Beatles To Party Again With Liam Gallagher

Filed under: Movie News,Paul McCartney,Ringo Starr,The Beatles

Liam Gallagher is bringing his idols The Beatles back together on the big screen in a movie that will explore the ‘stoned’ years that led to the band’s demise.

The former Oasis frontman is developing a film, set between 1967 and 1970, based on an insider’s view of the circus-like atmosphere at the Savile Row headquarters of The Beatles’ record company, Apple.

Liam has the screen rights to Richard DiLello’s memoir of his years as Apple’s ‘house hippy’, where his job included working in the company’s press office.

DiLel lo’s highly personal account, The Longest Cocktail Party: An Insider’s Diary Of The Beatles, Their Million Dollar Apple Empire And Its Wild Rise And Fall, published in 1972, details the comings and goings of Paul McCartney, John Lennon, George Harrison, Ringo Starr and their wives, girlfriends and hangers on.

It gives DiLello’s take on the personal and business problems that were to drive The Beatles apart.

His book recounts ‘stoned conversations’ and hilarious observations of the Apple office’s open bar and ‘other accommodations ’ with regards to recreational activities on offer.

The movie would feature actors portraying the Fab Four and cover the years when rock ’n’ roll was moving from its cool, ‘let it be’ vibe to the point where it was controlled by soulless multinational corporations.

And that is how the music industry has remained – though Liam and his brother Noel, in their Oasis heyday, certainly knew how to emulate the crazy, heady early era when rock really rolled.

Liam and his partners at Revolution Films will officially launch the project during the Cannes Film Festival next week.

They are still looking for a screenwriter and director. Then comes the task of casting actors to portray The Beatles, their families and associates, though that won’t begin until there’s a completed screenplay at the the task of casting actors to portray The Beatles, their families and associates, though that won’t begin until there’s a completed screenplay at the end of this year, or possibly early next year.

The Longest Cocktail Party also features tales of various other artists on the Apple roster, including Mary Hopkin, James Taylor, Doris Troy, Badfinger and Billy Preston.

Lauren Bacall, of all people, pops up in the tale after she visited the Apple HQ with her children.

Both Gallagher brothers are fans of the book. Noel has praised it, using language that is too colorful to repeat in a family newspaper.

With the two siblings at each others’ throats, I can only wonder at the behind-the-scenes wrangling over the rights. I can see Liam digging out his soul on this movie. If it all comes together, it’s going to be a scorcher.

[Thanks to MysteriosoMan.]

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Yellow Submarine Remake – Please Don’t Do It!

Filed under: Beatles,Disney,Paul McCartney,Ringo Starr

Moviemaker Robert Zemeckis wants surviving Beatles Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr to play themselves in his planned remake of the Fab Four’s animated classic Yellow Submarine.

Zemeckis and Disney bosses have brokered a deal that would allow them to rework the 1968 film and create a performance-capture 3-D digital production.

And Zemeckis – the man behind The Polar Express and Jim Carrey’s new animated version of A Christmas Carol – wants to get the Beatles involved.

He tells MTV, “We haven’t gotten the word yet on the two surviving Beatles, whether they’re interested in doing it or not.”

Please don’t make a mess of a classic movie from a classic band. Please. This is sacrilegious.

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Ringo Diss Was Just A Joke, Simon Cowell Says

Filed under: Beatles,Ringo Starr,Simon Cowell

“American Idol” judge Simon Cowell has been the one stung by criticism from Beatles fans since remarking on CBS’ “The Early Show” last week that were the group to come before him in a talent competition, “We would have said, ‘We’ll take those three [John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison] but probably lose the drummer.’ Ringo, I’m afraid we would have said, is ‘bad news’.”

“I said it as a joke,” Cowell told The Times over the weekend. “It was a tongue-in-cheek interview. But the sensitivity surrounding the group shows how much the public still loves them. You make a joke about them and people get really upset.”

Cowell, for the record, was a die-hard Beatles fan growing up in England.

“’She Loves You’ was the first record I ever bought,” he said. He hasn’t, however, rushed out to get copies of the sonically upgraded Beatles CDs released last week. “I never saw them, but I bought most of their records…..They always sounded perfect to me, so I haven’t gotten caught up in having to hear the new ones.”

And what would Cowell, one of today’s key arbiters of what works and what doesn’t in pop music, have counseled a group that offered up a single that runs more than seven minutes, a ballad in which the refrain is sung 19 times during the final four minutes, as the Beatles did in “Hey Jude”?

“They wouldn’t hear a peep from me,” he said. “The one group worldwide I always wish I had signed was the Beatles.”

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