Beatles Bits: Weekly news roundup

A whole bunch of John Lennon videos have been added to his official YouTube page.




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Liverpool music promoter Sam Leach, who helped the Beatles land some early high-profile gigs, has died of cancer at age 81.
Johnny Hutchinson, a member of The Big Three who were Liverpool contemporaries of The Beatles, said: “It’s the end of an era.
“Sam kept us all going in those days. We used to get the same amount of money as The Beatles got. None of us would have made it without him, or without Brian Epstein.=
“There was nobody like him and he kept the memory of those early years of The Beatles alive.”
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Fans have launched a petition asking that a number of songs slated to appear as downloads only in the upcoming, expensive box set of Paul McCartney's Flowers in the Dirt album be placed on CD instead.

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Paul McCartney and his wife Nancy Shevell attended the movie premiere of "This Beautiful Fantastic," which is directed by Simon About, son of Paul's daughter Mary.

Paul and Mary
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Before the Beatles, there was the Great Guitar Drought of 1960-63.

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True: "The Greatest Beatles Cover Is Stevie Wonder’s 'We Can Work It Out'."

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A French Beatles fan is selling off his collection of 15,000 items, including signed books, posters and autographs.
The Guardian notes that Volcouve’s career as France’s foremost “Beatles historian” began in the early 1970s, after he kept calling a French radio station to point out errors in a BBC series about the Beatles that they were airing, and was invited into the studio.
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From the Guardian archives, 1970: Reviews of four Beatles solo albums.
Paul’s album, McCartney (Apple PCS 7102), which has been out some time, is the work of a man of air. It has no substance. Paul reveals himself in it as a man preoccupied with himself, and his own situation. The music is boastfully casual, scraps of his home studio. He seems to believe that anything that comes into his head is worth having. And he’s wrong.

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