For all things Beatles—music, art, photo and fashion exhibits, contests, games, memorabilia and memories from guest speakers—it’s the three-day Beatles Festival gets underway on Sunday. Headquartered at The Mirage where Cirque du Soleil’s Beatles Love musical plays it will seem as if the Strip has become Abbey Road and the resort hotel has upped to Liverpool!

This year’s Beatles Fest here will feature concerts by Mellow Yellow singer Donovan in his first ever Vegas appearance, Liverpool band star Billy J. Kramer and the Dakotas who were also managed by The Beatles manager Brian Epstein, and Spencer Davis who founded the Spencer Davis Group with Stevie Winwood, model-actress-photographer Pattie Boyd who was married to both George Harrison and Eric Clapton will sign autographs at a special photo and fashion exhibit set up for her. George and Pattie first met on the set of Hard Days Night and married two years later. Festival organizers persuaded Ringo Starr to autograph several copies of his new limited edition artwork book Painting is my Madness to be available to Vegas fans.

Two friends of mine are involved with the Festival: Ken Mansfield, who was the US Manager of their Apple Records label has written two books about The Beatles who he first became friends with in the mid 60’s will make his first Beatles Fest appearance, and British humorist and leading Beatles scholar Martin Lewis, who will emcee all the guest events. Its his 43rd Beatles Fest convention since 1992 and he produced the 40th anniversary celebrations of the Beatles first visit to the United States.

Luxe Life will return Monday with a report of the Fest’s first day.

This entry was posted on Friday, June 27th, 2008 at 9:32 am and is filed under Misc. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.