ONE OF THE PRIME INGREDIENTS IN THE SUCCESS OF THE BEATLES-THE LOVE AND THE LOYALTY OF THE FANS
Independently Published-July 2026 release– 2nd edition of the title which was originally published in 2004
Kristi Siegel has issued a new edition of her book about Beatles fans. I recently received my copy in the mail, and I was delighted with the contents. I love the independent Beatles books as they always seem to include stories that we may never have heard before. A true Beatles fan seems to have a compulsion to learn new details about the band that continues to stimulate our imaginations after all of these years!
Now, we have the opportunity to once again take that journey Across Their Universe with Kristi Siegel’s collection of Beatles fan’s stories…
FOREWORD WRITTEN BY RUTH McCARTNEY
Ruth McCartney has written the wonderful & heartwarming emotional Foreword to the book and here are a few links to Ruth’s website so that you can peruse her many wonderful offerings and products.
Ruth and her mom Angie make a superb team, and I enjoy their Teaflix programs on YouTube very much!
Ruth has been generous with her support to Beatles book authors over the years.
BOOK DESCRIPTION FROM THE PUBLISHER:
Young and old and from all walks of life, millions of music lovers around the globe relate to the artistry of the Beatles. For more than 60 years since they earnestly appeared on the UK pop charts with ‘Love Me Do,’ the cultural impact of these four rather extraordinary young men from Liverpool has arguably never been stronger.
In a world of manufactured bands, and while many of their own contemporaries have fought longevity by playing the same songs 20, 30, or more years later, the work of the Fab Four is as relevant and fresh for today’s generation as it was when the term ‘Beatlemania’ was first coined.
Of course, no one knew then that ‘Beatlemania’ would still be thriving decades later.
In Across Their Universe: The Secret Lives Of Beatles Fans, author Kristi Siegel has compiled the personal stories of more than one hundred Beatles fans. Although separated by continents, language, and age, the common bond the contributors share is the deep influence of the Beatles, not only in their musical tastes but in their lives as well.
These fans’ words vividly portray the magnitude of the Beatles’ personal impact on their listeners: an enduring impact that no simple music-fad rock & roll band will ever eclipse.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Author Kristi saw that I run a section of a Beatles print blog and she informed me that she was soon to publish the 2nd edition of her book that dealt specifically with stories from Beatles fans. A little interesting aside to this is that the piece I submitted to her was originally accepted by former Paul McCartney spokesperson, Geoff Baker for a book he was writing about Beatles fans. Baker had informed me it was exactly the type of recollection he was seeking for a book he was planning. Unfortunately, I was later to find out a couple of years later that Baker had abandoned his book idea. When Kristi asked me if I had a submission for her 2nd edition, I sent her the following piece (with some modifications and updates) and she kindly has published it.
There is a wealth of stories included in the book from a lot of people who I am sure you will be familiar with and recognize!
My submission:
Page 2:
Back cover of the book:
Please note that while the Amazon links are provided here for the book as a convenience to you, the listing of Amazon does not reflect a recommendation that you should buy the book at this source. It is up to you to select the site you find most comfortable in making your book purchases. You can find most books at Barnes and Noble, Abe Books and many other sources. The motivation for providing the Amazon listing is simply to provide a commonly known convenient place to order book titles. Buy or acquire the books wherever you feel most comfortable in doing so!
Concluding remarksabout another fine book about Beatles fans:
People often relegate Beatles fans to being the lowest totem pole rung in the analysis of the Beatles success. Without the fans, the band would never have been as successful, whether you are using commercial standards or even artistic ones. Music critics often treat the fans of any popular musical entity as being purely incidental in the band’s development or when exploring the artist’s horizons. I often question how much an artist’s work is done not only to please themselves but to please their audienceand the need for audience approval.
I often sneer at many music critics because inspiration for the venom spewed by a purely scathing critical review can often be traced to the critic being a frustrated artist in their own right. They may not be able to create themselves so the end result is to tear down others work which generates controversial copy which can translate into greater readership and sales for the medium in which the piece appears. Look how some of the New York Times and Rolling Stone critical reviews of the past have greatly impacted the sales figures of popular releases!
Fans in recent years have become the academic study of Beatles scholars attempting to discern the great obsession that Beatles fans continue to have for this band and why it continues to this very day!
On many occasions, both the Beatles themselves and the fans that follow them have the ultimate answer to that question…
“It was the Music.”
Nothing more needs to said!
Congratulations are extended to the author, Kristi Siegel in her attempt to demonstrate the difficult task of highlighting the important role & ingredient of the Beatles fan in determining their lasting impact on popular culture across the generational divide!
Remember the old cliché “read it and weep”? Well, I am old enough to remember it and to realize there was much wisdom in that saying. I heard an interview with the author of the following manuscript several years ago on YouTube and I could not turn away from the content that he was discussing as I had heard several of the revelations before but brushed them aside thinking they might simply be rumors. However, I had also heard many press reports that had substantiated what I was listening to. I was able to track the author down eventually by email and he told me a fascinating story about the event discussed in an excerpt from his story that is presented below. Before we begin, I concur with the author’s assessment that John Lennon was never given the proper tribute concert that he deserved after he passed away. Did you notice that none of the former Beatles ever attended the concerts that were put together specifically to honor John’s memory. They sent videos but never personally appeared. Many of John’s contemporaries were also missing from these tributes. I have asked myself the question of why for all of these years and Perry Muckerheide has finally provided some of the answers. Some of them make me smile and many make me want to cry. This is a great “WHAT IF” story of a road that might have led in a better direction if different decisions had been made. This is an excerpt of that story that Perry has allowed me to post for your reading enjoyment.
Enjoy!
Buzz
MY BEATLES STORY: TRIBUTE TO JOHN
The Brass Ring
Perry Muckerheide’s story begins with a simple wound: John Lennon was murdered in December 1980, and in Perry’s view the world never truly gathered to honor John’s life, spirit, and music with the scale it deserved. Nearly a decade later, in the Christmas season of 1988, Perry is not sitting in a record company office or a Hollywood boardroom. He is serving lunch in a tuxedo at Grenadier’s, a Milwaukee dining room where civic power, money, and culture still pass through the ritual of the two-martini lunch. He overhears two men discussing the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra’s summer pops programming options. A waiter in that room is supposed to be invisible, but Perry steps through the invisible wall. Asked what he thinks of the music of Mantovani, Perry answers with the sentence that changes everything: “What do you think of John Lennon?” The man at the table asking the question is Gary Good, executive director of the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra. Within days, Perry is in the MSO offices discussing his ideas for a pop-symphonic ‘Tribute to John’ Lennon timed for the fall of 1990: between what would have been John Lennon’s 50th birthday and the tenth anniversary of his death. Perry explains that the idea is far beyond a concert. It is to be a global broadcast, a filmed and recorded event, a multi-venue production anchored by a major orchestra, a ballet company, and stars and superstars from rock, pop, dance, and the Beatles universe of family, friends, and admirers. The concept is impossible on its face, which is exactly what gives it force. Perry is reaching for the brass ring. The first dream image is pop-superstar Michael Jackson dancing with ballet legend Rudolf Nureyev. Perry’s pitch is not to ask Michael to sing, but to ask the greatest pop dancer of the era to dance with the greatest classical dancer of the age in a John Lennon music dance duet. MSO executive Gary Good knows Michel Sasson, Musical Director of La Scala in Milan and an associate and friend of Nureyev. Soon Perry is flying to Toronto and then New York with Good, moving from Milwaukee waiter to international impresario almost overnight. At a New York lunch, Perry brings in Sid Bernstein, a friend and the legendary promoter who presented the Beatles at Carnegie Hall and then created the stadium rock concert format with the Beatles at Shea Stadium. Sasson sees the real key immediately: Sid Bernstein can open doors for their ‘Tribute to John’ that no ordinary promoter can
Sid Bernstein and the First Launch
Sid’s method is direct: “Let’s ask everyone who knew John what they want to do”. That requires going where the global music business gathers. With financial help from Perry’s friend Rob Messinger, Perry and Sid fly to MIDEM in Cannes where the elite of the music industry meet annually. The trip has the logic of a comic adventure and a military operation. Sid arrives late at the airport carrying a box of blue leaflets announcing a ‘Tribute to John’ Lennon and inviting the music world to ‘Come Together’ to remember and honor John. Perry worries that spending thousands of dollars to hand out leaflets at the elite music industry’s Riviera gathering is madness. Sid reminds him that Thomas Paine was a leafleteer. The leaflets become their weapon. Cannes turns into Perry’s proof that the impossible sometimes moves if pushed from the right angle. Sid’s old relationships resurface instantly. One of Sid’s friends spots him in their cab and reunites with Sid. The friend is staying with famed chef Roger Verge at his world renown restaurant in Cannes, which gets Perry and Sid into the kind of restaurant Perry had only dreamed of visiting. Sid arranged for Perry
to pitch the ‘Tribute to John’ to the London editor of Billboard Magazine in a taxi ride to the Palais des Festivals where the elite of music are gathering. Following his pitch to the Billboard editor, Perry hires a young French boy from the beaches of Cannes to hand out Sid’s leaflets, fears the flyers will become litter, then watches industry attendees rush to get copies. That night, in a bar, an A&R record company man tells Perry that “The ‘Tribute to John’ is all anyone is talking about”. The Billboard story is published with explosive effect. Billboard reports the Milwaukee Symphony’s involvement in the proposed ‘Tribute to John’ and the hoped-for Michael Jackson-Rudolf Nureyev dance element. To Perry, this should be the project’s ultimate launch. Instead, it becomes the first major betrayal. MSO executive Gary Good, facing a Board of Directors he had not fully prepared, denies that the Milwaukee Symphony is committed to the project. The Milwaukee press reports the denial; Perry’s local credibility suffers a severe hit. Later, the Milwaukee Sentinel reports on Gary Good’s formal ‘Letters of Understanding’ with the ‘Tribute to John’, including detailed proposed compensation for Good and the MSO for services already rendered and services yet to be rendered as the Musical Director for the event. For Perry, those documents matter because they show that the project was far more than casual talk. But Sid Bernstein counsels for restraint: gentlemen do not play the game by dumping private letters into the press; however, Perry eventually surrenders the letters to the press. The ‘Tribute to John’ survives, but it loses Milwaukee as its safe home. Now anywhere in the world is the potential stage for the event and many possibilities will present themselves in the upcoming year.
Note: The photos appearing in the post were provided by the author of the piece!
The Stars Align
After the Milwaukee Symphony connection collapses, Perry and Sid move the project outward. In London they meet Sander Gorlinsky, Rudolf Nureyev’s agent, in an office Perry remembers as a room out of a Charles Dickens novel: dark wood, cigar smoke, morning liquor, and a theatrical sense that history is writing itself in real time. Gorlinsky reports that Rudolf Nureyev is willing to dance with Michael Jackson, but only to John Lennon’s music. Nureyev wants to speak with Michael directly. Perry now must solve the next impossible problem: reaching Michael Jackson. The front door to Michael and anyone associated with John Lennon is useless. Perry realizes that the modern music business has grown into a castle of handlers and gatekeepers, many of them paid to say no. Through a John Lennon sculpture event at the St. James Club on Sunset Boulevard in West Hollywood, Perry meets artist Brett Livingston-Strong, who has a working relationship with Michael. Brett says he has a working understanding with Michael that prohibits him from taking a project like the ‘Tribute to John’ directly to Michael, but he points Perry toward Jim Rissmiller, a major Southern California concert and event promoter with the right kind of hidden access to the powerful that can make things happen. Rissmiller is expensive, but he knows Bob Jones, an influential figure inside Michael Jackson’s world. Jones asks Michael directly about dancing with Nureyev. The answer, as reported back to Perry, is not indifference from Michael but excitement. Michael asks to speak with Nureyev. Perry tries to arrange a controlled conference call, but Michael’s camp wants Nureyev’s number and intends to let Michael call directly. It is a gamble. The next morning, Nureyev’s agent Gorlinsky reports that the call went very well. Michael and Rudolf will meet when Nureyev comes to Southern California with ‘The King and I’ a touring musical which Nureyev was headlining. The logistical absurdity that follows is pure Perry: Nureyev’s valet calls from the road and says Rudolf wants a massage before meeting Michael. Perry scrambles through old California contacts, finds a Chua Ka massage practitioner, routes Nureyev through a friend’s Coldwater Canyon home in LA to be given the massage, and then delivers the refreshed ballet legend to Studio One, Michael’s recording studio in Sherman Oaks where Michael was recording his album ‘Dangerous’ at the time.
At the studio, the meeting becomes real. Michael Jackson appears quietly from the shadows, dressed simply but unmistakably Michael. He, Nureyev, Perry, and Perry’s associate pose for photographs. Perry leaves Michael and Rudolf alone to talk. When Nureyev comes out, he reports the essential exchange: Michael says he can do it if Nureyev teaches him, and Nureyev says he can do it if Michael teaches him. The dream is no longer theoretical. A press conference follows, with Nureyev publicly saying he is interested in dancing with Michael, but Michael had better ask soon because Nureyev is 50.
Perry later sees more meaning in the remark after an associate suggests Nureyev may be seriously ill, which he is. Soon after, Hollywood trade magazine Variety carries a front page story that Paula Abdul is set to choreograph the Michael Jackson-Rudolf Nureyev dance duet. Perry sees the stars beginning to align.
George Martin and the Shape of the Show
Another giant door to open is Beatles Producer George Martin. Perry and Sid are in London when In April of 1989, Perry sees a news report that Paul McCartney will be presented the Ivor Novello Lifetime Achievement Award by Sting at Grosvenor Hotel in London. Perry decides he and Sid must gain access to the event. Entering the hotel lobby, Perry watches the British music aristocracy gather. The goal is Paul, but the real prize becomes George Martin who Perry notices lingering after the event. Perry introduces Sid Bernstein to George Martin, creating a meeting between two men who each shaped the Beatles legacy from different sides of the Atlantic. George Martin invites Sid and Perry to a meeting at his office at Chrysalis Records the next day. In Martin’s office, Perry finally gets to describe the show as he sees it. The ‘Tribute to John’ is not just to be a memorial concert. It is to become a pop-symphonic narrative, a ‘Popera,’ built in acts. He envisions The Moody Blues serving as performing hosts, taking the audience ‘On the Threshold of the Dream’ with orchestra and theatrical visuals. English folk minstrel Donovan, who traveled to India with the Beatles, would bring color and psychedelic light into the world of the broadcast. Then would come the dream itself: Michael Jackson and Rudolf Nureyev dancing to John Lennon’s music with a ballet company and choreography by Paula Abdul. After that, the stage would open to a kaleidoscope of artists who knew, loved, or were shaped by John and the Beatles, performing Lennon solo music and Lennon-McCartney songs in combinations of their own choosing. The Moody Blues would return for a closing reprise. George Martin listens. When Perry finishes, Martin makes the stunning announcement that he will score and conduct the orchestra, create a special orchestral composition for the event, and serve as musical director for the ‘Tribute to John’. He says he will handle artist invitations except for, without explanation, Paul McCartney, whom Perry and Sid will have to approach another way. Martrin also says that George, Paul, and Ringo owe John a farewell performance. For Perry, this is one of the highest points of the journey. The waiter from Grenadier’s has now sat across from the producer of the Beatles and described a memorial event for John Lennon that George Martin agrees to help shape. This is the point where the project feels almost too large to fail. Sid Bernstein gives the event Beatles historic legitimacy. George Martin gives it musical authority. Nureyev and Michael Jackson give it mythic spectacle. Paula Abdul gives it contemporary pop relevance. The Moody Blues, Donovan, and the broader cast of artists would place John inside the musical and spiritual landscape of the 1960s and its aftermath. In Perry’s telling, the ‘Tribute to John’ is becoming not merely a show but a ceremony: the goodbye that John never received.
The Three Magicians
The manuscript then widens into a meditation on the three men Perry calls ‘The Three Magicians’ of the Beatles story: Brian Epstein, George Martin, and Sid Bernstein. Epstein discovered, managed, disciplined, and believed in the Beatles when they were still raw Liverpool rockers. Martin became the studio alchemist, turning the Beatles’ ideas into records that changed what recorded music could be. Sid Bernstein foresaw their American potential before America knew what was coming, booked them into Carnegie Hall and later created the template for stadium rock with the Beatles at Shea Stadium. This history is not a detour. It explains why Perry trusts Sid Bernstein and why Sid’s presence matters to the ‘Tribute to John’. Sid is not just a legendary promoter. He is one of the living links to the memories of moment when the Beatles crossed from Liverpool into world history. In this chapter of his story, Perry travels with Sid to Liverpool, where they visit Brian Epstein’s family. The trip becomes a pilgrimage. Perry meets Barbara Epstein, Brian’s nephew Henry Brian Epstein, and Brian’s mother Queenie. In his room, Henry shows Perry Beatles memorabilia that once belonged to Brian, including acetate recording masters and a copy of Brian’s autobiography ‘A Cellar Full of Noise’. Brian Epstein’s nephew offers Perry his choice of these priceless Beatles treasures. Perry chooses modest souvenirs and feels the weight of standing near the private remains of public myth. Perry listens to Sid tell his largely unknown Beatles origin story on the train to Liverpool from London and back again. Sid details his largely unknown first-person narrative of the sequence of events that secured his verbal contract with Brian Epstein to present the Beatles at the famed Carnegie Hall in New York City. This happens a full year before Ed Sullivan famously books the Beatles for his television show. In 1963. Sid is working as a booking agent in New York and reading London’s major daily newspaper The Times for an English history night course he is taking. Sid notices an unknown British rock group called the Beatles beginning to cause a stir. The booking agency Sid works at dismiss the Beatles as a flash in the pan. Sid does not. Sid succeeds in getting Brian Epstein on the phone after speaking first with Brian’s mother Queenie. Thinking on his feet, Sid proposes to Brian two New York shows in a day for the Beatles. Since this is early 1963, Brian says it would be professional suicide for him to accept Sid’s offer because there is no American Beatles radio airplay at the time. No one in America has ever heard of the Beatles at the time. Sid answers by booking them a year out, at Carnegie Hall, on Lincoln’s Birthday, a school holiday, February 12th in 1964. When Sid successfully finishes the call with Brian who agrees to Sid Bernstein’s presentation of the Beatles at Carnegie Hall, Sid does not have the money he agreed to pay nor has he contacted much less contracted Carnegie Hall. Sid does not yet have proof America will care about the Beatles a year in the future. Sid Bernstein has only his instinct. For a long time, the tickets for Sid’s Carnegie Hall Beatles concerts do not move. Then, with just weeks left before Sid’s concerts, ‘I Want to Hold Your Hand’ explodes in America. Sid’s tickets are gone overnight. Ed Sullivan’s television appearances come first in public memory, but Perry emphasizes that Sid’s Carnegie Hall booking was already in place and helped create the American landing zone that Ed Sullivan exploited scheduling the Beatles performances on the Sundays before and after Sid’s Carnegie Hall concerts. The Carnegie Hall shows sell out. Sid later persuades Brian Epstein to let him present the Beatles at Shea Stadium, so certain of success that he promises to pay Brian Epstein for any unsold seats. Although Sid successfully presents the American premier concerts by the entire British Invasion in the year following the Beatles at Carnegie Hall, Sid suffers from a series of poor investment choices and is broke when the deadline approaches to deliver significant financial deposits to Brian Epstein for Sid’s upcoming presentation of the Beatles at Shea Stadium. Desperate, yet hopeful, Sid gathers ticket requests for his Shea Stadium Beatles concert through slips of paper he hands out inNew York’s Washington Square that listed simply a post office box number; bags of mail arrive, and the show sells out without a single ticket being put on public sale. To Perry, this is the deeper mirror of his own story: Sid also reached for impossible brass rings before he had the money, the proof, or permission
Cynthia Lennon Enters the Story
The ‘Tribute to John’ project is suddenly enlarged by the successful meeting with Beatles producer George Martin. On the eve of their return to New York, Sid remembers one more person they cannot leave London without seeing: Cynthia Lennon. She is not a formal gatekeeper. She is not the widow who controls the Lennon estate. She is the woman who met John Lennon at art school in Liverpool as teenagers, married him before the world knew his name, gave birth to his first son Julian, and lived beside him through the essential Beatles years. If the ‘Tribute to John’ is meant to be more than show business, Cynthia Lennon matters. Sid learns that Cynthia owns a restaurant in London. Perry imagines meeting her in a hushed candlelit white linen cloth dining room. Instead, he and Sid arrive at ‘Lennon’s Rock & Roll Bar’ in Covent Garden and find a narrow, sadder, fluorescent place: a sandwich-shop version of Beatles memories, with fading neon, and a commercialized wall menu board trading heavily on Beatles lyrics. Cynthia is visible through the front plate of glass. She is seated at a small table with a gentleman companion. That visual shock is important because it turns Cynthia from a Beatles footnote into a living wound. Sid reconnects with Cynthia at her table. The two have been friends since they first met when Cynthia traveled with the Beatles to New York for Sid’s Carnegie Hall concerts in 1964. Cynthia’s companion is Jim Christie, her partner, who supplies warmth and wit to the evening. Cynthia supplies dignity. The conversation between Cynthia and Sid reveals the economic and emotional cost of being John Lennon’s first wife: the divorce settlement, the public mythology, the need to keep finding income, and the strange fact that the woman who kept John’s home and raised their son Julian was treated by history as secondary property. Perry and Sid do not ask her to join the ‘Tribute to John’ that night. They assume the divorce left too much bitterness. That assumption will ultimately prove to be false. Cynthia does not allow the events of her life to lessen her lasting love for John. This section also supplies one of the manuscript’s most useful editorial contrasts: Cynthia is famous enough to open doors at elite clubs and concerts but she is not protected enough to escape slander by the estate of her former husband. Perry keeps seeing her in double exposure – the young woman beside John during Beatlemania and the mature woman trying to survive the afterlife of Beatle mythology. That doubleness provides the ‘Tribute to John’ its emotional center. The project is no longer only John’s public farewell. It becomes Cynthia’s attempt to recover her own place in the story and to create a cleaner future for John’s sons and brothers Julian and Sean Lennon.
Yoko Only and the New Opening
The plot hardens in early summer of 1989 when Yoko Ono’s attorney sends a cease-and-desist letter ordering Perry and Sid to stop pursuing the ‘Tribute to John’. According to Perry, the letter asserts Yoko’s control over ‘John Lennon’s image and over all music written or co-written by John’. The dream that had been expanding through the support of George Martin, suddenly takes on water. This is no longer only a question of booking stars. It is a question of who has the moral, legal, and emotional authority to honor John in public.
The pressure of the letter from Yoko shows immediately. In Los Angeles, Perry meets Tom Hulett, The Moody Blues American representative and one of the most powerful figures in the concert and artist management industry. Hulett likes the ‘Tribute to John’ concept, but asks the fatal question: “Do you have support from the Lennon Estate?” Perry answers from instinct, not strategy. “It is a blended family,” he says. “There is Cynthia and Julian Lennon also”. Hulett responds, “Yes, either Yoko or Julian can authorize a tribute; ex-wives do not count”. That sentence sends Perry toward the Isle of Man where Cynthia makes her home. He is in pursuit of his only hope, the support of Julian Lennon. When Perry calls Cynthia’s home, Jim Christie answers the phone and asks why Perry is trying to go through Cynthia to reach Julian instead of working with Cynthia directly. Perry admits he did not think she would be interested. Jim’s answer changes everything: “She is”. Perry’s flight to the Isle of Man becomes one of the comic obstacle courses that give the memoir its shape: sushi and sake in Hermosa Beach, a missed 747 at the LA airport, rain-soaked clothes, JFK delays, unplanned plane changes in London and Manchester, then finally landing on the island. Cynthia receives Perry at her cottage, feeds him breakfast, and lets him sleep in Julian’s bedroom beneath a gold record of Julian’s debut album ‘Valotte’. That night over dinner in an old stone inn, Cyntha tells Perry she feels obligated to do something for John because she never had the chance to say goodbye. In her words, John is in a state of spiritual limbo waiting for release by the world that clings to his legacy. Then Cynthia says the sentence that links her to George Martin’s earlier statement: George, Ringo, and Paul owe John a final performance. The waiter serving Cynthia, Jim and Perry their dinner continually places a mysterious fourth wine glass at the empty seat at the table each time they order. The three at the table instinctively understand the image without needing to explain it. John is dining with them. Cynthia joins the ‘Tribute to John’. She agrees to begin her support of the project my flying to New York to approach her son Julian to perform. The trip coincides with Julian’s August 1989 performance at New York City’s Beacon Theater during his tour supporting his ‘Mr. Jordan’ album. On the flight to New York, Cynthia proposes using her open invitation to appear on NBC’s ‘Today Show’ while in New York to announce her support of the ‘Tribute to John’ before Yoko can define the story. Sid Bernstein blocks the powerful plan, saying gentlemen do not play the game that way. Perry senses immediately and later judges this as a major tactical error. The memoir’s moral argument keeps colliding with show-business reality: courtesy, secrecy, and old world manners may be honorable, but they are weak weapons against a legal estate, publicists, and television timing.
The Lennon Family Reunion
The next brass ring is Julian Lennon. In New York, Cynthia chooses to stay at the Plaza Hotel, the same hotel where the Beatles hid out during their first American explosion in 1964. Ringo is staying at the nearby Pierre Hotel. Elton John is playing concerts at the Meadowlands in New Jersey. George Martin is also in orbit. The city feels briefly like a Beatles afterworld with all the old planets drifting back into alignment. Jim Chrisite calls Perry with the news following Cynthia’s meeting with her son: Julian will support his mother, sanction the ‘Tribute to John’, and perform. Then the night becomes bigger. Jim reports that Yoko and her teenage son Sean Lennon will attend Julian’s concert, and Sean will join Julian on stage. Perry alerts the Associated Press, misses their initial deadline, then uses news of a Hard Rock Cafe concert after-party to pull the press back in. Before the show, Cynthia accepts Yoko’s unexpected invitation for pre-concert cocktails with Yoko and Sean at their home in the Dakota apartments, knowing she must cross the physical and emotional threshold where John was murdered and enter the home
where John’s second family carried on their lives. Cynthia decides to confront this highly emotional barrier to make a ‘mother to mother’ appeal that she and Yoko collaborate on the ‘Tribute to John’ as The Lennon Family on behalf of their sons, the brothers Julian and Sean Lennon. At the Beacon Theater, Cynthia sits near the front near the stage while Yoko and Sean sit farther back. Julian brings Sean to the stage, and the brothers sing ‘Stand By Me’. The moment is not only a concert cameo. It is the visual answer to the whole problem: John’s two sons can stand together. The concert after-party makes the image permanent. At the Hard Rock Cafe, photographers alerted by the Associated Press gather in the dark. Julian sits with Cynthia. Sean joins them. Then Yoko approaches dressed in all black. Camera flashes cut the room like artillery. The photograph of Yoko, Julian, Sean, and Cynthia together as The Lennon Family for the first time appears in newspapers and magazines worldwide including ‘Rolling Stone’. Perry sees this meeting as a successful piece of history he arranged: The Lennon Family assembled in public for the first time. But the triumph does not hold. Cynthia tells Perry that when she asked Yoko to put their differences aside and host the ‘Tribute to John’ together for their sons, Yoko invited Cynthia to lunch the next day at the Russian Tea Room to plan their collaboration. Cynthia tells Perry that at the table at the Hard Rock, Yoko leaned over and canceled their luncheon without explanation. The brass ring appears, then slips away again. In the limo ride back to the Plaza Hotel, Cynthia tells Perry that when she and Jim arrived at Yoko’s apartment door at the Dakota, a member of Yoko’s staff asked Cynthia and Jim to remove their shoes out of respect for the oriental traditions of the home. Jim explained to the staff member that the two would not comply and kept their shoes on. Cynthia explained that when she came home early from a 1968 holiday in Greece, she found two pairs of shoes outside her bedroom door and John inside her bedroom with Yoko wearing Cynthia’s robe. This detail of refusing to remove her shoes in Yoko’s home may seem small, theatrical, and devastating. It is exactly the kind of scene Perry’s editor should preserve because it compresses an entire marriage’s collapse into one visual image. Another ‘Tribute to John’ episode, this one with Elton John, repeats the ‘almost heaven’ pattern that follows Perry in the project. Cynthia, Jim, Perry, and Sid are invited by Elton to attend his Meadowlands concert in New Jersey and discuss Elton’s participation in the ‘Tribute to John’ following the show. Cynthia’s party was placed in extraordinary seats that Perry reads as evidence of Elton’s respect for her. Elton is central to John’s final live performance at Madison Square Garden in 1974. Elton is Sean Lennon’s godfather. He should be an anchor of the event. Elton’s duet with John on ‘Whatever Gets You Through the Night’ and Elton’s postmortem lament to John ‘Empty Garden (Hey, Hey Johnny)’ are songs that must be performed in the ‘Tribute to John’. But Cynthia, always the considerate lady, hesitates to rush Elton backstage after the performance, wanting to be polite. By the time Cynthia and her guests arrive backstage they are informed that Elton was looking for Cynthia, but he had to leave for his plane before the Meadowland crowds trapped his limo in the parking lot. Another door opens and closes before Perry can get through it.
Rooms of Power: Paul, VIP Worlds, and the White House
Perry then moves through the social machinery surrounding Cynthia. English rock and roll empresario Peter Stringfellow is Cynthia’s landlord, investor, and partner in ‘Lennon’s Rock & Roll Bar’ in London. In fact, Cynthia’s restaurant and the famed Stringfellows nightclub are neighbors. Stringfellows in London is the flagship to a chain of elite clubs that pepper the capitals of the world. When Jim Christie arranges for he, Cynthia and Perry to party at Stringfellows in Manhattan, Perry sees what true VIP recognition looks like for Cynthia Lennon: the ropes at the exclusive nightclub doors open, staff mobilize, champagne appears, the bottle never empties, and a complimentary night for Cynthia and her guest
still costs Perry hundreds of dollars in highly anticipated tips. Later in our story, outside Stringfellows in London, Cynthia looks up at the failing ‘Lennon’s Rock & Roll Bar’ sign next door to Stringfellows after her relationship with the restaurant has ended. Perry reacts to Cynthia’s sorrow and throws a construction cone at the sign shattering the neon into a waterfall of sparks. The scene is reckless, comic, and symbolic. If Cynthia’s name is being used without her involvement, then the name comes down in sparks. It is the kind of detail that should stay in the book because it reveals Perry’s impulsive loyalty as much as it reveals Cynthia’s bruised dignity. The most impregnable Beatles door in this section of the story belongs to Paul McCartney. Cynthia, Jim, and Perry attend Paul’s Wembley Arena 1989 – 1990 World Tour concert after a near-impossible ticket scramble to gain admission to the show involving Sid Bernstein and former Beatles publicist Tony Barrow. Paul’s aide finds Cynthia in the VIP will-call line and removes the need for tickets altogether: Paul has sent for her. Inside, Cynthia is given perfect seats, brought backstage before the show, and receives after-show passes. Paul performs Beatles songs in large numbers, and Perry hears them as the already rehearsed core of the ‘Tribute to John’. At the concert after-party, held in a spectacular circus tent filled with sand outside Wembley, Cynthia speaks with Paul and Linda McCartney. When Perry asks what Paul said about the ‘Tribute to John’, Cynthia reports that he will think about it. It is not a yes. It is not a no. It is another suspended almost. Keep in mind this meeting occurs after Yoko Ono has issued her order for the ‘Tribute to John’ to cease-and- desist. The social scenes around Cynthia are not side trips. They show why Perry believes she can carry the ‘Tribute to John’ even when lawyers say she does not have the legal rights. Fans joyously shout Cynthia’s name outside the Beacon Theater in New York following Julian’s concert there and again, outside Wembley Arena after Paul McCartney’s show. Staff at private clubs know her instantly. Paul sends an aide to find her. Elton’s people make room for her. She may not control the Lennon estate, but she controls a different kind of authority: recognition, memory, and affection. After the Milwaukee Symphony collapses as the original anchor of the ‘Tribute to John’, Perry thinks larger still. The White House becomes a possible stage. Cynthia and her team receive a White House invitation to discuss President George H. W. Bush hosting the ‘Tribute to John’ with Cynthia. The concept is a South Lawn performance with the White House as backdrop, the Rose Garden as VIP backstage, and the National Mall as the audience field, carried by screens and sound toward the monuments. This event staging concept is commonplace today; however, it was a novel idea in 1990. Perry pitches his staging idea inside the West Wing as both a cultural event and presidential invitation: Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, George Harrison, Michael Jackson, Rudolf Nureyev, George Martin, and the elite of the music world entering the grounds like heads of state to honor John Lennon. The point is not practically outrageous. Perry is trying to match John’s symbolic scale with a stage large enough to present it. This is also where Perry’s imagination is clearest. He does not think in rooms. He thinks in maps. Central Park looks toward John’s last home at the Dakota apartments. The White House looks toward America’s National Mall. The Brandenburg Gate in Berlin looks toward the Berlin Wall. The Paris Opera House is Nureyev’s professional home. Each location is not merely a venue but an argument about what John Lennon meant: New York home, American power, European liberation, artistic defection, and global peace. That geographic thinking is one of the manuscript’s strongest cinematic assets.
Berlin, Egypt, Hamburg, and the World Stage
By spring of 1990 the calendar is tightening. Cynthia is invited to ring the United Nations Peace Bell to honor John’s advocacy to ‘Give Peace a Chance’. During the ceremony, Cynthia is invited to stage the
‘Tribute to John’ in New York’s Central Park by the city’s mayor who agrees to host the event with Cynthia. The newly reunited German press publication of Cynthia’s Peace Bell ceremony produces an unanticipated call: the Children of Berlin, newly emerging from behind the Berlin Wall, ask Cynthia to stage the ‘Tribute to John’ in Berlin to bring John Lennon and Beatles music to the population who have never experienced it since it was suppressed by Soviet occupying forces until just recently. Suddenly the ‘Tribute to John’ is offered the world’s greatest and most prestigious settings. Not only is Cynthia offered Central Park in the shadow of John’s beloved home and the White House in the capitol of his adopted country, but Cynthia is also invited to stage the ‘Tribute to John’ at Berlin’s newly opened Brandenburg Gate, the Cold War symbol of the repression of hope. In order to secure the use of the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin to stage the ‘Tribute to John’ Sid Bernstein’s United Nations contact Hans Janecek points Cynthia’s team toward Willy Brandt, the former mayor of West Berlin and Nobel Peace Prize laureate. The route to Brandt runs through Cairo, where he is chairing an international political conference. The resulting Egyptian trip is pure Perry: expensive, chaotic, cinematic, and absurdly alive. Michael Jackson’s publicist Lee Solters, whom is now representing the ‘Tribute to John’ sees the headline instantly – Cynthia Lennon and Willy Brandt, in Cairo, link John Lennon to celebrate peace at the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin. In Cairo, the Cynthia’s group waits for Brandt, gets lost in Arabian nightlife, is treated to a Persian band command performance because Jim Christie tells the band leader that Cynthia is John Lennon’s wife and Perry is a CIA operative. All of this transpires in a room filled with international arms dealers before Beatles history returns to the schedule. Brandt finally meets Cynthia and agrees to join her in hosting the ‘Tribute to John’ at the Brandenburg Gate. The two are photographed together. Before leaving Egypt, Perry, Cynthia, and the others race to Giza, ride camels and horses near the Pyramids, and then escape Cairo as political unrest threatens the airport. Cynthia and her team fly to Berlin, Perry and event promoter Jim Rissmiller meet with Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra Musical Director Claudio Abbado who responds to the idea of the ‘Tribute to John’ with elegance. Abbado gushes about the idea of hearing George Martin’s original orchestral composition and symphonic collaborations of superstar renditions of ‘All You Need Is Love’, ‘I Am the Walrus’, and ‘Strawberry Fields’ as music fit for performance by the Berlin Philharmonic at the Brandenburg Gate. His phrase – “Creativity versus Captivity” – gives Perry the intellectual frame for the event being staged in Berlin. John Lennon’s music becomes much more than nostalgia. It is an answer to the Berlin Wall. The journey then folds backward in time into the Beatles origin history in Hamburg, Germany. Cynthia, Jim, and Perry drive through the recently liberated East Berlin to Kiel north of Hamburg, for a meeting with Cynthia’s long term friends Klaus Voormann, Astrid Kirchherr, and others tied to the Beatles’ early pre-Beatlemania years. These scenes matter because they prove Cynthia is not an accessory to Beatles memory. She is a witness. Hamburg’s Reeperbahn, the fifth Beatle Stu Sutcliffe, Astrid’s moody black and white photographic eye, Klaus’s ‘Revolver’ album art, and the young Beatles all return through people who were there with Cynthia when she accompanied her husband John Lennon and the Beatles during their early 1960s Hamburg residencies. Perry’s project is no longer only a concert. It has become a living map of John Lennon’s past. After Cynthia’s team travels to America after Egypt and Germany, the extensive ‘My Beatles Story’ manuscript details Perry’s one more layer of symbolism. Cynthia meets and invites the participation in the ‘Tribute to John’ from public figures including heavy weight champion of the world Muhammad Ali and final Soviet Union Leader Mikhail Gorbachev. The Berlin episode of the ‘Tribute to John’ needs to be seen not merely as entertainment but as a global peace event. Perry wants the world to connect John Lennon with the men and places that defined the twentieth century’s moral theater: President
Kennedy’s historic speech at the Berlin Wall, Reagan’s challenge to Gorbachev to ‘Tear Down this Wall’, Willy Brandt’s Cold War authority, Ali’s global fame, and the fall of the Berlin Wall. It is grandiose, but it is not random. It is Perry trying to build a public mythology around the ‘Tribute to John’ imbuing the event with the spirit it needs to exist.
The Double Agent, the Collapse, and the Afterlife
Then the machinery shuts down. Perry and event promoter Jim Rissmiller arrange for an meeting with senior executives at ABC Network Headquarters in Los Angeles seeking broadcast support for the ‘Tribute to John’. The ABC executive tells Jim and Perry they are the second team pitching a John Lennon tribute to the network. The other team, he says, represents a tribute event that Yoko Ono is planning at the Liverpool Pier Head on the Mersey River in May. Worse, the person carrying Yoko’s proposal to ABC is, according to Perry, their own Milwaukee based highly paid marketing consultant – a man Perry had briefed on the details of the ‘Tribute to John’ at every step, therefore unknowingly feeding all of Cynthia’s movements directly to Yoko Ono. Perry now sees the pattern of betrayal that has plagued the ‘Tribute to John’: Orchestra executive Gary Good denied the Milwaukee Symphony involvement, Yoko’s legal team orders them to cease and desist, and their own consultant appears to be an opportunistic double agent fueling the demise of Cynthia’s ‘Tribute to John’. The brass ring is not only out of reach. Someone moved the carousel. Yoko announces her Liverpool tribute event to be held in May of 1990, six months ahead of Cynthia’s announced ‘Tribute to John’ which is to be staged in the autumn between two historic anniversary dates in John Lennon life: October 9th John’s 50th birthday and December 9th the 10th anniversary of John’s tragic death by the hands of an assassin. Yoko claims a superstar lineup for her event that includes the three remaining Beatles. The international press frames the dueling tribute events as the War of the Widows: artists must choose between Yoko, who controls the estate, and Cynthia, whose project many have been discussing for more than a year. Many will not cross Yoko to perform for Cynthia, but many also do not appear for Yoko. Perry notes that, in the end, Yoko and Sean Lennon’s family friend Michael Jackson, Sean Lennon’s godfather Elton John, ‘Fame’ co-writer David Bowie, and the surviving Beatles do not come to Liverpool to perform live at Yoko’s event. London’s premier newspaper The Times prints a review of Yoko’s Pier Head event that can only be called savage. The headline read: “Instant Bad Karma by the Meesey”. Yoko’s promised global high visibility afterlife broadcast of recordings of her event that don’t materialize. Where is ABC network television? Yoko’s event fails to become John’s long awaited great public farewell. It succeeds in killing the momentum of Cynthia’s ‘Tribute to John’. The industry cannot support two John Lennon tributes, and Cynthia’s with Yoko’s legal cloud hanging over it cannot survive.
The Dream is (not necessarily) Over
The last movement of Perry’s ‘My Beatles Story – Tribute to John’ elegy and blueprint is a summary of all those we have lost since 1990 coupled with the possibilities of what could still occur, perhaps in 2030 when we will celebrate John’s 90th birthday and the 50th anniversary of John’s passing. Cynthia Lennon died in Mallorca, Spain in 2015, having kept Julian, her memories, and her connection to John’s music even when the public story gave her little else. Legendary Beatles Promoter Sid Bernstein, Beatles Producer George Martin, International Ballet Superstar Rudolf Nureyev, the King of Pop Michael Jackson, Sitar Master Ravi Shankar and so many others are now gone. Perry refuses to treat that fact as the end. He turns the unfulfilled 1990 dream into a possible modern structure: Julian and Sean Lennon as anchors to a 2030 ‘Tribute to John’ in honor of their mothers and their fatherJohn, Beatles ‘Love’ arranger and album remastering producer Giles Martin carrying on his father George Martin’s musical inheritance, Klaus Voormann as a living Beatles bridge to the renewed ‘Tribute to John’, Michael Jackson’s superstar sister Janet Jackson dancing to honor her brother, with Rudolf Nureyev’s friend and protégé Mikhail Baryshnikov dancing with Janet echoing the Michael Jackson – Rudolf Nureyev dance dream, Paula Abdul returning to choreograph, The Moody Blues lead singer and sole living member Justin Hayward opening the ‘Tribute to John’ and Donovan who traveled to Rishikesh with the Beatles leading us into the White Album celebration of songs, styles and artistry. The venues that were offered to Cynthia from New York’s Central Park to Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate, America’s White House, Nureyev’s Paris Opera House, coupled with Yoko’s tribute event site at Liverpool’s Pier Head, historic Beatles sites in London, India, and even new performing iconic spaces such as the twenty-first-century digital Las Vegas Sphere can be reimagined for the 2030 ‘Tribute to John’.
And in the End . . .
Perry Muckerheide’s ‘My Beatles Story – Tribute to John’ ends where Perry always ends, not with proof that he won, but with proof that he kept seeing the brass ring. The 1990 ‘Tribute to John’ empowered by Cynthia Lennon never made it to the stage but it did not fail. The dream was shared by many who knew John Lennon, loved him, his life, and respected his creative spirit. There is no deadline on the dream of creating a triumphant ‘Tribute to John’. The final pages of Perry’s detailed manuscript are therefore best treated as an appendix of future possibilities and opportunities of reimagination rather than a continuation of the 1990 plans. Perry lays out possible performing acts, songs, and venues that could combine live performance, archival material, streaming, and immersive technology. This material does not crowd the condensed memoir, but it gives the project a practical afterlife. The manuscript for a possible book, episodic podcast, printed, internet or streaming serialization that finishes with suggestions for the future. The encouraged timeline for the reimagined ‘Tribute to John’ is focused on 2030 to celebrate John’s 90th birthday and the 50th anniversary of John’s passing. This will allow the creative talents of the modern media to get their act together appropriately. There could be a rising series of commemorative events between now and 2030. The 2030 event may morph into a grand celebration of the Beatles timed to commemorate the 50th anniversary of John’s tragic death as way to honor John’s role as the originator of the band that began as the Quarrymen and became the magical and mysterious Beatles as Paul McCartney joined John, George Harrison merged with the two of them, and Ringo Starr completed the chemistry. The controlling idea of ‘My Beatles Story – Tribute to John’ is still the brass ring. Perry keeps reaching through one more door: Cynthia’s restaurant, Yoko’s attorney, Tom Hulett’s office, the Isle of Man cottage, the Beacon Theater, the Dakota apartments, the Hard Rock Cafe, Elton’s backstage, Paul’s Wembley tent, the West Wing, Cairo, Berlin, Hamburg, ABC, and finally the unrealized dream of Yoko’s Liverpool event. Each room gives him a new glimpse of the elusive ‘Tribute to John’, and each room also shows the limits of nerve without institutional power. That is what keeps the story from being only complaint. It is a tour through the machinery that decides which memories become public ceremonies and which almost-happened histories are left to be carried on by one stubborn witness. The truth of God’s creation is that dreams may not occur on the schedule that is first conceived by the dreamer. In truth, the time for the ‘Tribute to John’ may yet to arrive. There is no deadline for the dream. Perry’s proposed 2030 version is not a vague reunion fantasy. It offers a roster and structure. Julian and Sean Lennon anchoring the event as sons, brothers and executive stewards. Giles Martin delivering George Martin’s promised musical role. Klaus Voormann connecting the modern production from Hamburg history to ‘Revolver’, and the Beatles solo years. Janet Jackson and Mikhail Baryshnikov echoing the Michael Jackson-Rudolf Nureyev dance duet that was once possible, with Paula Abdul still serving as choreographic bridge. Donovan takes us back to Rishikesh and ‘White Album’ songs, while Ravi Shankar’s legacy is honored through the Indian thread that offered enlightenment to George Harrison and, through George, to the Beatles themselves. The show Perry imagines is not a single concert with random covers. It is a staged argument that John’s life and music moved through Liverpool, Hamburg, London, India, New York, Berlin, and the world. The manuscript ends by holding two truths at once. First, the 1990 ‘Tribute to John’ was beaten by timing, legal rights, betrayal, competing claims, and the fear most artists and networks had of choosing sides inside The Lennon Family conflict. Second, the attempted ‘Tribute to John’ created real historical moments anyway: Cynthia standing forward, Julian and Sean performing together, The Lennon Family photographed together for the first time in one frame, Paul receiving Cynthia at Wembley, Willy Brandt inviting Cynthia to bring the ‘Tribute to John’ to Berlin, and the Berlin Philharmonic opening itself to performing a Lennon score. That is the cleanest way to preserve Perry’s genius-level detail without letting it dissolve into sprawl. Even though the event did not reach the stage in 1990, the evidence of how close it came is the story. That is the emotional engine of Perry’s memoir. The ‘Tribute to John’ is an unfulfilled story only if success means the event never reached its stage. Read another way, it is a magical mysterious brass ring story about proximity to history: a Milwaukee waiter steps into a conversation and, through nerve, imagination, and unlikely alliances, reaches Sid Bernstein, the Milwaukee Symphony, Billboard Magazine, Rudolf Nureyev, Michael Jackson, Paula Abdul, George Martin, and the Epstein family. Repeatedly, the brass ring appears: a ‘Tribute to John’ that institutional fear and legal pressure threaten, a global ceremony that comes close enough to be real and still slips away. The point is not that Perry wins or loses. The point is that he keeps reaching – and, for a moment and makes the impossible visible.
My sincere hope is that some enterprising publisher will realize that this unpublished manuscript would and could earmark the publication of an excellent book. I would love to be able to add a print version of this tales in our to my Beatles book library!
If you would like to watch the full YouTube video of Perry that I originally viewed, here is the link:
I acquired Perry’s full document and was truly amazed and astonished at the details provided.
Be healthy and be happy all of you!A bit of closing armchair philosophy: Never be afraid of the truth, the difficult thing is to be able to properly identify and recognize truth from deception and attempts to manipulate and control!
My good friend Jeff Smulyan just sent me the notification of a brand-new Beatles cover story in the October 2026 issue of MOJO magazine that not only features an article about the new release of Rubber Soul, but also features a cd entitledThe Soul of the Beatles!
Celebrating the New Rubber Soul Release
Pure Speculation: It appears that we may now possibly know. You will notice that the magazine cover states there is a special Last Lost Song that is mentioned in the magazine. I wonder if the song “Little Girl” is indeed what was being described several years ago when Julian and his mom displayed the lyrics to it at a Liverpool event that they hosted?
Several years ago, it was reported that Julian Lennon had acquired a set of unreleased lyrics from his dad. The title was not known yet the term Little Girl appears in the song. Years later we hear that Sean Lennon had discovered a heretofore unreleased song construction of his dad’s which will appear on the Rubber Soul deluxe box set both cd and vinyl.
It appears that the reports about the unreleased song were actually mentioned a few years ago and the links are provided for your perusal. Online a picture of John’s lyrics appeared several years ago, and I hope it is indeed the same song, and the picture is included in the forthcoming box set.
The handwritten lyrics which appeared online when the story broke several years ago. A musical artist named Nico Diamond actually composed a melody to the lyrics which briefly appeared on YouTube!
Just ordered my copy of the Mojo magazine described above on eBay!!Also available at the MOJO magazine site:
I figured with the soul motif being used for this post that I would include the link to this 1967 track by the Music Explosion! Even though it was not by the Beatles and the song is more of a basic rock tune than a soul-based number, it was a big hit in the ’60s in the US.
How many of you first-generation Beatles fans out there remember this song?
Take A “Magical Mystery Tour” through the Beatles’ Deep Tracks. The Beatles’ music has become so ingrained in our culture that their songs have become an integral part of our everyday lives. Who doesn’t know the words to “Hey Jude” or “Let It Be”? Who hasn’t been moved by the poetry of “Eleanor Rigby” or energized by that opening chord of “A Hard Day’s Night”?
Recently received a notification from author Andrew Croft that his 3-book set “Collecting Beatles Sheet Music & Song Books” are now available for purchase individually. The books are available separately as three individual titles, the U.K. edition, the U.S. edition and the International edition.
I collect Beatles print material and I must admit that I have never participated before in collecting Beatles-related sheet music. After acquiring the U.S. Edition of Collecting Beatles Sheet Music & Song Books, I must admit I am tempted to have a change of heart as seeing so many rare titles that were issued being presented in these volumes is truly impressive. After having obtained the U.S. Edition, I am planning on acquiring the other two volumes in the near future to complete the set.
Before I share with you the information about the 3-book set and the individual books, sent to me by the author, I want to share with you some images from my copy of the U.S. Edition. You do not have to be a musician to cherish and enjoy many of the rarities presented in these books!
THE US EDITION:
Collecting Beatles Sheet Music
BACK COVER OF THE U.S. EDITION:
A SAMPLING OF THE CONTENTS OF THE U.S. EDITION:
Author Andrew Croft has authorized me to present a few additional page samplings from the book which will indicate the type of information that you will be exposed to. Some of these titles I have never seen before:
Another fascination with this material is the numbers of more obscure solo type projects like Paul writing the theme song for the film, The Family Way!
I love reading information about Apple publishing artists like Grapefruit who Apple published many of their early compositions:
A few sheet music examples from Apple artists:
DETAILS:
Collecting Beatles Sheet Music & Song Books
By ANDREW CROFT
INDIVIDUAL BOOKS… U.K. Edition | U.S. Edition | International Edition
NOW AVAILABLE FOR PURCHASE!
Updated from the 72-page book published in 2003, this is the only complete guide to collecting Beatles and related sheet music and song books from around the world, now expanded to over 500 pages across three books.
Includes over 3,000 illustrations of all known Beatles, Lennon-McCartney and Harrison By Other Artists, Solo Beatles, Apple Records Artists, Apple Publishing and Beatles Novelty Record sheet music and song books from the U.K., the U.S. and over a dozen other countries around the world.
Starting with the history of publishing Beatles music in the U.K. and the history of Charles Hansen Publishing in the U.S. followed by a chronological format of all known individual song sheets, arrangement sheet music, reissues and song books, each guide includes a detailed look at how the sheets were published. Details include the background on the various publishing companies, as well as those who covered The Beatles’ and solo Beatles catalogue of music.
The U.K. and U.S. editions delve into the myriad of reissues throughout the Seventies and Eighties to reveal what was published, by whom and when. A number of different series of sheets have been assembled all together in these guides for the very first time. The U.K. guide also includes a section on George Martin sheet music which includes a number of titles unknown to collectors until now.
The International guide is vastly expanded from the original book published in 2003 – increasing from just 12 pages to over 120! This book has hundreds of illustrations of sheets and song books from countries around the world including: Argentina, Australia, Belgium, France, Germany, Holland, Italy, Japan, Scandinavia, Spain and Turkey. including some of the rarest titles ever assembled in one compilation until now.
LIMITED EDITION 3-BOOK SETS & INDIVIDUAL BOOKS NOW AVAILABLE! Books are available for purchase as a 3-volume setnumbered to 100 and signed by the author or individually.
Take A “Magical Mystery Tour” through the Beatles’ Deep Tracks. The Beatles’ music has become so ingrained in our culture that their songs have become an integral part of our everyday lives. Who doesn’t know the words to “Hey Jude” or “Let It Be”? Who hasn’t been moved by the poetry of “Eleanor Rigby” or energized by that opening chord of “A Hard Day’s Night”?
Our expert blogger and Beatles expert John Bezzini appeared on Jude Kessler’s YouTube Podcast “Tell Me Why”, and talked about his blog on The Beatles Bookstore, his collection, and shared some of those rare pieces during the interview.
MEET JOHN “BUZZ” BEZZINI
We’ve been enjoying the great blog that Buzz does for us on this website, but now you get to meet him! In a fascinating interview, Jude talks about his incredible blog, and they discuss the various pieces of memorabilia that John shares with her.
THE MAIN CHARACTERS – BRIAN EPSTEIN AND JOHN LENNON
John Lennon is portrayed by Jordan Barkley, Brian Epstein is portrayed by Joseph Winder, and the play is written by Alex King, (an award-winning writer and director of film and theatre)
THE SETTING
February 1964.The Beatles are on the cusp of changing the world. In a suite at New York’s Plaza Hotel, John Lennon and manager Brian Epstein find themselves alone for an evening that neither of them expects.
As conversation drifts between memory, ambition and identity, the boundaries between performance and reality begin to erode. John struggles to reconcile the man he is with the man the world demands he become, while Brian is forced to confront a lifetime spent hiding in plain sight. What begins as companionship gradually becomes a battle for understanding, exposing the fears, contradictions and vulnerabilities that lie beneath two carefully constructed lives.
Of All These Friends and Loversis an intimate new two-hander that imagines a deeply human encounter between two men navigating fame, expectation and the search for authenticity, asking whether anyone can truly know themselves when the whole world believes it already does.
This is the world-premiere of the play!
The production runs at The Hope Street Theatre (a stone’s throw from LIPA) during International Beatle Week, 25th – 29th August, with times as follows:
Please note that John Lennon’s college art school friend and classmate, Helen Anderson, has provided one of her famous caps that she designed for John for the play!
Actors Jordan Barkley (John Lennon) and Joseph Winder (Brian Epstein)
My only regret is that I live in the US and I will miss seeing this play. However, anyone in the US that is scheduled to be at Beatle Week in August of 2026, this is the play for you to attend and see while you are in Liverpool!
We at the blog extend our best wishes to the writer and director, Alex King, and all of the cast members and production crew. We sincerely wish you the best for a great long run for which mostcertainly will be a fascinating play and character study!
