Beatles News

In celebration of John Lennon's 74th birthday on October 9, eight essential studio albums, two compilations, and the acclaimed John Lennon Signature Box are making their high definition digital audio debuts.

All of the titles have been digitally remastered in high resolution digital audio for the first time from John Lennon's original mixes and are available worldwide via Universal Music Group for purchase from all major hi-res digital audio providers.

Beginning today, Imagine and Rock 'N' Roll are available in hi-res 96kHz/24bit digital resolution. On October 14, Double Fantasy, Mind Games, and Walls And Bridges will debut in the same digital resolution, followed by Plastic Ono Band, Sometime In New York City, and Milk And Honey on October 21.

Mr Birch is selling the photos, along with a Gretsch 6120 guitar Lennon gave him after he used it on The Beatles’ 1966 hit Paperback Writer and which could fetch up to $1million (£630,000). The average house price across the UK is £189,306. But the auctioneers are confident the guitar will be hotly contested for by collectors because it comes with a truly extraordinary provenance. Lennon gave the guitar to his cousin, David Birch, in November 1967, a year after Paperback Writer was recorded in April 1966 at London’s Abbey Road studios. Mr Birch said he had fancied forming his own band and asked if he could have one of his famous relative’s guitars on a visit to Lennon’s country mansion Kenwood in Weybridge, Surrey. ‘I was just cheeky enough to ask John for one of his spare guitars,’ he said. ‘I had my eye on a blue Fender Stratocaster lying in the studio, but John suggested the Gretsch and gave it to me.’

George Harrison’s childhood home is to be sold at auction for a guide price of just £100,000. The modest three bedroom mid-terrace is where George, Paul McCartney and John Lennon held some of their first rehearsals before achieving worldwide success as the Beatles. Now Fab Four fans have the chance to purchase the property when it goes under the hammer at the Cavern Club. George lived at 25 Upton Green in Speke from the age of six, when his parents Harold and Louise moved into the council house in 1949. The family remained there until the early 1960s and it was during George’s final years at the house that he met Paul and John. The house is now being sold at auction after the property’s most recent owner passed away.

The guitar John Lennon used on the recording of the Beatles‘ 1966 hit ‘Paperback Writer’ is going up for auction. The instrument, a Gretsch 6120, has been in the possession of Lennon’s cousin David Birch since he received it as a gift from the Beatle in 1967. It’s expected to bring in somewhere between $640,000 to $960,000 at auction later this month. ”I was just cheeky enough to ask John for one of his spare guitars,” Birch told the Telegraph. “‘I had my eye on a blue Fender Stratocaster that was lying in the studio, but John suggested the Gretsch and gave it to me as we were talking.” Birch’s mother Harriet was a younger sister of Lennon’s mother, Julia. ‘Paperback Writer’ was recorded in April 1966 during the sessions that would yield the classic ‘Revolver’ album, and though it was primarily the creation of Paul McCarteny, Lennon added his distinct touch to the song with that Gretsch, serial no 53940.

Given that Sir Paul McCartney regularly sells out arenas that seat 50,000 people, it was anyone’s guess what his production — usually filled out by giant graphics screens, pyrotechnics and plenty of moving parts — would look like in San Antonio’s 1,750-capacity H-E-B Performance Hall at the Tobin Center for the Performing Arts, where he played a gig to benefit the newly renovated venue Wednesday night. Amazingly, it was nearly the same setup but on a smaller scale. For those familiar with his recent Out There tour, which has been moving full-steam ahead since just before McCartney released sixteenth studio album New in late 2013, the only things really missing were side-stage jumbotrons, the rising platform during his tear-jerking solo acoustic run of “Blackbird” and about a dozen tunes, which cut his set down from the typical 40 to 28 and shortened it by nearly an hour. They even managed to light off enormous plumes of pyro during Wings mainstay “Live and Let Die” without torching the ceiling (though not without making more than a handful fans nearly leap out of their seats in fright).

Stories of the Beatles’ 1964 North American tour have gone down in legend — the screaming girls, the mob scenes, transporting the group from airport to hotel, and jellybeans hurled onstage because American audiences misunderstood interviews where the band professed to love “jelly babies.” While fans may be well acquainted with those tales, they will never fully comprehend what it was like to be in the center of the Beatlemania hurricane. Journalist Ivor Davis paints a vivid picture for readers in The Beatles and Me on Tour, an account of his month traveling with the band as an embedded correspondent. At once humorous and terrifying, Davis’ recollections lend a new and thoroughly detailed perspective on how the Beatles coped with those early days of fame. Davis found himself in the middle of the madness due to a special assignment. As the West Coast correspondent for London Daily Express, he was ordered to travel with the Beatles during their hectic 1964 trek, earning their trust and submitting reports from the road. In addition, Davis assumed another role: George Harrison’s ghostwriter.

Want to follow in the footsteps of The Beatles and record in the hallowed surroundings of Abbey Road studios? The Big Music Project competition will give some budding performers the chance to do just that. It is offering a once in a lifetime prize to aspiring musicians aged between 14 and 24. Winners will get VIP tickets to the star-filled BRIT awards, a private recording session at the Abbey Road studios, a solo performance at the Royal Albert Hall and your track on the BRIT Awards 2016 album. The competition offers wannabes the ultimate opportunity to get up close and personal with the music business and benefit from advice and mentoring from industry executives. Lynne McDowell who works for BPI, (the people behind The BRIT Awards) said the competition offers a great chance for talented musicians to follow in the footsteps of our homegrown musical talent who have made it big. She added: “It’s no secret that Northern Ireland has produced some of the world’s greatest musicians and songwriters, from Van Morrison to Gary Lightbody but it’s time a new generation was given a real chance.

Borderzine.com, a digital publication based at UT El Paso that focuses on achieving diversity in news media, announces an exhibit of photographs by  journalism professor David Smith-Soto at the Glass Gallery of the Fox Fine Arts Center on the UTEP campus, October 23 to 31. An opening reception of the exhibit at 5 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 23 will help celebrate the 6thanniversary of Borderzine, an award-winning web news portal and online community for Latino student journalists. Attendees will learn about the online publication’s future plans and programs, and have an opportunity to help send UTEP multimedia journalism students to news internships throughout the United States. A celebration of photojournalism The 24 prints from Smith-Soto’s 60-years of street photography were taken during his travels as a journalist in Latin American, European and U.S. cities.  They include images from Oaxaca, Ciudad Juarez, Guatemala, Tangier, Paris and Madrid. Projected images by Smith-Soto’s photography students will also be on display. “It is wonderful as I celebrate my 10th anniversary as a journalism professor at UTEP to be able to share a lifetime of photography with my students,” said Smith-Soto.

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Source: Borderzine, El Paso

A piece of Beatles history will go under the hammer at Liverpool’s world-famous Cavern Club later this month when the childhood home of George Harrison goes up for auction. The three bedroom, mid-terraced property in Upton Green, Speke, has a guide price of £100,000-plus. But because of its historical associations as a popular hang-out for the band during their formative years, it has already attracted worldwide interest and is likely to go for much more. John Lennon’s first home in Newcastle Road, Wavertree, sold at auction for £480,000 last year, from a guide price of £150,000-plus. George was born on February 25, 1943, at his family’s previous home on Arnold Grove, a cramped two-up, two-down terrace in Wavertree. His dad Harold was a bus driver, while his mum Louise was of Irish descent. He also had two brothers and a sister. After his parents were offered a brand new council house, the family moved to Upton Green, Speke, in 1950. George spent 12 happy years living there before fame and stardom whisked him away in 1962.