Fire up your XBOX 360’s and get ready to rock the wiimote Rickenbakcers and Casios my friends.  The Beatles are coming soon to a video game console near you.  It looks like I may need to finally upgrade my video game system because of this.  I am still running an Nintendo 64 and an XBOX. 

The time has come to upgrade and this may be the thing that pushes me to do it.  9.9.09 catchy.  John’s lucky numbers just seem to pop up everywhere even after he’s gone.

Here’s what we’ve read.

The music of the Beatles will arrive as a playable video game for the first time on September 9, 2009 when The Beatles: Rock Band hits stores in North America, Europe, Australia and New Zealand. The game, which will be available for Xbox, PlayStation 3 and Nintendo Wii on the same day, “takes players on a journey through the legacy and evolution of the band’s legendary career,” according to a press release issued by the title’s makers, Apple Corps, Harmonix and MTV Games. While there’s no playlist or word about venues and avatars, there will be a limited number of instruments issued that are modeled after guitars, basses and drums John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr used (regular Rock Band peripherals will be compatible, too).

Three offerings will be released on September 9th: The Beatles: Rock Band software; standalone guitars; and a limited edition premium bundle that will presumably include the game and some configuration of instruments. And there’s an incentive to pre-order now: the game’s makers say exclusive content will be accessible to those who reserve the game in advance through major retailers over the next few months. The game’s official Website is active and promises updates.

McCartney, Starr, Yoko Ono and Olivia Harrison are all backing the game, which is being overseen by Love co-producer Giles Martin. Rumors that Beatles music would finally come to Rock Band or Guitar Hero fired up in June 2008 after insiders speculated that the appearance of the Fab Four’s music in American Idol, the film Across the Universe and the Cirque du Soleil Love production indicated Apple Corps might be willing to loosen their famously tight grip on the band’s catalog. In October 2008 the game’s makers made it official, announcing, “This game will take you on a journey from the Beatles first album Please Please Me until the last album at Abbey Road,” as Apple Corps CEO Jeff Jones put it. “It will span samples of the whole catalog all the way through.” At the time, McCartney added, “I like people having the opportunity to get to know the music from the inside out.”

The game will be the first Rock Band title specifically branded to a band, though the game does offer full albums; the Guitar Hero series includes special versions for Aerosmith and Metallica (exclusive preview here).

Source: Rolling Stone

Hello there folks!

I know I haven’t been around lately to update the blog.  Things have gotten hectic, and I have really been thinking about changing around the format of the blog here.  No, it has not gone away.  But I am looking at changing formats, and posting more original conent, reviews, and features.

I am also on the lookout for writers and contributers to the blog.  The look will be changing and I would like to pepper in some new voices to the Beatle blog.

If any of you have a knack with words and would like to regualry contribute to the Beatle blog, please drop me a line at beatleboymatt [at] yahoo.com.  I am currently looking for writers and contributors.

I hope to kickoff some longer features, more in-depth reviews, and an entire regular column dedicated to those bootlegs that we so love to talk about all the time.

I’ll keep you all posted, and sit tight folks new changes are a coming.  In the meantime, if any of you want to write regularly, please drop me an email.

Cheers,
–Matt

In case you missed it, Paul McCartney and Dave Grohl ROCKED the Grammy Awards last night.  This wasn’t Paul and Dave’s first time together performing in recent memory.

“I Saw Her Standing There” (Feb 2009)

Here’s Paul and Dave Grohl live together at Anfield from last year in case you missed it.

“Band on the Run” (June 2008)

No Paul did not win a grammy award for His Amoeba EP, but it was an outstanding star-studded night.  Checkout the complete list of winners here. As the article indicates, it was a mini-British invasion of sorts with several Brits snapping up many many awards.

Folks.  So sorry lately for the lack of updates around the blog.  Life has gotten in the way a little bit.  Please look for regular posting to resume shortly.  Work, life, music, etc.  has gotten in the way for the Beatle blog.

Postings will resume in full force this Monday.

Not only will Paul McCartney be playing Coachella, but George Harrison’s son Dhani will be playing Coachella with his band thenewno2.

Get more info about thenewno2 at Dhani Harrison’s offcial website, and also thenewno2’s Myspace page.

Tickets for Coachella are on sale now and can be purchased through the festival’s website or Ticketmaster.

Paul is no stranger to performing at festivals, as we all have seen at the Glastonbury festival a few years back, but this announcement comes as a bit of a surprise.  The Coachella Festival is the hipster of all hipsters.  We have to admit that it’s a little strange to hear that a Beatle is playing at this cutting edge festival.  It’s a little weird to be hearing  Portishead or Sigur Ros and even Morrisey in the same breath.  There are hipster indie bands, and then there is the thought of a Beatle.

I guess it’s most strange knowing that Paul never, at least late in his career, aged as a “cool” guy.  He always held his artistic credibility, but did many things that are quite cringe-worthy.  That cool factor kind of dropped a bit.  In recent times, though Paul’s cool temperature is red hot.  He’s got several artistic and adventurous solo albums, and has also produced a remix album, and avant-garde album under a different moniker that would make the coolest hipster nod in approval.  Maybe a Fireman tune or two will make a Coachella appearance as well, it’s nothing too much just out of sight.

Here’s what we’ve read.

The Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival got famous by presenting the sounds of today and tomorrow. But this year California’s most celebrated live-music event is gambling on Paul McCartney and the music of “Yesterday.”

Booking the former Beatle, who is listed in the record books as the most successful musician in pop history, would be the safest choice imaginable for most music festivals. But the internationally respected Coachella festival, which is set for April 17-19, has been pulling in crowds of more than 140,000 fans by taking an edgier path with alt-rock heroes you would hear on a college town’s pirate radio station.

Presented with a chance to tap into music history and veteran star power, the promoters have signed the 66-year-old icon, who personifies the mature pop mainstream. The move could help the festival compete amid a grim economy and a host of imitators that have sprung up across the country; the news of McCartney’s presence — for better or worse — instantly will make Coachella a hot topic with music fans nationwide who have been anxiously awaiting the list of this year’s headliners.

What remains to be seen is whether the choice will cost the festival credibility with its core clientele: young fans who are more likely to listen to the White Stripes than the “White Album” and who are far more familiar with Rage Against the Machine than “Band on the Run.”

From Paris, McCartney sent word Thursday that he was thrilled with the idea of playing to a new crowd. “I have heard that Coachella is one of the greatest festivals in the world,” he said in a statement sent to The Times. “I’m really excited to get out there and rock!”

McCartney is just one of 120 acts at the festival. Most of them, including the Killers, Franz Ferdinand and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, perfectly fit the event’s tradition of connoisseur alt-rock.

There also will be sets by the Cure, Morrissey and My Bloody Valentine, three revered acts from the 1980s and 1990s British scene, as well as a performance from neo-soul singer Amy Winehouse, whose train-wreck tabloid life has made her a digital age version of Janis Joplin.

Still, despite those compelling bookings, Paul Tollett, the festival’s chief architect, knows that his decision to bring in a living legend from the 1960s will dominate discussion between now and Sir Paul’s main-stage set on the festival’s first night.

One-fourth of the Fab Four is big news no matter the year.

“This is a Beatle. That’s huge,” said Tollett, who has shown a flair for surprises in recent years. He and his partners at concert promotion company AEG booked Madonna in 2006, but the setting — a dance-tent instead of the main stage — made it an isolated, intriguing experiment.

The Coachella team also has brought in Willie Nelson, Pink Floyd alum Roger Waters and Prince, and this year has elegiac folk songwriter Leonard Cohen, who has not performed in the U.S. since 1993.

But each of those curveball performers has a maverick sensibility that connects with Coachella’s indie-rock streak. McCartney is still the man who sang “Silly Love Songs.”

There are plenty of people in the music industry who say it’s foolish to doubt the Coachella leadership — or that Beatles songbook.

“If they can pull off Madonna at Coachella, they can do anything,” said Gary Bongiovanni, the editor in chief of Pollstar, the concert-industry trade publication. “Coachella is the king. I can see McCartney wanting to play Coachella because it gives him the chance to reach a different audience.”

“I’m not sure what Coachella gets from him, though,” Bongiovanni said. “It may pull in some older fans, but for the usual Coachella audience, I don’t know that they will really get excited about seeing him — although they might enjoy the show once they are there.”

The legacy of the Beatles echoes throughout every corner of modern music, and Coachella fans have heard it firsthand in past performances by Oasis, Coldplay, the Verve and plenty of other stars who draw on the Fab Four. To win over the crowd, McCartney will probably steer clear of “Say Say Say” and lean into edgier material such as “Helter Skelter” and “Live and Let Die.”

McCartney, whose romantic life has been a topic of intense interest in the British press, has been a rejuvenated music figure in recent years. Critics praised last year’s “Electric Arguments,” the third album released under the name the Fireman, McCartney’s electronic-minded collaboration with producer Youth.

His more traditional solo work in the last few years has included “Chaos and Creation in the Backyard,” the 2005 release that was nominated for three Grammy Awards, including album of the year.

It’s safe to say that many Coachella fans will shrug when they see McCartney’s name on the list of performers. Tollett said there was a significant percentage of return customers who ignore the main stage altogether.

“A lot of people come to see bands that they don’t know much about yet,” Tollett said.

This year some of the up-and-coming acts include TV on the Radio, Band of Horses, Fleet Foxes, Glasvegas, White Lies, the Knux, the Ting Tings and Beirut. Veterans such as X, Paul Weller and Public Enemy also will draw many fans.

Still, despite pent-up interest, the festival at the Empire Polo Club is up against dismal economic realities.

Tickets go on sale today at 9 a.m., with a three-day pass going for $281 and single-day admission for $103. That’s a lot for young fans and European visitors, who also might consider rival summer festivals such as Bonnaroo in Tennessee (which reportedly will be headlined by Bruce Springsteen and Phish) and Lollapalooza in Chicago.

Coachella promoters have announced a layaway payment plan for the first time and will be heavily promoting the $55-per-person on-site camping option.

Tollett also organizes the Stagecoach Festival, a late April country music version of Coachella in Indio, and 24% of the tickets sold to date have been through a similar layaway program.

“These are tough times for people,” he said, “and we’ll do what it takes to get them to come to the show.”

Source: LA Times

Paul McCartney has been on nothing but a roll with his latest string of albums.  OK, really since Flaming Pie, he’s been on an outstanding run that has been nothing but outstanding.  Those late-career solo albums are all simply stunning.  It’s really hard to find a true clunker in there at all.  His latest masterpiece, while not a proper McCartney solo album, is one his best solo releases period.

The same can be said for interviews as of late with Sir Paul.  Since his divorce Paul has approached the media with a sense of openess and reflection that we have not seen or heard for many many years.  Yes, sone of Paul’s interview answers are canned and retreads, but ever the public figure, Paul is able to always give us new insights into his mind, and life.  Ever informative and entertaining.

Here’s what we’ve read.

I imagine you know who Paul McCartney is, but here are some recent data: He’s 66 years old, single and financially secure. He recently released Electric Arguments, the third album by Fireman, an ongoing McCartney side project that represents the former Beatle’s foray into trance and dance music. Composed of McCartney and British producer/deejay Youth, Fireman opens its third full-length release with “Nothing Too Much Just Out of Sight,” a tune that features the most bone-rattling vocal McCartney’s delivered since “Helter Skelter.” The first time I heard it on the radio, I thought it was Jack White. Not bad for a 66-year-old. On the occasion of the album’s release, McCartney agreed to a short chat.

L.A. WEEKLY: At what point did you become an adult?

PAUL McCARTNEY: When my first baby was born.

How old do you feel emotionally?
Twenty-five.

What’s the biggest obstacle you’ve overcome in your life?
Linda’s death.

What was it about Linda Eastman that made her such a stabilizing force in your life?
She was just such a supercool girl. She just was. She was supercool.

Do you believe in destiny?
Yes.

Do you believe in karma, or do some people get away with murder?
I believe in karma (laughing), and I believe people get away with murder, too. For a while. Somewhere down the line everyone must pay for their misdeeds.

The Beatles’ music was always wonderful, but at a certain point it became something more than entertainment; at what point did you know that the work you were doing was important?
It’s difficult to discuss this without sounding immodest, but I think I started to feel it around the time of “Eleanor Rigby.” Prior to that, I thought the music was very good, and I realized we were in a different league when we wrote “From Me To You,” because it had a middle eight in it and went somewhere we hadn’t been before, but you used the word “important.” For me, “Eleanor Rigby” was the start of that.

Does music have the power to bring about social change?
Yeah, that’s a proven fact. “We Shall Overcome” and “Give Peace a Chance” are two examples, and there are thousands of less obvious examples. “We Shall Overcome” is inextricably bound up with the civil rights movement, and “Give Peace a Chance” equals Vietnam. Those are two huge events, and that music was hugely important to them.

Is it important that your music be commercially successful?
It’s not important, but it’s preferable. I like the idea that people hear my stuff, and if it’s commercially successful, that’s a good sign that it’s being heard.

What’s the most significant difference between work you do as Fireman and the rest of your music?
Fireman is improvisational theater. When I sit down to write a song, it’s a kind of improvisation, but I formalize it a bit to get it into the studio, and when I step up to a microphone, I have a vague idea of what I’m about to do. I usually have a song, and I know the melody and lyrics, and my performance is the only unknown. In this case, I had neither lyrics nor melody to go on — and it felt great. The previous Fireman record didn’t have vocals, so when we began adding them for this record, the music moved into the area of improvisational theater, as the lyrics were improvised in the studio as well. I’d arrive at the studio in the morning and the first thing I’d do would be to apologize to the engineers. I’d say “Okay, guys, this could really be the most serious error of my career.”

Working that way, how do you know when a piece of music is finished?
Instinct. I paint, and that’s the trick with painting, too, particularly if you paint in the abstract form. You’ve just got to know when it’s time to stop.

To what degree was the music sculpted in the editing?
Very much, and that’s where Youth comes in. I trust him implicitly. He’s a deejay, and I went to one of his gigs to watch him work and he’s good. He mixes stuff there and then, and it’s the same process with Fireman. He takes everything I throw at him and selects what he thinks is the best, and 99 percent of the time I agree with him.

What’s the most useful thing about money?
Helping people who are ill. I have a very large family and if anybody gets ill, I can help them.

What’s the biggest problem money creates?
Wow, you’re getting deep girl! I’ve never even met you! Okay, the biggest problem are the kinds of people who have license plates like one I saw in East Hampton: It read ‘rich 1.’ The kind of people who actually believe they’re cool because they’ve got money — I can‘t begin to describe the symptoms of that, but you know what I’m talking about.

What’s the most significant historical event you’ve witnessed?
The death of John Kennedy. He was our hope and he got wiped out, and we hadn’t realized that hope could get wiped out quite so easily. But now Obama’s brought it back. I love it.

Is memory more apt to be a source of pain or pleasure?
Pleasure.

Do you feel nostalgic for the past?
Nostalgia’s not the right word because it implies something sort of wrong. I love the past. There are parts of the past I hate, of course. My mum died, Linda died, John died, and George died, so I can’t say I love everything about it, but I have a great affection for the past. And why shouldn’t I? I was just some kid from Liverpool, who walked around the streets with John Lennon, and wrote songs with him, and met this beautiful girl from New York, then married her and had kids with her — why shouldn’t I love the past? Mine has been good.

What aspect of the future, as you envision it, do you find most disturbing?
It’s not a good idea to look at, or for, disturbances. They come anyway, so I don’t invite them. Rather than just moan “We’re all fucked,” it’s better to work on avoiding them. A big subject of mine is a report recently completed by the U.N., called Livestock’s Long Shadow, which makes the point that the most important thing people could do for the future of the planet would be to eat vegetarian. Cattle rearing is one of the most destructive human activities on Earth, and at this point, it’s taking a bigger toll on the planet than airplanes and cars.

Are most people willing to change?
People are willing to change when they have to. I suppose people would all go to Disneyland and have milkshakes at McDonald’s and wear Bermuda shorts if you didn’t tell them it wasn’t a good idea, and sometimes we have no choice but to speak in their ears very loudly.

Would you agree that most artists do their best work when they’re hungry?
I think that’s probably true.

When people approach you on the street what do they want?
More often than not they just want to communicate, and it’s normally quite cool. Everybody these days has a camera on their phone, so now they ask, “Can I have a photograph with you?” I say, “I’d rather not, because if I have a photograph with you, then somebody else will see us and say, ‘I’ve got a phone and I’d like a photograph, too.’” It’s funny, I was talking to a celebrity friend, and he made the point that people who don’t even like your work line up for autographs and photographs, saying, “I can get one for my grandma!” Often, when I’m approached for a photograph or autograph, I try to persuade the person that what we really want is communication. That takes longer than signing a quick autograph, but it’s an important point to make.

Are you able to move about the world with freedom?
With impunity — I go into shops, to movies, and I walk around. I’m now in a car heading into London with my longtime assistant, and if we need to stop at a shop or a petrol station, we will. I’ve always held on to that, and it’s a very important part of who I am.

What an amazing thing, to be able to walk into a shop and make people happy simply by walking in.
Tell me about it! I’m very aware of that, and it’s incredible.

Source: LA Weekly

Everytime I even think about putting my pen to paper and writing that “great Beatles’” that I know is inside of me I think of titles like this.  There are book about The Beatles’, and then there are things that are much greater.  Jonathan Gould’s awesome tome definitely falls in the latter category.

It’s about so much more than the Fab Four.  It’s bigger than a dissection of songs and chords.  It’s all encompasing of an era.  It encapsulates so much, and really takes you back in time.  If you haven’t read this one yet then you absolutely should NOT miss this title.  It’s one of those essential titles that all music fans should read.

Here’s what we’ve read.

Finally, what the world has been crying out for: a book about the Beatles. This is forgivable sarcasm when you consider that there are more than 500 of them already. I must have about a dozen of them myself, and have read a dozen more. These range from the indispensable – Ian MacDonald’s Revolution in the Head, Bob Spitz’s The Beatles, the Hunter Davies and Philip Norman works and, for my money the most fascinating of them all, Devin McKinney’s inspirational, insanely ambitious Magic Circles – to some of the shoddiest and most opportunistic verbiage you will encounter in the course of a reading life. Anyone with any sense of professional pride now writing about the group must feel like a treasure hunter going over ground that has been thoroughly ransacked by hundreds of people, some armed with pretty sophisticated detection equipment.

But still they keep coming out – and we still want to read them. Well, some of us, and some of them. The group still fascinates. A friend of mine, asked whether he liked them, replied that asking him whether he liked the Beatles or not was like asking a priest whether he liked God or not: the question was all but meaningless. They’re there, and you can, should you wish, accommodate yourself to the fact by inhaling every available datum of information about them.

Jonathan Gould, who by his account spent some two decades writing this, his first book, might have felt a certain despair when Spitz’s near-1,000-page biography of the band came out in 2005; but Gould plodded on, and we can be glad that he did. For it is not so much that he brings anything really new to the party – he says his book concentrates on the music more than the others, but this is true only if you ignore about two dozen of them – as that he manages, almost miraculously, to retell a story that could hardly be called unfamiliar in a way which actually manages to illuminate.

And he does it subtly (compare Henry W Sullivan’s The Beatles with Lacan, a title you could be forgiven for thinking was some kind of joke, but isn’t). The trick is in an easy fluency of writing combined with a sense of when not to dwell too much on stuff we already know. He is very good on the political backgrounds of both Britain and America – particularly, in fact, on the differing sociologies which accounted for the differing versions of British and American Beatlemania. (Interestingly, it is only when that phenomenon kicks off that the book itself wakes up; it does take a while to get going.) He has a nice line in clear-headed assessments of the group’s faults as well as their virtues, and the occasional, never intrusive way with a nice simile. By the time he says that “Tomorrow Never Knows” is “oddly reminiscent” of their version of “Twist and Shout”, you know exactly what he’s getting at.

It is a measure of the worth of the book that there is so little you could find in it to take issue with. So here are some pettifogging quibbles. The song “A Hard Day’s Night” is more like two and a half minutes long than “a full three”. Lennon and McCartney’s decision not to put Harrison’s “Not Guilty” on the White Album was not “churlish” – it was sensible, considering how dire it is. And that’s about it. If he skates over McCartney’s tomcatting or how close they came to being murdered in the Philippines, then that is probably because he knows full well you can go elsewhere for that. He doesn’t even slip up when considering matters of British heritage, culture and politics – quite a feat when you consider that I have read respected American authors dealing with the subject who think that Private Eye is a TV show, or that London still suffers from pea-soupers.

But it is in his descriptions of the songs that Gould really shines. He knows his terminology and is not afraid to use it – but he is not intimidatingly knowledgable, and when he describes a song it really is as if you’re hearing it, too. And if you ask: “What’s the point of that, then?”, maybe this book isn’t for you.

Source: UK Guardian

I can only imagine what the conversations between a rap icon and Paul McCartney would go like.  Maybe they’d share a bit of the hippie lettuce, and talk some football.  Somehow, I don’t really see that happening actually.

It looks like Snoop is having some visa problems, and wants Paul to give him a push to get past the ban.  Nothing better than a character witness in the form of a football legend and a Knighted musician.

Here’s what we’ve read.

US rapper Snoop Dogg has called on footballer David Beckham and former Beatle Sir Paul McCartney to help overturn his UK visa ban.

The rapper has faced continued visa problems following an altercation between his entourage and police at Heathrow Airport in 2006.

Although Immigration judges have argued that he should be allowed into the country, the UK Boarder Agency believe the rapper is not conducive to public order.

Speaking to the Mirror newspaper, the rapper said he was “desperate” to return to London.

“I’ve called David Beckham, Sir Paul McCartney, hell, I want to get the whole of the Beatles to help me get back in,” he said.

“I’m trying to get through to Madonna as well. I’d love them all to write to the Prime Minister to change his mind.”

The rapper added that he has “not forgotten” his UK fans – “especially the ladies”

Source: Gigwise

Could you imagine spending your entire adult life being one of the most famous people on the planet?  Truthfully, as much as I would wish and dream for it, it must be total hell.  I imagine you have to be a pretty guarded individual.  You have to constantly worry about the things you say, and the things you do in the court of public opinion.

I really don’t find what Paul says as too revealing.  It’s his way of coping.  I just find it interesting that he twists it around to focus on The Fireman.  Yes, we know that Paul’s creative muses have many faces, but it’s a bit of it as a stretch to say it’s another personna.  Yes, The Fireman-leanings of Paul McCartney are different, but it’s still a McCartney record afterall.  Just a thought.

Paul on The View (Part I)

Paul on The View (Part II)

Here’s what we’ve read.

Paul McCartney keeps fame from driving him crazy by maintaining two versions of himself.

McCartney tells ABC’s “The View” he separates the real Paul from the famous Paul. He says Famous Paul does the shows and Real Paul goes home and watches TV.

He extended that idea to his music. He says normally he sings at the high end of his range, but he dropped to his lower range for his new album, “Electric Arguments.” He released that album under his alter ego, The Fireman.

There’s only one audience where McCartney has to fight to prove he’s famous: young girls. He says they know him only as the father of fashion designer Stella McCartney.

Source: Live 5 News