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      Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour Speed Round, Part 2

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      Subscribe to Popcast!Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher | Amazon MusicThe first leg of Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour has come to a close, with the pop superstar having performed in stadiums across North America for several million people.A few of those people are friends of Popcast. This week and next, we’ll speak with a few of them about their experiences at the show.On this week’s Popcast, conversations about Swift’s relationship to the broader hierarchy of celebrity, the tour date as destination event, how fans dressed up for the show, and ways in which Swift is extremely deliberate in the manner that she deploys sexuality.Guests:Caryn Ganz, The New York Times’s pop music editorVrinda Jagota, a freelance writer for Pitchfork and othersJosh Duboff, a freelance writer for Vanity Fair and othersConnect With Popcast. Become a part of the Popcast community: Join the show’s Facebook group and Discord channel. We want to hear from you! Tune in, and tell us what you think at popcast@nytimes.com. Follow our host, Jon Caramanica, on Twitter: @joncaramanica. More

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      Gloria Coates, Composer Who Defied Conventions, Dies at 89

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      A Wisconsin native, she was among the most prolific female composers of symphonies, 17 in all, finding particular prominence in Europe, where she lived.Gloria Coates, an adventurous composer who wrote symphonies — she was one of the few women to do so — as well as other works, pieces that were seldom performed in her home country, the United States, but found audiences in Europe, where she lived much of her professional life, died on Aug. 19 in Munich. She was 89.Her daughter, Alexandra Coates, said the cause was pancreatic cancer.Ms. Coates composed 17 symphonies, along with numerous works for small ensembles and voice. In 1999, when she was working on her 11th symphony, the composer and critic Kyle Gann wrote in The New York Times that “Ms. Coates’s symphonies are dark and sensuous, and distinguished by an imaginative use of orchestral glissandos (gradual rather than stepwise changes of pitch, like slow sirens), which culminate powerfully in drawn-out crescendos.”The glissando continued to be her calling card, Mr. Gann said this week by email.“Gloria owned the orchestral glissando the way van Gogh said he owed the sunflower,” he said. “The slow pitch slides that run across the surfaces of her symphonies and string quartets can be difficult for the performers to coordinate, which has probably made musicians less willing to present her music. But they make it absolutely distinctive and recognizable. And underneath those glissandos there is often a clear discipline of canons, palindromes and other simple musical structures.”“The effect,” he added, “is often like a painting of a beautiful edifice on which rain has impressionistically smeared the surface.”Ms. Coates first came to wide attention when her “Music on Open Strings” was performed by the Polish Chamber Orchestra at the Warsaw Autumn International Festival of Contemporary Music in 1978. Her work has since received only occasional bursts of attention in the United States — as in 1989, when her “Music on Abstract Lines” was given its world premiere at the New Music America festival in Brooklyn; and in 2002, when New World Records released the first recording of her works on an American label; and in 2019, when “Music on Open Strings” was performed at Zankel Hall in Manhattan by the American Composers Orchestra.In 2021, Edition Peters announced that it would begin publishing her works.Ms. Coates said her music “sometimes is melodic, but often derived from structures of microtones melted together.”“It is a way of thinking of music not as separate tones on a scale, as we have for centuries,” she told The Wausau Daily Herald of Wisconsin, her hometown newspaper, in 2021, “but as sounds gliding through time and space which have their own laws and still have roots in the historical musical tradition.”In 2005, the Crash Ensemble performed her Sixth String Quartet (1999) in Dublin.“Bleak and ascetic, strange and disturbing as her music may be, it’s also got a purity that makes it peculiarly compelling,” The Irish Times wrote then. “It’s not music that’s ever likely to leave even a single listener indifferent.”Ms. Coates and the conductor George Manahan in 2019 at Zankel Hall in New York City, where the American Composers Orchestra performed her “Music on Open Strings.”Jennifer TaylorGloria Ann Kannenberg was born on Oct. 10, 1933, in Wausau. Her father, Roland, was a state senator, and her mother, Natalina (Corso) Kannenberg, worked in weapons manufacturing during World War II and was later a nurse’s assistant.Gloria showed musical inclinations early.“The children in the 5-year-old kindergarten have a rhythm band,” The Wausau Daily Herald reported in early 1939. “Thomas Evenson, Jack Luedtke and Gloria Kannenberg brought drums from home.”By then she was also proficient on the toy piano. By 12 she was creating her own often unconventional music. In 1951, a composition of hers won an “excellent” rating in a national junior composers’ competition. But teachers and contest judges sometimes discouraged her more audacious departures from tradition.She told The Irish Times in 2005 that a key moment in her development came when, as a teenager, she attended a question-and-answer with the Russian composer Alexander Tcherepnin, who would become a mentor. He told her that it was more important to follow her instincts than to follow predetermined rules.After graduating from high school in Wausau, she studied music and drama for a time at Monticello College in Illinois. She later studied at other institutions, including the Cooper Union in New York and Louisiana State University, which she attended after marrying Francis Mitchell Coates Jr. in 1959 and settling for a time in Baton Rouge. She earned a master’s degree in composition there.She continued her studies in New York, but after her marriage ended in divorce in 1969, she, her daughter and their dachshund boarded a ship for Europe. Ms. Coates, who had studied voice as well as composition, settled in Munich and for a time pursued a career singing opera. But fate intervened.“When I was 7,” Alexandra Coates said by email, “she was hit by another skiing student and was paralyzed in the upper back.”Ms. Coates gave up singing and focused on painting, another interest, along with music. She told The Irish Times that in the early 1970s, amid the terrorist attacks at the Olympics in Munich and the violence of the Baader-Meinhof Gang, the Munich building where she was living was thought to be a possible terrorist target. She moved her music manuscripts out of the building but continued to live there. (Her daughter was living with her father in the United States.) She was, she said, sending a sort of subliminal message to herself.“It was not until several months later that I realized that that music was so important, it was more important than my life,” she said.From then on, music became her primary focus. For years Ms. Coates curated a series in Germany devoted to American contemporary music. Her own compositional output covered a wide range. Her daughter said that for a time Ms. Coates held a job giving tours of the Dachau concentration camp to members of the U.S. Army. Among the works those tours inspired was her “Voices of Women in Wartime,” a setting of writings by women under various circumstances during World War II.In addition to her daughter, Ms. Coates is survived by a brother, Philip Kannenberg; a sister, Natalie Tackett; and a grandson.If her work wasn’t often heard in the United States, critics and other writers admired her originality. Simon Cummings, who writes the contemporary music blog 5:4, said by email that Ms. Coates had set herself apart from other out-of-the-mainstream composers as “one who doesn’t merely surprise or amuse you when you encounter their music for the first time, but who completely knocks you off your feet, and moves you very deeply and powerfully, even if, at the time, you’re not really sure why you’re experiencing such a strong reaction.”In 2014, the Los Angeles Times music critic Mark Swed called Ms. Coates simply “our last maverick.” More

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      Ghostwriter Returns With an A.I. Travis Scott Song

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      The anonymous artist, who stirred conversation with the A.I. track “Heart on My Sleeve,” has been quietly consulting with executives, while also gunning for a Grammy.Earlier this year, when the anonymous musical creator known as Ghostwriter released an unauthorized track that used artificial intelligence voice effects to mimic the pop superstars Drake and the Weeknd, the fallout was immediate and far-reaching.The mostly original song, “Heart on My Sleeve,” was promptly removed from official streaming services, even as experts acknowledged that its use of A.I. fell into a rapidly expanding legal gray area. But while the major record labels sought to protect their intellectual property and scrambled to prepare for disruptions to come, the track also proliferated on social media, earning millions of listens and helping to inspire a wave of similarly novel compositions.Throughout the aftermath, Ghostwriter stayed silent — at least in public.Behind the scenes, however, the shadowy act and its team were making overtures to the very industry figures “Heart on My Sleeve” had unnerved. In the months since, those behind the project have met with record labels, tech leaders, music platforms and artists about how to best harness the powers of A.I., including at a virtual round-table discussion this summer organized by the Recording Academy, the organization behind the Grammy Awards.“I knew right away as soon as I heard that record that it was going to be something that we had to grapple with from an Academy standpoint, but also from a music community and industry standpoint,” Harvey Mason Jr., a producer who is the chief executive of the Recording Academy, said in an interview. “When you start seeing A.I. involved in something so creative and so cool, relevant and of-the-moment, it immediately starts you thinking, ‘OK, where is this going? How is this going to affect creativity? What’s the business implication for monetization?’”Mason said he had contacted Ghostwriter directly on social media after being impressed with “Heart on My Sleeve.” He added that Ghostwriter attended the meeting in character, including using a distorted voice.On Tuesday, Ghostwriter returned with a new track, titled “Whiplash,” this time using A.I. vocal filters to sound like the rappers Travis Scott and 21 Savage and deliver a message to the industry: “Me and Writer raise a toast,” the A.I. version of 21 Savage raps. “Trying to shadowban my boy/but you can’t kill a ghost.”The song — which was posted to social media platforms like TikTok and X, formerly known as Twitter, instead of Spotify and other proper streaming services — came accompanied by a statement that called on both Scott and 21 Savage to collaborate on an official release. “The future of music is here. Artists now have the ability to let their voice work for them without lifting a finger,” Ghostwriter wrote. “If you’re down to put it out, I will clearly label it as A.I., and I’ll direct royalties to you. Respect either way.”Representatives for Scott and 21 Savage did not immediately respond to a request for comment.A representative for Ghostwriter, who requested anonymity to not expose those behind the project — acknowledging that much of its marketing power comes from its mystery — confirmed that “Whiplash,” like “Heart on My Sleeve,” was an original composition written and recorded by humans. Ghostwriter attempted to match the content, delivery, tone and phrasing of the established stars before using A.I. components.They added that the Ghostwriter team had recently submitted “Heart on My Sleeve” for Grammy Awards in two categories at next year’s ceremony: best rap song and song of the year, both of which are awarded to a track’s writers.“As far as the creative side, it’s absolutely eligible because it was written by a human,” said Mason of the Recording Academy.He added that the Academy would also look at whether the song was commercially available, with Grammy rules stating that a track must have “general distribution,” meaning “the broad release of a recording, available nationwide via brick-and-mortar stores, third-party online retailers and/or streaming services.”Ghostwriter’s representative said they were aware of the commercial availability requirement.The Ghostwriter team noted in a statement that it hoped to raise awareness about the creative and business possibilities of A.I. voice filters, comparing the technology to the early days of hip-hop sampling or user-generated content on YouTube. It offered examples like the ability to do karaoke in the voice of one’s favorite artist; at-home creators making original music à la fan fiction; or artists’ estates using the filters for posthumous original releases.With guidance from Mason, the Recording Academy and its partners in the industry, the team said it hoped to work with stakeholders to build a platform that ensures artists who choose to license their voice can control how it is used and make sure they get paid when it is.“Ghostwriter really has played an important role here to bring awareness and attention,” Mason said. “We know A.I. is going to play a role in our business. We can’t pretend to turn our back on it and try to ban it.”He added, “I’m not scared of A.I., but I do believe work needs to be done to make sure that things are in place so that the creative community is protected.” More

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      Zach Bryan’s First No. 1 Is His Self-Titled Album

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      The singer-songwriter, whose music crosses genre borders, also has the first rock release to top the Billboard 200 in over a year.Zach Bryan, the Oklahoma-raised singer-songwriter whose work fits somewhere on a continuum of country, rock and Americana folk, has logged his first No. 1 album and single with big streaming numbers.His album, “Zach Bryan,” opens at the top of the Billboard 200 chart with the equivalent of 200,000 sales in the United States. That includes 233 million streams and 17,000 copies sold as a digital download, according to the tracking service Luminate.Critics and playlist curators may quibble over exactly which genre tags to attach to Bryan’s work. But for chart purposes, Billboard has applied a straightforward test, ruling that “Zach Bryan” counts as both country and rock since Bryan’s work has appeared on both its country and rock charts. As such, “Zach Bryan” is the first rock album to top the chart in over a year, since the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ “Unlimited Love” early last year, and it has the biggest streaming week ever for a rock album. (Among country releases, Billboard reported, Bryan’s album has the fifth-largest debut streaming week.)In addition, Bryan notches his first No. 1 single on Billboard’s all-genre Hot 100 chart. “I Remember Everything,” Bryan’s duet with Kacey Musgraves, takes over from Oliver Anthony Music’s “Rich Men North of Richmond,” which falls to No. 6 after two weeks at the top.Also on the latest album chart, Travis Scott’s “Utopia” falls to second place after four weeks at No. 1, Morgan Wallen’s “One Thing at a Time” is No. 3 and Taylor Swift’s “Midnights” is No. 4. SZA’s “SOS” returns to the Top 10 for the first time in a month, jumping six spots to No. 5, after the release of a new music video for her song “Snooze.” More

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      Steve Harwell, Former Smash Mouth Lead Singer, Dies at 56

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      He was a founding member of the band, which broke out in the late 1990s with hit songs like “Walkin’ on the Sun” and “All Star.”Steve Harwell, the former lead singer of the rock band Smash Mouth, which was best known for its 1999 hit “All Star,” died on Monday. He was 56.His death, at his home in Boise, Idaho, was confirmed by the band’s manager, Robert Hayes, who said the cause was liver failure.Smash Mouth was founded in 1994 in San Jose, Calif., and was made up of Mr. Harwell, the guitarist Greg Camp, the drummer Kevin Coleman and the bassist Paul De Lisle. Its first success came with the song “Walkin’ on the Sun,” from the band’s debut album, “Fush Yu Mang” (1997).An upbeat track with a dark undertow, calling to mind both the Doors and contemporary ska-punk, “Walkin’ on the Sun,” with songwriting credits going to all four band members, went into steady rotation on MTV and topped Billboard’s alternative chart.The song’s music video laid out the band’s aesthetic and attitude. Dressed in short-sleeve shirts and shades, with fedoras and soul patches, the four members looked like rougher versions of the image-obsessed retro hipsters depicted in the 1996 comedy “Swingers.” The video features a dance party straight out of a 1960s beach movie and ends with a drag-race crash, with Mr. Harwell — beefy, with tattoos on his arms — behind the wheel.“The question of a particular style never once crossed our minds,” Mr. Harwell said in a 1997 interview. “We didn’t want to be labeled as a punk band, a ska band, a surf band, a rock band, a pop band or a whatever band. We just wanted to be us, Smash Mouth, and leave it to the people to interpret what we are.”The band Smash Mouth in 1999. From left, the guitarist Greg Camp, the drummer Kevin Coleman, Mr. Harwell, and the bassist Paul De Lisle.Bob Berg/Getty ImagesThe band’s big-time crossover came with “All Star,” from its next album, “Astro Lounge,” in 1999. Backed by harder-driving guitars, Mr. Harwell, with a slight sneer, sings an outsiders’ anthem to ignore ridicule and shoot for the moon:Hey now, you’re an all starGet your game on, go playHey now, you’re a rock starGet the show on, get paid“All Star” — written by Mr. Camp, the band’s guitarist — went to No. 4 on Billboard’s Hot 100 singles chart, the band’s best-ever chart position, and found a lasting audience through movie soundtracks. In 1999, it was used in “Inspector Gadget” and “Mystery Men,” and two years later the song got its broadest exposure when it played during the opening credits of “Shrek,” the animated hit that featured Mike Myers as a grouchy but good-hearted ogre.The “Shrek” soundtrack — which also featured Smash Mouth’s amped-up version of the Monkees’ “I’m a Believer,” in the closing scene — went double platinum, and the film won an Academy Award for best animated feature. “All Star” was everywhere.“We had no clue how big ‘Shrek’ was going to be,” Mr. Harwell recalled in a 2019 article in Rolling Stone. “We sold millions of records off that alone. The song was reborn again.”Since then, “All Star” has lived on, becoming a rich source for online parodies. Nearly 25 years later, the song has garnered nearly a billion streams on Spotify alone, and the sound of Mr. Harwell’s slightly raspy voice is still linked to the song’s recognizable opening lines: “Somebody once told me/The world is gonna roll me/I ain’t the sharpest tool in the shed.”Steven Scott Harwell was born on Jan. 9, 1967, and grew up in San Jose. He began his musical career as a rapper with the group F.O.S., which stood for Freedom of Speech. With a sound reminiscent of West Coast groups of the late 1980s and early ’90s like N.W.A and Cypress Hill, it released a single, “Big Black Boots,” in 1993. But by then Mr. Harwell was already restless.“Around the time we were about to put out our single, this kid Snoop Dogg came out and changed everything,” he recalled in 2017 interview with the music website Stereogum. “I was at a radio convention in Las Vegas watching MC Hammer, of all people, and I just looked at my manager, ‘I’m tired of all this hip-hop’” — he added an expletive — “‘I want to start an alternative rock band.’”After “Astro Lounge,” Smash Mouth released five more studio albums through 2012, with diminishing levels of success. In 2006, Mr. Harwell was a cast member on “The Surreal Life,” a reality show on VH1 in which onetime celebrities live together; his fellow cast members included Sherman Hemsley of “The Jeffersons,” Florence Henderson of “The Brady Bunch” and Tawny Kitaen, known for her appearances in Whitesnake music videos.Mr. Harwell performing in 2003. “We didn’t want to be labeled as a punk band, a ska band, a surf band, a rock band, a pop band or a whatever band,” he said. “We just wanted to be us.”Kevin Winter/Getty ImagesFor the last decade, Mr. Harwell’s career had been marked by health problems and occasionally erratic behavior. In 2013, he was diagnosed with cardiomyopathy, a heart condition, and Wernicke’s encephalopathy, a neurological condition that can affect speech and memory.In August 2020, while many parts of the country were still under major restrictions related to the Covid-19 pandemic, Smash Mouth appeared at the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally, a huge annual event in South Dakota, and performed before thousands of fans — very few of whom, according to reports and videos of the event, were wearing masks or taking any precautions.Mr. Harwell drew cheers from the crowd — but wide condemnation elsewhere — when he said from the stage, “We’re all here together tonight, and we’re being human once again,” and made a crude dismissal of the viral threat.Mr. Harwell performing with Smash Mouth in Brooklyn in 2015. He retired from the band in 2021. Brad Barket/Getty ImagesIn 2021, Mr. Harwell left the band and retired from performing after a live show in upstate New York during which he was seen slurring his words, using profanity and apparently giving a Nazi salute.“I’ve tried so hard to power through my physical and mental health issues, and to play in front of you one last time, but I just wasn’t able to,” he said in a statement at the time.He is survived by his fiancée, Annette Jones; a brother, Mark; and three sisters, Carla Crocker, Michelle Baroni and Julie Harwell.In 2022, Smash Mouth recruited a new lead singer, Zach Goode, and the group has concerts scheduled in coming weeks, including one on Thursday in Madera, Calif. Mr. Hayes, the manager, said the band was still scheduled to perform there.In a statement on Monday, Mr. Goode said: “I love singing these songs every night and carrying on the spirit of rock n roll in front of the best fans in the world. I will continue to try, in my own way, to honor what Steve and the band have created.” More

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      Steve Harwell: How Smash Mouth’s ‘All Star’ Got a Second Wind From Memes

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      The track, sung by Steve Harwell, took a winding path to evergreen status that illustrates how social media and fan-made content have transformed the music business.Long before it became a soundtrack nugget and an internet meme, it was just a rock band’s attempt to land a radio hit.But the long path to evergreen status for “All Star,” the 1999 track by the California alternative band Smash Mouth, whose founding lead singer, Steve Harwell, died on Monday at age 56, is an illustration of how social media and fan-made content have transformed the music industry.The song took shape while the group was working on its second album, “Astro Lounge,” after its first taste of success with the song “Walkin’ on the Sun” (1997). The group submitted a batch of songs to its record company and was told: “You’re not done. We don’t hear a single, so keep working,” Robert Hayes, the band’s manager, told Rolling Stone in 2019. Greg Camp, Smash Mouth’s guitarist and primary songwriter, said the song’s lovable-loser theme (“I ain’t the sharpest tool in the shed”) emerged from fan mail. “About 85 to 90 percent of the mail was from these kids who were being bullied” for being Smash Mouth fans, he told the website Songfacts. “So we were like, ‘We should write a song for fans.’”“All Star” was quickly placed on film soundtracks, including “Inspector Gadget” and “Mystery Men,” in 1999. (The original music video had clips from “Mystery Men,” a superhero sendup starring Ben Stiller and Janeane Garofalo, among others.) But the song’s immortality began with its placement in “Shrek,” the 2001 animated favorite starring Mike Myers and Eddie Murphy, where the song plays in the opening credits. The film grossed a total of $484 million around the world, according to the site Box Office Mojo.A decade or so later, generational nostalgia kicked off another level of success for “All Star,” when the children who grew up on “Shrek” began meme-ing on it relentlessly. There was the version made up entirely of samples of Bill O’Reilly saying his name. And the one, from “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon,” with lyrics stitched together from “Star Wars” clips. There were the ones sung by Jon Sudano, a YouTuber, showing him melding the song — sometimes painfully — to hits like Adele’s “Hello” and Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” or with the vocal line maddeningly shifted one beat from the original. And don’t forget the guy who recreated Mussorgsky’s “Pictures at an Exhibition” using samples of Harwell’s voice.Perhaps the most popular take was “Mario, You’re a Plumber,” a Mario Bros.-theme adaptation — with actual effort taken to write new lyrics — that has garnered 1.6 million views on YouTube.Those were all iterations of what has become a key avenue for artists to find wide success in a fragmented media environment, with user-generated content ricocheting through social media to propel a new song (see Lil Nas X, “Old Town Road”) or point younger listeners to an old one (Fleetwood Mac, “Dreams”).In the case of “All Star,” this process kept an old track alive for years and led to gigs like the band performing a snippet of the song on a Progressive insurance ad in 2020. All of that activity tends to drive listeners back to streaming services, and “All Star” has garnered just under a billion streams on Spotify alone.In an interview with the music site Stereogum in 2017, Harwell expressed the contrasting opinions artists sometimes have about such memes. On the one hand, it’s valuable exposure, and that can lead to money in their pocket. On the other … it’s not always fun to have one’s work flattened into a joke.“It’s entertaining, I get it,” Harwell said. “It doesn’t bother me, but at the same time, I don’t love it.” More

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      Have You Seen Paul McCartney’s Lost Bass Guitar? Tips Welcome.

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      For decades, mystery has surrounded the fate of the missing bass that accompanied the Beatles as they rocketed to fame. A new campaign is trying to find it. Before Beatlemania, there was the distinctive Höfner violin bass — the first guitar that Paul McCartney bought after becoming the bassist for the Beatles.That bass can be heard on some of the band’s most famous hits, including “Love Me Do,” “She Loves You,” and “Twist and Shout.”Mr. McCartney picked up the instrument in a Hamburg music store in 1961, and it accompanied the Fab Four as they rocketed to stunning success, becoming the most famous band in the world. But the guitar vanished eight years later.A new campaign is seeking to find the missing instrument, and hundreds of people have responded, hoping to help solve the decades-old mystery: Where is Paul McCartney’s missing bass guitar?“It’s a hugely significant instrument in its own right,” said Nick Wass, a semiretired consultant for Höfner, the guitar’s manufacturer, who has joined forces with two journalists to try and track the guitar down. “It’s the bass that made the Beatles.”“The bass was absolutely at the heart of the origins of the Beatles sound,” said one of the journalists, Scott Jones, who worked for the BBC. “The smallest pieces of information can often lead to the biggest breakthroughs,” he said of their appeal for tips on its fate.Mr. Jones’s wife, Naomi, is the other journalist behind what they are calling The Lost Bass Project.The three Beatles fans have urged members of the public to come forward with any information that might help. No tip is too small, they say, and they are promising to keep sources confidential. They say they have already received several credible leads since the project was launched on Saturday.The instrument’s treasured place in Beatles mythology is intertwined with the band’s story. After the departure of their original bassist, Stuart Sutcliffe, Mr. McCartney, who had been playing guitar, switched instruments to replace him during a residency in Hamburg in 1961. For that, he needed a new bass guitar.“I got my Violin Bass at the Steinway shop in the town center. I remember going along and there was this bass which was quite cheap,” he said in a 1993 interview with Guitar Magazine, adding that he had not wanted to go into debt and could only afford the Höfner, 500/1 guitar at the time. It cost about £30 pounds, or $38, he recalled. “And once I bought it, I fell in love with it.”Paul McCartney performing in 2017.Kamil Krzaczynski/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesMr. McCartney took the guitar back to Britain, where it accompanied the Beatles through hundreds of gigs — from the band’s early concerts at the Cavern Club in Liverpool, where they were spotted by Brian Epstein, who would become their manager, to the recording of their first two albums. It was repaired in 1964, according to the team behind the new search, and then used along with other bass guitars.But the last confirmed sighting of the instrument was in London in 1969, in video footage of the band members writing their final album, “Let It Be.” Rumors have percolated ever since about what happened to the instrument: The Lost Bass Project suggests that it could have been stolen or lost either from the basement of Abbey Road Studios, or from the Apple Corps recording studio on Savile Row.A representative for Paul McCartney declined a request for an interview. But Mr. Wass said he understood, from previous communications with Mr. McCartney, that he was keen to be reunited with the instrument. “He calls it the ancient one,” Mr. Wass said.Among the leads they had received, Mr. Jones said, were suggestions that the instrument could have traveled to the United States or Japan. But he added that all the leads need to be vetted. “Somewhere among that information there is going to be the answer,” he said.Other iconic instruments have been lost and found over the years — one close example being a Gibson acoustic guitar belonging to John Lennon, which was bought in 1962 and then lost the following year. Half a century later, it re-emerged and was sold at auction in 2015 to an anonymous buyer for $2.4 million.It is unclear what the market value of Mr. McCartney’s missing guitar would be, but the team behind the search insists that the effort is not for monetary gain, calling the guitar “priceless.”“We just want to know where it is,” said Mr. Wass. More

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      Jimmy Buffett Died of Rare Form of Skin Cancer

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      The singer’s website said he had Merkel cell carcinoma for four years and died at his home on Long Island.Jimmy Buffett died of skin cancer at his home in Sag Harbor, N.Y., on Long Island, according to a statement on the singer-songwriter’s website.After Mr. Buffett died on Friday at age 76, his site announced the death but did not give a cause or specify where he died. In an update over the weekend, the website said that he had Merkel cell carcinoma for four years. A rare and aggressive form of skin cancer, Merkel cell is diagnosed only about 2,500 times a year in the United States, and until recent years it had carried a life expectancy of five months.Mr. Buffett’s 1970s hits like “Margaritaville” and “Cheeseburger in Paradise,” which mingled country-rock with bits of calypso melodies and had wry lyrics about the carefree life of boating and loafing at beachside bars, made him a cult hero on a huge scale.He sold at least 23 million albums in the United States alone, according to the Recording Industry Association of America, on par with Jimi Hendrix and the Beastie Boys. And Mr. Buffett’s annual tours — in which he usually appeared barefoot, in a comfy T-shirt or Hawaiian button-down — were hugely successful, drawing millions of fans who sang along, drank prodigiously and called themselves Parrot Heads.Mr. Buffett was one of pop music’s most successful and ambitious businessmen, building a huge empire on the brand of good times and island escapism that he sang about in his songs. That included Margaritaville restaurants and resorts, footwear, drink mixes and a 2018 Broadway jukebox musical, “Escape to Margaritaville.”This year, Forbes estimated his net worth at $1 billion, with $570 million attributed to his tours and recording and $140 million in planes, homes and his shares in Berkshire Hathaway — the holding company whose chairman and CEO is multibillionaire investor Warren Buffett, who had been a longtime friend. More