The Beatles biopic has announced its cast:
After months of buzz, director Sam Mendes has confirmed that he will helm The Beatles – A Four-Film Cinematic Event. Mendes also revealed at CinemaCon that the film has been cast with actors Harris Dickinson, Paul Mescal, Barry Keoghan and Joseph Quinn stepping into their roles as John Lennon, Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr and George Harrison.
CBC:
Last week, late at night, when Rob Frith was wrapping up a work session at a friend’s studio, he decided to throw on one last tape for a listen.
It was labelled “Beatles 60s demos” and had been sitting around Neptoon Records, one of Vancouver’s most well-known record shops, unplayed. Frith, who owns the shop, had never listened to it, but had brought the recording to his friend’s studio that night, knowing he had the right player for the tape.
”I thought it was just a reel-to-reel tape that somebody had put bootleg things on,” Frith said.
But when the tape played, the quality of the sound was clear and bright.
The Beatles have shared a music video for “Now and Then.”
Read More “The Beatles – “Now and Then” Video” The Beatles have shared their final new song “Now and Then.”
Read More “The Beatles – “Now and Then”” The Beatles will release “Now and Then” on November 2nd. The full press release can be found below.
Read More “The Last Beatles Song” The trailer for Peter Jackson’s The Beatles documentary, Get Back, has been released.
Read More “Trailer for ‘Get Back’ Documentary” The Beatles have announced another reissue of Let It Be, including 27 unreleased recordings.
Read More “The Beatles Reissue ‘Let It Be’”
St. Vincent covered The Beatles’ “Martha My Dear” as part of the Ally Coalition talent show.
Read More “St. Vincent Covers The Beatles” Peter Jackson has shared a preview of his upcoming The Beatles documentary.
Read More “Peter Jackson’s The Beatles Documentary Preview”
The Beatles have announced a new book, The Beatles: Get Back, that will be released along with Peter Jackson’s upcoming documentary of the same name. Pre-orders are now up.
Read More “The Beatles Announce New Book” The Beatles’ Abbey Road is getting a new 50th anniversary box set.
This is the first time Abbey Road has been remixed and presented with additional session recordings and demos. The album’s sweeping new edition follows the universally acclaimed, remixed, and expanded anniversary editions of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band and The BEATLES (“White Album”) released in 2017 and 2018 respectively. All the new Abbey Road releases feature the new stereo album mix, sourced directly from the original eight-track session tapes.
Read More “The Beatles’ ‘Abbey Road’ Gets 50th Anniversary Box Set”
Joshua Bote, writing at NPR:
As was the case with They Shall Not Grow Old, which found Jackson reviving a trove of archival World War I footage, the Lord of the Rings filmmaker is mining 55 hours of unreleased footage of the band, using restoration techniques to render it in modern quality. The footage was originally intended for Michael Lindsay-Hogg’s 1970 documentary Let it Be.
The Beatles will be releasing a limited edition box set for Christmas. Billboard reports:
[T]hey will be releasing a limited-edition box set of their Christmas holiday messages, originally given only to fan club members on flexi-discs from 1963 to 1969.
The limited edition set will include seven 7-inch colored vinyl singles, one for each of the seven messages. The Christmas records have never been given general release as a set before, though one was made available as part of The Beatles Rock Band video game.
Pre-orders are up on Amazon.
This weekend marked the anniversary of The Beatles’ first U.S. concert, the Washington Post has an oral history:
I never was a screamer. It was all about the music for me. The concert started with some warm-up groups, and I was relieved because I had heard about the screaming that went on in England. And I thought: Nobody’s screaming. This is going to be nice; we’re going to be able to hear them. (Laughs.) When they started playing, you couldn’t hear a thing. It was unbelievably loud, like white noise. I remember the policeman near me stuck bullets in his ears.