Beatles Music Group

Hopes that the three surviving Beatles would stage a mini-reunion at Wednesday night's third annual Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction dinner were dashed by Paul McCartney. And that led to some bad vibrations from the Beach Boys' Mike Love.

It's easy to understand musician Dhani Harrison's antipathy toward the general concept of being in a rock band. After all, he got loads of priceless firsthand information from his father about the ups and downsides of making it to the absolute peak of pop music success during his tenure with the Beatles. FOR THE RECORD: Dhani Harrison: An article on musician Dhani Harrison in Tuesday's Calendar identified Activision as developer of The Beatles: Rock Band. The game was created by Harmonix, MTV Games and Apple Corps Ltd. — It was George Harrison who famously said, "The biggest break in my career was getting into the Beatles in 1962.

It's easy to understand musician Dhani Harrison's antipathy toward the general concept of being in a rock band. After all, he got loads of priceless firsthand information from his father about the ups and downsides of making it to the absolute peak of pop music success during his tenure with the Beatles. FOR THE RECORD: Dhani Harrison: An article on musician Dhani Harrison in Tuesday's Calendar identified Activision as developer of The Beatles: Rock Band. The game was created by Harmonix, MTV Games and Apple Corps Ltd. — It was George Harrison who famously said, "The biggest break in my career was getting into the Beatles in 1962.

A federal court in Los Angeles this week issued a temporary restraining order against a music website that recently had been offering the entire Beatles catalog for downloading at 25 cents per song. The Santa Cruz-based BlueBeat earlier in the week was hit with a copyright infringement lawsuit by EMI's Capitol Records, the group's U.S. label. The order set back a novel legal argument by BlueBeat that songs produced through digital regeneration are akin to songs performed by cover bands and therefore do not run afoul of copyright law. BlueBeat had argued in court filings that its downloads were legal because the company had created entirely new versions by computer through a process called "psychoacoustic simulations" that makes the re-created songs sound just like the original recordings.

It was George Harrison--the quiet, but not-oblivious-to-trademark-law Beatle--who in 1980 first noticed the potential for conflict. Leafing through a British magazine, Harrison saw an ad for an Apple Computer Inc. retailer. So the composer of the "Sue Me, Sue You, Blues" quickly rang up the trademark agents at the Beatles' company, Apple Corps Ltd., and asked them to investigate. The two firms have been at odds over the name they share almost since--most recently in a London courtroom.

After the breakup of the Beatles in 1970, Paul McCartney thought of naming his first album "I'm the One It Hit the Most," because he was so devastated by the split. Today, however, he looks back with affection on the Beatles years and their legacy. In a phone interview, he spoke about returning to the studio with rock's greatest band, but why we shouldn't expect a tour. * Question: What was it like, emotionally, going back into the studio with George and Ringo?

The first Orange County-bred rock star to sing and play on the stage of the Orange County Performing Arts Center will be . . . George Harrison. At least that's the alias Jim Owen will be singing and playing under Saturday. Since his teens, this 30-year-old Westminster resident has been earning his living impersonating the quiet Beatle as a cast member in "Beatlemania" and other touring tributes to the Fab Four.

From the very beginning of their career, the Beatles have proved an irresistible temptation for biographers. The first substantial book about them, Michael Braun's "Love Me Do," appeared in 1964 -- just a year after the group's initial conquest of the United Kingdom with "Please Please Me."

Before Jessie Nelson began work on "I Am Sam," a wrenching drama due at Christmas that stars Sean Penn as a mentally handicapped father battling to keep custody of his 7-year-old daughter, the writer-director spent several months at the L.A. Goal center for people with disabilities in Culver City. It didn't take long for Nelson to notice something the center's residents had in common: Nearly everybody was a huge Beatles fan.

Like the character in the old Steely Dan song who has to tell his younger lover, "Hey, 19, that's 'Retha Franklin," one invariably feels one's age explaining to teen-agers and even some young adults that "Yesterday" wasn't always elevator music, and that Ringo Starr was in a rock band before he landed that gig playing the miniature train conductor on a Saturday morning kids' show.

Beatlemania: A 1966 magazine signed by John Lennon containing his remark that the Beatles were more popular than Jesus has sold at auction for $12,713. The buyer was a New York surgeon.

The 2009 version of Beatlemania had no screams, no fainting and little hysteria. But there were plenty of smiles on the faces of fans indulging their fondness for the music of the Fab Four as the Beatles: Rock Band and a batch of new and improved CDs of their complete catalog went on sale Wednesday. "I always liked the Beatles," said Theresa Gordon, 48, who trekked from Lake Arrowhead to a Best Buy store in West Los Angeles with her four children, three of whom made a beeline for the Beatles: Rock Band setup and tackled "I Am the Walrus."

Viacom Inc. and the video game industry are hoping they'll get more than a little help from the Beatles. When the Beatles: Rock Band hits stores Sept. 9, Viacom is betting that the new title from its MTV unit will end a slump in the market and vindicate the company's expensive and unprofitable entry into the music video game business over the last two years. The new game applies the simulated rock star experience that many are familiar with from other Rock Band games and Activision Blizzard Inc.'s Guitar Hero and brings in the Beatles, who have never before appeared in a video game.

Trodding heavily toward you like a 300-foot blue elephant in a band uniform, The Beatles: Rock Band video game will consume much of the industry's advertising bandwidth this summer ahead of its Sept. 9 release. A collaboration between MTV Games' Harmonix and the Beatles' Apple Corps Ltd.

For all of us Beatles fans, the news last week that the Weinstein Co. had acquired "Nowhere Boy," a coming-of-age tale about John Lennon's tumultuous teenage years in Liverpool, was cause for high hopes.

KANYE WEST's eight nominations may top this year's list, but the music of the Beatles, together and separately, generated another eight -- and that almost four decades after the group disbanded. The Beatles' "Love" album, dramatically mashed-up remixes of the group's original recordings, done for Cirque du Soleil's Las Vegas show, snagged two nominations: in the compilation soundtrack and surround-sound categories.

Most portentous Beatles-related coincidence: The group's album, "With the Beatles," was released in England on Nov. 22, 1963--the same day that President Kennedy was assassinated. * Most macabre misreporting of a Beatle malady by the press: The BBC reported in 1964 that Ringo Starr had his toenails removed. In fact, the extricated anatomy in question was Ringo's tonsils.

Things are starting to "Come Together" for "All You Need Is Love." Revolution Studios' $50-million romantic musical directed by Julie Taymor ("Frida"), which begins shooting Sept. 7 in New York, has just licensed the rights to about 30 classic Beatles songs. It won't be John, Paul, George and Ringo belting out their original hits, like "I Want to Hold Your Hand" or "Let It Be," since the price tag would have been astronomical.

Paul McCartney tells Billboard.com that he's "pretty sure" the Beatles catalog will finally be available online in 2008. "The whole thing is primed, ready to go," he's quoted as saying on the magazine's website. "It's down to fine-tuning, but I'm pretty sure it'll be happening next year." The long-awaited move has been expected after the arrival of each of the Fab Four's solo catalog's went online this year.

Richard Lester has heard the knocks against "Help!," the second film he directed starring the Beatles, none more hard-hitting than a famous one from John Lennon. "What John said, if I can remember the quote is, 'I was an extra in my own . . . film!' " Lester, 75, said last week from his home in West Sussex, England. "I understand that. They were never going to play the Four Musketeers. They had to play themselves. . . .