“Ken Brown, Bandmate of Future Beatles in the Quarrymen, Dead at 70” plus 1

Ken Brown, Bandmate of Future Beatles in the Quarrymen, Dead at 70

Posted: 28 Jun 2010 07:11 AM PDT

Ken Brown, a guitarist who played alongside three future members of the Beatles -- George Harrison, John Lennon and Paul McCartney -- in the Quarrymen, has died. Brown, 70, suffered from emphysema and passed away earlier this month. He was found dead in his home by authorities on June 14.

"Former Quarrymen guitarist Ken Brown was discovered at his home in Essex on Monday after a concerned relative had raised the alarm," the Liverpool Echo reported. "Police forced their way in through his front door and found [him] lying on the living room floor. It is thought he may have died five days earlier."s

Brown first played with 16-year-old George Harrison in the Les Stewart Quartet in 1958. In August of the following year, Brown asked Harrison to bring John Lennon and Paul McCartney with him to fill a residency at the Casbah Coffee Club in West Derby. As the Quarrymen, the group played seven Saturday night gigs.

Unfortunately, the guitarist broke his leg the night of the final performance and was unable to play. He was ultimately kicked out of the band over a financial disagreement. Brown later formed the Blackjacks with Pete Best, who would soon join the Beatles as Ringo Starr's predecessor.

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Chicago author creates Beatles monster mash-up

Posted: 27 Jun 2010 02:01 AM PDT

CHICAGO LIT | Author creates musical monster mash-up starring the Beatles

In the fall of 1969, a rumor began to circulate alleging that Paul McCartney, of Beatles fame, had died. In fact, he was still very much alive. But that didn't stop rampant speculation from spreading far and wide.

Seizing in part on that well-known urban legend, Chicago author and longtime music writer Alan Goldsher combined his Beatles mania with his love of horror writing.

The deft result, an equal parts gory and goofy oral history of the zombified Beatles called Paul Is Undead: the British Zombie Invasion (Gallery, $15), is off to an auspicious start.
Booklist gave it high marks, and a recent starred review in Publishers Weekly praised its "over-the-top bizarro charm." On the Hollywood front, movie rights were snapped up by prominent producers Michael Shamberg and Stacey Sher of Double Feature Films.
"A lot of people are going to kind of be like, 'Oh, he's jumping on the zombie bandwagon, he's jumping on the mash-up bandwagon," says Goldsher, 43, who lives with his wife in Irving Park.
A literary mash-up, for those who aren't familiar with the term, refers to a book that combines elements of two pre-existing works to create something original. For the past several years, zombies have been all the rage.
"And it's actually a pretty organic thing," Goldsher continues. "The zombie renaissance kind of started in the early 2000s with 'Shaun of the Dead' and the 'Dawn of the Dead' remake, and it was always kind of niggling in the back of my mind: I think I could have a really good time getting in on this tongue-in-cheek zombie thing."
Also, Goldsher notes, the fact that yuks and yucks could be successfully combined had already been proven by scribes far more famous than he.
"When I first started reading adult books, Stephen King was one of the first authors that really touched me. And people forget that he's a pretty funny dude. He mixes humor and horror. So he sort of demonstrated that it is feasible to be funny and scary at once. And I'm a big improv comedy fan, I'm a big Monty Python fan. English comedy in general. So I think that's sort of where it stemmed from."
Incidentally, as the Beatles' saga plays out, the band battles a dogged zombie hunter named Mick Jagger and throwing star-hurling ninja lord Yoko Ono.
"They're very high-functioning zombies," Goldsher says of his decaying, brain-gobbling, world-domination-seeking protagonists John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr — the latter of whom is also a ninja. "They make music, they can move really quickly. They don't shuffle all the time unless they want to for effect."
While he fashioned his own zombie world largely from scratch, following only a handful of generally accepted zombie rules (eg., illicit drugs wreak havoc on zombies' gastrointestinal systems), his rendering of the Beatles and their rise to fame is informed by historical fact. From recording sessions and television appearances to verbal ticks and mannerisms, Goldsher strove to root his tall tale in reality.
"I watched 'The Beatles Anthology' multiple times to get their voices down because I thought that was really important since I was doing it as an oral history," Goldsher says of the epic and minutiae-filled documentary released in 1995. "I needed to be careful to differentiate the way they speak and their attitudes. You can read all the written interviews you want to, but actually seeing them and watching how they move, that was really important to the process."
He knows, however, that hardcore devotees of both zombies and the Fab Four might give him guff for taking so much poetic license.
"I think since it's so weird with the zombie rules that I've created, there are probably going to be some zombie fans that might be turned off. 'Oh, zombies don't do this, zombies don't do that,'" Goldsher admits. "And that's cool. I realized as I was writing it that I'm probably going to get tagged. And I'm sure there are plenty of Beatles fans out there who are not going to be thrilled with John Lennon, Mr. 'Imagine-All-the-People,' [being] portrayed as a murderous, power-mad killer."
While Goldsher hasn't yet sent copies of his novel to surviving Beatles McCartney and Starr, Macca apparently was informed of its existence by a reporter from the London Times. "Have you heard about Paul is Undead?" the reporter asked the rock star.
According to Goldsher's retelling, McCartney "kind of rolled his eyes and said, 'Oh, that rubbish was back in the '60s and I'm obviously still alive.'"
Upon clarifying that Goldsher's book was actually about the Beatles as zombies, McCartney reportedly replied "Oh," laughed weakly and said nothing more.
Which begs the question: Will he and/or Starr sign off on the wild and exceedingly sanguinary story so as to give it a shot at eventual big-screen glory? Goldsher can only hope.
"It's not going to involve life rights, per se, but it is messing with their lives," he says of legal considerations. "So [the producers] want the Beatles to give it their blessing, and I'm not sure how much of a blessing we're ever going to get from them. But McCartney has been on 'The Simpsons,' he's made fun of himself on 'Saturday Night Live.' I'd like to hope that they do have a sense of humor about the whole thing. I tried really hard to treat them with respect, because I do love the music."
Mike Thomas is a Sun-Times features writer and Beatles fan.

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The Beatles

Monday, June 28, 2010