Beatles fans to sign giant replica of first contractFans of the Fab Four are expected to descend on London's Carnaby Street to sign a supersized copy

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If one memorabilia company has its way, hundreds of Beatles fans will sign the mop-tops' first contract later today (Tuesday 14 June). An 11ft replica of John, Paul, George and Ringo's contract with Brian Epstein will be erected on Carnaby Street, giving fans the chance to pretend they too were part of the deal – leading to fame, fortune and a Sgt Pepper uniform.

The giant contract is the work of the Imagine Corporation, which that claims to have launched "the most exciting, innovative, transparent, skill-based website on the internet". Or perhaps just a fancy British Invasion-themed carnival game.

Imagine's first major project is a competition to win the original copy of the Epstein contract, insured for £500,000. Fans can log into the site, pay a £10 fee, guess the "value" of the contract – and if their estimate matches the one the company's panel agrees on, they win. But if their guess is wrong, they still lose that tenner.

Contrary to appearances – a website decked out in pretty blue skies and named after John Lennon's most idealistic song – Imagine's creators are not philanthropists. The competition is for profit, and every entry costs money. Only an undisclosed portion of the proceeds will go to the designated charity, the Teenage Cancer Trust.

Still, the real Beatles contract could be yours for just £10! Or ... it could not be. Most likely not, in fact.

Imagine's giant contract signing will take place at the top of Carnaby Street, next to Liberty and Mcasso Music, at 6pm Tuesday 14 June.

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Lennon's Artwork

Gallery gives visitors a chance to see Lennon's artwork
Friday, June 12, 2009
BY JAN PURCELL
Special to the Times
John Lennon was a visual artist long before he picked up his first guitar, but few people take that into account when they think of him. Usually the first words that come to mind are "the Beatles."
He drew caricatures of his teachers and other people who walked through his life and created a comic strip, "The Daily Howl," in his school notebook. Later he attended the respected Liverpool Art School for three years (1957-1960) and continued to draw his entire life, using either pen, pencil or Japanese sumi ink. His drawings illustrated three best-selling books he wrote in the 1960's.

More than 100 works created by John Lennon between 1968 and 1980 will be on display this weekend at Union Square in New Hope. Working in concert, Legacy Productions, Yoko Ono and Bag One Arts have put together a collection that features new releases: "Give Peace a Chance," "Consult the Stars" and "Turn Left and Make Peace." Also on display will be rare signed works from the controversial "Bag-One" suite, as well as serigraphs, lithographs, copper etchings and aqua tints of his drawings, signed by Yoko Ono, which include song lyrics and the "Real Love" children's drawings sketched for John's son, Sean.
All works will be available for purchase and profits will help benefit the Fox Chase Cancer Center (fccc.edu).
According to Legacy Productions producer Rudy Siegel, the exhibit is in its 17th year of travel throughout the United States. "The majority of people who come to the exhibits do not know he did artwork," he says. "The exhibits have become meeting places for all generations. (The people) come to reminisce, to share personal anecdotes about Lennon and the Beatles. They bring their kids and their grandkids and input their stories from their youth about John. And the artwork is a great catalyst."
"I feel good that they are all very loving people. They are usually beaming with love," Lennon's widow, Yoko Ono said in a recent e-mail exchange with this newspaper. "It could be John's drawings that are making them happy, or it could be that they came to see the show because they were loving people anyway. It's just nice to be there with them. I am hoping (Lennon's work) will inspire people to make their own creative effort in whatever they love to do. He was drawing things with the idea that he wanted to share fun, love, and creativity with people."
Lennon did more visual art than songwriting after his second son, Sean, was born in 1975. When asked why this was so, Yoko Ono replied, "It was because he was a house-husband and a daddy. He was at home a lot. It was easier for him to pick up a pencil and draw things. He did record new songs on cassette tapes, but he did not have a band to play them at home, of course. An artist has to be versatile and change his/her way of expressing their creativity. That's what he did."
And when asked how she sees Lennon's visual art impacting these troubled times, she said, "I think people are happy to discover songs of love and peace amidst the songs of anger and violence which are permeating the world."
Producer Siegel says, "The messages of love and peace are resonant in this collection are as poignant now as they were forty years ago. They are still good foundations to build upon.
"I've been traveling with this exhibit for seven years, from Omaha to San Francisco, from Portland, Maine to New Hope and the thing that impresses me is we'll have the wealthiest person in town standing next to someone without anything in his pocket and they're on one level. It's very powerful, very uplifting and empowering. And it's all positive."

credit: Central Jersey Entertainment News

The Real Lucy In The Sky with Diamond is gravely ill

Real `Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds' gravely ill


By GREGORY KATZ – 6 hours ago
LONDON (AP) — 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.
They are linked together by something that happened more than 40 years ago when Julian brought home a drawing from school and told his father, "That's Lucy in the sky with diamonds."
Just the sort of cute phrase lots of 3- or 4-year-olds produce — but not many have a father like John Lennon, who used it as a springboard for a legendary song that became a centerpiece on the landmark album "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band."
"Julian got in touch with me out of the blue, when he heard how ill I was, and he said he wanted to do something for me," said the 46-year-old Vodden, who has lupus, a chronic disease where the immune system attacks the body's own tissue.
Lennon, who lives in France, sent his old friend flowers and vouchers she could use to buy plants at a local gardening center, since working in her garden is one of the few activities she is still occasionally well enough to enjoy. More importantly, he has offered her friendship and a connection to more carefree days. They communicate mostly by text message.
"I wasn't sure at first how to approach her. I wanted at least to get a note to her," Julian Lennon told The Associated Press. "Then I heard she had a great love of gardening, and I thought I'd help with something she's passionate about, and I love gardening too. I wanted to do something to put a smile on her face."
Vodden admits she enjoys her association with the song, but doesn't particularly care for it. Perhaps that's not surprising. It was thought by many at the time, including BBC executives who banned the song, that the classic was a paean to LSD because of the initials in the title. Plus, she and Julian were 4 years old in 1967, the "Summer of Love" when "Sgt. Pepper" was released to worldwide acclaim. She missed the psychedelic era to which the song is indelibly linked.
"I don't relate to the song, to that type of song," said Vodden, described as "the girl with kaleidoscope eyes" in the lyrics. "As a teenager, I made the mistake of telling a couple of friends at school that I was the Lucy in the song and they said, 'No, it's not you, my parents said it's about drugs.' And I didn't know what LSD was at the time, so I just kept it quiet, to myself."
There's no doubt the fanciful lyrics and swirling musical effects draw heavily on the LSD experiences that were shaping Lennon's artistic output at the time — although many of the musical flourishes were provided by producer George Martin, who was not a drug user.
"The imagery in the song is partly a reflection of John's drug experiences, and partly his love of `Alice in Wonderland,'" said Steve Turner, author of "A Hard Day's Write," a book that details the origins of every Beatles song. "At the time it came out, it seemed overtly psychedelic, it sounded like some kind of trip. It was completely new at the time. To me it is very evocative of the period."
Turner said his research, including interviews with Vodden and Julian Lennon, confirm that she is the Lucy in the song. He said it was common for John Lennon to "snatch songs out of thin air" based on a simple phrase he heard on TV or an item he read in the newspapers. In this case, Turner said, it was the phrase from Julian that triggered John's imagination.
Veteran music critic Fred Schruers said Julian Lennon's reaching out to help Vodden as she fights the disease is particularly moving because of the childlike nature of the song.
"It's enormously evocative but with a tinge of poignancy," he said. "It's the lost childhood Julian had with that little Lucy and the lost innocence we had with the psychedelic era, an innocence we really cherished until it was snatched away."
Vodden was diagnosed with lupus about five years ago after suffering other serious health problems. She has been struggling extreme fatigue, joint pain, and other ailments.
"She's not given up, she's a fighter, and she has her family backing her, that's a good thing," said Angie Davidson, campaign director for St. Thomas' Lupus Trust, which funds research. "We need more people like her, more Lucys."
Davidson, who also has the disease, said it affects each person differently, typically causing exhaustion and depression. When the disease kills, she said, it does so by attacking the body's internal organs.
It has become difficult for Vodden to go out — most of her trips are to the hospital — but recently she and her husband went to a bookstore and heard the song playing over the store's music system. When they went to another shop, the song was on there as well.
"That made me giggle," she said.

The woman who as a child was the basis for the Beatles song "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" is gravely ill. It was thought by many at the time that the psychedelic song from Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Heart Club Band was a paean to LSD because of the initials in the title, but it was actually based on a drawing that John Lennon's young son Julian brought home from school. He told his father the drawing was of Lucy in the sky with diamonds. Lucy Vodden, now living in Surrey just outside of London _ drifted apart after schoolyard days, but they have gotten back in touch as Lennon has tried to help Vodden cope with Lupus, a life-threatening disease
credit: AP

ENTIRE ORIGINAL RECORDED CATALOGUE REMASTERED

THE BEATLES' FOR RELEASE ENTIRE ORIGINAL RECORDED CATALOGUE REMASTERED

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• http://www.thebeatles.com/core/home/

A Master’s in Paul-Is-Definitely-Not-Dead

Qoute'-"The young scholars at Liverpool Hope — the professors, too — will have to become bootleg collectors as well, because there is no better way to understand how the Beatles did what they did than to hear their studio work in progress."
nytimes.com

Rare photos of Beatles at the Hard Rock Cafe NY

The Beatles gold single award for "She Loves You" will be at the "Icons Of Music" auction at Hard Rock Cafe in New York on April 21.

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upi.com

Previously Unreleased Beatles Track Disappeared!

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• http://www.gibson.com/en-us/Lifestyle/News/previously-unreleased-224/
  

Unreleased 11minutes version

Beatles link is questioned

While Max Clifford has undoubtedly helped to make his client Jade Goody famous, the author Hunter Davies, who became acquainted with The Beatles during the 1960s when he was working on their authorised biography, disputes the ubiquitous publicist's claim that he somehow "made" the pop group when, at the age of 19, he was working in the EMI press office. [readmore]

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• telegraph.co.uk
  

Beatles in the USSR

• podcast

As Beatlemania swept throughout the world in 1964, it seemed unable to penetrate the Iron Curtain.
In the Soviet Union, the music of the Beatles was repressed by the government.
Melodiya, the only record manufacturer in the Soviet Union, did not release their music stating "musicians such as these, who have plunged to the depth of musical decline, do not deserve a place on Soviet records".
However, an underground culture grew which used ingenious ways to discover and disseminate the Beatles' music.
Once a Beatles record had been smuggled into the country - a particularly difficult and dangerous task - it was quickly copied and distributed.
Vinyl production was under strict control, so records were made using the high quality film of medical X-rays.
If you held an underground record up to the light - negative images of broken bones were visible!
Electric guitars were banned but home-made resourcefulness triumphed.
Microphones in telephone receivers were used as guitar pick-ups, which led to widespread vandalism of public phone boxes. Strings for bass guitars were liberated from pianos.
Paul Gambaccini reveals the extraordinary ways that the Beatles' music was listened to in the Soviet Union during the 1960s.
Did the music and spirit of The Beatles help to end communism?
First broadcast Friday 13th February 2009

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bbcdocumentaries

Rolling Stone Magazine Beatles Disc

• rollingstone|thebeatles/discography