Beatles News

French rocker JOHNNY HALLYDAY is hoping to finally crack the international markets by releasing a duets album featuring the likes of SIR PAUL McCARTNEY and STEVIE WONDER. The singer is a music icon in his homeland and Francophone nations, but has so far failed to gain the same recognition in the English-speaking world.

He is now heading to Los Angeles to record a new English-language album, and is eyeing collaborations with a number of superstars in a bid to win over new fans. The 70 year old tells Leparisien.fr he will start work on the record after an upcoming family holiday in the Caribbean, adding, "I will then be working on the record in Los Angeles. Duets, I hope, with Paul McCartney, Stevie Wonder, Bon Jovi and others. (It will be) an album for the United States and England, which will come out in France too." Hallyday has previously released English albums including Johnny Hallyday sings America's Rockin' Hits in 1962 and 1994's Rough Town.

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Somewhere between three and four o’clock on a Monday morning in April 1968, the telephone rang in the little office at RCA Records in Los Angeles where an obscure singer-songwriter named Harry Nilsson was keeping his usual nocturnal hours. ‘I was half asleep,’ Nilsson recalled. ‘A voice says: “Hello, Harry. This is John. Man you’re too f***ing much, you’re just great. We’ve got to get together and do something.”

‘I said, “Who is this?”

‘“John Lennon.”

‘I said: “Yeah, right, who is this?”

‘“It’s John Lennon. I’m just trying to say you’re fantastic. Have a good night’s sleep. Speak to you soon. Goodbye.”

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John Lennon is having a moment. Again. More than three decades after his untimely death in New York, the Lennon legend lives on in not one, but two plays being performed in Liverpool this month. And while John Power is taking on his first acting role – playing the ex-Beatle at the Royal Court – Daniel Taylor is preparing to be John Winston Lennon for the third time.

Writer Ian Carroll’s play One Bad Thing – which suggests while Mark Chapman may have fired the bullet that killed the music icon, he’d been manipulated by darker state forces who wanted Lennon off the scene – is at the Liverpool Actors Studio Theatre in Seel Street after being performed there three years ago. Daniel, who appears ahead of an autumn tour with Blood Brothers, also took on the same role a decade ago when the work was first premiered in the city.

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Source: Liverpool Echo

Staten Islanders enjoyed the music of The Beatles performed by many talented cover bands during the second annual Beatles Blast held at the Richmond County Ballpark in St. George.

Close to 5,000 fans packed the ballpark on a beautiful summer evening to hear the Fab Four's most popular hits.

 "Beatles music is music for the ages," he told the crowd. "We are all young at heart tonight." Sponsored by the Borough President's Office and the Northfield Bank Foundation, the night also promoted awareness of autism. Borough President James Molinaro was proud to use the evening to focus on a serious issue.

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Source: Silive.com

Photo Credit: (Staten Island Advance/ Bill Lyons)

This Feb. 11, 1964 image provided by the David Anthony Fine Art gallery in Taos, N.M., shows a photograph of George Harrison taken by photographer Mike Mitchell during the Beatles first live U.S. concert at the Washington Coliseum.

Mitchell’s portraits of the Beatles are the centerpiece of a monthlong photography exhibition at the gallery. This marks the first time the images have been shown since their unveiling in 2011 at a Christie’s auction in New York City. (AP/David Anthony Fine Art, Mike Mitchell)

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Source: Jakarta Post

Photo Credit: (AP/David Anthony Fine Art, Mike Mitchell)

Beatles legend Paul McCartney made a lifelong dream come true for a cancer-stricken fan by calling her when she was admitted in the hospital. McCartney called the terminally ill woman, who had left city government to become a top official at the MTA, to fulfil her life-long dream, reported the New York daily News.

Susan Kupferman and McCartney's wife, former MTA board member Nancy Shevell, were friends. "I wasn't on the call but I'm telling you, Paul called. He is a great guy," said mayor Bloomberg. Kupferman, 54, was in the final stages of cancer and died on June 26.

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One mistake and your reputation is shot. Dick Rowe was one of the pillars of the Decca label, but he has gone down in history as "the talent scout who turned down The Beatles." A sin of a different nature was committed by Vee-Jay Records, the Chicago firm that in 1963 signed a contract to release The Beatles' records in the United States. But it lost that license to print money out of mere fecklessness.

Early in 1963 Capitol, the California branch of EMI, didn't want to know about The Beatles, or even how to pronounce their name. Despairing of making any progress in the matter, EMI ceded its masters to Vee-Jay, which was trying to sign a balladeer, Frank Ifield. The Beatles came as part of a two-for-one package.

The Beatles saga is portrayed as a triumphal march, but it might have ground to a halt on several occasions. In spite of Vee-Jay's good relations with Chicago radio, the first Beatles singles hardly got any air time. Faced with this lukewarm reception, they delayed their first LP, Introducing... The Beatles .< details

After close to 300 Beatles appearances at the Cavern Club, spanning two and a half years, this was the last! The venue had played perhaps the vital role in preparing them for "The Big Time" and now that time had come. Bob Wooler, the Cavern Club compere, remembers Brian Epstein promising that one day the Beatles would be back, but it was not to be.

Tickets for the performance went on sale on July 21st at 1:30 pm and by 2:00 pm were sold out. The Beatles fee was £300 - The first time they played at the Cavern it was £5.

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 Source: Beatles Radio

In 2010, a small jazz festival in Toronto decided to produce a tribute to British singer-songwriter John Lennon to commemorate the 30th anniversary of his death. The project brought some of Canada’s most renowned musicians together to perform music by Lennon and the Beatles, thoughtfully arranged by Michael Occhipinti, a talented musician who had done a similar project previously with the music of Bruce Cockburn.

The tribute was a huge hit, and it spun off into a CD, which was also successful. As a treat for music lovers, that concert experience will be recreated during the 2013 P.E.I. Jazz and Blues Festival in Charlottetown. Shine On: The Universe of John Lennon will hit the stage of the Homburg Theatre of the Confederation Centre of the Arts on Sunday, Aug. 25, 7:30 p.m.

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Stuart Sutcliffe, the late artist and early bassist for the Beatles, will receive an art showcase from Harper's Books in East Hampton, New York on August 10th (running until October 14th). The exhibition, titled "Stuart Sutcliffe: Yea Yea Yea" and curated by artist Richard Prince, will feature 21 of Sutcliffe's paintings and paper-based works.

According to the Harper's website, the exhibition "seeks to recontextualize (Sutcliffe's) oeuvre within the paradigm of the contemporary art world, highlighting the enduring significance of his work for both late Modernist art history and present-day artistic practices." The selected art will emphasize "the collaged geometricism of his works on paper and the dense gestural abstraction of his paintings."

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