It’s hard to believe that it’s only been 4 months since Michael Jackson’s death. It’s harder to believe that in that time, he has become the third top grossing dead celebrity this year. The King of Pop beat out the likes of Elvis Presley and John Lennon as Forbes has clocked the late singer as having earned $90 million posthumously. Most of the earnings are due to the countless merchandising deals and the rights to the use of his name and likeness in the film ‘This is It’. Michael also made millions from album sales, radio airplay and music video marathons from the weeks after his death. He was only beat out by fashion designer Yves Saint Laurent and Broadway buffs Richard Rogers and Oscar Hammerstein, whose earnings were combined.
The Beatles are arguably the greatest band to ever grace the world but the secret behind their split has never been completely understood and the fact that the musicians kept mum about the circumstances didn’t exactly help the curiosity. However, a previously unreleased Rolling Stone interview tape with John Lennon has recently surfaced and it reveals the great amounts of tension between him and Paul McCartney. In the interview, John comments on feeling sick over selling out as well as being fed up playing sidekick to Paul, a feeling mutual for Ringo Starr and George Harrison. John also had a problem with how the rest of the band treated his wife, Yoko Ono.
The legendary Yoko Ono has signed a global grassroots petition appealing to the United Nations to declare a Oneness Day, her website says.
Other famous figures to add their names to the petition of some 50,000 signatures include South African Nobel Peace laureate Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Deepak Chopra and Neale Donald Walsch. The Dalai Lama, envoy Sonam Tenzin and U.N. adviser Janis Roze are also on the petition.
The 1971 song Imagine, a classic by Ono’s ex-husband and Beatle, John Lennon, invites the world to come together as one: “I hope someday you’ll join us. And the world will be as one.”
Ono on her website called the appeal “potentially the most important petition ever launched”.
She said, “We are all one, united with infinite and eternal love.”
She also is said to have used Facebook and Twitter to promote the campaign.
The petition will be delivered to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon or next year’s General Assembly president, said petition drive coordinator Anna-Mari Pieterse of Pretoria, South Africa.
The widow of the Beatles legend, John Lennon, was recently handed a Lifetime Achievement Gong at the MOJO Honors List. When asked what her late husband would’ve thought about her receiving this award, Yoko Ono said: “He would have said, ‘I told you so, man.’ He was the only person who was really believing and promoting my work. Without that I might have been pretty discouraged.” Too bad it took everybody so long to appreciate Yoko Ono’s work, even though, I have to ask myself: what work is that, anyway? And furthermore, what is the MOJO Honors List. Honestly, all of these names just rising up spontaneously from the shadow of obscurity… creepy.
John Lennon may be turning in his grave with the way his two families have been fighting over his properties which left his two sons growing up apart from each other. No thanks to Yoko Ono who reports said refuses to give Cynthia Lennon and her son Julian their fair share in Lennon’s estate after he was murdered in 1980. In fact, Julian has not yet received anything from Ono as of May 2007. Inheritance issues aside, half brothers Julian and Sean (son of Yoko by John) are set to appear together in public during the UN-Millennium Goal Awards in New York on February 26.
The event is expected to be attended by thousands of music fans who will be there for their idols including Richie Sambora, Jon Bon Jovi, Macy Gray and Akon. The brain behind the show is no other than Sacha Stone who founded the Humanitad Foundation. Stone may be living in the UK but she has managed to maintain her relationships with the people who will be involved in the event. The animosity between the two Lennon families is said to be mostly fueled by Ono who seemed bent to wipe out everything that concerns Lennon’s first family. Ono is a far cry from the amiable Cynthia and Julian but blood is thicker than water so the two brothers will most likely feel for each other despite Ono’s schemes. Julian is popularly known for his hit songs “Too Late for Goodbye” and “Valotte”.
Late Beatle John Lennon is all set to appear in a TV commercial for charity some twenty eight years his death. Well of course I’m not saying John Lennon himself but footage of his will be used in a commercial which is directed at promoting a new campaign launched on Thursday to deliver solar-powered laptop computers to the world’s poorest children.
The advertisement is part of the promotions for the One Laptop per Child Foundation, the foundation was created in 2005, a voice dubbed over images of Lennon recalls the sentiment of his 1971 hit song Imagine. This is the same foundation that started producing the XO series of laptops at the end of last year at a manufacturing cost less than $200 per machine.
Hey that’s really not the thing to do, there are enough good people that exist in this universe who would have done a great job for this cause but to use John’s image and song and then mix it and have a voice being dubbed really sounds as if either his real voice would not go down so well with today’s generation or something else.
A Vatican newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano, has issued a posthumous pardon to John Lennon for his offensive declaration forty years ago that the Beatles were more famous than Jesus. The paper described the remark as “showing off, bragging by a young English working-class musician who had grown up in the age of Elvis Presley and rock and roll and had enjoyed unexpected success.” If you can’t process that, they’re basically saying that you say stupid things when you’re young. The iconic musician must feel so relieved that the Pope’s people are cool with him again. But then again, he could probably care less.
I don’t know how I should feel about a legal system that treats murderers well in jail. John Lennon’s crazy killer is one of those people living a pretty good life in jail. He’s been enjoying conjugal visits with his wife for the past 16 years. Mark David Chapman killed the iconic Beatle back in December of 1980 and has since been serving time in the Attica Correctional Facility. Chapman was actually up for parole for the fifth time last week. He’s been denied four times since he became eligible back in 2000. Yoko Ono had submitted a letter in 2000 stating she feared for her safety, for Lennon’s kids’ safety and even for Chapman’s safety if he was released. 8 years later and Yoko says that her position has not changed.
A newly discovered tape of The Beatles laughing and chatting during an early recording session has sold for about $23,000.
Cameo Auctioneers said the reel-to-reel tape was recorded in 1964 and had recently been discovered by a man in northern England while he was clearing out his father’s attic.
Pause while every reader rushes to their attic to see if they can unearth any quarter million dollar finds…no? Bad luck.
The half-hour tape sold to an Internet bidder Tuesday afternoon for 11,900 pounds ($23,446) including tax and the buyer’s premium, the auction house said, adding that it had yet to contact the winner.
The tape features John Lennon and Paul McCartney collapsing into fits of giggles as they try to finish the ballad I’ll Follow the Sun. It also carries versions of songs including I Feel Fine,I’m a Loser and Don’t Put Me Down Like This.
Amazing video footage of John Lennon smoking pot, writing songs and discussing putting the hallucinogenic drug LSD in President Richard Nixon’s tea will be at the centre of a dramatic court case to start next week.
In a bid to keep the tape private Yoko is set to go against Lawrence, Massachusetts-based World Wide Video, which claims ownership of nine hours of raw footage of the former Beatle and Ono filmed only weeks before the legendry band parted in 1970.
World Wide, a consortium of Beatles collectors, are looking to release the historical footage as a 2 hour film “3 days in the life” detailing the break-up and mind set of Lennon at this crucial time.
Rolling Stone magazine dubs it “the most awesome John Lennon footage you might never see.”
Having paid $1 million for the tapes after legal costs and other expenses, it was almost premiered last year but the showing was pulled after Yoko’s lawyers asserted her copyright ownership of the videotapes.
The story looks to be a film in itself with legal parties get ready to fight.
The tapes in question were filmed between 8 to 11 February 1970, and show Lennon composing two hits, “Remember” and “Mind Games,” whilst openly discussing his drug use in scenes that World Wide describe as “intimate and no-holds-barred.”
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