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My streaming gem: why you should watch Starcrash

The latest in a series of writers recommending under-appreciated films available to stream highlights a schlocky late 70s Star Wars rip-off

When the Emperor of the First Circle of the Universe (that is, Christopher Plummer, in a patent leather suit beneath silver armor, a cape and oven mitt-like gloves) wants to calm his worried son (David Hasselhoff) during a climactic moment, he steps forward amid a room full of warriors and slain robots and bellows: Imperial Battleship stop the flow of time!!!

It is an apogee of trash brilliance unrivaled anywhere else in the galaxy.

The Star Wars big bang created a universe that is still expanding, but never was the fiery scream of that first eruption felt more furiously than in the late 1970s. Producers far and wide hitched their fortunes to the Millennium Falcons hyperdrive, to varying measures of financial and artistic success.

It got Star Trek (the far superior of the two franchises) back into business, with the curiously terrific Star Trek: The Motion Picture in 1979 and begat Battlestar Galactica in 1978, Flash Gordon in 1980 and Buck Rogers in the 25th Century in 1979.

But these are the more respectable titles. On the lower budget shelf came Battle Beyond the Stars (penned on assignment by John Sayles), Galaxina (starring Playboy playmate Dorothy Stratten) and one of the all-time pieces of junk, Italys Cosmos: War of the Planets.

In the middle of all this is something that demands further study. Mixing low-budget schlock with genuine design brilliance is Starcrash. Produced at Romes Cinecitt Studios in 1978 and distributed by Roger Cormans New World Pictures, Starcrash was directed and co-written by future Dario Argento collaborator Luigi Cozzi (credited as Lewis Coates)

In addition to Plummer (only in a few scenes, whispering his ludicrous lines with a true thespians straight face) and Hasselhoff (dashing, and wielding a cheapo green lightsaber) is a nervous police robot with a wacky American Southern drawl, a goon named Thor with green makeup on his face (but not his neck), and the real reason this movie is as remembered as it is: Caroline Munro.

Munro, already known for appearing in Hammer Studio films, the Ray Harryhausen Golden Voyage of Sinbad and as Bond villainess Naomi in The Spy Who Loved Me, is Stella Star, a bikini clad smuggler with Patrick Nagel-like makeup and eternally blown-out hair. Though her voiced is dubbed by Candy Clark (Plummer referred to her accent as one you could coot with a fookin knife when I asked him about Starcrash in a recent interview), her charisma still blasts through the screen. Yes, it is absurd that all the men are wearing spacesuits or typical high fantasy gowns, but she wears her various skintight, fabric-light outfits with confidence and verve. She is a vision of vertices, a striking image on her own, but even more so against the primary colors of the various interplanetary interiors and spaceship bridges of the film.

At her side is Akton, played by former child preacher (and subject of an Academy Award-winning documentary feature) Marjoe Gortner. Resembling a lovechild of poultry magnate Frank Purdue and Foreigners Lou Gramm during his Jukebox Hero peak, Gortner is a baffling pick as a leading man, but he does have access to cool, neon-like laser magic and a red-and-black rubbery outfit.

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Photograph: Allstar/NEW WORLD PICTURES

The plot to Starcrash is submental a ripoff of Star Wars, which was already a ripoff classic action serials. Theres a gender-swapped rescue mission (David Hasselhoff is Princess Leia) and a big laser beam shoot em up at the end. We visit an outer space hard labor prison, a Zardoz-like rocky planet riddled with troglodytes, a frozen realm where clouds zoom across the sky in surreal high speeds and then theres the evil Count, Zarth Arn, who literally cackles after describing his plan to take over the universe. (It involves something called The Doom Machine.)

In addition to Christopher Plummer, the other grown up in the room, who youll notice immediately, is composer John Barry. His inimitable orchestral sweep lends the proceedings a strong boost. While his score to Starcrash is not going to top On Her Majestys Secret Service, Out of Africa or the (far more boring post-Star Wars flick) The Black Hole as a personal best, it is undeniably grand music.

And while the dialogue and performances in Starcrash are likely to lead to facepalms and outright laughter, I must state in no uncertain terms that the visual pop of this movie is tremendous. According to lore, production on Starcrash was marred by widespread food poisoning, then the negative was then held for ransom by striking workers. The effort was well worth it.

  • Starcrash is available on Amazon Prime in the US and UK

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/film/2020/apr/13/starcrash-david-hasselhoff-film-amazon-prime

Jay-Z takes action against ‘deepfakes’ of him rapping Hamlet and Billy Joel

YouTuber Vocal Synthesis says rappers label Roc Nation filed copyright notices against their AI impersonations

Jay-Zs company Roc Nation have filed takedown notices against deepfake videos that use artificial intelligence to make him rap Billy Joels We Didnt Start the Fire and Hamlets To be or not to be soliloquy.

The anonymous creator of the YouTube-hosted videos, known as Vocal Synthesis, has said that copyright notices were filed by Roc Nation, stating: This content unlawfully uses an AI to impersonate our clients voice. The two aforementioned videos have been removed, though others remain, including one of the rapper taking on the Book of Genesis.

Vocal Synthesis said via a deepfake video using the ersatz voices of Barack Obama and Donald Trump that they had no malicious purpose and were disappointed that Jay-Z and Roc Nation have decided to bully a small YouTuber in this way.

The Guardian has contacted Roc Nation for comment.

Deepfake videos have already caused great controversy in political and celebrity circles, with California outlawing them in 2018, and Facebook banning them in January. The technology has most notoriously been used to create fake pornographic videos featuring famous actors the PornHub website banned deepfakes in 2018.

Deepfakes differ from so-called cheapfakes, which dont involve AI and instead feature re-edited footage with the aim of distorting the truth. Famous examples include a video of Nancy Pelosi doctored to make her look drunk, and one of Keir Starmer created by the Tory party for social media where he appeared unable to answer a question. Posting on Twitter this week, Donald Trump shared a fake gif of Joe Biden sticking his tongue out.

There are debates over the copyright implications of AI-created videos such as the Jay-Z performances, with digital access advocates Creative Commons arguing: It is ill-advised to force the application of the copyright system an antiquated system that has yet to adapt to the digital environment on to AI.

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/music/2020/apr/29/jay-z-files-takes-action-against-deepfakes-of-him-rapping-hamlet-and-billy-joel

One Two Three Four: The Beatles in Time by Craig Brown review

Craig Browns portrait of the band recaptures their heyday in a series of shimmering vignettes

Fifty years since their dissolution in April 1970 the Beatles live on. The bands music, their significance and their individual personalities exert a hold on the cultural consciousness that seems to tighten as their heyday recedes. But is there anything new to say? Craig Browns One Two Three Four, the latest to enter the crowded library of Beatles books, is not a biography so much as a group portrait in vignettes, a rearrangement of stories and legends whose trick is to make them gleam anew.

The subtitle, The Beatles in Time, marks out the books difference from the rest. Brown goes on Beatles jaunts around Liverpool and Hamburg, visits fan festivals, tests the strength of the industry that has agglomerated around them. So many of the clubs where they played are now lost or changed beyond recognition a memory of a memory and the fans who do the pilgrimages are simply chasing shadows.

Brown, the arch-satirist, is wry about the 1,000-plus Beatles tribute acts worldwide. At times, the slightly desperate nostalgia of International Beatle Week in Liverpool reminds him of his parents watching The Good Old Days in the 1970s, a collective delusion that the dead can be revived. But then he watches tribute band the Fab Four play She Loves You and hes transported. A double fantasy is at work for as long as they play, we are all 50 years younger, gazing in wonder at the Beatles in their prime.

The book is a social history as well as a musical one. Success came slowly at first, and then quickly, as a landslide, flattening those ahead. Cliff Richard, once the golden boy of British pop, sounds (even decades later) mightily miffed about the way the Beatles displaced him. Prime ministers were as susceptible as teenagers: Harold Wilson sought an audience with them and later arranged their MBEs.

In the US, their appearances on The Ed Sullivan Show had a seismic effect: it seemed nobody could talk about anything else. Some responded in bemusement. Cassius Clay, after a jokey photo session with the boys, asked a reporter: Who were those little sissies? The actor Eleanor Bron recalls girls screaming like starlings as the Beatles landed at Heathrow a high sighing hopeless poignant sound, unrequitable. You can almost feel the 1960s bloom from monochrome into colour as the band plays irresistibly on.

Brown is an able memoirist, with an instinct for selection that quite eludes the Beatles most exhaustive chronicler, Mark Lewisohn, whose basic principle is to include everything he knows. One Two Three Four hasnt the authority or the insight of Ian MacDonalds sacred Revolution in the Head, and lacking an index it isnt as useful as Philip Normans 1981 biography Shout! But it does an intriguing sideline in characters who were tangential to the Beatles story such as Richard and Margaret Asher, who welcomed Paul as one of the family into their Wimpole Street home when he was going out with their daughter, Jane. Or the drummer Jimmie Nicol, a Beatle-surrogate for 10 days when Ringo had tonsilitis and whose life thereafter fell through the cracks. Or the sad figure of Eric Clague, former police constable, who discovered by chance that the woman he had accidentally run down and killed years before was Julia Lennon, Johns mum.

The
The Beatles in Washington DC, 1964. Photograph: Copyright Apple Corps

This is the strange paradox of the Beatles. Listening to the sound that John, Paul, George and Ringo created still plugs us right into the happiness and exhilaration that their producer, the gentlemanly George Martin, talked of. Reading about them, conversely, is quite a melancholy experience, because the end seems always in sight.

Its noticeable in this book how, once they are famous, they become prey to the most outrageous hangers-on. This vulnerability is most evident in John, the prickliest of the four, and also the neediest. He was first seduced by Magic Alex, a Greek conman whom he appointed his guru and electronics expert. Then he and George fell under the spell of the Maharishi.

Finally, and fatefully, came Yoko Ono, who John initially assured his wife Cynthia was crackers, just a weirdo artist who wants me to sponsor her. Brown reserves a particular scorn for Yoko, not because she broke up the Beatles that was inevitable but because her narcissism egged Lennon on to painful extremes of silliness and self-importance.

The saddest irony was that the Beatles once did have someone to take care of them. The Hamlets Ghost of this book is Brian Epstein, whose story Brown plots in reverse from the eclipse of his lonely suicide to the bright-eyed overtures as manager and impresario. It makes a poignant epilogue. Of course that story is nothing without the Beatles talent, but here is the reminder of how Epstein discovered it, packaged it, and sold it. Had he not taken himself down the steps of the Cavern Club one lunchtime in November 1961, the world might never have heard of the Beatles. As Lennon once admitted: Brian made it all seem real. We were in a daydream til he came along We stopped chomping at cheese rolls and jam butties onstage.

One Two Three Four: The Beatles in Timeby Craig Brownis published by Fourth Estate (20). To order a copy go to guardianbookshop.com. Free UK p&p over 15

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/apr/13/one-two-three-four-the-beatles-in-time-by-craig-brown-review

The Strokes: The New Abnormal review new-found focus

Julian Casablancas is back on passive-aggressive form on an album of all-out pop and mid-paced fillers

What was on the Strokes minds when they named their latest album The New Abnormal? Its anyones guess. Part of the appeal of this band has long lain in their inscrutability especially that of singer Julian Casablancas. Its in the way he hollers about something so oblique, spittle-flecked and sublime as to be beyond the ken of the average civilian, even as she pores over a lyric sheet.

No one in Camp Stroke, of course, foresaw the atypical, twilit times into which this album would arrive. But The New Abnormal does herald another unexpected state of affairs: one in which this bands long, slow, painful decline finally levels out a little.

These nine songs, two of them already released, arent all endorphin rushes that recall the Strokes imperial period, but they come closer than this benighted band have in ages to some kind of musical sweet spot.

Two decades ago, the fivesome hit upon a way to bottle grubby lightning, borrowing the attitude of the Velvet Underground and the double-helix guitars of Television (plus a soupon of the Cars and rather more Ramones) and made trapped-nerve rock music a legitimate fetish once again. After 2003, and the bands second album, Room on Fire, the co-conspirators gradually fell out with one another and into rock cliches, addictions and solo ventures, to audibly diminishing returns. The bands two most recent outings, 2011s Angles and 2013s Comedown Machine, went through the motions a little too obviously. The Strokes were great when they sounded prematurely jaded, less so when they had earned that status the hard way.

Now there is new-found energy, discernible in the form of a Jean-Michel Basquiat painting on the cover Bird on Money, the artists tribute to jazz horn player Charlie Bird Parker. There are out-and-out pop songs. A cessation of hostilities has been declared between Casablancass gnarlier meanderings in his side-gig, the Voidz, and the effortless, five-way synchromesh of peak Strokes.

Most of all, there is focus. Strangely, the jumping-off point for this late-life flicker is a barely concealed cover version. Bad Decisions, a knowing rewrite of Billy Idols 1981 hit Dancing With Myself, suggests the band might have actually had some fun knocking around in the same room together, rather than mere strained detente. (A series of between-song outtakes labours this point a little too hard, perhaps.) Moreover, Casablancas is back on rueful, passive-aggressive form, while the twin guitars of Albert Hammond Jr and Nick Valensi weaponise simplicity.

Without going to Shangri-La the Malibu studio where the album was recorded and blending in with the all-white decor, its hard to know exactly what the producer brings to this party. But the guru behind the faders here is Rick Rubin, a badass Buddha now less known for his early triumphs (producing Slayers Reign in Blood, signing Public Enemy, unleashing Beastie Boys) and more for his ability to fix stymied creatives. He is less a gilder of lilies than a trimmer of fat, and there is a clarity to The New Abnormal that commends it.

Watch the video for Bad Decisions by the Strokes

Album opener The Adults Are Talking is another giddy keeper, in which the details pop out brightly: pizzicato guitar, a weird backwards cymbal hiss, Casablancas swapping between croon and falsetto. Despite a random mutter of stockholders!, it all knits together.

With any band of this arc and scope, the task here is to taste the fresh fruit being thrown into the bowl of dubious backstage punch. Billy Idol is not the only 80s reference point: Eternal Summer is an unashamed yacht-rock track that pivots surprisingly towards Talking Heads.

What really stands out, though, is how Casablancas starts the song. When I think of you, he trills, in a soul-pop falsetto worthy of Janet Jackson; the frazzled, FX-laden outro instead recalls her brother Michael.

On Arctic Monkeys most recent album, Tranquillity Base Hotel & Casino, Alex Turner blithely confessed his youthful fandom (I just wanted to be one of the Strokes, he sang). Casablancas unwittingly returns the favour here: fleetingly, he can sound like his disciple. The start of Not the Same Anymore shimmers like an echo of an echo that would have sat nicely on Tranquillity Base. Youre not the same any more, murmurs Casablancas, straight out of the Turner lexicon, Dont play that game any more/ Youd make a better window than a door.

The New Abnormal remains a frustrating listen despite its gleam. Faster tempos would have helped. Nothing says Will this do? more clearly than a mid-paced shuffle, of which there are a few. Some songs just dont gel. Why Are Sundays So Depressing? is, somehow, less than the sum of its discrete good ideas (the bow-wow-ing keyboard, the stuttering melody). Track titles such as Brooklyn Bridge to Chorus could have used a final edit. (The song itself starts with a cute keyboard brio reminiscent of Metronomy before turning into an odd disco jangle; its not at all bad, neither is it magisterial.)

Listen to Brooklyn Bridge to Chorus

You sense that the albums swaying crescendo of a closer, Ode to the Mets, carries a weight of significance. It really isnt about baseball. As ever, the lyrics provide few clues as to the target of Casablancass weary ire. I was just bored/ Playing the guitar/ Learned all your tricks/ Wasnt too hard, he sneers, as the band headily mix swagger and sentimentality. It all makes for an odd state of mind to get used to: the Strokes arent over yet.

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/music/2020/apr/11/the-strokes-the-new-abnormal-review-new-found-focus

Rihanna gives 1.67m to support LA domestic violence victims in lockdown

The singer joined with Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey to provide shelter, meals and counselling for families at risk in coronavirus pandemic

Rihanna has donated $2.1m (1.67m) to the Mayors Fund for Los Angeles to assist victims of domestic violence affected by the coronavirus lockdown. The singers Clara Lionel Foundation joined with Twitter and Square CEO Jack Dorsey to donate matching sums to the drive. Their donations will cover 10 weeks of support, including shelter, meals and counselling for families experiencing domestic violence during the pandemic in greater Los Angeles.

Alyson Messenger, a managing staff lawyer with the Jenesse Center, a domestic violence organisation in South Los Angeles, told the Los Angeles Times last month that the lockdown was a worst-case scenario for anyone in an abusive relationship: Compound that with the fact that access to services is more difficult than ever.

UN secretary general Antnio Guterres tweeted on 6 April: Many women under lockdown for #COVID19 face violence where they should be safest: in their own homes. I urge all governments to put womens safety first as they respond to the pandemic.

In Chinas Hubei province, the centre of the initial outbreak, domestic violence reports to police more than tripled in a single county, from 47 cases in February 2019 to 162 this year. A quarter of British domestic violence charities said that they could not effectively support abuse victims during lockdown owing to technical issues, inability to meet victims and staff sickness.

A statement announcing the donations by Rihanna a domestic abuse survivor and Dorsey said: Victims of domestic violence exist all over the world, so this is just the beginning.

Last month, Rihannas Clara Lionel Foundation previously joined with Jay-Zs Shawn Carter Foundation to donate $2m (1.59m) to support undocumented workers, prisoners, homeless people, the elderly and children of frontline health workers in Los Angeles and New York during the Covid-19 outbreak. She also donated personal protective equipment to healthcare providers in New York State, and gave $5m ($4m) to global organisations to protect healthcare workers and marginalised communities.

Her father, Ronald Fenty, has been recovering from coronavirus after spending 14 days inside the Paragon Isolation Center in Barbados. He told the Sun: I thought I was going to die. He said his daughter sent a ventilator to his home, which ultimately he did not need.

The 32-year old singer is the latest musician to mobilise in the effort to assist healthcare providers and people affected by coronavirus. Lady Gaga has curated the benefit concert One World: Together at Home featuring performances from such artists as Gaga, Billie Eilish, Lizzo, Paul McCartney and Coldplays Chris Martin to be livestreamed globally and televised in the US on 18 April. The BBC will broadcast an adapted version the following day.

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/music/2020/apr/10/rihanna-1-point-coronavirus-lockdown-donation-los-angeles-domestic-violence

Laura Marling: Song for Our Daughter review the intimate album we need

Written to an imaginary child about what it is to be a woman in this society, the singers seventh album is alternately intimate, sneering and sad, and lavished with gorgeous melodies

Laura Marling has described her seventh solo album as a kind of conceptual work. Song for Our Daughter, she says, is about trauma and an enduring quest to understand what it is to be a woman in this society. The songs are written to an imaginary child, offering her all the confidences and affirmations I found so difficult to provide myself. It has also turned up months earlier than expected. Scheduled for release in August the beginning of the annual three-month season when albums by major artists traditionally appear it has been brought forward. In light of the change to all our circumstances, Marling wrote on Instagram, I saw no reason to hold back on something that, at the very least, might entertain, and, at its best, provide some union.

The
The artwork for Song for Our Daughter. Photograph: Publicity image

However altruistic her intention, its quite a canny move: a lot of people have a lot of time on their hands right now, which may cause them to focus more intently on a singers work. Yet there is always the chance the opposite may happen. These are, as you can hardly have failed to notice, extraordinary, unprecedented times. There is no escape from whats going on in the outside world: to release an album now, an artist would have to be pretty confident theyd made something capable of cutting through the constant roar of news about the terrifying global crisis; something capable of subverting our natural inclination to react by turning to stuff we already know and love and find comforting. But a lack of confidence has never been Laura Marlings undoing: as so-called sensitive singer-songwriters go, she always cuts a remarkably robust figure. I have not a fuck to give, she snaps on opener Alexandra, and all the contents of Song for Our Daughter are distinctly less gooey and self-absorbed than an album offering advice to an imaginary unborn child might be in less assured hands.

Marling is still wont to change her accent with the frequency that some singer-songwriters change plectrums. Indeed, she sometimes changes accent in the middle of a song, as on Hope We Meet Again, where she keeps dipping out of the mid-Atlantic twang thats presumably necessary if youre going to write songs with words such as highway and momma in them, into the kind of cut-glass RP you might expect from someone who comes from Berkshire. The first song that lyrically fits with the advice-to-an-imaginary-child concept, Strange Girl, finds Marling singing in the Dylan-derived sneer she deployed on Master Hunter, from her album Once I Was an Eagle, with what appears to be a little of mid-70s Lou Reeds patent brand of bored contempt stirred in. Which is certainly a bracing way of delivering maternal counsel.

Laura Marling: Held Down video

In fact, it doesnt sound much like maternal counsel at all, more like Marling talking about her own past with an appealing roll of the eyes: Build yourself a garden and have something to attend / Cut off all relations because you couldnt stand your friends / Oh girl, please dont bullshit me. Certainly, its more successful than the title track, where the emotions she summons when imagining her daughter in some pretty grim situations blood on the floor, with your clothes on the floor, taking your advice from an old, balding bore tend to nothing sharper than sighing, well-I-tried-to-warn-you sadness. Its a song written by someone trying to picture what its like being a parent, and not quite pulling said picture into focus.

That said, the title track is extraordinarily beautiful, a quality it shares with the rest of Song for Our Daughter. One of the albums musical touchstones was apparently Paul McCartneys 70s albums, and whatever else you think about post-Beatles Macca, youd have a hard time arguing he was stingy with the tunes. And so it is here. The piano-led Blow By Blow, the gentle strum of For You, and the feedback-flecked Held Down are all lavished with gorgeous, effortless-seeming melodies.

The effect is heightened by the production. Its a highly polished piece of work, big on rich string arrangements and intricate harmony vocals. Theres a particularly striking moment when a swirl of voices all Marlings, multi-tracked to infinity rises up to underpin the line I love you, goodbye, on The End of the Affair. But its recorded in a way that creates a live feel, the lack of echo giving the illusion that Marling and her band are in close proximity to the listener. The effect is impressively punchy on Strange Girl, but on the songs that fill the albums second half, which are largely reliant on vocals and fingerpicked guitar, the production conjures a warm, fresh intimacy that feels welcome in a world of Zoom meetings and FaceTime catch-ups. Perhaps now is the perfect moment to release it after all.

This week Alexis listened to

Jon Brooks – Fonn
Electronic auteur Jon Brookss new album How to Get Spring is pastoral and wistful: sonic lushness spiked with an aching hint of melancholy.

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/music/2020/apr/09/laura-marling-song-for-our-daughter-album-review

Lady Gaga, Billie Eilish and Paul McCartney to play coronavirus benefit

One World: Together at Home, streamed live on 18 April, will support UN response fund

Lady Gaga is to curate One World: Together at Home, a live-streamed and televised benefit concert in support of the World Health Organizations Covid-19 solidarity response fund and in celebration of health workers around the world.

The lineup includes Lady Gaga, Billie Eilish and her brother Finneas, Lizzo, J Balvin, Stevie Wonder, Paul McCartney, Billie Joe Armstrong of Green Day, Alanis Morissette, Burna Boy, Andrea Bocelli, Chris Martin of Coldplay, Eddie Vedder of Pearl Jam, Elton John, John Legend, Kacey Musgraves, Keith Urban and Lang Lang.

The US talk show hosts Jimmy Fallon, Jimmy Kimmel and Stephen Colbert will host the event, which broadcasts live across the US television networks ABC, CBS and NBC, as well as being streamed online, at 8pm EST on 18 April.

BBC One will show an adapted version of the concert on 19 April, including exclusive performances from UK artists and interviews with frontline health workers. The details of the broadcast are yet to be announced.

Other celebrities expected to appear include David Beckham, Idris and Sabrina Elba, Kerry Washington, Priyanka Chopra Jonas, Shah Rukh Khan and Sesame Street cast members.

The WHO and the social action platform Global Citizen have partnered to produce the event. The latters Together at Home series, launched last month, has featured performances from artists in isolation including Shawn Mendes, Camila Cabello and Rufus Wainwright.

In a WHO press conference, Lady Gaga said she had helped to raise $35m (28m) for Global Citizen in the past week. She clarified that One World was not a fundraising telethon and would focus on entertainment and messages of solidarity, with philanthropists and businesses urged to donate to the Covid-19 solidarity response fund ahead of the event.

The WHOs general director, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said:We may have to be apart physically for a little while, but we can still come together virtually to enjoy great music. The One World: Together at Home concert represents a powerful show of solidarity against a common threat.

This article was amended on 6 April 2020. Lady Gaga stated that philanthropists and businesses were being urged to donate to the organisation, rather than fans as an earlier version said. This has been corrected.

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/music/2020/apr/06/lady-gaga-billie-eilish-and-paul-mccartney-to-play-coronavirus-benefit

Marianne Faithfull hospitalised with coronavirus

Star described by her representatives as being stable and responding to treatment

Marianne Faithfull has been hospitalised in London with coronavirus.

The singer, who became famous during the swinging London scene of the 1960s and has had a respected (and occasionally troubled) career since, is said to be stable and responding to treatment, according to her representatives.

Her friend, the performer Penny Arcade, told Rolling Stone Faithfull had self-isolated following a cold, and then checked herself into hospital last Monday, where she tested positive for Covid-19. She has since contracted pneumonia.

Faithfull, who is 73, has had various health issues in the past. She suffered from anorexia during a spell of homelessness in central London in the early 1970s, when she was also addicted to heroin. In 2006, she was diagnosed with breast cancer and underwent successful surgery. In 2007, she announced she had hepatitis C, diagnosed 12 years previously. She also has arthritis, and has had other joint issues, including a hip injury which became infected after surgery and forced her to cancel a 2015 tour.

Apart from a decade-long fallow period following her 1960s breakthrough, she has steadily released music throughout her life. Her most recent album was 2018s Negative Capability, described as a masterly meditation on ageing and death in a five-star Observer review.

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2020/apr/04/marianne-faithfull-hospitalised-with-coronavirus

Abbey Road zebra crossing repainted in coronavirus lockdown

Council workers take advantage of the empty streets to spruce up the crossing featured on the cover of the Beatles 1969 album

The iconic Abbey Road zebra crossing made famous by the 1969 Beatles album of the same name has been repainted while the streets of London are empty because of the coronavirus pandemic.

A highways maintenance crew quietly repainted the normally busy zebra crossing on 24 March, the day after the prime minister ordered Britain to go on lockdown in an attempt to stem the spread of the virus.

A spokesperson for Westminster City Council said: This is a very busy zebra crossing and we repainted the line markings to ensure visibility and increased safety for drivers and pedestrians. Our contractors follow government advice on limiting the spread of covid-19, including social distancing and hand washing.

The
A site of national importance … the album cover for Abbey Road. Photograph: Pictorial Press/Alamy Stock Photo

The brightened markings can be seen in action on the Abbey Road webcam.

The government designated the crossing a site of national importance in 2010 and it can be altered only with the approval of local authorities. This London zebra crossing is no castle or cathedral but, thanks to the Beatles and a 10-minute photoshoot one August morning in 1969, it has just as strong a claim as any to be seen as part of our heritage, John Penrose, minister for tourism and heritage said at the time.

The remaining Beatles, Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr, celebrated the 50th anniversary of the Abbey Road album with a deluxe reissue last September. In January, it was announced as the biggest selling vinyl record of the 2010s in the US. It came eighth in the UK, with British Beatles fans apparently preferring Sgt Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band.

The cover for Abbey Road was shot at 11.35am on 8 August 1969, as John Lennon, George Harrison and Ringo Starr took a break from completing I Want You (Shes So Heavy) and The End, and Paul McCartney paused work on Oh! Darling. Standing on a step ladder in the middle of the road, photographer Iain Macmillan only had time to shoot six photographs on his Hasselblad camera given the oncoming traffic. McCartney selected the fourth image as the cover shot.

Repainting
Repainting the famous crossing. Photograph: Leon Neal/Getty Images

On the albums release, fans became convinced that McCartneys barefoot appearance related to the conspiracy theory that he had died two years earlier and been replaced by a ringer. He had in fact kicked off his sandals because it was hot.

On Abbey Road we were wearing our ordinary clothes. I was walking barefoot because it was a hot day, McCartney told Life magazine later that year. Can you spread it around that I am just an ordinary person and want to live in peace?

He parodied the theory on the cover of his 1993 live album, Paul Is Live, posing with a dog on the crossing. Pop cultural figures from the Simpsons to the Red Hot Chili Peppers and Doctor Who have also re-enacted the image.

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/music/2020/mar/27/abbey-road-crossing-repainted-coronavirus-lockdown-beatles-album

Seven-year-old Greek piano prodigy pens an ‘isolation waltz’

Stelios Kerasidis says his latest work is for people who suffer and isolate because of Covid-19

Move over Mozart, here comes Stelios Kerasidis. A seven-year-old Greek prodigy has penned an isolation waltz inspired by the pandemic.

The hypnotic, fugue-like melody has picked up more than 43,000 hits on YouTube since its launch last week.

Hi guys! Im Stelios. Lets be just a teeny bit more patient and we will soon be out swimming in the sea, he beams, perched on his piano stool, feet barely touching the floor. Im dedicating to you a piece of my own.

The work, his third composition, was written especially for people who suffer and those who isolate because of Covid-19, he adds.

Stelios Kerasidiss Isolation Waltz

Born in Athens in 2012 to Fotis and Agathe Kerasidis, both pianists who now teach him, Stelios first performed in public at the age of three.

In 2018 he played Chopins Waltz in A Minor at New Yorks Carnegie Hall, and last year he appeared at Londons Royal Albert Hall performing on Elton Johns famous red piano.

Stelios says his favourite pianist is the late Canadian Glenn Gould, best known for his technically demanding renditions of Bach variations.

The Greek has shown a flare for composing. His two earlier works were written for his sisters, Veronica and Anastasia, and like Isolation Waltz were met with critical acclaim.

Greece has been under lockdown for longer than most other European nations, the government having closed schools almost a month ago. Last week the government announced that swimming was also forbidden as the measures were ramped up.

The precautionary steps appear to be working: Greece has reported 79 deaths and fewer than 1,800 confirmed coronavirus cases, far fewer than some other countries.

Stelios, who is likely to be homebound for some time yet, has not hinted whether he has another composition up his sleeve.

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/06/seven-year-old-greek-piano-prodigy-pens-an-isolation-waltz