Lennon Still Helping Me, Yoko Ono Says

Nearly 30 years after his death, I imagine he is:

Yoko Ono says John Lennon is still helping her in her endeavours as an artist and peace activist as she pays tribute to her late husband before what would have been his 70th birthday.

Ono visited Lennon's childhood home and school in northern England's Liverpool on Friday. She was welcomed by hundreds of students at Dovedale School, before she went to the semi-detached family home that Lennon shared with his aunt from 1945 to 1963.
The musician was shot outside his New York home in 1980, when he was 40 years old. He would have been 70 on Oct. 9.

Ono will travel from her home in New York to Iceland on Lennon's birthday to light the Imagine Peace Tower, an illuminated memorial.

Because without Lennon, who knows where Ono would be now? Oh, I'm sure she has her fans, those who think she would have had significance on her own even if she had never met Lennon.

But they're probably few.

Oh, who am I kidding, Ono-only fans don't exist.

Still, the woman is nearly 80 years old and stylin':

Lennon Lyrics For Sale

If I had oodles of money and nothing better to do with it, I might try to bid on this:

John Lennon's hand written lyrics to "A Day in the Life," the haunting final song on the 1967 "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" album, are to go on sale at Sotheby's this June.

The auction house estimated that the double-sided page of writing, inscribed with corrections, will sell for between 327,336 and 458,270, pounds when it goes under the hammer on June 19 in New York.

From the article, a lousy picture of the merchandise:

All You Need is Love

Love breaks out between the Vatican and the Beatles:

The Vatican has finally made peace with the Beatles, saying their drug use, "dissolute" lives and even the claim that the band was bigger than Jesus are all in the past — while their music lives on.

Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano paid tribute to the Fab Four in its weekend editions, with two articles and a front-page cartoon reproducing the crosswalk immortalized on the cover of the band's album "Abbey Road."

The tribute marked the 40th anniversary of the band's breakup.

Money Can't Buy Me Beatles

Are (Is?) The Beatles internet fuddy-duddies or just copyright savvy? The latter, it seems:

But the real question is why, so many years into the era of digital music, the Beatles still don't allow digital downloads of their songs. Many bands now view the sales and illegal downloads of their songs as loss leaders for their live performances, but the last Beatles concert was in 1966. Rights holders such as John Lennon's widow, Yoko Ono, are well known for trying to protect exactly how Beatles songs are presented, limiting distribution.

The explanation is that the owners of the Beatles understand that the brand is so valuable that they can maintain scarcity even in a world of file sharing and mass downloading. The late George Harrison's son, Dhani, has said "we disagree" with the standard Apple price of 99 cents a song. At a time when the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry estimates that 95% of downloads of digital music are illegal, there is less money to be made selling songs through any medium, whether the Web or CDs.

Instead, the Beatles are focused on more innovative and high-priced digital products. One is "The Beatles: Rock Band," a videogame released in September whose theme is the history of the band. The music has to be played through the game console and can't be downloaded or shared. The success of the game accounted for much of the revenue growth of Viacom in its most recent quarter.

I've got all of The Beatles on CD that's available - or, more accurately, that's worth having - and I've transferred them to my iTunes so having them digitally available elsewhere isn't a problem for me. But I think it's a mistake to purposely keep their music away from newer listeners. Sure, it's a fine line between art and commerce but how rich can you be? (Okay, as an unapologetic capitalist, I say as rich as you can get but still.)

No, I think the better business model is to get your music - your art - out there to as many consumers as possible. That's what you got in this business for in the first place, isn't it?

Lucy of Beatles’ ‘Lucy in the Sky ...’ Fame dies

Lucy finally, and sadly, succumbs:

Lucy Vodden, who provided the inspiration for the Beatles' classic song "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds," has died after a long battle with lupus. She was 46.

Her death was announced Monday by St. Thomas’ Hospital in London, where she had been treated for the chronic disease for more than five years, and by her husband, Ross Vodden. Britain’s Press Association said she died last Tuesday. Hospital officials said they could not confirm the day of her death.

Vodden's connection to the Beatles dates back to her early days, when she made friends with schoolmate Julian Lennon, John Lennon's son.

Here's my earlier post about the touching reunion between Vodden and Julian Lennon. I'm glad they were able to reconnect after all that time.

The Beatles (Re) Issues

This one of those good news/bad news things:

Get ready to meet the Beatles again.

. . . Apple Corps. and EMI will jointly roll out the long-awaited remastered editions of the Beatles studio albums on CD with Digipak sleeves as well as two box sets of the albums, one in stereo and one in mono. The same date will see Harmonix’s release of the “Beatles: Rock Band” game. What’s missing is the availability of the Beatles recordings for digital downloading. A statement from Apple said discussions about this “are continuing,” but rumors are flying that the other Apple may have something in the works, since it announced its annual iPod meeting will also happen Wednesday.

For a band that broke up almost 40 years ago, the Beatles sure have a lot happening.

Good news for Beatles fans like me because there can't be enough Beatles stuff out there. Bad news for Beatles fan like me because there's too much Beatles stuff out there. How can we keep up?

Really, though, it's about time. Though I'm no audiophile, on my iPod, I can tell the difference between the re-mastered CDs from the 80s that I've loaded and the latest Beatles CD, 1, and The Yellow Submarine re-master from not that long ago. There's quite a bit of difference.

Will I update my collection? I'm not sure. I'm quite happy with what I've got though I'd hate to miss out on such an historical occasion. And based on their track record, it's not likely they'll re-issue these things again anytime soon. Might be a good idea to grab 'em while I can.

It Was 40 Years Ago Today

The Beatles made their iconic stroll across the street.



Fans come together to the location and recreate the moment:

Hundreds of Beatles fans swarmed Abbey Road on Saturday, singing songs and snarling traffic to mark 40 years since John, Paul, George and Ringo strode across the leafy north London street and into the history books on iconic pop photos.

The famous photo graced the cover of the Fab Four's "Abbey Road," the last album recorded together, and shows the bandmates walking purposefully across the zebra-striped asphalt.

It remains one of music's best-known album covers, endlessly imitated and parodied. Although the shoot itself only took a few minutes, so carefully studied was the cover for signs and symbolism that some die-hard fans came to the conclusion that Paul McCartney — who appears barefoot and out of step with the rest — had secretly died.

Amazing that a simple thing can become such a moment in pop history.

‘Yellow Submarine’ Graphic Designer, Dies at 75

The man responsible for the look of the Beatles animated movie, The Yellow Submarine, has died:

Heinz Edelmann, the multifaceted graphic designer and illustrator who created the comically hallucinogenic landscape of Pepperland as art director for the 1968 animated Beatles film “Yellow Submarine,” died on Tuesday in Stuttgart, Germany. He was 75.

I never found the landscape of the movie to be hallucinogenic - it just seemed to follow a cartoony logic all its own. But seeing this reminds me that the girls' might enjoy seeing the movie.


It's been years since I've seen it. I'd enjoy seeing it again, too.

(Via Althouse.)

Dead Sea Sinkholes Swallow Up Plans

The area around the Dead Sea is filling up with holes:

Eli Raz was peering into a narrow hole in the Dead Sea shore when the earth opened up and swallowed him. Fearing he would never be found alive, he scribbled his will on an old postcard.

After 14 hours a search party pulled him from the 10-meter-(30 foot-) deep hole unhurt, and five years later the 69-year-old geologist is working to save others from a similar fate, leading an effort to map the sinkholes that are spreading on the banks of the fabled saltwater lake.

These underground craters can open up in an instant, sucking in whatever lies above and leaving the surrounding area looking like an earthquake zone.

Estimated number of holes? 3,000. Which means, to paraphrase John Lennon, they had to count them all. Now they know how many holes it takes to fill the, er, Dead Sea.

Real ‘Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds’ Gravely Ill

Despite the somber news, this is a sweet story:

They were childhood chums. Then they drifted apart, lost touch completely, and only renewed their friendship decades later, when illness struck.

Not so unusual, really.

Except she is Lucy Vodden — the girl who was the inspiration for the Beatles’ 1967 psychedelic classic “Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds” — and he is Julian Lennon, the musician son of John Lennon.

Turns out, the real Lucy isn't a big fan of the song written about her. Well, that's okay. It wasn't her choice to be written about and she couldn't help being the inspiration for Julian's picture and John's song.

Hey, might as well snatch a picture from the story while I'm there:

Dylan Unnoticed on Beatles Tour

Bob Dylan rolls just like any other tourist:

The 67-year-old troubadour paid £16 for the public trip to the 1940s semi in Woolton, Liverpool, last week as his European tour called at the city.

He was one of 14 tourists to examine photos and documents in the National Trust-owned home, where Lennon grew up with his aunt Mimi and uncle George.

A National Trust spokeswoman said Dylan "appeared to enjoy himself."

Endearing. Just when you think he's become a bit of crank, he does this kind of thing. Always surprising.