A signed John Lennon drawing created by the late musician during a 1969 visit to Scotland is coming up for auction in Lichfield.

Autographed ‘To Derek Peace + Love John Lennon 1969’, the framed picture is a sketch of the former Beatles member and Yoko Ono in the musician’s caricature style.

Derek was the uncle of owner Frank Massie, who inherited the work from his late father after it had been passed on to him.

The work will go under the hammer at Richard Winterton Auctioneers on 1st November.

Source: lichfieldlive.co.uk

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In the foreword to The Lyrics: 1956 to The Present, Paul McCartney says that he’s repeatedly been asked to write his memoirs “but the time has never been right.” As he looked back across his life, though he did not have a diary to refer to, “what I do have is my songs—hundreds of them—which serve much the same purpose.” In 2015, he began meeting with poet Paul Muldoon and going through his recollections about his compositions with the Beatles and as a solo artist. The results are the 154 selections included in this two-volume collection. Here, a look at McCartney’s discussion of 10 of those songs—and a distilled view into his life and creative process.

Source: Alan Light/wsj.com

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Every Beatles fan has heard about the upcoming documentary The Beatles: Get Back by now. Directed by Peter Jackson, famous for his work on Lord of the Rings, this project is said to be one of the best films about the band. It shows footage from the recording sessions of their iconic album Let it Be in a way no one has ever seen before, and will come out on Disney + at the end of November 2021.

Fans can be sensitive about things like this, especially considering how many myths have surrounded this legendary band, so to put their minds at ease and to calm the impatience, let's see what the director and the Beatles themselves have said about this documentary.

Source: Val Barone/thethings.com

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Who knew that the singers of “Material Girl” and “Living in the Material World” would work on a film together? Just by listening to those two songs, you can understand how different George Harrison and Madonna are. Yet both pop stars were able to have a pretty great working relationship on the film Shanghai Surprise. However, some would say they worked a little too well with one another. In 1986, then-newlyweds Sean Penn and Madonna were cast as love interests, Glendon Wasey and Gloria Tatlock, in Shanghai Surprise. Set in 1938, Shanghai Surprise follows a failed glow-in-the-dark necktie salesman (Penn) as he helps a missionary nurse (Madonna) obtain opium to ease her patient’s pain.

Source: cheatsheet.com

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Of all the revelations on the Beatles’ new Let It Be box set, the biggest is the song that didn’t even make the original album. “Don’t Let Me Down” is John Lennon’s raw love ballad to Yoko Ono, much like “Two of Us,” Paul McCartney’s song for Linda. John sounds terrified of the emotional leaps he’s taking, but he leans on the other Beatles to back him up and carry him through the song. You can hear the band develop “Don’t Let Me Down” over the course of the box, until it comes to feel like the whole Beatles story in one song: a map to the long and winding road of their messy, doomed, inescapable friendship.

Source: Rob Sheffield/yahoo.com

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Actor and activist Ed Begley, Jr. joined host Kenneth Womack to talk about his decades-long career, Beatles stories, extensive environmental work and more on the Season 3 premiere of "Everything Fab Four," a podcast co-produced by me and Womack (a music scholar who also writes about pop music for Salon) and distributed by Salon.

Begley, known for his roles in many popular TV shows and movies, including "St. Elsewhere," "This Is Spinal Tap" and "Better Call Saul," says he first became aware of the Beatles as a boarding school student in 1963. And as a drummer in the marching band (and later a garage rock band), he became "obsessed" with being like Ringo and insisted on getting Ludwig drums.

Source: salon.com

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