1. First of all, I am sorry to report that the rumors circulating earlier this year weren't true-- Paul McCartney will NOT inherit rights to the Lennon-McCartney catalog per Michael Jackson's will. Which is not terribly surprising considering those rumors were very much unconfirmed anyway. Here's a story that Walrus Gumboot linked to originally. And here's Paul's note on his own website, claiming that he is not, as has been claimed, "devastated" to learn the sad truth-- he apparently wasn't counting on it anyway. Glad to hear that his mental health is all set, then.
I've read-- and, like a bad blogger, I now can't find the original source, so shame on me-- that Jackson had sold off all but about 5% of those valuable rights anyway (mostly to Sony, whose lawyers will assure that they keep them forever and ever), in order to help pay off some of his astronomical debts. And so, forgive me for sullying the honor of a man passed away, but: What a fucking douche.
2. A hat tip to super-commenter Troy for this link to a paper in Zimbabwe that makes it sounds as though a release of "Now and Then" is imminent. Beatles News has the story from an anonymous source as well. Here's the background: three Anthology double-CD sets were released in the mid-1990s, and the first two each featured a Zombie Beatles track: "Free as a Bird" and "Real Love." They are zombie songs because they star the voice of John Lennon from beyond the grave singing and playing demo tapes, which the other three living (at the time) Beatles overdubbed onto in the '90s to create something approximating Beatles songs. (I'm making them sound bad. They're not bad. I mean, they're okay. "Real Love" is actually a really great song-- the zombie version is good, but also check out John Lennon's uneven-but-interesting Acoustic album to get a sense of what I mean.) "Now and Then" was meant to be the third zombie song, but the poor sound quality on the original demo was a turn-off, especially to George, I believe. So they worked on it, but ultimately didn't release it. Now I guess Paul has been working on it again and wants it out there. Which would make it a Zombie Zombie Beatles song. Color me skeptical on this one. But hey, you know who's gonna be first in line to buy it? Me.
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"Super-commenter" is blogger for "won't stop monopolizing my comments field. :)
ReplyDeleteHey, if you can't trust the press in Zimbabwe, who can you trust?
It truly was meant very nicely. :)
ReplyDeleteI'll leave it to you two to stay on top of it all and keep me in the loop. To be honest, I did not like 1996’s ’Real Love." I only heard it once, back then, but that was enough. One would think that they chose, then, the most likely and strongest candidate, so i don't hold much hope for this upcoming song. BUT, never count out the ingenuity of Paul.
ReplyDeleteIt's not like "Real Love" is one of the best songs John ever wrote or anything, but it's got a great melody, in my opinion.
ReplyDeleteThat said, the videos to both those songs were cooler than the songs themselves. If "Now and Then" comes out, I demand another awesome video.