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Music News: You can buy the right to be buried with Eleanor Rigby

Eleanor Rigby's grave in Liverpool.
Eleanor Rigby's grave in Liverpool.Ryan McKee/CC BY-ND 2.0

by Jay Gabler

August 21, 2017

Eleanor Rigby died in the church and was buried along with her name. Want to join her? In an auction that begins on Sept. 11, the deed for the late Liverpudlian's grave will become available for purchase. The deed comes with a Bible that seemingly belonged to Rigby and — more intriguingly — the right to be buried with Rigby, as long as you wait until after 2024. (By British law, that's how long you'd have to wait to disturb the remains of the Rigby family members.)

Yes, Eleanor Rigby was a real person: she's buried in the Liverpool churchyard where Paul McCartney and John Lennon first met. The deed to her grave, which is being sold by a family member, is expected to fetch several thousand dollars — but not nearly as much as the original handwritten score for the Beatles song inspired by her name, which is also going up for auction and is expected to sell for over $25,000. (The Guardian)

Remembering Sonny Burgess

Rockabilly pioneer Sonny Burgess has died of complications from a fall, at age 88. Burgess recorded several singles for Sun Records in the 1950s; he didn't achieve much commercial success, but his storied reputation as "the Arkansas Wild Man" grew over time, leading to a welcome resurgence in the 1990s that included collaborations with Dave Alvin and Garry Tallent (the E Street Band). (New York Times)

Prince/Universal deal under investigated

St. Paul attorney Peter J. Gleekel has been appointed to investigate the status of the deal between Universal Music Group and Prince’s estate. The $30 million deal quickly hit the rocks when it was discovered that some of the rights granted to Universal conflicted with rights Prince had granted to Warner Bros., but rescinding a deal like that is no simple matter. Gleekel's review, to be completed by Dec. 15, will help the court determine what to do with the deal. (NPR)

Chvrches heading to Riverdale

Chvrches will make an appearance as comic book characters in an upcoming issue of Archie Comics. They'll be mentors to a new band being formed by the Archie characters. "Specifically," reports Pitchfork, "frontwoman Lauren Mayberry will serve as a guide to Betty and Veronica."

Question, though: shouldn't this gig really have gone to Alvvays? Maybe they came on too strong.

Virginia residents petition for Missy statue

Over 22,000 fans have signed a petition to replace a Confederate monument in Portsmouth, Va. with a statue of hometown heroine Missy Elliott.

"Hailing from humble beginnings as the only child of a power company dispatcher and a welder at Portsmouth's lauded naval shipyard," reads the petition, "she rose to become a platinum recording artist with over 30 million albums sold. All this without even once owning a slave. Missy is all of us. Missy is everything the Confederacy was not."

Bonnie Tyler rocks the eclipse

As promised, pop star Bonnie Tyler celebrated the solar eclipse as only she could: by singing her immortal power ballad "Total Eclipse of the Heart" just as the moon passed in front of the sun. A new generation of pop stars, the band DNCE, backed Tyler up for the performance on a Caribbean cruise ship. The eclipse should bring a nice payday for Tyler and songwriter Jim Steinman: sales and streams of the song have skyrocketed in the lead-up to the event. (Pitchfork)