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. 

“There was such a divide between rock music and jazz music … We just didn’t discuss anything like that.”

There were some notable crossover efforts, including Ella Fitzgerald with her versions of “Can’t Buy Me Love” and “Got To Get You Into My Life.” 

“But among the instrumentalists, it was not possible,” said Benson, who was forced to keep his admiration for The Beatles a secret. ”I liked The Beatles. It just was against the law,” he said. 

But within weeks of the 1969 release of The Beatles album “Abbey Road,” Benson found himself in the studio, at the best of his label boss, doing a jazz version of the album with a chamber orchestra. ”The Other Side of Abbey Road,” complete with a cover that showed Benson carrying his guitar across the road, scrambled the order of the tunes, recasting most of them in medley form. He also sang on the album for the last time until his smash 1976 Warner Bros. label debut “Breezin.’” 

“It took me to a place I had never been before,” he said of the “Abbey Road” sessions, singing the first line of “Golden Slumbers” for good measure. 

He later treated the audience to complete versions of a few tunes from the new album, “Songs and Stories,” which just hit stores through Concord Music Group. Among the selections were the instrumental “Living in High Definition,” written by Motown songwriter Lamont Dozier, and “Family Reunion,” co-written by Rod Temperton, who is perhaps best known as the man behind Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” and “Rock With You.”

The album also includes a version of “Sailing,” whose singer/songwriter Christopher Cross was in the audience. Benson even managed to persuade retired soul maestro Bill Withers to contribute a tune, “A Telephone Call Away.” 

“He can be a difficult fellow if you don’t understand him,” he said. “We got him to come to brunch with us, and we listened to him, as he rambled on and on and on.” 

Perhaps with an eye on the latest pop chart, Benson said he would like to collaborate with Whitney Houston, whose first album in seven years just debuted at No. 1. “She’s shaped a lot of careers,” he said.

(photo credit: Greg Allen)

Help!

We admit we may be playing into the hands of a marketing campaign designed to eke out as much publicity as possible for the new Beatles interactive “Rock Band” video game on Sept 9. (Read the latest story here). But we couldn’t resist what is a rather intriguing question.

What will be the last Beatles song available for fans to “virtually” play from a list of 45 tunes for the new game? Today, the makers announced 19 more titles that will come with the game including “Ticket to Ride,” “Come Together,” “Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds” and “A Hard Day’s Night” – bringing the list to 44.

Other songs previously announced for the Fab Four’s first digital release after years of shunning websites like iTunes include “Yellow Submarine”, “Day Tripper,” “I Am The Walrus,” “Get Back” and “Eight Days A Week.”

But some of the band’s biggest hits are not on the list and could still sneak into the game, including “Hey Jude”, “We can Work It Out” and “Yesterday.”

So what do fans hope for, as they dream of the day they can strum their plastic guitars in their lounges and make all their troubles seem so far away?

Paul McCartney has put to rest any lingering questions about whether Michael Jackson bequeathed to Macca his rights to songs by The Beatles. The reports began surfacing before Jackson died two weeks ago, but when the King of Pop’s will was released last week it contained no reference to any such transfer.

In a post on his website, McCartney wrote that it was all a case of the media getting it wrong.

“Some time ago, the media came up with the idea that Michael Jackson was going to leave his share in the Beatles songs to me in his will, which was completely made up and something I didn’t believe for a second,” McCartney said in the post. 

“Now the report is that I am devastated to find that he didn’t leave the songs to me. This is completely untrue. I had not thought for one minute that the original report was true and therefore, the report that I’m devastated is also totally false, so don’t believe everything you read folks!”

A January 2009 article in British tabloid The Mirror said that Jackson wanted to leave his share in many of the Beatles songs to McCartney as a peace offering. Of course, the will that keeps the Beatles songs with Jackson’s estate dates from 2002, so even if he had wanted to turn them over to McCartney, he would have had to revise that document, and clearly he did not.

Jackson snapped up the Beatles songs for $47.5 million in 1985 in a purchase of the ATV Music catalog, outbidding McCartney himself. When he died, he owned a 50 percent stake in the catalog with Sony, but his share was heavily leveraged.

McCartney famously called Jackson a “massively talented boy-man” after the King of Pop died at age 50 on June 25. But on his website Macca, who in decades past socialized with Jackson, said that even though he and Jackson “drifted apart over the years,” they “never really fell out” and that he still has fond memories of his old friend and duet partner.

My Sweet Lord, indeed. George Harrison is back on the pop charts with the first hits package covering his entire solo career. 

“Let It Roll: Songs By George Harrison,” released last week, boasts tracks from 1970’s “All Things Must Pass” to his posthumous 2002 set “Brainwashed.” It also includes three Beatle-era tunes from 1971’s “Concert for Bangladesh” all-star live charity album. 

In the U.K., “Let It Roll” debuted at No. 4, his highest solo ranking since “Living In The Material World” reached No. 2 in 1973. In the United States, it debuted at No. 24 after selling 18,880 copies, EMI said on Wednesday. It also peaked at No. 1 on Amazon.com and at No. 2 on iTunes last week, the label said. 

Harrison did better Stateside with “Brainwashed,” which debuted at No. 18 with 74,000 copies. That marked his first studio set since his 1987 comeback “Cloud Nine,” which hit No. 8 (Sales data did not become available until 1991, when SoundScan launched its point-of-sales system.) In all, Harrison enjoyed six top-10 solo hits before he succumbed to cancer in 2001. But “Let It Roll” outranks his two other compilations: “The Best of George Harrison” reached No. 31 in 1976, and “Best of Dark Horse 1976-1989″ stalled at No. 132.

Even Sir Paul McCartney is a good sport when it comes to losing, pretending to weep but making light of the fact that he lost an early bid to get his first Grammy in 29 years on Sunday at the 51st annual Grammys.
“I am really annoyed. That is why I didn’t come. I don’t come to win it, I come to be in it,” said McCartney backstage, sporting a t-shirt of the four Beatles with clown noses  designed by his daughter to benefit the charity Comic Relief.
“It is a great thing and I am honored to be asked. I was watching the Golden Globes and I saw Mickey (Rourke) win for best actor. And in the audience there’s Clint (Eastwood), there’s Brad (Pitt) — they come to be a part of it, not necessarily win it.”
McCartney is the most-honored former Beatle, with 13 Grammys, but his chance at topping that eluded him early on at the Grammys on Sunday. He was competing for two awards and was also scheduled to perform with Foo Fighters frontman Dave Grohl.
McCartney lost out to John Mayer on Sunday in the best solo rock vocal performance category. The former Beatle had been nominated for his cover of the early Beatles tune “I Saw Her Standing There,” a track from the 12-inch vinyl release “Amoeba’s Secret.”
McCartney, 66, is also nominated for best male pop vocal performance statuette for “That Was Me,” another track from “Amoeba’s Secret.”

(Reuters photo by Mario Anzuoni)

The Times in London ran an intriguing report on Tuesday saying that the honour bestowed upon Beatle John Lennon in 1965, which he returned to the queen four years later, had “finally been rediscovered”.

A quick call to Buckingham Palace suggests otherwise. The spokeswoman did confirm that the MBE, returned by Lennon in 1969 as a peace protest, was being kept at the Central Chancery of the Orders of Knighthood at St. James’s Palace in London. But she added that, far from being “rediscovered”, she and, presumably, many others, had known for years where the MBE was being kept. Quite where the newspaper got the idea for its story is still a mystery.

“It was not recently found, but it has been in the Central Chancery for some time,” the spokeswoman said. “I was asked that question (of its whereabouts) a few years ago,” she added.

The spokeswoman explained that in cases where the original owner of a returned insignia dies, the Chancery would consider releasing it to the legal next of kin if such a request were made. That presumably means that Lennon’s widow Yoko Ono would have that right.

The Times also reports that the medal is still in its original presentation case and sits alongside the singer’s protest letter to the Queen. If that is true, the mind boggles at how much it might be worth at auction. Beatlemania shows no sign of fading — a 97-year-old document containing clues to the identity of Eleanor Rigby, the subject of one of the Fab Four’s most famous songs, recently fetched $177,000 at auction. In July, the hand-painted drum skin that appeared on the sleeve of “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” sold for $1.1 million.

When John Lennon said in 1966 that the Beatles were "more popular than Jesus," there was a furious reaction in the United States. Dozens of radio stations in the South and Midwest banned Beatles music and some concert venues cancelled scheduled appearances by the band. Their manager Brian Epstein quickly flew to the U.S. to try to quell the storm. Soon afterward, Lennon told a news conference in Chicago that he was sorry for making the comparison, although he added he still thought it was true. The Vatican, as far as I can see from online archives, stayed silent and aloof even thought it could hardly agree with or approve Lennon's message.

(Photo: Japanese band performs in Lennon's memory, 8 Dec 2005/Toshiyuki Aizawa)

When the Vatican daily L'Osservatore Romano came out with a nostalgic look back at the Beatles on the 40th anniversary of their 1968 White Album on Saturday, it lead off the article with Lennon's famous quote and promptly shrugged it off. "The remark by John Lennon, which triggered deep indignation mainly in the United States, after many years sounds only like a 'boast' by a young working-class Englishman faced with unexpected success, after growing up with the legend of Elvis and rock and roll," it wrote. The Beatles' music was creative and original, even more so than their haircuts and clothes, and has stood the test of time, it said. The Italian-language original has now been overtaken on the OR website by the latest edition, but an English translation will certainly pop up somewhere (on Zenit?).

At the risk of possibly over-interpreting an arts page story, I wonder what all this says about the ridiculing of religious leaders. The uproar back in 1966 was mostly from the U.S. "Bible Belt" and the Vatican seems to have been quiet. Would it be the same today? At the Catholic-Muslim Forum in Rome three weeks ago, the two sides agreed in a statement about religious minorities that "their founding figures and symbols they consider sacred should not be subject to any form of mockery or ridicule." Muslim countries, which were not very vocal on the international scene back in the 1960s, are now working hard at the United Nations to push through a global blasphemy law.

What do you think would happen today if a rock band claimed to be more popular than Jesus? Or Mohammad?