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ST. HELENA, Calif. — The scientists exchanged one last look and held their breath. Everything was ready. The electrode was in place, threaded between the two hemispheres of a living cat’s brain; the instruments were tuned to pick up the chatter passing from one half to the other. The only thing left was to listen for that electronic whisper, the brain’s own internal code. The amplifier hissed — the three scientists expectantly leaning closer — and out it came, loud and clear. “We all live in a yellow submarine, yellow submarine, yellow submarine ....” “The Beatles’ song! We somehow picked...

The Fab Four made two hysteria-inducing visits to America in 1964, launching the so-called "British Invasion" of the mid-1960s. As they visited Washington DC and Baltimore a young photographer, Mike Mitchell, snapped dozens of images of John, Paul, George and Ringo. Now, after being filed away for nearly 50 years, these never seen before black-and-white photographs are being sold at auction at Christie's in New York. (2min video at link)

He is still revered around the world as a peace-loving working class hero. But by the time he died, John Lennon was a closet conservative embarrassed by his radical past, according to his former personal assistant. Fred Seaman claims that the former Beatle was a fan of Ronald Reagan, who went on to become America’s Republican president in 1981 and forged a close political alliance with Margaret Thatcher.

For more than 40 years Beatles member John Lennon towered above all others as the Left’s most powerful artistic icon. His anthem “Imagine” dreamed of a unified world that transcended the divides of nation-states and religious strife. It was an inspiration to generations of utopians. Now a new documentary reveals a startling fact: in his final years before his murder, the songwriter abandoned his famous progressive faith, enjoyed arguing with radicals, and supported Ronald Reagan. The Toronto Sun reported Tuesday night on one of the interviews from a new documentary called “Beatles Stories.” Director Seth Swirsky spent five years collecting...

You know what? I think the answer’s probably no. But why let that get in the way of the delicious schadenfreude I’m feeling right now over the recent claims by his former personal assistant Fred Seaman – and the apparent discomfort it is causing lefties. -Excerpt- Over at the leftie Nation, historian Jon Wiener is having a massive sense of humour failure at this outrageous slur on a man probably second only to Che as an icon of international left-wing street credibility.

John Lennon was a closet Republican, who felt a little embarrassed by his former radicalism, at the time of his death - according to the tragic Beatles star's last personal assistant. Fred Seaman worked alongside the music legend from 1979 to Lennon's death at the end of 1980 and he reveals the star was a Ronald Reagan fan who enjoyed arguing with left-wing radicals who reminded him of his former self. In new documentary Beatles Stories, Seaman tells filmmaker Seth Swirsky Lennon wasn't the peace-loving militant fans thought he was while he was his assistant. He says, "John, basically, made...

Ringo Starr looks at a photograph of his young self and laughs. ‘We didn’t know what was ahead of us. You never do. We didn’t think it would last.’ The black-and-white image shows the Beatles in suits in the early Sixties, waiting to appear on a television show. He’s not sure which one. Paul is whistling, George is distracted, John is wide-eyed and Ringo is staring at the camera, his feet up on a seat. In the picture (below) he looks the most assured, by far. ‘Even Paul thought, “Well, I’ll probably end up as a writer.” So did John....

LONDON --Paul McCartney and his girlfriend Nancy Shevell are engaged, his publicist said Friday, nearly four years after they were first spotted together.

On April 29, 1909 — 102 years almost to the day before the Congressional Progressive Caucus proposed its “People’s Budget” – the British chancellor of the exchequer, David Lloyd George, introduced his own “People’s Budget” in Parliament. This budget included something called the “super tax,” designed specifically to redistribute wealth from the rich to the poor. Half a century later, in his famous 1966 song “Taxman,” George Harrison, singing in the guise of a sardonic tax collector, warns listeners that he will keep 19 of every 20 pounds they earn, and concludes his advice with the reminder that “you’re working...

The light-blue 1965 Ferrari 330 GT, immaculately restored to its original condition in the mid 90s, was John's first car after he passed his driving test. Rumour has it, his driving test made headline news; so much so, every luxury car dealership close to his home in Weybridge rocked up with a car on the day, hoping the big man would pick theirs. Astons, Jags and Maseratis flooded the road outside, as Lennon calmly strolled outside, had a peek at the collected exotica and plumped for the 330 GT. In them days the Fezza was worth £2,000, but Bonhams is...

Rest easy all you old folk – one of the great icons of your youth is now saved for eternity or the last trump (whichever comes first)….the hallowed black and white tarmac on Abbey Road, London NW8, which graced the cover of the Beatles 1969 “Abbey Road” album, is safe.

Not exactly in the league of Pearl Harbor and 9/11, or even the JFK assassination, but for those who are old enough to remember, it was a pretty big deal when John Lennon was assassinated in New York City exactly 30 years ago today, on December 8, 1980. So I thought I'd put a post out there to see if anybody has any thoughts from that day, how they learned about it and how they felt about John Lennon and his music at the time and more importantly, how they feel about him today now that we have had 30...

Because it is the thirtieth anniversary of the tragic murder of John Lennon, much nostalgia will be summoned up for Lennon, the Beatles and the times they lived in. The glory days of sixties idealism and “innocence” will be recalled with misty fondness by aging baby boomers, and those who came along later. But were the Beatles merely innocent, mop headed,peace loving idealists? As we looked at last week in our previous article, Lennon;Whose Minstrel Was He ?, Lennon was an effective musical evangelist of the sexual revolution, which has wrecked untold millions of lives, in broken health, broken families,...

Less my 64 (Sung to “When I’m Sixty-four” by The Beatles) http://www.links2love.com/love_lyrics_125.htm Nancy got bolder; screwing health care … Barry cheered her loud! Tell you we’ll be spending… Steal every dime … Your pay leaving; bottom of line! Despite a wipe out, still hopes she’ll be … good to mop the floor … “O, you still need me!” “Hope I still can lead” … less my “sixty-four!” Girl he’s over you … Nancy, you crazy bird … ‘O’ should say “F you!” Life should be dandy, end of your rule … Since your might is gone! You can sit as...

The song that unshook the world — and that the Lennon tributes forgot. (John Lennon) criticized America’s involvement in Vietnam, and, as the Sixties progressed, he became an increasingly important symbol of the burgeoning counterculture. — Veteran rock music journalist Anthony DeCurtis, on the website JohnLennon.com, 10/8/10. As a staunch Lennonist, I was tickled to get a letter some years back from a rich lefty friend that included a photo of him sitting with “John” in Havana. Well, he wasn’t really with John himself, since the ex-Beatle was long dead at that point. But he was sitting next to the...

While George is completely out of it, oddly enough, Ringo seems fine. Paul is buzzed, as well as John.

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OXON HILL, Md. - It's a decades-old rumor few attending this weekend's Beatles tribute festival at National Harbor have any doubt putting to rest: is Paul McCartney dead? Their uniform answer is no! And yet, a new documentary that had its worldwide premiere at the festival Friday claims McCartney died in a car crash in 1966. "They had covered up the death at the behest of her Majesty's government and the British intelligence service, MI5," said the documentary's director Joel Gilbert. He says the British government was "afraid there would be a rash of suicides worldwide if Paul McCartney's death...

Heather found a message on her answer machine: ‘It’s Paul ­McCartney here.’ Paul presented the Heather Mills Trust — which she hadn’t yet registered with the Charity Commission — with a cheque for £150,000. At 14, she claimed in her ­autobiography, she’d run away from home. She’d started ­sleeping rough and mixing with drug addicts, rent boys and prostitutes. Then she got a Saturday job with a jeweler, from whom she stole — resulting in a ­probationary sentence for theft. Next, Heather strayed into the fringes of the sex industry, ­finding employment at around the age of 16 as a...

Don't hold your breath waiting for Beatles songs to go on sale at iTunes or other online retailers, Yoko Ono said on Thursday. The Fab Four have long resisted the allure of digital downloads, instead selling millions of old-fashioned compact discs last year after remastering the catalog. Apple Corps, the group's holding company has been unable to agree on terms with EMI Group, which licenses the Beatles' recordings. And then there's the unrelated Apple Inc, owner of iTunes, the world's largest music retailer. Apple and Apple have had a difficult history over rights to the name. But that trademark dispute...

I find myself in an unusual and slightly strange situation: I am in disagreement with Cardinal George Pell. This has never happened to me before, and I’m not sure that I like it. In a sermon last week, the cardinal had a go at the Beatles, and in particular John Lennon, whom he described as “the best known of the Beatles, who once claimed they were better known than Jesus Christ”. Well, so he did: but John Lennon wasn’t the same phenomenon at all as the Beatles. Cardinal Pell attacked in particular Imagine, in which, as the cardinal reminds us,...

Whatever your opinion of President Obama, there's no question he has spectacularly revived the number and quality of musical performances in the White House. Look no further than "Paul McCartney: The Library of Congress Gershwin Prize for Popular Song in Performance at the White House," taped early last month and screening on PBS on Wednesday, the fourth "In Performance" show thus far during his young administration. Yes, Sir Paul is English. But the award is not restricted to U.S. citizens. Named in honor of brothers Ira and George Gershwin, the award is given to a composer or performer whose lifetime...

The late musician makes some good sense. The video is the 7th one down.

Ringo Starr kept his 70th birthday celebration going on Tuesday night (July 7) with a concert at New York's Radio City Music Hall that was positively star-studded, thanks in part to "a little help from his friend," Paul McCartney. The former Beatles bandmates topped off the show by surprising audience members with a performance of "Birthday" from "The Beatles [White Album]," and appropriately so. With McCartney on lead vocals and Starr behind the drum kit, the duo performed with classic rock 'n' roll flair. "Birthday" was preceded by another all-star collaboration, when Ringo Starr & His All-Starr Band played "With...

The Beatles' record label Apple is to release material to download for the first time - but the music of the Fab Four will not be included. Apple has remastered 15 albums, including Mary Hopkin's Post Card, to be released digitally and on CD. The work of The Beatles has never been cleared for download, partly because of a trademark dispute with iTunes owner Apple. Earlier this year, Sir Paul McCartney said "one day it's going to happen..." "I know iTunes would like to do it, so one day it's going to happen." He said the delay had been down...

Yes, the oil spill has silver lining. Unfortunately, it is only for environmentalists who pretend to care about the environment. Last week film critic Roger Ebert was the latest to advance a phony ideology, looking past the current crisis in the Gulf of Mexico by pushing clean energy instead. Just like Ebert and President Obama, Beatle Paul McCartney is the latest celebrity to prove his blind allegiance to the ‘green’ movement at the expense of common sense.

THE shocking images of oil-covered wildlife and ruined beaches across the Gulf of Mexico have horrified millions. But passionate green campaigner Sir Paul McCartney believes the environmental disaster may have a silver lining, with the search for clean, renewable energy now being pushed forward. The Beatles legend said: "Sadly we need disasters like this to show people. Some people don't believe in climate warming - like those who don't believe there was a Holocaust. "But the facts indicate that there's something going on and we've got to be aware of it if we want our kids to inherit a decent...

What is it with these left-wing entertainers that have to insult people while they accept their dubious awards? Why can't these lefties just graciously accept an award and go about their business without going out of their way to let the world know about their politics? But once again, this time with Paul McCartney, we have an entertainer forcing his politics on the world in an inappropriate manner. While accepting the Library of Congress Gershwin Prize for Popular Song, McCartney decided that the celebratory air of the event was a good time make to fun of George W. Bush and...

Paul McCartney was reportedly "shaken up" by an incident that happened after a concert in Mexico City. Police had to rescue the former Beatle after a mob swarmed his tour bus. A source says that even McCartney's security detail thought it was just another ho-hum standard giant crowd enveloping his tour bus until things got out of hand as youths started scaling the bus. It escalated from there as they got on the roof of the bus and started jumping up and down. The mob dispersed when police were dispatched to the scene. McCartney's management is said to be re-evaluating...

It might have been coming out of the air space between her ear buds and flesh, or it might have been seeping through the holes in the woman's head. Either way, that endless, non-varying thump-thump-thump was making me nuts. This experience is similar that one endures when listening to a well known song by a bubblegum band named after an ubiquitous insect. The one in which the lyric, "I want to hold your hand" is repeated over and over and over and over and... The "Boss", Bruce---Bruce!---Springsteen uses this technique as a bludgeon: "Born in the USA!...I was...[wait for it]...Born...

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....

An America deeply divided by helter skelter politics and war, the void littered with protest signs, bricks and racial epithets, is nothing new to Paul McCartney. The Beatles provided a soundtrack for a similar era 40 years ago. As then, the man who sang that "Life is very short, and there's no time for fussing and fighting, my friends" in "We Can Work It Out," is hopeful. "It's a tough time, of course," McCartney said by phone last week as he motored through Sussex in the south of England. "But things get better.

That gasping, wheezing sound you hear is capitalism and the free-enterprise system as we know them, struggling and dying, followed in their throes by those who will be deemed expendable in a new age of healthcare reform where “government experts” and not your ability to buy your own health insurance will decide who should be given the chance to live. It is the very destruction of everything America has stood for over the past two-plus centuries...

Rolling Stones drummer Charlie Watts has revealed he no longer cares if the band continues saying, "Honestly, I couldn't care less if it were over." Watts is famously dismissive of popular music with jazz his widely acknowledged first love. He is currently on tour with The ABC&D of Boogie Woogie jazz-blues band and confirms, "Jazz is my passion. This is the music that I really want to do. The Stones are merely an annoying pastime."

LAS VEGAS, Dec. 3 /PRNewswire/ -- Recently some rare and unreleased John Lennon recordings were discovered in a vault. These recordings were taped on August 19, 1980. They were done separately from the mysteriously missing video footage that was filmed at what is believed to be John Lennon's last recording session with his band prior to his death. Even more incredible, these recordings have never been released until now.

The two remaining Beatles have teamed up for a duet on Starr's forthcoming solo album, Y Not. It's a band renuion! Sort of ... Paul McCartney appears on two tracks... "Paul was doing the Grammys, so he came over to the house and was playing bass on [new song] Peace Dream," Starr explained. "I played him this other track and Paul said, 'Give me the headphones. Give me a pair of cans'. And he went to the mic and he just invented that part where he follows on my vocal. That was all Paul McCartney, and there could be nothing...

From today's New York Times... John Lennon The Beatles united a generation of young people with their songs, their attitudes and their sense of style, and John Lennon was the thinking man's Beatle. Of the four, he was the Beatle who wrote books, the Beatle who embroiled the group in a potentially disastrous controversy by suggesting in an interview that they were more popular than Jesus, the Beatle who embraced the poetic innovations of Bob Dylan in the mid-1960's and shocked Beatles fans by jumping into performance art, happenings and political protests in the late 60's and early 70's. ..."...

LONDON, England (CNN) -- The childhood friend of John Lennon's son who inspired the Beatles' psychedelic masterpiece "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" has died aged 46 from the chronic disease Lupus. Lucy Vodden was a classmate of Julian Lennon, who came home from school one day carrying a drawing of his 4-year-old classmate. "That's Lucy in the sky with diamonds," he told his father. Lennon seized on the image and embellished it in a song along with "newspaper taxis" and a "girl with kaleidoscope eyes." The BBC later banned the track, which appeared on the 1967 album "Sgt. Pepper's...

LONDON – 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,...

Los Angeles, CA (BANG) - Yoko Ono thinks the new Beatles video game will help create "a world of Peace." The 76-year-old widow of "Fab Four" singer John Lennon has praised Beatles Rock Band - which was released earlier this month - because it merges music and art to create amazing "healing vibrations." She explained: "I think game is the second revolution. In the beginning they made a splash with their music; with the video game we're going to create a planet of music and art." "Music and art are both very interesting healing vibrations, and with that vibration we...

Here at Americans for Tax Reform we have worked tirelessly to educate the public about the dangers of excessive taxation: job losses, businesses closing, economic stagnation - effectivly misery all round. Now we have one more thing to blame high taxes on: breaking up the Beatles. That's right, one of the greatest cultural tragedies of the 20th century was caused by big government...

Walt Disney Co is to remake the zany 1960s Beatles movie "Yellow Submarine" in 3-D in a deal with the band's company Apple Corps. Disney Studios chairman Dick Cook said on Friday the new "Yellow Submarine" will be directed by Oscar-winning director Robert Zemeckis using the same motion-capture effects he employed in the family movie "Polar Express." It will incorporate the 16 Beatles songs and recordings from the original film, licensed from Sony/ATV Music Publishing and EMI Capitol Records. No release date was announced. The original film, about a peaceful, music-loving underwater community that is attacked by music hating "blue...

As The Beatles take center stage in the music world this week with the much-anticipated reissue of their albums, it’s easy to forget that the Fab Four were not exactly adored by large swathes of the musical community back in the day. Jazz artists, especially, looked down on the noisy pop stars (or were more likely envious of their fame and fortune). “It used to be a crime for a jazz musician to even mention the word ‘Beatles,’” jazz guitarist George Benson recalled on Thursday, during a promotion for his new album at the Grammy Museum in downtown Los Angeles....

With the entire Beatles back catalogue now available in digitally remastered form, not to mention their appearance in the latest version of Rock Band, Tom Townshend takes an in-depth look at a crucial moment in their musical development - the day they met Bob Dylan… When future generations look back on the music of the twentieth century, two names will loom larger than all others. In the British corner, The Beatles will represent musical innovation, melodic sophistication and the phenomena of global pop fame. In the American corner, Bob Dylan will stand for lyrical mastery, stylistic reinvention and unprecedented artistic...

In the late '60s, with a little prodding from his sons, my father finally gave in and replaced his monaural Garrard turntable with a stereo one. Suddenly, Sgt. Pepper's band sounded so much bigger. And clearer. I could hear two distinct guitars playing, not just a generic guitar sound. Two decades later, in 1988, I finally broke down and bought a CD player and the first of many Beatles CDs -- now, that was a jump from what I'd been hearing on vinyl for years. There were so many more instruments I'd never noticed. And notes I'd never heard. On...

Introduction this week of the new video game "The Beatles: Rock Band" reminds us of an odd fact about these music artists who were once widely considered to be the definition of avant garde: the Beatles have often been, really, one beat behind. Believe it or not, up until now music by the Beatles has not been available for sale on the Internet. With "The Beatles: Rock Band," players will be able to download up to 45 songs that they can perform with the Fab Four in such reproduced settings as "The Ed Sullivan Show," Shea Stadium and the Abbey...

"Here's to You Mr. Jefferson" Awesome! by Mike Church

twist and shout!! again, RIP John Hughes...

Forty years ago on Saturday, one of the pop world's most infamous and imitated album covers was shot in a little side street in north London... On the 8 August 1969 that the Fab Four walked out of No 3 Abbey Road, having finished basic work on what would be - and they subsequently said they knew would be - their last album. A policeman held up the traffic, the band walked back and forth a few times and that was that ...A lesser noted curiosity is that the album cover has no writing on it and is just the...

The President might want to keep an eye on the cute Beatle. Paul McCartney made no secret of his admiration - or is it adoration? - of Michelle Obama at his Washington-area concert on Saturday night. "I love you, I love you, I love you. That's all I want to say," he sang. "I need to, I need to, I need to, I need to make you see. Oh, what you mean to me." The knighted, besotted singer dedicated the love song "Michelle" to the First Lady during his concert at FedEx Field, NBC Washington reported.