Beatles News

A waxwork model of Sir Paul McCartney will take pride of place at a Beatles-themedauction in Liverpool this weekend. The mannequin could go for between £800 and £1,000, the auction’s organiser believes. Stephen Bailey, manager of The Beatles Shop in Mathew Street, told the ECHO: “We hold the auction every year and it attracts people willing to spend £10 as well as people willing to spend thousands of pounds.” The life-size waxwork came from a museum in Great Yarmouth. The auction begins at 10.30am tomorrow and will be held at the Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts, co-founded by McCartney on the site of his old school. There will be 330 items up for grabs, including signatures, clothes, books, posters and other memorabilia. Mr Bailey said: “We have sold all sorts of stuff over the years. The international pull is amazing. “This year will be the biggest auction we’ve ever had with 330 lots. “The Beatles were the first ever boy band and you can only invent something once – and they invented it. That’s why they are still so popular.”

“All of my girlfriends. We all lived on the same street. All we did, you know,we we’re the Beatle’ girlfriends every single chance we had,” Denise McKevitt Rasmussen, who was celebrating her ninth birthday, said. Her dad let her pick two friends to take to the Beatles show at the Cow Palace. One of them was Terry O’Brien. “I remember I wore my pink pants dress with my John Lennon boots. Everyone had them then—the little white boots,” O’Brien said. Terry’s mom Gina was not so thrilled. “I just thought, she’s too young; she’ll get eaten alive down there but, oh, she wanted to go so bad,” she said. “They were so excited.” While youthful fans were primping, a KCBS reporter named Hilly Rose was trying to figure out an angle on what was obviously the story of the day. “The Beatles were big but really with teenagers—young people. And so guys our age, who in that time where in their 30s and 40s working at KCBS, we didn’t know a lot about them,” Rose said.

They hold down the low end, but many of them are living the high life. A new list compiles the Top 10 Richest Bassists in the World, and there are many of our favorites among them. This countdown can be found over at a website fittingly called the Richest. Unsurprisingly, it’s topped by Paul McCartney, whose net worth is valued at $1.2 billion. In fact, McCartney is so far ahead of the pack that he’s got more money than the next four bassists combined. There’s a tie for second, with Sting and Gene Simmons both worth $300 million. Two months ago, Sting made news when, while discussing his fortune, said that he will not pass it on to his six children so that they understand the value of a hard day’s work. “I certainly don’t want to leave them trust funds that are albatrosses ’round their necks,” he said. “I told them there won’t be much money left because we are spending it!

Kanye West has secretly been recording tracks with SirPaul McCartney, sources exclusively tell Page Six. The rapper and the former Beatle have quietly been collaborating on a number of tracks that could develop into an album, we’re told. One song, tentatively titled “Piss on My Grave,” is sparking some chatter. West’s wife Kim Kardashian has been heard telling friends she was a little surprised they chose such a provocative name. Kanye, whose rep declined to comment, was also present at McCartney’s show at LA’s Dodger Stadium last week. The legend had previously revealed he would be interested in collaborating with a rapper such as Kanye or Jay Z.

Don Was took home an Emmy on Saturday night at the Creative Arts Awards. The show, held one week before the formal Emmy telecast, presents the awards for all categories that will not be part of the main show. Was won for Music Direction for the CBS special The Beatles: The Night That Changed America, a special that aired on the 50th anniversary of the Beatles' first appearance on the Ed Sullivan show and including performances of Fab Four songs by classic and contemporary artists. Was, born Don Fergensen, formed the group Was (Not Was) in 1979 with childhood friend David Weiss. They hit their commercial peak in 1987 and 1988 with the album What Up, Dog? and the number 7 hit Walk the Dinosaur.

Rare pictures of The Beatles meeting youngsters from a children's home while filming A Hard Day's Night in 1964 have been discovered by a children's charity. Staff at The Children's Society discovered the photographs in an archive which contained a copy of the charity's supporters’ magazine from 1964. It featured an article on children from the Society's now-defunct Roehampton home, Hambro House, meeting the band while they were filming at London's Scala Theatre. "We were thrilled to discover these photos in The Children’s Society archive, showing The Beatles taking time out from filming A Hard Day’s Night to spend time with children from one of our children’s homes in London," a spokesperson for the charity said.

PHOENIX -- When attending a concert, especially in a large arena, most of us would just be happy with a shout-out from our favorite rock star. But for one Phoenix couple, the Paul McCartney concert at US Airways Arena Tuesday was a night to remember. Adam Kowal and Andrea Copado have a wedding planned for Oct. 11. Copado read on the Internet that McCartney was ordained, and with their seats in the sixth row, they decided to make a sign that read, "You're ordained, we're engaged, please marry us tonight!" "We put together that poster and just hoped that he would acknowledge us and see our sign. We would have been happy," Kowal told News/Talk 92.3 KTAR's Mac & Gaydos Thursday.

On August 19, 1964, I was woken up at my home in Los Angeles by the phone ringing at six in the morning. It was my editor in London calling to give me the assignment of a lifetime. He wanted me to fly up to San Francisco to cover - from start to finish - a hot British rock 'n' roll group making their first concert tour of North America. The Beatles had landed. That summer I was the 25-year-old West Coast correspondent of the Daily Express charged with chronicling the vagaries of Hollywood which ranged from the marriages of Elizabeth Taylor to the divorces of Marlon Brando and Cary Grant. Thrown in for good measure was an earthquake, a riot and a shipwreck. But The Beatles looked set to create a sensation to outstrip all these. After all only six months earlier they appeared on the country's most popular variety hour The Ed Sullivan Show and became an instant hit drawing 74 million viewers.

After dealing with several decades’ worth of pedestrians clogging the crosswalk at Abbey Road, local officials are mulling over hiring a crossing guard to keep would-be Beatles from being mowed down by motorists. The BBC reports that the Westminster City Council recently met to discuss the possibility, quoting a representative who cautioned that no decisions have been made. “Local Abbey Road ward councillors raised their residents’ concerns about the number of tourists spilling into the road and traffic near the crossing at the height of the summer season, and put forward various suggestions, asking the city council to review pedestrian safety and crowd management,” he said. “However, no proposals have been agreed by the council, nor the review completed.” As we previously recalled, the Beatles shot the cover photo for their ‘Abbey Road’ LP in that crosswalk on Aug. 8, 1969, inspiring countless others who’ve posed for their own version of the image over the years. “I come here all the time and it’s always been the same — it really does annoy you,” complained one cab driver. “All they’re doing is posing on the crossing. Someone’s going to get mown down one of these days, there’s no doubt about it.”