A singer from a Beatles tribute band has put the words of William Shakespeare to music in the style of the Fab Four.
Chris O’Neill, who plays Sir Paul McCartney in the Backbeat Beatles, said the idea came to him in a dream.
"I woke up and wrote down all these ideas about the Beatles going back in time and meeting Shakespeare," he said.
Mr O’Neill begins his one man show - A Bard Day’s Night- in Gateshead on Monday evening.
The singer did not study Shakespeare at school and so this project has allowed him to get to know the Bard.
I get my complete works of Shakespeare out and give myself some tasks - sometimes it might be a speech - and I just sit there with a piano; he said.
BBC NEWS | Entertainment | Bard is given Beatles treatment.
A tape of a Beatles recording session in which John Lennon and Paul McCartney are heard cracking jokes and breaking into giggles, is to be auctioned off.
The 30-minute tape, thought to have been recorded in 1964, is expected to fetch between £8,000 and £12,000 when it goes under the hammer on Tuesday.
It includes a recording of the band’s attempt to record I’ll Follow The Sun.
The tape was found during an attic clearance by the son of a man who had worked in the music industry.
The reel-to-reel recording contains songs composed by John Lennon and Sir Paul McCartney as well as versions of other artists’ tracks, according to auction house Cameo.
‘Funnier and funnier’
During the recording of I’ll Follow The Sun Lennon says: "I’m not looking at you," to which McCartney replies: "You were".
Lennon then says: "It’s just going to get funnier and funnier as the evening goes on."
McCartney adds: "Let’s just try this once more and if it’s the last one that’s hard lines."
The band managed to complete a recording of the song without interruption later in the tape.
The man who found the recording wished to remain anonymous, but the auction house have revealed that it was discovered in the north of England.
In a recent auction in London last month the drum skin used on the cover of The Beatles’ Sgt Pepper album sold for £541,250.
Sir Paul McCartney is to perform to hundreds of thousands of fans at a free concert in the Ukrainian capital Kiev in June.
The Beatles legend will play in the city’s main Independence Square at a show dubbed the Independence Concert. Read more
Yoko Ono is suing the makers of a documentary for using John Lennon’s song Imagine without permission.
The former Beatle’s widow and sons Sean and Julian have filed a legal action in Manhattan against the producers of Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed.
Ono said the film gave the impression she approved the song’s use, leading to accusations that she was “selling out”.
Premise Media, who made the documentary challenging Darwinian theories of evolution, said it was fair use.
The film is at number 10 in this week’s North American box office chart, taking $3m (£1.5m) in its first weekend. Read more
A foliage sculpture of Beatle Ringo Starr in the band’s home city has been beheaded by vandals.
The topiary feature, which took 18 months to cultivate into the fab four, was unveiled at the city south Parkways Transport Exchange last month.
Starr’s head was chopped off, but the rest of the Beatles were untouched.
The 67-year-old outraged some Liverpool residents when, after opening the European Capital of Culture events, he said he missed nothing about the city.
Merseytravel funded the topiary which was commissioned from artists in Tuscany and cultivated on the Wirral.
The piece was created by Italian sculptor Franco Covill and then nurtured and shaped into George, Ringo, John and Paul.
A legal attempt has begun to block the release of early Beatles recordings. Lawyers for the group’s surviving members have claimed the eight tracks, apparently played in Hamburg in 1962, were taped without permission.
The songs include Paul McCartney performing Lovesick Blues by Hank Williams, and McCartney and Lennon singing together on Ask Me Why.
But the Miami company trying to sell the music, Fuego Entertainment, has insisted the recordings were legal. Read more
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