Photo: Michael Ochs Archive/Getty
A federal court has issued a preliminary injunction against the digital music vendor Bluebeat after the site offered up high-quality MP3s of the Beatles’ catalog without permission. According to the Los Angeles Times, the judge overseeing the case, which came after EMI Music and Apple Corps. issued a copyright infringement lawsuit against Bluebeat, said there was no distinct difference between the Beatles’ recordings and the “psychoacoustic simulations” that Bluebeat claims they added to the music that would have allowed them by a legal loophole to sell the Beatles catalog digitally.

Explore the Beatles’ full catalog in our album guide.

As Rolling Stone previously reported, Bluebeat was recently selling the newly remastered Beatles catalog for a mere 25 cents per track on its now-defunct Website, even though the owners of the Fab Four’s music have yet to agree to any digital deal. Bluebeat was also selling the entire Beatles in Mono box set digitally for only $53.25, well below the market value the Beatles would command on either an iTunes or Amazon MP3 store. (more…)

Photo: Mazur/MPL/WireImage
Ringo Starr grabbed a little help from his friends for his new album Y Not, due January 12th, 2010. The Beatles drummer will be joined by his Fab Four bandmate Paul McCartney on a couple of tracks, including first single “Walk With Me,” which finds Macca and Starr sharing vocals. Other guests and songwriters on Y Not, Ringo’s first album since 2008’s Liverpool 8, include Joe Walsh, Joss Stone, Van Dyke Parks, Ben Harper and Richard Marx.

Talking about working with his old Beatles mate, Starr said in a press release, “Paul was doing the Grammys, so he came over to the house and was playing bass on ‘Peace Dream.’ So I played him this other track and Paul said, ‘Give me the headphones. Give me a pair of cans.’ And he went to the mike and he just invented that part where he follows on my vocal. That was all Paul McCartney, and there could be nothing better.”

The illustrated guide to the Beatles’ split. (more…)

Paul McCartney’s 2 CD/DVD set Good Evening New York City, featuring his sold-out three-night stand at Queens, New York’s new Citi Field, isn’t out until next Tuesday, November 17th, but we’ve got an exclusive preview of Macca rocking out in center field with this clip of his Band on the Run joint “Let Me Roll It.” The July 2009 concerts found the Hall of Famer and his band covering 33 songs from his entire catalog — from the Beatles to McCartney to Wings to latest project the Fireman — over the course of two blistering hours and 40 minutes.

Considering the Beatles’ history at Shea Stadium and the fact that McCartney played some of the last notes ever at that now-demolished field, it was fitting that he would be the first artist to perform at the new home of the New York Mets. (more…)

Already mastered Abbey Road on The Beatles: Rock Band? As promised, the entire Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band will be available as downloadable content for TB:RB starting November 17th. Sgt. Pepper’s title track, “With A Little Help From My Friends,” “Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds,” “Getting Better,” and “Good Morning Good Morning” were previously included in the game’s original release, but the classic LP’s remaining eight tracks, including “A Day in the Life,” will hit Xbox 360s, PS3s and Wiis next week.

Rock Star Avatars: Video Game Versions of Real-Life Music Heroes. (more…)

As Rolling Stone previously reported, director Robert Zemeckis and Disney brokered a deal that would allow them to re-submerge the Beatles’ Yellow Submarine, turning the 1968 animated film into a performance-capture 3-D digital production. What was at first a Hollywood rumor is now a fact as Zemeckis confirmed to MTV Movies Blog that he’s already working on the script, which he’ll also direct. However, one thing the Back to the Future director doesn’t know is whether Paul McCartney or Ringo Starr will participate in the film.

“We haven’t gotten the word yet on the two surviving Beatles, whether they’re interested in doing it or not,” Zemeckis said after admitting his wish is that Macca and Starr provide the voices for their characters. In the original Yellow Submarine, voice actors played the role of the Beatles, with the Fab Four only appearing in a live-action sequence at film’s end.

Look back at iconic Beatles moments. (more…)

Photo: Apple Corps

Though you can play Beatles songs on Rock Band and enjoy the band’s epic catalog on remastered CDs, you still can’t legally buy the music of John, Paul, George and Ringo on the iTunes store or other digital shops — yet. In a move that may represent Apple Corps. softening its traditionally inflexible view of selling the Fab Four’s music digitally, the company and EMI Music will release a limited-edition USB drive featuring the entire Beatles in Stereo remastered set as 320 Kbps MP3s on December 8th. All 14 albums and 13 “mini-documentaries” will be included on the 16GB USB drive, which will be shaped like the iconic Apple logo with “The Beatles” written on it. Only 30,000 of these USBs will be produced; onsale information is available at the Beatles Website.

Explore the Beatles’ full catalog in our album guide.

In addition, EMI is going after a digital-music Website called BlueBeat.com for offering up the Beatles catalog as a digital download without permission. According to Variety, a copyright-infringement lawsuit was filed yesterday by EMI, which controls the digital rights of the Beatles music through an agreement with Apple Corps. (more…)

The trailer for Nowhere Boy, a film based on the teenage years of the Beatles‘ John Lennon, debuted this week, just days before its premiere tomorrow at the London Film Festival. The movie, directed by Sam Taylor-Wood, was filmed in Lennon’s boyhood city of Liverpool and stars British actor Aaron Johnson as Lennon. The film is based on a book by Lennon’s half-sister Julia Baird called Imagine This: Growing Up With My Brother John Lennon and details the singer’s early life, when he was being raised by his Aunt Mimi, played here by Kristen Scott Thomas, and his own mother Julia.

Look back at John Lennon’s New York years.

As the trailer demonstrates, the film will also feature the teenage Lennon meeting Paul McCartney — played by Thomas Sangster — for the first time. The two would later be band mates in the Quarrymen, which laid the foundation for one of the greatest bands of all time. But Nowhere Boy is less about the Beatles’ development and more focused on analyzing Lennon’s relationships with his mother and aunt. Julia died in a car crash in 1958 at the age of 44; John was only 17 at the time. (more…)

As promised, Abbey Road will be available in its entirety for The Beatles: Rock Band starting this week, Harmonix and MTV Games announced in a press release. Even though six of Abbey’s most famous tracks were included on the in-game track list — “Come Together,” “Something,” “Octopus’s Garden,” “I Want You (She’s So Heavy),” “Here Comes The Sun” and “The End” — the remaining songs will be made available on October 20th for Microsoft XBox 360 and Nintento Wii gamers and October 22nd for Playstation 3.

Look back at all the LPs in the Beatles catalog, with their RS reviews.

For PS3 and XBox 360, the tracks will be offered up in two ways: Fans of Side A but not Side B — if those people actually exist — can buy “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer,” “Oh! Darling” and “Because” as standalone download. However, if you want those three songs and all 16 glorious minutes of the Abbey Road medley, plus all 23 seconds of “Her Majesty,” you can purchase the complete album pack for $16.99. Wii will offer up the three songs plus “You Never Give Me Your Money” as $2 a la carte downloads (”Her Majesty” will run $1) except for the medley, which will be divided into three multi-song downloads at $3.50 each.

A day in the life of the Beatles: photos from 1963. (more…)

Photo: Ochs Archives/Getty

While we’ve been celebrating the Beatles’ immeasurable contributions to modern music nearly every day since the release of the band’s fantastic remastered albums and The Beatles: Rock Band, there’s an extra reason to break out Fab Four memories this weekend: John Lennon would have been 69 years old today had he not been gunned down 29 years ago in New York. To celebrate his remarkable life and music, Rolling Stone recommends diving into our essential Beatles page, which is stocked with photos, an album guide and more Fab Four artifacts. Check out the best of the bunch here:

• Rolling Stone’s Essential Beatles Coverage

• Hear John Lennon’s historic 1970 interview

• Photos: John Lennon’s NYC Years

Photo: Michael Ochs Archive/Getty

Lucy Vodden, the subject of a Julian Lennon drawing that inspired his father, John, to write the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s classic “Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds,” passed away last week after a long battle with lupus. Vodden, formerly Lucy O’ Donnell, was 46. In a statement, Julian and his mother Cynthia Lennon said they were “shocked and saddened” by Vodden’s death, the Associated Press reports.

As the story goes, in 1966, Julian Lennon brought home a drawing of his classmate Lucy, describing the image of the girl as “Lucy in the sky with diamonds.” The rest is rock history. Inspired by the drawing, Lennon — and McCartney, who Lennon told Rolling Stone in 1968 contributed imagery like “newspaper taxis” — crafted one of their most famous and controversial songs. For decades, fans have debated the Lucy story and argued that the song’s psychedelic lyrics are veiled references to the band’s experimentation with LSD, hence the capitalizations.

However, Lennon himself was vocal about dispelling those rumors on numerous occasions, including a 1970 interview with RS when he said, “‘Lucy In The Sky with Diamonds,’ which I swear to God, or swear to Mao, or to anybody you like, I had no idea spelled L.S.D.” (Get more Beatles history in our Essential Beatles Coverage.) (more…)

Tomorrow, September 26th, marks the 40th anniversary of the release of the last album the Beatles recorded together, Abbey Road. From the opening bassline of “Come Together” to “The love you take is equal to the love you make,” four decades later Abbey Road remains one of the greatest masterpieces not only in the Beatles’ history, but also in rock history. Thankfully, because of the new Beatles remasters, we’re hearing Abbey Road again like it’s the first time. With a Side A stocked with tracks like “Come Together,” “Something” and “Oh! Darling,” our readers recently voted Abbey Road as the Fab Four’s greatest album, no small achievement. (more…)