Mojo - The Music Magazine

Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr appeared on stage today to launch the Beatles' Rock Band video game.

In one of the most peculiar sales pitches MOJO has seen, Starr said of the interactive game "the game is good, the graphics are very good and... errr... we were great."

"Who'd have thought we'd end up as androids?" added a gum-chewing McCartney before walking off stage playing air guitar.

The Beatles Rock Band is on sale on September 3 and will allow users to play along to 46 Beatle songs. It is the first time any Beatles music has been licensed to a third party.

The game takes place at a number of locations where The Beatles played, including the Cavern Club and Shea Stadium. Alongside onstage performances there will be cut sequences between songs that developers claim are "artistic visual expressions intended to transport players to the imaginative environments that capture the essence of The Beatles musical and fashion transformations during their later years".

Still, the trailer looks pretty cool...

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Jimi Hendrix was murdered by his manager as part of an insurance scam, a new book written by former Hendrix roadie James 'Tappy' Wright claims.

Out next month, Rock Roadie claims Hendrix's manager Michael Jeffery drunkenly confessed in 1971 to forcing pills and red wine down the guitarist's throat.

Wright claims Jeffery, who died in a plane crash two years later, was worried that Hendrix was looking for a new manager and had taken out a life insurance policy on the guitarist worth £1.2 million with Jeffery as beneficiary.

"I had to do it, Tappy. You understand, don't you? I had to do it. You know damn well what I'm talking about." Jeffery, who was married to actress Gillian French, is alleged to have told Wright. "I was in London the night of Jimi's death and together with some old friends... we went round to Monika's hotel room [Hendrix was found by an ambulance crew in the room of Monika Dannemann], got a handful of pills and stuffed them into his mouth... then poured a few bottles of red wine deep into his windpipe. I had to do it. Jimi was worth much more to me dead than alive. That son of a bitch was going to leave me. If I lost him, I'd lose everything."

The official cause of Hendrix's death in September 1970 was 'barbiturate intoxication and inhalation of vomit', and the coroner recorded an open verdict.

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Seminal record label Elektra is to be re-launched by Atlantic. The label - home to The Doors, Love and The Stooges - was founded in 1950 by Jac Holzman and Paul Rickholt but has been dormant since 2004.

The new imprint will be run by Fuelled By Ramen founder John Janick and Atlantic executive A&R Mike Caren. In a move perhaps not in the spirit of the label's late '60s heyday, the first release will be the soundtrack to HBO TV show True Blood, followed by the US debut release from Little Boots.

The label also has signed French duo Justice and Gnarls Barkley rapper Cee-Lo.

"We are planning on building an eclectic brand," Janick said. "We're looking for artists with potential. We're not an incubator label; we're going to develop artists and get them to the next level."

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And finally... today would have marked the 20th wedding anniversary of Bill Wyman and Mandy Smith. That is of course if the aging Rolling Stone and his 19-year-old bride had stayed together for more than 17 months. Here's Bill performing Je Suis Un Rockstar around the time Mandy would have been 10...