On June 19, Return To Forever will release a new three-disc album, The Mothership Returns, via Eagle Rock Entertainment.

The new album is also an opportunity for Return To Forever to unveil their new lineup — keyboardist/pianist Chick Corea, bassist Stanley Clarke and drummer Lenny White, plus new members violinist Jean Luc-Ponty and guitarist Frank Gambale.

The album will be released as an eight-panel digipak with two CDs, a Dolby 5.1 Surround-Sound DVD and a substantial booklet.

The DVD contains full live performances of “After The Cosmic Rain” and “The Romantic Warrior,” plus as an elongated trailer for the upcoming film documentary, The Story Of Return To Forever, and an hour-plus-long bonus film, Return To Forever: Inside The Music. The film includes live footage and interviews of the band members discussing the tracks on the CDs.

The music covers various eras of Return To Forever (This is band’s fourth incarnation) as well as classic songs from the individual artist’s catalogs.

For more information on Return To Forever, visit return2forever.com. Follow the band on Facebook.

In 1967, American-born animator Bob Balser was working on a project in Spain when he received an invitation to fly to London and try his hand at designing animated characters based on the Beatles. The project? A full-length cartoon feature film called Yellow Submarine.

“They had to get started quickly, because they had a screening date set for July of the following year,” Balser recalls. “They had just one year to do an entire feature-length animated film.” The schedule was tight, and the budget was small: slightly less than $1 million.

But among the talents assembled for the film were special effects director Charlie Jenkins and celebrated illustrator and graphic designer Heinz Edelmann—not to mention the Beatles, whose music would be featured throughout and who would themselves make a cameo in the film. When Balser was offered the chance to work as a director on the film, he took it. “It was,” he says, “probably one of the best years of my life.”

Yellow Submarine, of course, went on to become one of the most popular and influential films in the history of animation. When it premiered in 1968, audiences had never seen anything like. With its pop-art visuals, Day-Glo color scheme, and cast of bizarre characters and creatures, the film was like something out of an LSD trip. Subsequent releases on videotape and DVD were poor representations of the film’s original splendor, and are no longer in circulation.

Fortunately, Yellow Submarine, will sail once again when the film is reissued on DVD and Blu-ray this month. The new editions, to be released in the U.S. on May 29, have been restored frame by frame, entirely by hand, from the original hand-drawn animated artwork.

Both the DVD and Blu-ray releases will come with bonus features, including a documentary on the making of the film, audio commentary by producer John Coates and Heinz Edelmann, the original theatrical trailer, interviews with participants involved in the film, behind-the-scenes photos and reproductions of pencil drawings. In association with the film’s reissue, the Yellow Submarine soundtrack album—including the songs “Nowhere Man,” “Eleanor Rigby,” “All You Need Is Love” and the title track—will be reissued on CD.

The new restoration has been not only much needed but also much deserved. Nearly 45 years since it made its debut, Yellow Submarine remains a visual treat, with its brilliant design, rich color palette and frequently wondrous use of special effects such as rotoscoping and multiple exposure.

Ironically, for all of its cutting-edge animation and design, Yellow Submarine was the brainchild of two men who had worked on the decidedly downmarket TV cartoon series The Beatles. The program, a Saturday morning staple in the U.S. during the late Sixties, was created by Al Brodax and directed by George Dunning for King Features Syndicate. Brodax and Dunning had higher ambitions for Yellow Submarine, and set about assembling an international cast of animators and artistic talent for the film.

Balser recalls that Dunning originally planned the film as a series of 10 animated sequences set to the Beatles’ music. Eventually, the filmmakers decided on a plot about Pepperland, a musical fantasyland that is overdriven by music-hating Blue Meanies. Pepperland’s Lord Mayor sends an aged sailor named Old Fred off in a yellow submarine to find the Beatles and persuade them to help defeat the Blue Meanies and return Pepperland to glory.

Though the Beatles had allowed their music to be used in the film, they initially had no interest in the venture. They’d hated The Beatles cartoon series and figured a full-length King Features movie would be no better. At the outset of the project, they saw Yellow Submarine merely as an opportunity to fulfill their three-film contract with United Artists, which released A Hard Day’s Night and Help! (As it turned out, the Beatles’ brief onscreen appearance in Yellow Submarine was not substantial enough for United Artists to consider the contract fulfilled.)

Eventually, though, they were won over by Yellow Submarine’s highly original animation. “Once they came to see what we were doing, they were completely supportive of the film,” Balser says.

One of the few Americans to work on Yellow Submarine, Balser directed and storyboarded the scenes depicting the Beatles in Liverpool, where Old Fred finds them, and traveling to Pepperland through a number of seas, including the Sea of Nothing, where they meet “Nowhere Man” Jeremy Hilary Boob PhD. Though Yellow Submarine was Balser’s first feature-length film, he had previously worked on a number of award-winning commercials. Most notable among his early achievements is his work with revolutionary graphic designer Saul Bass on the innovative (and nearly seven-minute long) animated title sequence for the 1956 film Around the World in 80 Days.

On the occasion of Yellow Submarine’s new DVD and Blu-ray reissue, Balser took time out to talk with GuitarWorld.com about the making of this historic film.

GUITAR WORLD: How did you become involved in Yellow Submarine?

I had been working in Europe and had won a few prizes for some commercials. They were looking for people [futureusgalleryto work on the film], and they invited what they considered were the eight or 10 best people in Europe to come to London and try out by designing and showing an animation style. There was sort of a common style of animation at that time, and [futureusgallerythe Yellow Submarine team] wanted to break out of the mold and do something different.

Those of us who were invited to try out were asked to come up with a design for the Beatles’ characters. The film uses a huge variety of animation styles, and the biggest problem was finding a style with which to animate the Beatles themselves. For the trials, you didn’t have to do all four of them; they just said, “Do any character you like. We just want to see what you’re going to come up with.”

Before I went to London, they sent me home movies of the Beatles, and photos and so forth, so I had a lot of reference material to work from. What happened was that Charlie Jenkins, who brought me in on the project, also brought in Heinz Edelmann, who worked on [futureusgalleryGerman publication] Twen magazine and was a very avant-garde artist at that time. Heinz’s original drawings for the Yellow Submarine animation were very beautiful, and when those came in, everybody said, “This is the style we want.”

So after they went with Heinz Edelmann’s design, they called me back in and asked me to be one of the unit directors. Well, it so happened that there were no units—there was nobody available to direct but me and Jack Stokes. [futureusgalleryStokes, along with Dunning, had directed The Beatles cartoon series and also designed the titles for the Beatles’ 1967 film, Magical Mystery Tour. He directed and storyboarded all the Pepperland scenes in Yellow Submarine.] We ended up being the only two directors on the film. This is what you call destiny, luck…god only knows!

What did your particular job entail?

I was basically directing my sequences in the film, but I did work on characters. I worked on the “Nowhere Man” character with Heinz Edelmann. When you’re talking about animation production, you’re talking about a team operation. It always is a collaborative situation. We had a basic team of maybe six or eight people who really set the style and planned and prepared the film, but we ended up with about 240 people working on the film. At the end of the film—and remember this is classic animation; there was no computer-generated images at that time—at the last minute, with the push to finish the film, they emptied out all the art schools in the London area and brought people in and worked them all night long to trace and paint animation cels.

What kind of changes did the film go through as it developed from concept to completion?

When I came in on the film, the day I started there was no script. Actually, there were lots of scripts but nothing was planned or accepted or prepared. George Dunning originally was going to do the film as 10 little short films that they would tie together with music.

How did the script come about?

We’d sit around and say, “We could do this and this,” and somebody would say, “Okay, that sounds good.” And somebody would scribble out some lines, we’d have a recording sessions and record the dialogue. Now, this is an hour-and-a-half film, but we must have recorded maybe a hundred, two hundred hours of dialogue. And it was not recorded just capriciously. We thought, Okay, this is what we’re gonna do, and then someone would say, “That’s not gonna work.” So we’d change the dialogue and plan another sequence and go back and record some new dialogue.

It’s been reported over the years that the Beatles were not interested in the film until they’d been shown a segment of it while it was in production.

That’s correct. They hated the Beatles cartoon TV series so much that it has never been shown in England. They hated the voices—you know, Hollywood actors imitating Englishmen—and they didn’t want to have anything to do with Yellow Submarine. George Dunning had worked on the Beatles cartoons, but his involvement I think was minimal.

George was tremendously creative; he did some fantastic films. I won’t say the Beatles cartoons were beneath him, but when you have a company, you just take whatever work you can get in order to keep your crew together so that you can eventually do the work that you want to do. He certainly wasn’t involved in the creative aspect of the series, but the Beatles didn’t know that. They thought Yellow Submarine was going to be more of the same—just like the cartoons, except longer.

Eventually, they came to see what we were doing. And when they saw what design Heinz had come up with, what the look was, what the people were pouring into it with their creative collaboration, they liked it. And, of course, then they said, “We want to do the voices.” But by the time they came in and said all of this, we were coming up to the end of the film, and there was no way we could record them. First of all, you can’t say to the Beatles, “We’re going to record at 10 o’clock in the morning,” and expect them to be in the studio.

Secondly, this film was done for just under a million dollars, and of that, $250,000 was paid to the Beatles for their live-action section in the film. So you’re talking about working on a shoelace. Recording their voices just wasn’t going to happen. As it turned out, the actors who were voicing their characters were all from Liverpool, and they captured the character of the Beatles perfectly.

I’ve read that the Beatles had contributed some plot ideas…

Nothing.

…that John had suggested the sequence early in the film when the yellow submarine is following Ringo down the street in Liverpool.

They may have said something to Jack Stokes or somebody on the project. But it was certainly nothing formal.

Were any of the sequences in the film particularly difficult or costly to create?

Yes, the sequence for “When I’m 64,” when the Beatles are traveling through the Sea of Time. It was late in the production and we were running out of money. Heinz Edelmann said, “I have an idea where we can do one minute of film very cheaply, just with numbers.” [futureusgalleryThe second half of the “When I’m 64” sequence consists of the numbers one through 64 illustrated in the film’s signature pop-art style.] Well, it turned out that was probably the most expensive sequence in the film. It was not as easy as just putting a bunch of numbers in there, because of the way it was animated, the way it was structured and so forth. But I love that sequence. That’s one of my favorites. Of course I love the “Nowhere Man” sequence, That was the first sequence that I storyboarded and that we put into work.

There had been nothing like Yellow Submarine in the world of commercial animation. Did you feel you were breaking ground with the film?

The biggest thing was that we were using lots of the techniques that had been used in experimental films leading up to this. And so this was a chance to have complete freedom to use all those techniques and incorporate them into the film.

Why would you have had that extra measure of creative freedom?

Because this being a Beatle film, nobody really cared what we did. Once the designs of the Beatles were approved, as long as there was Beatles music, King Features was assured it was going to be a success. As a result, nobody ever said, “No, you can’t do that,” or “You must do this.” And also, we never had to say, “We’ve got to be careful about the content because of kids.” We just made and did what we felt was the right thing to do.

The British version of the film contained a sequence with the song “Hey Bulldog,” which was omitted from the U.S. version. Has that been restored for the new, restored release?

Yes. Actually, there were three versions of the film: There’s the English version, with “Hey Bulldog.” Then they wanted to change it for the American market, so I redirected the film for a version without “Hey Bulldog.” And then, in 1999, when they first restored the film, they put everything together from both versions. This is the film that you’re going to be seeing now, complete with all the scenes. And you won’t believe how good it looks. The restoration work on this is amazing. It really is a revelation.

No band made a bigger mark on rock and roll in the 20th century than The Beatles. ‘Guitar Legends: The Beatles’ takes you through the band’s history, walks you through the making of three Beatles albums via interviews with the people who were there, and gives you deep insights into the playing styles of John Lennon, Paul McCartney and George Harrison. Check it out at the Guitar World Online Store.

Just as Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr got together in the mid-’90s to finish two John Lennon tracks for The Beatles’ Anthology project, McCartney might be finishing up an incomplete song by Harrison.

Harrison’s widow, Olivia, says Harrison left behind a number of works-in-progress after his death in 2001.

She recently released Early Takes Volume 1, an album of demos and unreleased acoustic material by Harrison that coincided with the DVD release of Martin Scorcese’s Harrison documentary, Living in the Material World.

“There is some more material,” she recently told Spinner. “There may be a minute of something he was writing and it will never be finished. I had an idea of giving unfinished songs to different people – giving one to Paul, maybe, or giving one to somebody else and saying: ‘Here are the bones of a song, would you like to finished it?’ I think that would be a nice idea.”

“It was an amazing thing to witness,” said Olivia of the former Beatle’s writing process. “It was just being born right then and there. I’d try not to interrupt – I’d put a pencil and paper by him, just to make sure he had something if he wanted to write something down. I’d get the tape player and put it there.”

No band made a bigger mark on rock and roll in the 20th century than The Beatles. ‘Guitar Legends: The Beatles’ takes you through the band’s history, walks you through the making of three Beatles albums via interviews with the people who were there, and gives you deep insights into the playing styles of John Lennon, Paul McCartney and George Harrison. Check it out at the Guitar World Online Store.

As we recently reported, Mick Jagger will be hosting the May 19 season finale of NBC’s Saturday Night Live.

It was an announcement that left us wondering about that episode’s musical guest — especially since Jagger (who, as you might know, is something of a vocalist) was merely named the host.

However, the people at SNL have just cleared that up.

In addition to his hosting duties, Jagger will perform with Foo Fighters and the legendary Jeff Beck. He’ll also take the stage with Canada’s Arcade Fire.

The evening will mark Jagger’s first time as an SNL host (He guested on a 1978 episode with The Rolling Stones). It also marks Beck’s first-ever SNL appearance. Dave Grohl will be making his 10th appearance on the show, having also performed with Nirvana and Them Crooked Vultures.

Jagger and Beck have worked together several times. Beck appeared on Jagger’s 1985 She’s The Boss album; much more recently, Beck and Jagger performed together at the White House in February.

Sunday morning, May 13, influential bassist Donald “Duck” Dunn died while on tour in Japan. He was 70.

His bandmate and friend Steve Cropper — who was on tour with Dunn at the time — broke the news of his passing via Facebook, writing, “Today I lost my best friend, the world has lost the best guy and bass player to ever live. Duck Dunn died in his sleep Sunday morning, May 13, in Tokyo Japan after finishing 2 shows at the Blue Note Night Club.”

Dunn is perhaps best known as the bassist for Booker T. & The MGs, the highly influential house band for Stax Records that set the tone for modern Southern soul music. Dunn was invited to join the band in 1964 by Cropper, who he met in high-school, backing everyone from Sam & Dave to Otis Redding before the band split up in 1971.

Dunn would continue working as a session musician, backing musical legends like Muddy Waters, Freddie King, Bob Dylan, Levon Helm, Eric Clapton, Rod Stewart and Jerry Lee Lewis during the course of his career.

Perhaps his most famous post-MGs work came as a member of the Blues Brothers’ backing band, alongside his old friend, Steve Cropper. The Dan Aykroyd- and John Belushi-fronted group would record Briefcase Full of Blues in 1978, with the Blues Brothers movie following two years later.

Dunn was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame for his work with Booker T. & The MGs in 1992.

Guitarist Richard Lloyd will kick off an 18-date Midwest summer tour on June 7.

Lloyd’s sets will cover his entire career, from his days with post-punk legends Television (the first band to play CBGB) through his many solo releases.

This summer, Lloyd will break his three-year artistic silence with a July release through the 45 RPM Sevens Series and Riot House Records, followed by a full-length album, which is expected in early 2013 (also through Riot House Records).

His current band includes Television drummer Billy Ficca and Danny Tamberelli on bass.

Lloyd released six solo records from 1979 to 2007. As a session guitarist, he has backed Matthew Sweet, John Doe and Rocket From the Tombs.

To whet your Lloyd appetite, check out his three DVDs, which are available at the Guitar World Online Store. The Alchemical Guitarist: Fretboard Secrets Unlocked collects Lloyd’s 12 best Guitar World videos and accompanying columns. You can check it out here.

Also available are The Alchemical Guitarist 2 DVD and the Volumne 1 and 2 combo pack.

Richard Lloyd June Tour Schedule:

6.7.2012 MilkBoy Philadelphia, PA
6.8.2012 Lemon Grove Cafe Youngstown, OH
6.9.2012 Frankie’s Inner City Toledo, OH
6.10.2012 Thursdays Lounge Akron, OH
6.11.2012 Grog Shop Cleveland, OH
6.12.2012 Small’s Hamtramck, MI
6.13.2012 Pyramid Scheme Grand Rapids, MI
6.14.2012 Redstone Room Davenport, IA
6.15.2012 The Double Door Chicago, IL
6.16.2012 Off Broadway St. Louis, MO
6.17.2012 The Revolution Room Little Rock AR
6.18.2012 TBA
6.19.2012 Cosmic Charlies Lexington, KY
6.20.2012 The Lindsey Street Performance Hall Chattanooga, TN
6.21.2012 Pilot Light Knoxville, TN
6.22.2012 Mayday Northside Cincinnati, OH
6.23.2012 Ace of Cups Columbus, OH

For more about Lloyd, visit RichardLloyd.com.

A new commercial for Jeremiah Weed alcohol products features an appearance by the one-and-only ZZ Top.

In case you have a hard time spotting them, they’re the guys standing inside the Jeremiah Weed cooler performing their new single, “I Got to Get Paid.”

The song, their first single in nine years, is from the Texas trio’s still-untitled upcoming studio album, which is being produced by Rick Rubin.

Check out the quick scene where Billy Gibbons uses a can of Jeremiah Weed as a slide.

For more about ZZ Top and their upcoming Gang of Outlaws Tour with 3 Doors Down, visit their official Facebook page.

Most of “I Got to Get Paid” can be heard below.

Glenn Tilbrook has always been something of a rarity.

The Squeeze lead vocalist is one of the only frontmen of his generation of New Wave rockers — a generation that includes Elvis Costello, Paul Weller, Debbie Harry, Ric Okasek, David Burn and Ian Dury — who could write and sing a boundless collection of brilliant, hook-filled hits and then grace them with catchy, lightning-fast guitar solos.

His solos on some of the band’s best-known songs — including “Black Coffee in Bed,” “Another Nail in My Heart” and “Pulling Mussels (From the Shell)” — are mini-masterpieces that draw from a host of influences, including R&B, blues and ’60s rock, while lesser-known tracks show a deep appreciation for country, rockabilly and jazz.

And then there are the songs.

A Squeeze concert is a reminder of just how huge Squeeze were from 1979 through 1987 and how many outstanding songs Tilbrook and his writing partner, guitarist Chris Difford, wrote. One after another they come — “Tempted,” “Annie Get Your Gun,” “Hourglass,” “Cool for Cats,” “Goodbye Girl,” “If I Didn’t Love You,” “Up the Junction,” “Take Me I’m Yours.” It’s enough to make you think the Lennon/McCartney comparisons weren’t so crazy after all.

Seeing a modern Squeeze concert is a lot like seeing them in their heyday, thanks to the recent return of bassist John Bentley, who played with the band from 1980 to 1982, when the Squeeze hit factory was working overtime. Bentley has been back with Difford and Tilbrook since 2007; keyboardist Stephen Large and drummer Simon Hanson round out the band.

If you’ve missed their recent US tour, you can check out the current lineup on their new live album, Live At The Fillmore, which was released April 17 via Anchor and Hope Music. The career-spanning album features 20 songs, complete with a few offbeat choices, like “It’s So Dirty” from Cool for Cats and “Hope Fell Down” from Difford & Tilbrook’s self-titled 1984 album.

I sat down with Tilbrook after Squeeze’s soundcheck at the Count Basie Theatre in Red Bank, New Jersey. For the rest of this interview, visit GuitarWorld.com.

GUITAR AFICIONADO: I’m going to name five Squeeze songs with what I consider exceptional guitar solos. Please tell me what comes to mind for each one — how they came to be, what you were going after, etc.

“Another Nail in My Heart” (from Argybargy, 1980): I think that was my first proper melodic solo. As I said earlier, I spent an afternoon constructing it drop by drop. The placing of the solo is really odd because it happens after one verse and chorus, but it somehow works. I used a Yamaha on that – I forget the model, but I play it in the video. It’s one of those double cutaways; it looks like an SG, but it isn’t.

“Messed Around” (from East Side Story, 1981): That’s when I felt relaxed enough to go back like that. Stray Cats were really happening at that time, and that was sort of a nod in their direction. And when Squeeze were forming, Jools [futureusgalleryHolland, original Squeeze keyboardist and current UK TV presenter] really brought a lot of early rock and roll and boogie-woogie to the table, so I loved all that music. It was very easy for me to write in that idiom.

“Pulling Mussels (From the Shell)” (from Argybargy, 1980): I think that’s an obstinant solo – just to stick on one note for half the solo. That’s my personality all over. It’s a delay, so I just play (makes the sound of an E note and waits … then again …) [futureusgallerylaughs]. It’s like a series of false starts.

“Black Coffee In Bed” (from Sweets from a Stranger, 1982): It’s sort of a very 1960s, Motown-influenced solo. But I love the idea of a key change for the solo. And also for it to be quite jazzy, which the song wasn’t.

The weird slide solo on “If I Didn’t Love You” (from Argybargy, 1980): [futureusgalleryPausing] Yeah, that’s right – it is a slide, isn’t it? I don’t know why I stopped doing slide after a while — but I’ve never done it since. Yeah, that’s one of the most rock solos I’ve done, with an extra touch of New Wave weirdness thrown in.

That was five. Let’s consider this one an honorable mention — “Crying In My Sleep” (from Play, 1990): I was always trying to pull Squeeze toward R&B, and as a band, generally, until now, they’ve pretty successfully resisted. At the time, I was listening to a lot of Prince and Tony! Toni! Toné!. That sort of thing was really floating my boat. So that was my reaction to that.

Squeeze’s new live album, Live At The Fillmore, which was released April 17 via Anchor and Hope Music, is available on iTunes. For more about Squeeze, check out their official website and Facebook page.