It's Official: Beatles Coming to Rock Band

The Beatles’ catalog is still not available on iTunes, and will likely remain that way for some time. A legal battle over the licensing rights has prevented the Beatles’ music from legally entering the modern, digital world.

Yet, in a move that manages to both slay a sacred cow and bypass the logical and functional—not to mention lucrative—transposition of the Beatles catalog to digital format, the Beatles will be coming to popular video game franchise Rock Band.



In an ominous ad featuring a cryptic “09.09.09” super-imposed over the cleanest band practice space in the history of band practice spaces, MTV Games and Harmonix have announced a partnership with Apple Corps, LTD (not to be confused, upon punishment of costly litigation, with Apple Inc.) to bring the Fab Four directly to your living room, where you can, you know, pretend to be them. Or something.

Oh, and if the music and animated avatars of the Beatles weren’t enough, new hardware “modeled after the instruments used by John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr throughout their career” will eventually become available as well. The date for the release of Beatles-themed hardware is still unknown, but, I’m fairly certain “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” will sound just as terrible on one plastic guitar-controller as another.

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