Yoko Ono’s meddling at the eleventh hour nearly brought down the planned release of Beatles Rock Band. John Lennon’s widow swooped in at the last minute with a raft of changes, after Macca, Ringo and Dhani Harrison had given it their seal of approval. Read on to see how Yoko’s still managing to wind up Beatles fans the world over.
Beatles Rock Band is all set to land on 9 September, after much E3 fanfare which saw Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, George Harrison’s son Dhani and Yoko Ono take to the stage and give it the trademark double thumbs up. Except, it seems, Mrs Lennon nearly derailed the whole thing.
According to Wired, Yoko rolled up at Harmonix’s studios in Boston, just three months before E3, having initially not take much of an interest. “She gave the designers hell,” said Paul DeGooyer, VP of MTV’s game division. Alex Rigopulos of Harmonix said, “We were like, ‘Oh, gee. Thanks’. It would have been nice to know that six months ago, but yes, ‘Thank you very much’.” It’s all the more telling seeing as Dhani Harrison told us at the LA launch party that he’d had a build of the game “for years.”
Word is Yoko wanted to tweak the final 1969 scene, showing The Beatles performing on the roof of their Saville Row offices. She said it needed to be windier. To be fair to her, footage does show her old man getting buffered by a few gales and Ringo looking like he’s about to fall off his drum stool.
