A new exhibition featuring photos of The Beatles‘ first tour of America has opened in New York.

The Liverpool legends’ first journey to the US and the height of the Beatlemania craze in the early 1960s was photographed by Curt Gunther, and a retrospective of his work, Unseen Beatles, is currently taking place at the Morrison Hotel Gallery in Soho, New York.

Speaking of how close he was to the band, Gunther’s son told Rolling Stone magazine: “He was there on every plane ride and in every hotel room. I think there was real, genuine affection between The Beatles and my dad.”

The photos the photographer collected include not just the band playing live, but also of their downtime, with them riding horses and goofing around with manager Brian Epstein. Peter Blachley, co-founder of the Morrison Hotel Gallery, said: “You can see it in the photographs. There were no handlers. Just, ‘Hang out, you’re one of the band now’.”

Alongside Gunther’s photos are pictures by another photographer close to the band, Robert Whitaker, who famously posed the band with a number of dismembered toy dolls and raw meat for the album cover of US release, Yesterday And Today.

The Unseen Beatles exhibition of Robert Whitaker and Curt Gunther’s work is on throughout the Summer. For more info visit morrisonhotelgallery.com.

Bon Iver have announced a UK and Ireland arena tour for later this year.

The folk band, who are already confirmed to headline this summer’s Latitude festival, will play five arena shows in November. The dates are part of a full European tour.

The gigs kick off on November 8 at London’s Wembley Arena and run until November 10 when the band headline Dublin’s O2 Arena. They will also play dates in Manchester, Glasgow and Belfast.

Bon Iver release a new EP today (June 19). The EP, which is simply titled ‘iTunes Session EP‘, contains a total of seven tracks, all of which were recorded live. Among the tracks scheduled for release is a cover of Bjork‘s ‘Who Is It?’ and the band’s recent single ‘Holocene’.

As well as this, the band announced yesterday (June 18) that they have helped to design a sneaker for ‘cruelty free’ footwear brand Keep.

The double Grammy-winning musician has joined forces with Los Angeles based company Keep to make a ‘salmon’ pink canvas shoe, which features “herringbone accents” and “a black fishbone detail across the toe”.

Bon Iver will play:

London Wembley Arena (November 8)

Dublin O2 Arena (12)

Keith Richards has confirmed that the Rolling Stones will meet in London in July to discuss their 50th anniversary plans.

“It’s all very hush-hush,” Richards is quoted in Rolling Stone. “I’m going over to London for a bit, so I’ll find out more then.”

The guitarist confirmed that the band will also discuss whether they will record any new material, their first since 2005’s A Bigger Bang. “We’re going to talk about that in July and see. I mean, I’d love to get some tracks down and see what songs we’ve got. And that goes along with part of getting the band back together and getting things moving. So I’d love to cut some tracks, yeah.”

Richards also revealed that he’d still like to tour in 2013. “I’d like to get a couple of shows down and see how it goes,” Richards said. “But I’d love it.”

The band reconvened in April in New York, where they inviting a film crew led by director Brett Morgen to shoot footage for a documentary celebrating the group’s anniversary, due for release in September.

“We played everything, really,” said Richards. “We’re just getting our chops together. It was like playing in the garage, a maintenance check, you know?”

Earlier this week the band denied tabloid reports they were to bow out with a headline slot at next year’s Glastonbury festival.

In a Twitter post the band said, “Every year the @RollingStones are asked to play this UK festival..but playing Glastonbury is not in our plans”.

Meanwhile, A new photography exhibition called The Rolling Stones: 50 is set to open at London’s Somerset House this summer.

The free exhibition will be held from July 13 – August 27 in the landmark venue’s East Wing Galleries and will coincide with the release of a book of the same time. The book will feature 700 shots and words from the band on their history, and will hit UK bookshops on July 12.

The exhibition will show a host of unseen and rare photographs, including more than 70 prints, with live shots, studio images and reportage pictures on display as well as contact sheets and negative strips.

Blur guitarist Graham Coxon, Alt-J and Patrick Watson are among the new additions to this summer’s End Of The Road festival.

The festival, which will take place in Larmer Tree Gardens in Wiltshire on August 31 – September 2, will be headlined by Grandaddy, Midlake and a co-headline effort from Grizzy Bear and Tindersticks.

Also newly confirmed for the festival are Savages, Creature With The Atom Brain, Gravenhurst, Abi Wade, Big Wave, Olympians, Horse Thief, Hurray For The Riff Raff, King Charles, The Step Kids, Woods, and Zachary Cale.

They join a line-up that also includes Anna Calvi, The Antlers, First Aid Kit, Beach House, Veronica Falls, The Low Anthem, Toy, Islet and many others.

For more information, visit Endoftheroadfestival.com.

The line-up for End Of The Road so far is as follows:

Grandaddy

Outfit

Morrissey has announced an extensive tour of North America.

The singer, who recently reissued his 1998 debut album Viva Hate, will play 33 dates beginning in Boston on October 5. The tour eventually closes in Atlantic City on December 8.

Morrissey will play his only UK show of the year at Manchester Arena on July 28.

The North American tour dates are:

10/05 – Boston, Massachusetts – Wang Theatre

12/08 – Atlantic City, New Jersey – Showboat Resort and Casino – House of Blues

Victor Spinetti, the comic actor who appeared in three Beatles films, has died aged 82.

The Welsh star appeared in a string of acclaimed movies as well as appearing on the West End and Broadway. He died in a hospice in Monmouth this morning after battling with pancreatic cancer, reports BBC.

Once described by Paul McCartney as “the man who makes clouds disappear”, Spinetti was the only non-Beatle to appear in the films A Hard Day’s Night, Help! and Magical Mystery Tour.

Born Victorio G A Spinetti on 2 September 1929 south Wales, he attended Monmouth School before studying at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama in Cardiff. He worked as a waiter and factory worker before his acting career took off.

Spinetti appeared in more than 30 films, including Zeffirelli’s The Taming Of The Shrew, The Return Of The Pink Panther, The Krays, and Under Milk Wood with Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton. He also appeared frequently on television and theatre as an actor and director.

George Harrison once told him: “You’ve got to be in all our films. If you’re not in them me mum won’t come and see them – because she fancies you.”

In 1968, he also worked with John Lennon to turn Lennon’s book, In His Own Write, into to a play which he then directed at the National Theatre – where Laurence Olivier was Artistic Director.

Victor Spinetti’s partner of 44 years, Graham Curnow, died in 1997.

Mark and Colleen Hayward/Getty Images

Michael Nesmith, the former Monkee and country rock pioneer, is to play the UK for the first time in over 30 years.

Nesmith, who left the Monkees in 1970, went on to release three albums with The First National Band between 1970 and 1971, which were later hailed as country rock classics.

“The shows will take a complete look at the songs I’ve recorded over the years, starting back when I was just a solo folk singer,” says Nesmith of the forthcoming dates. “I have decades of music to draw from and I think I can put together something exciting, something that will make for a very full, dramatic and emotional evening.”

Speaking to Uncut in 2008, Nesmith recalled his last UK tour, playing “workingmen’s clubs for three or four months. The audiences were mostly morbidly curious: I was out of The Monkees, and they weren’t on for giving any deference to yesterday’s TV star.”

This time, Nesmith will play:

Friday, October 26:

Oran Moor, Glasgow

Sunday, October 28:

Queen Elizabeth Hall, Southbank, London

Monday, October 29:

RNCM, Manchester

Richard Hawley has unveiled the video for his new single, “Down In The Woods”. Scroll down to watch it.

The heavy, psychedelic single is the second to be taken from his latest album, following “Leave Your Body Behind You”. The album, Standing At The Sky’s Edge, is Hawley’s seventh solo LP and it debuted at Number Three in the Official UK Album Chart last month, his highest ever chart placing.

Richard Hawley recently said that his only ambition in his music career was to “avoid flipping burgers”. He told Shortlist magazine that he was happy to live in a separate “bubble” away from the mainstream. Asked about his chart success, he replied: “Well, the chart thing is fucking mental so I presume people are digging what I do. But I can’t really feel anything else yet. I live in a bubble anyway and that’s for a good reason. It keeps you real and keeps you sane.”

Hawley, who also said he’d “never, ever been interested in fashion or being fashionable”, added: “I would have been content just playing the music I loved in clubs and pubs. My only real ambition was to avoid flipping burgers or ending up in the steelworks.”

Hawley is set to embark on an extensive UK tour later this year.

Richard Hawley will play:

Holmfirth Picture House (September 16)

O2 Academy Brixton (3)

Sonic Youth‘s Lee Ranaldo and Dinosaur Jr.’s J Mascis have collaborated on a cover of Peter Green’s guitar instrumental “Albatross” for a new Fleetwood Mac covers compilation.

To be released on August 14 via Hear Music/Concord, the compilation also features contributions from Marianne Faithful, Antony Hegarty and MGMT.

The track listing for the compilation is:

Entrance Band – ‘Green Manalishi’

Lykke Li – ‘Silver Springs’

Bon Iver frontman Justin Vernon has helped to design a sneaker for ‘cruelty free’ footwear brand, Keep.

The double Grammy winning musician has joined forces with Los Angeles based company Keep to make a ‘salmon’ pink canvas shoe, which features “herringbone accents” and “a black fishbone detail across the toe”.

The project is hoping to raise awareness for Best Friends Animal Society, which is described as “an animal advocacy group which operates the nation’s largest sanctuary for abused and abandoned animals. Both Vernon and Una Kim, Keep’s founder, are proud adopters of rescued pets, pictures of whom often make appearances on both the band and Keep’s blogs.”

Advance sales for the shoe are running until July 1 and there will be a limited global instore release of the sneaker in October. Last year, Animal Collective teamed up with Keep for a similar project.

Bon Iver release a new live EP, the ‘iTunes Session EP’, today (June 19), which will include a version of Bjork’s ‘Who Is It?’. The band will then go on to headline this summer’s Latitude festival. They are also set to play Glasgow’s SECC on November 10.

The Red Hot Chili Peppers are planning to release 18 previously unheard songs from the sessions for their last album, I’m With You.

According to Rolling Stone, the band will begin on August 14 with the release of “Strange Man” and “Long Progression”, and on September 11 they will release a follow-up, “Magpies” and “Victorian Machinery”.

“Some songs seem to have a lot more of an agenda than others,” said Chili Peppers guitarist Josh Klinghoffer in a statement. “Some songs play well with others and some songs need more attention and a little extra care. Here are some songs that seemed to want to pair up and take a later train. Keep your eye on them, they’re up to something . . .”

Each instalment will be available as a 7″ single and digitally.

The Rolling Stones have denied reports they will retire next year with a headline slot at Glastonbury.

It was reported “sources” close to the band had indicated that their Glastonbury appearance will be their final date in a “handful” of shows in the UK and USA in 2012. It was also suggested that, as it is part of the group’s 50-year anniversary, it will be seen as a good time to call it a day on live performances.

Representatives for the band insisted there is no truth in the claim, which appeared in the Sunday Mirror yesterday (June 17) and they would not be playing at Worthy Farm next summer.

The veteran four-piece have never played Glastonbury before. A spokesman for the festival told The Guardian there have been no conversations as yet. He added: “Everybody in the year off thinks they’ve come up with the perfect Glastonbury lineup. But at the moment there isn’t anything to confirm or deny.”

In a Twitter post the band said, “Every year the @RollingStones are asked to play this UK festival..but playing Glastonbury is not in our plans”.

Damon Albarn unveiled a new track at a poetry festival in London earlier this week (June 14) – scroll down to the bottom of the page and click to watch.

Consequence Of Sound reports that the singer, who was performing at the Poetry Olympics at the Queen Elizabeth Hall, included a brand new song in his set which he told the crowd he had recorded “last week”.

Although initial reports claimed that the bouncing and melodic acoustic track constituted new material from Blur, there has been no confirmation if the song will be used by the Britpop legends or if it will be released in one of Albarn’s other musical projects.

Last month (May 23), producer William Orbit told NME that he had been in the studio with Blur working on new material, but that Albarn had decided to halt the recording sessions. “The new stuff sounded amazing,” he said. “Then it all stopped suddenly. It was all over with Damon, and the rest of the band were like, ‘Is this it?’.”

In April, however, Albarn denied he was finished with Blur after earlier suggesting that their huge Hyde Park reunion gig to coincide with the close of this summer’s Olympics in August would be their final show, while last week (June 9), guitarist Graham Coxon admitted that he and his bandmates felt “pressure” from fans to record new material.

The band are due to warm up for the show with a short tour taking in dates in Margate, Wolverhampton and Plymouth, along with headlining Sweden’s Way Out West in the same month.

REM’s Peter Buck has posted his first solo material online – scroll down to the bottom of the page and click to hear his track ’10 Million BC’.

The song, which surfaced via Slicing Up Eyeballs, is set to appear on the guitarist’s debut album, although a title or release date for the LP have yet to be revealed. In March of this year, Scott McCaughey – Buck’s Minus 5 band mate and frequent REM collaborator – confirmed that he had been working on the record and hinted that it would be released on vinyl only.

It is likely that the LP will be the first album made by any of the members of REM since they split up in September last year, following the release of their 15th studio album Collapse Into Now. Last November, frontman Michael Stipe said it was “unfathomable” that he would make a solo LP, with reports suggesting that the singer is more interested in pursuing his artistic interests such as sculpture and photography. The band’s bassist Mike Mills, meanwhile, has given no indication that he will record or release material by himself.

All three members of the seminal alternative rock band, meanwhile, have repeatedly quashed any speculation that they will reunite in the future, with Mills describing the timing of their split as “perfect” and Stipe insisting that they will not play together again.

Wayne Coyne has said that the band’s new album could be the best Flaming Lips album that the band ever make.

The Oklahoman band are set to release their collaboration-heavy LP The Flaming Lips And Heavy Fwends on CD and digitally on June 25 but, in an interview with Spinner, the singer said the band were already looking ahead to their new studio record.

Asked to describe the album, he said: “Big songs, big arrangements, big productions, big mixing. It feels to me like religious music from the future that’s like this distorted melody coming from somewhere else in the universe and we’re just sort of collecting them.”

The frontman, who also said that the record was “almost exclusively” about “internal fear, and an internal sadness about living/oblivion”, added: “I would say I think it could be the best Flaming Lips record that could ever be made.”

Earlier this month, Coyne became embroiled in a public spat with singer Erykah Badu, after she told him to “kiss my glittery ass” when he leaked an unapproved edit of the highly NSFW video to “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face“. Last week (June 9), however, Coyne insisted that vthe ideo was “wonderful” and claimed that Badu’s public display of rage was a means of garnering publicity.

‘The Flaming Lips And Heady Fwends’ was originally released as a double vinyl album for this year’s Record Store Day. The LP sees Coyne and co teaming up with a variety of artists including Ke$ha, Bon Iver, Yoko Ono, Nick Cave, My Morning Jacket and Tame Impala.

Photo credit: Andy Willsher