source added: 'The board has been blocking and questioning the things Neil wants to do. The way the board want to play it is for money, money, money. All the Beatles albums - the entire back catalogue - is going to be re-released.'
Aspinall - described as the Beatles' 'keeper of the flame' - was their first road manager in 1961. In 1968 he was given a management role at Apple.
Twelve years ago, he was executive producer on the Beatles Anthology and behind successes such as the compilation album One.
His departure was revealed in a press release announcing his replacement, Jeff Jones, ex-executive vice-president at Sony/BMG.
AND THE DEPARTURE OF NEIL ASPINALL
London, England, Tuesday, April 10, 2007 Today Apple Corps Ltd. announced that Jeff Jones will become Chief Executive Officer of Apple Corps Ltd.
Apple welcomes Jeff, who comes with over 30 years experience in the music business with a brilliant record. He leaves his position of Executive Vice President, Legacy Recordings/Sony BMG Catalog Worldwide where he has been since 1995.
Apple also announces the departure of Neil Aspinall, who had been with John, Paul, George and Ringo for a spectacular 40 plus years, during which he played an indispensable role for the four. He was there since the inception of the band in Liverpool and has meant so much to the Beatles' family for all these years and still does. However, he has decided to move on. Apple as a whole, and each member of this company, wishes him great success in whatever endeavor he chooses to pursue in the future.
James Morrison, The Fratellis, Travis and the Kaiser Chiefs are among the other acts taking part in the special recording sessions for BBC Radio 2.
The engineer in charge of the original 1967 sessions will use the same equipment to record the new versions.
The results will be aired on Radio 2 on 2 June, a day after the anniversary.
The original album was released on 1 June 1967 and went on to be regarded as one of the best and most influential releases in rock history.
Last year, it came top of a Radio 2 poll to find the best number one album of all time.
'Unique event'
The modern rock bands will be recorded by audio engineer Geoff Emerick, using the one-inch four-track equipment he captured the original on 40 years ago.
Radio 2 is also celebrating
its 40th birthday this year, and the programme will form part
of the station's '60s Season. Radio 2 controller Lesley Douglas
said: "This will be not only a unique radio event, but a
very special musical moment.
"The range and quality of artists involved ensure that this
will be a fitting tribute to one of the great albums of all time."
THE HAPPIEST
BEATLE OF ALL
For more than 40 years, the name Pete Best has
been synonymous with the notion of the man who so nearly had it
all. One day he was the drummer with The Beatles;
the next he wasn't. On the very brink of fame, the other three
band members ditched him. And he never saw it coming.
And yet as we talked this week, surrounded by drums and recording equipment, and with a photograph of John Lennon staring at us from a wall, there was not one trace of bitterness.
'What's the point in saying, "I should have been this", or "I could have been that?" ' he says simply. 'That's yesterday. Forty years ago. What's important is what's happening today and tomorrow. When you realise that, you get on with it.'
All of which, of course, is true. Understandably, however, it took him a little time to realise it and 'get on with it'. The moment Best's life changed was when, coming off stage at Liverpool's Cavern Club on the night of August 15, 1962, Beatles' manager Brian Epstein asked him to pop into his office the next morning.
The drummer naturally assumed the meeting would be to talk about some business matter. After all, the group was on the cusp of stardom, a fame which was already starting to sweep across Merseyside.
For two years he'd been playing with The Beatles as they'd perfected their early sound in the clubs of Hamburg, where they'd shared bedrooms, girls and squalor, and now he was seeing their fame explode in Liverpool. They were almost there. He and they were living in a cloud of euphoria.
He'd first met John Lennon, Paul McCartney and George Harrison three years earlier at the teenage nightclub, the Casbah, a place his mother, Mona, had opened in the basement of the vast Best family home in the West Derby suburb of Liverpool, and where he and I met.
Mona had seen the future in rock music, encouraging local groups to perform there. And although the Cavern would later become world famous as the nursery of what was then called the Mersey Sound, Best argues, with some reason, that the Casbah was its first breeding ground.
Lennon and McCartney not only played there, they decorated the ceilings, too. And when The Beatles needed a new drummer to go with them to Germany, it was Best to whom they turned.
Now, at last, in the summer of 1962 The Beatles had been offered a record deal by EMI. Later that week they would be filmed for television for the first time and, within a month, they would make their first record, Love Me Do. The world was opening its door to them.
But when he arrived for the meeting with Epstein, Best quickly saw that the manager was nervous.
Finally Epstein came to the point. The other Beatles had decided they no longer wanted him in their band. He was being sacked. Ringo Starr was to replace him.
In a moment, all Best's dreams disappeared. He was cast out. In shock, he went home and cried. From that day, not one of the other Beatles ever contacted him again. Nor has he tried to contact them.
'We were cowards,' Lennon would say many years later. 'We got Epstein to do the dirty work for us.'
To be pushed out of any job is painful. But this wasn't any job. Best then had to watch as The Beatles became the biggest show business attraction the world has ever known, while his career with his own new little group went in ever-decreasing circles.
By the mid-Sixties he was so low he tried to commit suicide by gassing himself, only to be saved by his mother and brother, Rory. 'They gave me the most sensible talking-to I've ever had in my life,' he remembers. 'They asked me what the hell I thought I was doing, saying that committing suicide was what people would expect me to do because of what had happened.
'But I had a beautiful wife and daughter to consider. Was I going to leave my daughter without a father?
'When I came to my senses, I wasn't ashamed of what I'd done, but realised only then what it would have done to my family. I vowed I'd never do anything like that again.'
Already the seeds of his life without The Beatles had been sown, not least by his wife, Kathy, whom he'd met at an early Beatles gig in Aintree.
From behind his drums he'd watched her dancing and admired her from afar. They got together at the first Beatles fan club party at the Cavern in 1962. That was, he says, the best day of his life.
'If she hadn't been the type of person I thought she was, she could have walked away from me when I wasn't a Beatle anymore,' he says.
'But she just said: "Pete, it's you I want. Not a Beatle." '
They married the following summer when She Loves You was topping the charts, and are still happily together nearly 44 years on with five grandchildren from their two daughters.
Shortly after his suicide attempt, Best decided to give up on his stumbling career in music. But although he'd got good O-levels, and had once considered becoming a teacher, he now found he couldn't get a job.
'Employers always thought that, once bitten by show business, I'd be off again when some manager with a big cigar and cheque book turned up. They wouldn't give me a chance.'
So, in 1968 (the year when The Beatles were dallying in the Himalayas with meditation and the Maharishi at the very peak of their fame), their former friend and drummer found himself doing shift work in a bread factory, filling vans with sliced bread.
'It didn't worry me in the least,' he chuckles. 'I wasn't at all ashamed. It was good, wholesome, manual work. I was providing for my family and their security. That was all that mattered.'
A year later, fancying a change, he went to the employment exchange and ended up being given a job in the employment exchange! 'When I got home, I told Kathy I was going to become a civil servant.'
'You'd better buy a suit then, hadn't you?' was her response.
He stayed a civil servant for 20 years, rising steadily through the system, doing a steady nine-to-five job. 'I was very proud of myself. I achieved success in a different way, helping people get jobs and then being in charge of retraining programmes.'
All the time he stayed away from his drums. One day, his daughters said: 'Dad, there's a girl at school who says her mum told her you used to be a Beatle. Is that true?' Intent on living his new life, he'd never told them.
While John Lennon was falling in love with Yoko Ono and climbing in and out of bags as a conceptual artist, Best was playing rugby again for Liverpool Collegiate Old Boys.
He's a quietly spoken, friendly guy; a Liverpool man's man, if you like. While the other Beatles dabbled with pep pills in Germany, he never touched drugs, and never has, still preferring a pint in the pub with his friends and brothers.
Central to his life has been the support of his family, and it's an interesting one. His father came from a wellknown Liverpool clan of boxing promoters and met Best's mother while serving in the Army in India during World War II.
She had been born in India -- as was Pete, the eldest of three sons -- and when the family returned to Liverpool after the war, she wanted a large house rather than the usual semi.
One day on his way home from school her second son Rory spotted a For Sale sign in large grey detached house in a very smart, leafy road.
'She had to have it,' says Pete. 'But my dad wasn't interested. So, unknown to any of us, she pawned all her jewellery and put it on a horse in the Derby which was being ridden by a young jockey called Lester Piggott. It was a rank outsider called Never Say Die. And it won at 33-1. With the winnings she had enough to put down a deposit and get a mortgage.
'She was a strong, matriarchal woman, full of ambition. She made the Casbah club famous, and even after what had happened to me she never turned her back on The Beatles.
'She'd once shown John Lennon her father's war medals, and in 1967 he got in touch with her, wondering if he could wear them for the photograph on the front of the Sergeant Pepper album. She let him have them.'
By 1988, Best's Beatle past was 25 years behind him when some old pals persuaded him to come out of retirement for a Sixties concert at Liverpool's Adelphi Hotel.
'They'd tried for years to get me back on stage, saying there were thousands of people who came to Liverpool and wondered whatever had happened to Pete Best.
'I'd always found an excuse not to do it. This time, however, I ran out of excuses and put together a little band, with my youngest brother, Roag, playing drums alongside me.'
The show was a huge success. 'And it was nice for Mona to see her eldest and youngest boys playing together on stage for the first time. Tragically she died of a heart attack a couple of weeks later.'
Inevitably he was then tempted back to music. And while Beatles fans had not wanted to know about the evicted drummer while John, Paul, George and Ringo were still playing together, Best was now an international curiosity.
Taking early retirement from the civil service, he picked up his drumsticks again and began to make records and tour with his 'Best Of The Beatles' stage show.
'We do a lot of Sixties stuff, and, of course, Beatle songs. I don't have a problem with that. I didn't buy their first record, Love Me Do, but I got later ones, because, quite honestly, they were so good, so different, so brave. And their songs have stood the test of time.'
Piece by piece, it all began to come right for him again. The Best family had always kept the big home which had housed the Casbah where it all began, and when the club was opened to the public again as a museum in 1999, thousands turned up to take a look.
It's now been listed by English Heritage and groups of tourists can visit by appointment to see John Lennon's ceiling decorations and the old Dansette record player the kids used to dance to.
His biggest surprise, though, must have been the release of The Beatles Anthology in 1995, when early demo recordings made by the group with Best on drums went on sale for the first time.
Suddenly, three decades on, he was eligible for royalties. Exactly how much he received he won't say. But when I ask him if he's rich, he agrees. 'In many ways, but I had a comfortable life before that happened. I always provided and I brought up my family safe and secure.'
Today, the 65-year-old Best is a happy man -- with good reason.
Apart from the touring, with part of the house which held the Casbah now turned into a recording studio, he records local Liverpool talent and his own CDs, has a website to which hundreds of fans write, and does a nice sideline in merchandising.
And how does he now feel about The Beatles who hurt him so much so long ago?
'Some people expect me to be bitter and twisted, but I'm not. I feel very fortunate in my life. God knows what strains and stresses The Beatles must have been under. They became a public commodity. And John paid for that with his life.
'I feel lucky to have known another side of John, the softer side, not the sarcastic, sardonic one he put on for the public.
'When I was kicked out of The Beatles, none of us knew what was going to happen. I know we went about saying we were going to be "bigger than Elvis", but I didn't believe it and I don't think the others did either.'
Exactly why Pete Best was pushed out of The Beatles has never been fully explained. At the time, some people thought it was because the others in the group were jealous of his good looks, while others said he was too quiet and a bit moody.
I don't believe either story. In many ways, he was different from the other three and I think he was perceived to lack the ruthless ambition that Lennon would talk about later in life, the drive that got The Beatles to the peak of fame.
Ringo may or may not have been a better technical drummer than Best. It's a matter of opinion. But I suspect the other Beatles -- always musical perfectionists -- heard something in the way Ringo played that Best wasn't giving them.
Today, of the three Beatles who sacked him, only Paul is still alive. Does he regret the decades of silence between them?
'We're not getting any younger,'
he says. 'We know what we've done and we're not going to think
any worse of each other if we had a chat now. God bless us, it
was all 40 odd years ago.'
April 3, 2007 -- Contact Music
BEATLES HEADING ONLINE
THE BEATLES record label EMI has vowed to make the
legendary rockers' music available to download. The company made
the announcement yesterday (02APR07) after a conference with Apple.
No date has been made yet for the release. EMI boss Eric Nicoli
says the label are "working on it".
The move marks a major U-turn for the band - The Beatles' own
Apple Corps label only recently ended a court battle with Apple
over the use of their shared name.
It was (nearly) 40 years ago today. On the evening of March 30, 1967, four young musicians gathered with a large group of artists and assistants in a London studio to shoot a photograph for an album cover.
The album, to be called "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band," would, of course, become synonymous with the creative revolution of the 1960s. The cover artwork, a photomontage of the Beatles posing for photographer Michael Cooper among a gallery of several dozen celebrities ("People We Like," as the crew took to calling them) was itself a radical departure, with its elaborately designed "gatefold" layout, bonus insert, and printed song lyrics -- the latter a first in pop.
Behind the real-life Beatles, who were dressed in candy-colored military-band costumes and sported newly cultivated mustaches, the "crowd" was actually made up of wax figures and cardboard cutouts of singers, actors, writers, artists, athletes, and critical thinkers -- some of them (Marlon Brando, Bob Dylan) as familiar as the Beatles themselves, others (Bobby Breen?) now as obsolete as monaural recording.
The cover concept was originally conceived by Paul McCartney and London art dealer Robert Fraser as a tableau for a fictitious Salvation Army-style brass band. But in the hands of its designers, then-husband-and-wife Pop artists Peter Blake and Jann Haworth (who ended up choosing more than half of the faces), it became a droll satire of celebrity and influence. While many of the famous figures in the gallery were heroes to the Beatles, others were chosen out of sheer, Beatlesque audacity. The group's record company, EMI, rejected three of John Lennon's suggestions -- Jesus, Gandhi, and Hitler.
Inspired by Victorian-era composite photographs, Dada collage artists, and Pop artist Richard Hamilton's surreal cut-and-paste suburban scenes, the "Sgt. Pepper" cover has become a visual touchstone. Haworth, now living in Utah, still has the Grammy she and her ex-husband shared for the graphic design: "I let the children play with it," she says with a laugh. "The trumpet fell off, and the dog chewed on it. It's been destroyed in an iconoclastic way."
1. Sri Yukteswar Giri: Indian guru, one of four chosen for the cover by George Harrison.
2. Aleister Crowley: Notorious mystic, polymath, and drug user chosen, designer Jann Haworth says, by John Lennon.
3.Mae West: "What would I be doing in a lonely hearts club?" she reportedly joked. Ringo Starr appeared in her 1978 film "Sextette."
4.Lenny Bruce: By 1967, the Beatles shared some of the late comic's persecution complex.
5.Karlheinz Stockhausen: Avant-garde composer who (though chosen by McCartney) once credited Lennon as the crucial link between pop and "serious" music.
6.W.C. Fields: Wisecracking actor, apparently chosen by Peter Blake.
7.Carl Jung: Psychoanalyst who famously dreamed of "dirty, sooty" Liverpool (the Beatles' hometown), where he discovers Self in the form of a blooming magnolia.
8.Edgar Allan Poe: Chosen by Lennon, who would soon write the line "Man you should have seen them kicking Edgar Allan Poe" ("I Am the Walrus").
9.Fred Astaire: McCartney, a big fan, has said "Here, There and Everywhere" was inspired by "Cheek to Cheek."
10.Richard Merkin: Self-proclaimed "literary painter" chosen by Haworth and/or Blake.
11.Vargas girl: Iconic pinup. Haworth now finds the cover's preponderance of blond bombshells (and lack of other influential women) "scathing, terrible."
12.Leo Gorcey (missing): Actor who starred in 1930s-'40s comedy-drama serials "Dead End Kids" and "Bowery Boys" asked for $400 for permission to use his image and was painted out.
13.Huntz Hall: Gorcey's fellow actor in "Dead End Kids" and "Bowery Boys" series.
14.Simon Rodia: Immigrant construction worker who created the Watts Towers in Los Angeles.
15.Bob Dylan: The man who introduced the Beatles to marijuana.
16.Aubrey Beardsley: Influential Victorian-era illustrator whose work enjoyed a '60s revival.
17.Sir Robert Peel: UK prime minister of 1830s and '40s who reformed the police force.
18.Aldous Huxley: Author of "Brave New World," advocated psychedelic drug use.
19.Dylan Thomas: The Welsh poet, who died in 1953. As a child, Lennon took comfort in stories about artists such as Thomas and van Gogh, who "seemed to see things other people didn't see."
20.Terry Southern: Novelist and satirist. Ringo starred in 1969 feature film of his novel "The Magic Christian."
21.Dion: Besides Dylan, the onetime heartthrob was the only pop music figure in the gallery.
22.Tony Curtis: The actor, a family friend of the Haworths, inspired a generation of hairstyles in late '50s England.
23.Wallace Berman: West Coast collage/assemblage artist chosen by designers Haworth and Blake.
24.Tommy Handley: BBC comedian of the Beatles' childhood eulogized by the bishop of London for his "satire without malice."
25.Marilyn Monroe: Famously sang "Happy Birthday" for JFK; contrary to popular belief, McCartney does not own the rights to the song.
26.William S. Burroughs: Experimental writer, influenced McCartney with his cut-up tape recordings.
27.Sri Mahavatara Babaji: Indian guru.
28.Stan Laurel: British-born comic actor, one half of the duo Laurel and Hardy.
29.Richard Lindner: "Mechanistic Cubist" painter chosen by the designers.
30.Oliver Hardy: Laurel's comic partner.
31.Karl Marx: Though an avid reader of his work, Lennon was an uncertain revolutionary ("Don't you know that you can count me out").
32.H.G. Wells: Science fiction pioneer ("War of the Worlds," "The Time Machine") and utopian thinker.
33.Sri Paramahansa Yogananda: Harrison liked to give away copies of his "Autobiography of a Yogi."
34.(Window dummy)
35.Stuart Sutcliffe: Ex-Beatle whose premature death haunted Lennon.
36.(Window dummy)
37.Max Miller: Risque comedian of McCartney's beloved music hall era.
38.Petty girl: Like Vargas's, George Petty's pinup girls were World War II icons.
39.Marlon Brando: In "The Wild One," the rival biker gang is called the Beetles.
40.Tom Mix: Early Western film star.
41.Oscar Wilde: Another of the artists who "suffered because of their visions," as Lennon once told Playboy.
42.Tyrone Power: Hollywood star of the Beatles' formative years.
43.Larry Bell: American sculptor who worked as a bouncer at the Unicorn in LA.
44.Dr. David Livingstone: Scottish explorer and African missionary.
45.Johnny Weissmuller: Movie Tarzan whose famous whoop preceded McCartney's.
46.Stephen Crane: "Red Badge of Courage" author who died at 28 after living the last years of his life in England.
47.Issy Bonn: British comic and singer whose raised right hand just behind Paul's head -- an Eastern death symbol? -- was seen as a clue to the rampant "Paul is dead" rumors.
48.George Bernard Shaw: Playwright, critic, socialist, vegetarian.
49.H.C. Westermann: American sculptor and printmaker, chosen by the designers.
50.Albert Stubbins: Midcentury English footballer whose best years were with Liverpool.
51.Sri Lahiri Mahasaya: Indian guru.
52.Lewis Carroll: Lennon, a big fan of the "Alice" author, took Carroll's verse "The Walrus and the Carpenter" as inspiration for "I Am the Walrus."
53.T.E. Lawrence: "Lawrence of Arabia" famously portrayed by Swinging Londoner Peter O'Toole.
54.Sonny Liston: Wax image of the former heavyweight champ, whose nemesis, the future Muhammad Ali, posed for photos with the Beatles.
55.Petty girl
56.George Harrison (wax): Wax images of the youthful Beatles were provided by Madame Tussauds, which threw in Liston and Diana Dors for good measure.
57.John Lennon (wax)
58.Shirley Temple (hidden behind wax Lennon's left shoulder): First of three images of the child star (including the doll wearing the Rolling Stones jersey), a bit of overkill for which Haworth blames herself.
59.Ringo Starr (wax)
60.Paul McCartney (wax)
61.Albert Einstein (hidden behind real-life Lennon's right shoulder): Scientific genius who said, "I live my daydreams in music."
62.John Lennon: "Sgt. Pepper" outfits designed by Manuel Cuevas, who still sews flashy costumes in Nashville. He hardly remembers it: "I made a bunch of funny outfits for them," he says.
63.Ringo Starr: Declined to make any suggestions and doesn't recall the photo shoot -- "I suppose I must have been there because I'm in the photograph," he has said.
64.Paul McCartney: Originated the "Sgt. Pepper" concept; chose most of the showbiz celebrities.
65.George Harrison: "Within You Without You," his sole contribution to "Sgt. Pepper," reconfirmed his interest in Eastern philosophy.
66.Bobby Breen: Child star of the 1930s.
67.Marlene Dietrich: Once shared the stage at the Prince of Wales Theatre with young Beatles.
68.Mohandas Gandhi (blacked out).
69.Order of the Buffalos Legionnaire
70.Diana Dors: British Marilyn whose second husband was Richard Dawson.
71. Shirley Temple
The Fab Four are the last major act to withhold their back catalogue from stores like iTunes and Napster.
UK download site Wippit indicated it would be first to sell the songs in a headline on its press release pages.
Record company EMI said the statement was untrue and has asked for it to be removed. Representatives for Wippit were unavailable for comment.
EMI is believed to be on the verge of releasing The Beatles' back catalogue as digital downloads.
A potential deal with iTunes became more likely last month when the band's record label Apple Corps settled a long-running trademark dispute with technology giant Apple Inc.
After settling their differences, Apple Corps manager Neil Aspinall said the Beatles looked forward to "many years of peaceful co-operation" with the computer firm.
In January, Apple Inc boss Steve Jobs teased Beatles fans by calling up a selection from the band's Sergeant Pepper album when he unveiled the company's iPhone.
'Beatles Top 10'
Wippit posted the Beatles announcement on its website last Friday. The headline reads: "The Beatles available for download on Wippit."
But the full text of the press release, which is dated Wednesday, March 14, is unavailable.
Winning the online distribution rights to the Beatles' music would be a major coup for the company.
HMV spokesman Gennaro Castaldo says a top 10 made up entirely of Beatles' tracks "would be almost guaranteed" as soon as the songs go on sale.
Michael Jackson is being forced to sell off part of his catalogue of Beatles songs in a bid to stave off bankruptcy.
The singer outbid Sir Paul McCartney and John Lennon's widow, Yoko Ono, to buy the songs for £24 million ($46 million) in 1985.
The deal gave Jackson control over the Fab Four's repertoire and hits by artists such as Bob Dylan and Neil Diamond.
But now the giant Sony entertainment company is ready to claim as much as half of his holdings as payback for a financial fix that the disgraced star agreed to last year.
"Sir Paul will be delighted,' a source close to Jackson said. "But for Michael this will be devastating. He fought tooth and nail to try to find an alternative but he doesn't see one."
Jackson's rights to the music - which he co-owns with Sony - are valued at between £250 million ($482 million) and £400 million ($772 million).
The catalogue has earned him hundreds of millions of pounds over the years but he has squandered his earnings maintaining his lifestyle.
And he racked up huge legal fees successfully defending himself against allegations that he abused children at his Neverland ranch.
His Beatles collection is at risk after an American investment group threatened to foreclose on a £140 million ($270 million)loan they made to Jackson.
Sony helped him repay the debt in return for an option to buy half of his 50 per cent stake in the catalogue - and they now want to enforce the option.
New York entertainment commentator Roger Friedman said: "It's known as the Liquidation Sale among insiders."
The singer is facing enormous new financial demands, including a £10 million ($19 million) loan payment due in October and a £14 million ($27 million) writ from a finance firm.
Yoko Ono has granted permission for an unfinished
track by her late husband John Lennon to be finished
by his Beatles bandmates. The song, called "Now
And Then", will be completed by Sir Paul McCartney and
Ringo Starr after Ono - who owns the rights to Lennon's
solo material - gave the project a cautious green light. She says,
"It's up to them. But no, I'm not against it." McCartney
and Starr previously tried to revive the track more than a decade
ago (95) for inclusion in The Beatles Anthology. However, George Harrison vetoed the idea.
February 17, 2007 -- The
Sun
Dis-please Please Me
Classic original photographs of The Beatles were lost forever after they were accidentally
chucked in the trash.
The iconic 1963 pictures - used on the cover of the Fab Four's first official album Please Please Me - were stored in two boxes at an EMI base.
But although they were marked Not Rubbish - Do Not Remove, a cleaner allegedly admitted binning them.
Now EMI and Apple Corps bosses are suing the cleaner's firm for £700,000, ($1.4 million) claiming they were negligent, failed to follow instructions, failed to take reasonable care and failed to properly train or supervise their employee.
The photos - showing John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr leaning over a staircase at EMI's office in Manchester Square, London - were also used on the covers of The Beatles EP and the 1973 compilation Red Album.
They were among more than 450 transparencies and negatives kept at EMI's Brook Green base in West London.
The seven Beatles snaps were taken by respected late photographer Angus McBean.
But the January 2001 gaffe saw them tossed in a waste compactor and CRUSHED. EMI and Apple Corps, owned and controlled by McCartney, Starr and the estates of Lennon and Harrison, issued a writ against cleaning firm Crystal Services on Thursday.
It says: "The Beatles transparencies were the only original material from the photography from this session and were historically important and valuable." Crystal allegedly fired the female cleaner.
Apple Corps was founded in 1968 by The Beatles after they were advised to invest their capital in a business or lose out to the tax man.
The Beatles songs - all of them - will be offered for downloading soon. That's what Neil Aspinall, the head of Apple Corps Ltd. and the man who's protected the Beatles legacy for the last 40 years - told me over the weekend.
"All 13 core albums, the ones originally released on CD in 1987, have been remastered," Aspinall told me. "At some point they will all be released, probably at the same time."
But the film "Let It Be" remains in DVD purgatory, Aspinall says. The reason? "The film was so controversial when it first came out. When we got halfway through restoring it, we looked at the outtakes and realized: this stuff is still controversial. It raised a lot of old issues."
All rock groups - all musicians and artists - should have a protector as devoted or committed as Aspinall. He's never sold out the group or their legacy, but instead has been their fierce protector for nearly four decades.
Where others might have had the temptation to just cash out and take the billions of dollars being offered for one venture or another, Aspinall has proceeded with incredible care and caution.
John Lennon and George Harrison especially must be smiling at the thought of Aspinall keeping their names away from crass endeavors.
It was Aspinall who guided the Cirque du Soleil project, "Love," which is not only a hit in Las Vegas but is a bestselling CD as well. It's the only album that EMI Music can claim as a hit from this past Christmas.
Aspinall did confirm for me that not everything from the show is on the CD. "A lot of the transitions wouldn't fit," he said. And there will not be a DVD of the magnificent show at the Mirage.
"The Mirage doesn't want it," he said. "They want people to come see it."
Now that Aspinall has "won" his longstanding lawsuit with Apple Inc. (formerly Apple Computer), he says downloaded Beatle songs will be coming to us soon.
If you missed it, Apple Corps. sued Apple Computer in 2002 over trademark violations after signing a 1991 agreement - and Steve Jobs paying the Beatles about $43 million.
Jobs et al won, but the case went to appeal. Before the appeals court could make a ruling, a settlement was reached.
The Beatles, sources say (and not Aspinall, whom I didn't even discuss this with), may have won royalties on Apple iTunes/iPod hardware as part of the settlement.
The settlement didn't address downloading. But now Aspinall says that when the Beatles songs do get put on the Internet officially, "it will be on all the services, not just one." So all the Beatles songs will be found on iTunes, Rhapsody, etc. That's very "PC" of him!
And those 13 remastered albums? They will not include "Hey Jude," a 1969 compilation album that Americans of a certain age fondly recall and keep in their collections on vinyl only.
Aspinall said he'd kind of forgotten about it.
"Do you know that Allen Klein" - who represented Lennon back then in the U.S. - "screwed that up!" Aspinall said. "He reversed the photos. The back picture was supposed to be the cover!"
Is it possible that today, almost precisely 43 years after they stormed America for the first time, The Beatles are still making music news?
The only possible answer is "yeah, yeah, yeah."
Two new CDs -- one credited to the band itself and one by the Smithereens -- have forced music fans to ponder the lads from Liverpool anew.
People who debate such matters have a choice of explanations for the Beatles' enduring presence in the popular culture scene. Idealists would argue that John, Paul, George and Ringo's craft transcends the time when the band was extant, and those songs that helped defined the 1960s for many people still resonate with meaning and emotion in the first decade of the 21st Century. They have a point.
Commercialists might note that Beatles's songs generate big bucks for copyright holders, publishing companies, and record labels -- to say nothing of the surviving Beatles themselves and the families of the deceased band members. These people, too, make a valid argument.
Finally, realists point out that graying Baby Boomers continue to have a stranglehold on popular culture. The music of this age cohort has become an inescapable soundtrack of daily life. Even Boomers' kids and grandkids know their music
This might be the most compelling case of all. A unscientific survey at elementary and middle schools in Warren County found a startling number of students knew who the Beatles were AND could identify all four members AND could name at least one of their songs.
This is curious. These are kids no older than 14 who are aware of music recorded 30 years before they were born. Put that in perspective: Can you imagine a Baby Boomer (say, someone who will turn 48 on February 20) who was familiar with music from the 1920s when HE was 14 years old, in 1973? In the early 1970s, no one wanted to know anything about music earlier than "Rock Around the Clock." (And even THAT was chiefly because of the movie "American Graffiti.")
But even allowing for nostalgia, what are we to make of "Love," the collection of remixes and mash-ups overseen by original Beatles producer Sir George Martin and his son Giles? And how are we supposed to react the New Jersey-based quartet the Smithereens and their new release "Meet the Smithereens," a track-by-track re-creation of "Meet the Beatles," the Fab Four's first American LP?
Though "Love" is touted as a daring re-imagining of the band's songs, it's rather tame. The idea of combining snippets of various cuts sounds intriguing, but in practice, the Martins kept a rather conservative tone. Most of their rejiggering comes either at the very beginning or the very end of each track, leaving the bulk of the songs untouched.
The glorious exception -- and the track that hints at what "Love" might have been -- is the mash-up of "Drive My Car," "The Word" and "What You're Doing." This seamless folding together of three very different songs truly is something both familiar and fresh. Would that there were more such experiments on this CD.
In contrast, "Meet the Smithereens" sounds like karaoke. The Smithereens have recorded more than their share of Beatles-influenced songs over the years (as well as a few direct covers of songs from the Lennon-McCartney catalog). But the idea of doing the same songs of an entire album? A waste of time and money, right?
And yetand yet "Meet the Smithereens" is a gas, man. These are the same songs that you've known for all these years, but they are also unmistakably the product of the Smithereens, with somewhat dark undercurrents and just a little hint of menace amidst the jangle.
So if you're looking for a
way to give a fresh listen to the Beatles, by all means, "Meet
the Smithereens." But "Love" isn't all you need.
February 7, 2007 -- BBC News
Will the Beatles go digital at last?
If you download music, then money really can't buy you Love - the latest album by The Beatles.
In fact, none of the Fab Four's music is available online in its original form.
You can download cover versions by Joe Cocker, En Vogue and something called the Beatles String Tribute Ensemble, but nothing by the band themselves.
The only legally available recording of a genuine Beatle singing a genuine Beatles song is of Paul McCartney performing Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band with U2 at Live 8.
So why have the iconic band
been so slow to embrace the MP3 age?
It is partly because of the long-running trademark dispute between
the Beatles' record company, Apple Corps,
and iPod manufacturer Apple Inc.
Their court battles ensured that fans looking for the Beatles on the iTunes music store faced a Hard Day's Night.
But it did not explain the absence of the group's music on other download sites, such as Napster or Rhapsody.
The real reason for the rockers' reticence, says Mark Mulligan, a digital music analyst at Jupiter Research, is caution.
Sceptical
"The Beatles are principally an album band, and for album sales the online market is still a relatively niche opportunity," he explains.
"They were sceptical about how much mass market appeal there was for downloading."
The Beatles have held back on new music technology in the past - making fans wait until 1986 before they released their albums on CD - but they are now the last major act to abstain from the digital market.
Some analysts believe the band's representatives have been trying to negotiate a better deal - wary of artists who complain that online sales rob them of profits.
Other artists claim that shops like iTunes wrecks the artistic integrity of an album by allowing songs to be purchased for 79 pence apiece.
Indeed, Mulligan argues it is more important for online stores to secure the Beatles catalogue than it is for the band to move online.
"Steve Jobs can't say that his iTunes store offers everything you want, because it doesn't," he says.
"It's an anomaly that needs to be closed."
Closure appeared to become more likely this week when Apple computers and the Beatles announced a truce.
Under the deal, Apple Inc takes full control of the Apple brand and will license certain trademarks back to the Beatles' Apple Corps for continued use.
Many analysts believe it is now a certainty that Lady Madonna, Eleanor Rigby and Mr Kite will set up home on the internet.
"It goes from impossible to a lock that it's going to happen - it's a function of time at this point," says Gene Munster, an analyst with investment bank Piper Jaffray & Co.
In the UK, this could have a rather strange effect on the singles chart - which recently began accepting any downloaded track into the Top 40.
HMV spokesman Gennaro Castaldo says a top 10 made up entirely of Beatles' tracks "would be almost guaranteed" as soon as the songs go on sale.
Bookmaker William Hill is offering odds of 10/1 on an all-Beatles top 10 before he end of the year, with Hey Jude favourite to be the band's first digital number one.
But chart analyst James Masterton, who writes for Yahoo! Music, called such predictions "wishful thinking".
He points out that the last time the Beatles singles were reissued in the UK, in 1976, only Yesterday broke the top 10.
"You've got to consider that these are some of the most famous pop records ever made," he said. "They've sold in their millions already."
"The chances are that if people own an iPod and they want to listen to a Beatles song they've already gone out and bought it."
Those who are holding out for the digital versions, however, may still have a wait on their hands, as both Apple and the Beatles have refused to comment on their plans since Monday's announcement.
The Beatles are set for a £500 million ($984 million) -a-year bonanza after settling a long dispute with computer giant Apple.
The settlement means the Fab Four's entire back catalogue will be available on iTunes at 79p ($1.55) a song.
Bookies are predicting that Beatles songs will occupy every slot in the top 40 within a year.
It could mean earnings of £500 million-a-year for five years, split between surviving Beatles Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr and the heirs of John Lennon and George Harrison.
Apple chiefs are also expected to launch a Beatles iPod.
The dispute centred on the rights to the name Apple, which The Beatles chose for their record label.
The deal which has been done involves the computer firm owning all trademarks of the company but licensing them back to The Beatles' Apple Corps.
Apple boss Steve Jobs said: "We love the Beatles and it has been very painful to be at odds with them over these trademarks. It feels wonderful to have resolved this in a positive manner."
Bookies say the new download rules could spark Beatlemania all over again.
They are offering odds of 8-1
for Hey Jude becoming the Beatles' first digital No1, with Yesterday
at 9-1 and She Loves You at 10-1.
February 5, 2007 -- Press Release
Apple Inc. and The Beatles' Apple Corps Ltd. Enter into New Agreement
Apple Inc. and The Beatles' company Apple Corps Ltd. are pleased to announce the parties have entered
into a new agreement concerning the use of the name "Apple"
and apple logos which replaces their 1991 Agreement. Under this
new agreement, Apple Inc. will own all of the trademarks related
to "Apple" and will license certain of those trademarks
back to Apple Corps for their continued use. In addition, the
ongoing trademark lawsuit between the companies will end, with
each party bearing its own legal costs, and Apple Inc. will continue
using its name and logos on iTunes. The terms of settlement are
confidential.
Commenting on the settlement, Steve Jobs, Apple's CEO said, "We
love the Beatles, and it has been painful being at odds with them
over these trademarks. It feels great to resolve this in a positive
manner, and in a way that should remove the potential of further
disagreements in the future."
Commenting on the settlement on behalf of the shareholders of
Apple Corps, Neil
Aspinall, manager of Apple
Corps said, "It is great to put this dispute behind us and
move on. The years ahead are going to be very exciting times for
us. We wish Apple Inc. every success and look forward to many
years of peaceful co-operation with them."
February 5, 2007 -- Press
Release
New Beatle Interview Talk Show launched on http://www.daytrippin.com
Enjoy the most fab interviews with Beatle people from around the world only on "Beatle Talk" available exclusively from Daytrippin'.
Join Daytrippin's Editor and Publisher, Trina Yannicos, as she hosts an entertaining and insightful podcast featuring interviews with newsmakers in the Beatles world. New episodes to be added every month.
Episode 1: Pat DiNizio, leader of the Smithereens, discusses the new Beatles tribute album, "Meet the Smithereens"
Pat discusses the impact of The Beatles and specifically, "Meet the Beatles" on his career as a musician; the concept and making of "Meet the Smithereens"; his professional encounters with Paul, George and Ringo; his passion for Beatles memorabilia and The Smithereens upcoming performances on tour including The Fest for Beatles Fans in New Jersey.
Visit http://www.daytrippin.com/beatletalk.htm
There was a time when, every few years, the people who announce such things would announce that some young band would be the new Beatles.
In the '70s there was the Bay City Rollers, Cheap Trick and, I don't know, that band Kansas? Boston? Or Dunnville even. With their big hit We Got A Great Big Lawn-Boy. Or was that Caistor Centre, with StairMaster To A Great Big Convoy To Heaven? Whatever.
Even after musicians ran out of cities and towns to name their bands after, the industry still kept up the search for the new Beatles, much in the way that explorers persisted in the hunt for the Northwest Passage, trying to weave through the maze of vast ice fields in what is now, thanks to climate change, the Baffin Riviera.
Later there were other pretenders. Air Supply. The Go-Gos. Barbra Streisand, with Barry Gibb.
Even before that, while The Beatles themselves were still peaking and Michael Jackson didn't own all their songs, other groups were being groomed as the new Beatles. The Monkees. And that trio Neil Young often played with -- Sharon, Lois and Bram (the cute one).
There was Badfinger and Spooky Tooth -- and even the Vienna Boys Choir, in that brief phase they went through, with the bangs and the visits to the Maharishi.
There was a time when anyone with bangs, and a bit of melody, harmony, and/or reverb was being called The New Beatles.
In fact, as far back as the early 1800s, when Napoleon was at the crest of his power, people were calling him "as big as The Beatles." He'd say, "Ah, shucks," but in French, if they have a word for shucks. Or he'd say, "I am the walrus."
He started dressing his Imperial army in Sgt. Peppers outfits and they froze on the road to Moscow, singing, "Flew in from Miami Beach, BOAC, couldn't get to sleep last night." The grandparents of The Beatles weren't even born yet. That's how big The Beatles were. People knew them 150 years before they existed.
Things are different now. When you ask young people these days if they recognize the name Ringo Starr, they'll say, "Of course. The voice on Thomas the Tank Engine. Remember the episode when Sir Topham Hat gets caught in a sleeping car with George Michaels?'"
They may not know Ringo's other great distinctions. Like headlining at Casino Rama. Or marrying Barbara Bach after meeting her on the set of a caveman movie. Or, yes, playing drums for The Beatles.
And though The Beatles are still fabulously famous, and even though many young people do know who Ringo Starr is, the sad truth is ... more people will watch Paul McCartney and Heather Mills in the new reality show, Mud Wrestling For Custody, than watched The Beatles on Ed Sullivan.
But that's just the nature of the times and the culture and the demographics. There are a lot more people now than there were then, but the markets are all diced up like onions. I'm sure one day Justin Timberlake will sell more records than The Beatles ever sold. But more people don't know who Justin Timberlake is than do know. That is, as Garrison Keillor has pointed out, the fragmented nature of contemporary fame.
When The Beatles hit, everyone knew who they were. Everyone watched them on Ed Sullivan. Everyone wanted to be like them.
And every country started creating their own versions. The Chinese Beatles, The German Beatles (You Will Hold My Hand), The Balkan Beatles (they were always breaking up).
My friends and I formed a band in Grade 4 called The Junior Beatles, even though we couldn't play. But we combed down our bangs, painted Ludwig on a garbage can that was the drum, and played in the back yard.
They were, I think, the first group to have an actual "mania," the technical designation above "craze." That's what all the promoters of the new Beatles hopefuls were trying to recreate. Their bands might have had the look and the sound down pat. That mania part, though, the true kind that The Beatles had -- tough to duplicate. Tough to rub out of the bottle. That's what they were missing.
"The mania," of course, came to an abrupt end when the Fab Four were drafted into the army. They came back, made a lot of movies, but they were never the same. Sorry. That was someone else.
No, what the Beatles did after the initial "mania" was something no one thought possible, something that had never been done before in pop music. They didn't allow their fans to outgrow them. They outgrew their fans, who had to scramble to keep up.
There have been imitators, pretenders, but somehow only The Beatles could ever count how many holes it took to fill the Albert Hall (A Day In The Life). Or catch the magic.
No, there are no new Beatles. The new Beatle these days are the old Beatles. Remastered albums. Movies like I Am Sam. Tribute shows like Rain, which played in Hamilton on Tuesday.
My wife went to see Rain (I had a meeting), and it's as close as she's going to get. She came home on a Beatles high and we listened to Abbey Road. We looked at the famous cover.
Those Beatles. People have tried and tried, but no one can cross a street, in file, quite the way they could. Yes, everyone wanted to be like them. Tragically, of course, no one wants to be like them now -- two have died, Paul was ridiculously rumoured to have died back in '68, and these days, with his troubles, maybe he half wishes he had.
But there's the music. There will always be the music. It sticks. Like glue, a glue that holds our memories together.
June 1, 2007 will mark the 40th anniversary of the Beatles' groundbreaking Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band album, and to celebrate it's birthday - all 11 of the fab four's UK albums will be re-released.
The albums were originally released on CD in the late 80's and the new versions are expected to feature each track re-mastered in a state-of-the art 24-bit sound as well as it's original mono recording.
Exact details are to be confirmed but Rock Radio reports that the discs could be available as early as March and that iTunes, who are negotiating the digital rights, are to make a special announcement during the Super Bowl on February 4th.
Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band is the UK's biggest selling album of all time; it has shifted nearly 5 million copies and spent a staggering 23 weeks at number one.
Britain's Royal Mail released a first-ever series of stamps featuring The Beatles yesterday, and immediately forecast they would break global records for sales of a single issue.
Demand from countries including Japan, the US and Canada has already put the six-stamp issue on target to become its biggest seller apart from collections related to occasions like royal weddings.
"Judging by the unprecedented response we have already received from collectors and the public, The Beatles is on course to be the best selling issue internationally," said the Royal Mail's Julietta Edgar.
"We chose to celebrate a band as exceptional as The Beatles because of their contribution to the world - and that popularity has been demonstrated by the interest this stamp issue has received across the globe," she added.
The new stamps - which have already smashed a record set by Queen Elizabeth II's 80th birthday issue last year - feature iconic Beatles album covers including "Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band", "Abbey Road" and "Revolver".
The poll commissioned by Brandedmedia, a CD and DVD replication specialist, asked people across the UK to rate their top three CD album covers.
Pink Floyds' "Dark Side of the Moon" was voted into a close second place.
The results threw up some interesting results about the respondees, both men and women chose The Beatles and Pink Floyd as their number one and number two sleeves respectively.
The differences occur from the third choice, whilst men elected the classic Rolling Stones' "Sticky Fingers" sleeve artwork, women takin part in the survey plumped for a more contemporary option Scissor Sisters' eponymous debut.
The result of Sgt. Pepper at number one is unanimous across age groups 35-65 and over, but for the 25-34 year olds, Dark Side of the Moon just pips Sgt. Pepper to the post as first choice.
The nation's Top five favourite album sleeves are:
1. Beatles Sgt. Peppers
Lonely Hearts Club Band
2. Pink Floyd Dark Side of the Moon
3. Rolling Stones Sticky Fingers
4. Scissor Sisters Scissors Sisters
5. Mike Oldfield Tubular Bells