I wasn’t sure if they’d added a touring version I’d not heard about, @AppleScruffJunior, as the BBC article I linked to said:

Along with its circuses, its also has musicals that tour the world including Michael Jackson One and The Beatles Love.

Thanks for the correction.

Is there a Brian biopic on the way? Yes, I know there have been Brian biopics in the pipeline before that no progress ever seems to be made on, especially after the graphic novel.

However, yesterday, Trevor Beattie Films in conjuction with Studio Pow announced that Grammy-award winning director Jonas Åkerlund would be directing “an emotional, witty, heartfelt story of the joy of success and the terrifying pressures of unspeakable risk and unfulfilled desire” about Brian called Midas Man.

Trevor Beattie said:

Epstein’s one of the most extraordinary men of the 20th century. His story hasn’t been told properly. He’s often taken for granted by the wider world, but he was ahead of his time from his vision of music and popular culture through to gender identity. He was gay at a time when homosexuality was illegal. He lived a secret life. He made some risky decisions in handling the business of his stars … Compared with what Brian had to live in his life, [they were] not a risk.

While Åkerlund commented:

Brian Epstein’s story has everything I’m looking for in a story…. it’s all about Brian’s singularity for me. I love that Brian seemed to know every step of the way what no one else knew, he saw things that no one else saw. His vision was astonishing, he created a culture that didn’t exist. The film is more like touring Brian’s mind and what it was like to be him than how one thing led to another chronologically. I want to bring him back to life.

At the moment the plan is to film it on location in Liverpool, London and the US in 2021.

More here and here.

The mid-year Nielsen Music/MRC Data report on music consumption in the US has been published, and Forbes point out that of the acts to sell over a million in the first six months of the year (3 January to 2 July) nearly all are solo artists with The Beatles and BTS being the only two groups to pass the million mark.

BTS came second in the Pop genre with the equivalent of 1,417 million albums (based on physical album sales, downloads and streams), beaten by Billie Eilesh.

The Beatles topped the Rock genre with the equivalent of 1,094 million albums.

Abbey Road  is continuing to sell well on vinyl following the 50th anniversary, with sales of 54,000 making it the current 5th best-selling vinyl album of the year.

The BBC report that the pandemic and the resulting lockdown has thrown doubt over the survival of the Cavern Club, with it losing £30,000 a week since lockdown began and it not reopening till later in August.

Apollo Magazine report that the complete archive of photographer Robert Freeman, closely associated with The Beatles during the Mop Top years, and who died at the beginning of November 2019, was stolen from the sheltered accommodation he was living in at the time of his death over the weekend of 14-15 December 2019.

When the photographer Robert Freeman died in November last year, at the age of 82, he left behind a substantial, albeit disorderly, archive. But within weeks, his life’s work had gone missing – stolen from the sheltered accommodation in south-west London where he spent his final years. ‘Bob kept everything,’ recalls Monica Godwin, executor of the Freeman estate. ‘He was such an artist that he didn’t want to let go of any of his babies.’ His fastidiousness did not, however, extend to keeping his records in manageable order. His archive was housed in a haphazard arrangement of boxes that filled an entire room of his home; the closest thing to a catalogue was stored on a CD-ROM, which has disappeared along with the rest of the collection.

The theft of his archive is a great loss as it surely included many images of The Beatles we’ve never seen, and may never see unless the archive is recovered.

Just to report it, John’s killer (you know I don’t do his name) – now aged 65, 25 years older than John was when robbed of his future – had his 11th parole hearing in August, with it being turned down.

The parole board has said that, among its reasons, his “selfish actions stole the chance for future fans to experience the words of inspiration that this artist provided for millions of people. Your violent act caused devastation to not only family and former band members, but the world”.

He did show some contrition during the hearing, apologising to Yoko, but if you want to read his words you can go to the article. His words don’t interest me.

Next up for parole in 2022.

The BBC have announced a two-part radio special, to be broadcast on Radio 2 on 3 & 4 October, to mark John’s 80th birthday, hosted by Sean and featuring him discussing John with Paul, Julian, and Elton John.

Paul also performs early Lennon/McCartney song Just Fun for the programme.

The Radio 2 description of Episode 1:

A celebration of John Lennon on what would have been his 80th birthday on October 9th.

Presented by his youngest son, Sean Ono Lennon, the programme will delve deep into the Lennon family’s musical memories of John. In episode one, Sean and his elder brother Julian chat publicly for the first time about their father.

Both recall time spent in the studio at different points in John’s solo career – Julian during the making of the ‘Walls And Bridges ‘ album in 1974 and Sean during the recording of ‘Double Fantasy ‘, shortly before John’s death in December 1980. They chat warmly about their memories of growing up as ‘John Lennon ‘s son’ and how that reflected on their own musical careers.

Elton John also chats to Sean about his close relationship with Lennon, his admiration of the Beatles as a youngster and the effect that meeting and playing music with John in the 1970’s had on him. Elton also explains how he played a pivotal part in Sean’s very existence (and ended up as Sean’s Godfather as a result).

In Part 2, Sean will be in conversation with his father’s friend, bandmate and songwriting partner, Paul McCartney . It will be the first time the pair have spoken together about John, for broadcast.

Sean will also share his own memories on his father’s remarkable musical life, which created some of the most important musical milestones of the entire 20th Century.

…and Episode 2:

A celebration of John Lennon on what would have been his 80th birthday on October 9th.

Presented by his youngest son, Sean Ono Lennon, this second part of the programme will continue to explore John’s musical life, this time with the help of his friend, collaborator and bandmate, Paul McCartney .

For the first time in public, Paul reveals to Sean his own memories of meeting John as a teenager in their hometown of Liverpool, their early musical beginnings, writing together, life as a Beatle and beyond. Paul plays an excerpt of a never-before-heard Lennon/McCartney composition – an example of one of their early tunes that didn’t make it to the recording studio!

Also in this programme, Sean’s elder brother Julian continues exploring his recollections of his father. In the previous episode, Sean’s godfather, Elton John shared his own memories of his friendship and musical relationship with John, including the story of John’s last ever live performance at an Elton show in New York in 1974.

Helen Thomas, head of Radio 2, said:

John Lennon is one of the Radio 2 audience’s most popular and best-loved musicians, so we’re thrilled and honoured that Sean’s first ever radio programme in which he talks at length about his father, alongside his brother Julian, Paul McCartney and Elton John, will be broadcast on our network.

The 2nd annual ‘Dear John’ concert – this year marking his 80th birthday, and raising money for the UK charity War Child, will be held at the Hard Rock Hotel in London on 9 October and will stream for free live on YouTube from 8pm BST (British Summer Time)/3pm ET (Eastern Time) (I think!).

The evening will include performances of Lennon songs by/or tributes from KT Tunstall, Larkin Poe, Peter Gabriel (part of the Dear John video), Richard Curtis CBE, Maxi Jazz of Faithless, Lindsay Ell, PP Arnold, Andy Fairweather Low, John Ilsley of Dire Straits, Graham Gouldman of 10cc, Gowan ( AKA frontman of Styx), Nick Van Eede of Cutting Crew, Blurred Vision with Lyndon J Connah, Mollie Marriott, Laura Jean Anderson, and more to be announced.

More here and I assume will be streaming here.

The Morrison Hotel Gallery are launching an online exhibition of 40 John pictures in conjunction with the Lennon Estate, that it’s said will feature several rarely seen images:

On October 9th of this year, John Lennon would have turned 80 years old. To commemorate the momentous occasion, Morrison Hotel Gallery reimagines what it means to be a dreamer in the digital age with its latest online exhibition, opening Thursday, October 1st, 2020 with select works on view at both its Los Angeles and New York City outposts by appointment only. Reflecting upon the enduring ideals championed by the late-great visionary through photographic masterworks from Bob Gruen, Astrid Kirchherr, and Allan Tannenbaum among others, In His Life retrospects the artist and activist’s colossal rise from pompadoured Liverpudlian to metaphysical legend whose posthumous lens of perception speaks to the sensibilities of a socio-political present.

As the world seeks to come together to commemorate the late-great John Lennon ’s birthday on the cusp of seismic cultural awakening, In His Life lends itself to endless cultural rumination on what was, what might have been and that which remains eight prolific decades later. Harkening to more than a return to in-gallery activations, this exhibition moves beyond familiar holdings of fine art music photography with the unveiling of several rarely-seen images and special offering of four of Lennon’s original handwritten lyric sheets (“Yer Blues “, “I’m So Tired “, “Dear Prudence “, “Watching The Wheels “) made available in limited edition fine art prints by the John Lennon Estate on behalf of Yoko Ono.

Link here (scroll down and you’ll see it among ‘Collections’), though a better link – straight to the photographs – will probably appear tomorrow.