Paul McCartney will be the first Beatle to have his solo work featured in Rock Band. Earlier this year, McCartney released a live album, Good Evening New York, to favorable reviews. On January 5th, three tracks from that album will be available for download on the Rock Band and LEGO Rock Band marketplace. Billed as the “New York Pack 01,” the songs include “Band on the Run,” “Jet,” and “Sing the Changes.”

The tracks will become available for XBox 360 and Wii on January 5th, while Playstation 3 users can get their hands on the content on January 7th. McCartney becomes the first of the Fab Four to have their solo material feature on the Rock Band series, and continues a partnership with Harmonix and MTV Games that saw the release of The Beatles: Rock Band on September 9th.

As Rolling Stone previously reported, more than 40 years after Beatlesmania took over Shea Stadium, McCartney was chosen to headline the first concerts at Citi Field in July. The sold out run of three concerts found Macca touching upon all aspects of his discography, from the Beatles to Wings to his solo catalog. Billy Joel, who recruited Paul McCartney during the final string of Shea Stadium concerts, also made a guest appearance at the first Citi show.

I generally avoid video games, but a Rock Band purchase seems inevitable.

Following the success of “The Beatles: Rock Band”, Harmonix announced they were developing a version for The Who. But why stop there? Harmonix and publisher MTV Games will unveil “Green Day: Rock Band” in 2010.

“We’ve worked with the Rock Band team in the past year to enable our fans to play tracks from 21st Century Breakdown, and we’re excited to now be working on a game, spanning our entire career,” Billie Joe Armstrong said in a statement. “We want people to fire this up, choose their favorite Green Day tracks, and play along with us as Rock Band avatars so they can feel what it’s like to perform onstage as Green Day.”

Like The Beatles: Rock Band, the Green Day game will allow players to put themselves in venues and environments specific to the NoCal trio, and will feature key moments from the band’s three-decade career.

A specific release date and the game’s track list are unknown. They should just take the songs from International Superhits! and the singles from the last two albums. Better yet, “Green Day: Rock Band Dookie” is good enough.

Given the success of The Beatles: Rock Band, it’s logical to think other prominent bands could get their own version of the game in the near future. Thankfully, we haven’t heard anything along the lines of Fall Out Boy: Rock Band or Paramore: Rock Band, but anything is possible these days.

The people behind Rock Band must have some serious musical taste. They are supposedly working with The Who. Roger Daultrey, the band’s frontman, confirmed the rumors:

“The game, yeah, yeah, they’re going to be doing a Who one next year. There is one planned. [The idea] is fabulous. Anything that gets non-musical people interested in music is wonderful.”

It seems appropriate that the legendary band would go with Rock Band over Guitar Hero.

Given the cinematic and conceptual nature of the Who and Pete Townshend, Rock Band seems like a better fit for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame band than Guitar Hero. Whereas GH has created lifelike avatars and restored famed venues for their artist-based games like GH: Metallica or GH: Van Halen, MTV Games upped the ante with The Beatles: Rock Band, crafting entire dreamscapes to accompany the music and offering replicas of the Fab Four’s instruments, an approach that would work well with the Who’s concept albums like Tommy and Quadrophenia.

A release date hasn’t been announced.

Dhani Harrison…yes, you may know him as George’s son…has been making the press rounds, talking up You Are Here, the album by his band, thenewno2. While doing so, however, it hasn’t exactly required a great deal of arm-twisting to get him to chat about how he had more than a little bit to do with the folks at Apple Corps agreeing to license the Beatles’ music for their very own volume of “Rock Band.” But that’s fair enough, since “Yomp,” a song by thenewno2, was released as downloadable content for “Rock Band” on July 29, 2008, and another track, “Crazy Tuesday,” was released as one of 20 free songs for “Rock Band 2.”

“I basically did that for Apple,” admitted Harrison, “so that they could see it and say, ‘Oh, look, there’s Dhani, he’s a new media kind of person, and this is how he’s selling his stuff. Maybe we should consider doing that with the Beatles, seeing as we don’t have any digital deal or anything.’”

The Beatles’ “Rock Band” evolved out of several meetings Harrison had with Alex Rigopulos, co-founder of Harmonix Music Systems, the developers of “Rock Band.”

“He’s a genius,” said Harrison, “just the loveliest, loveliest guy. We were sitting around one day, and he just said to me, ‘Do you think they would ever go for a Beatle game?’ And I was thinking the same thing to talk to him about! ‘It would be amazing, wouldn’t it?’ I said to him. Actually, I think I said, ‘It would be amazing because I could kick your ass at ‘I Am the Walrus’ while dressed as a wizard in Shea Stadium.’

“Do you know what I mean? Or I could put on the ice skating outfit from ‘Help!’ and then beat you at ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’ in the universe somewhere. I don’t know. Just make up whatever you can; ‘I Am the Walrus’ at the Cavern Club, even. Wouldn’t that be fun? And we both just started riffing on that kind of stuff until we both just were in hysterics, and it was obviously a brilliant idea, but I said, ‘Well, that’s never going to happen, is it?’ And he said, ‘No, it’s never going to happen.’ I said, ‘But I should talk to the guys from Apple, anyway. Because it is actually a no-brainer. It is the biggest no-brainer that I’ve ever, ever thought about, and if Apple don’t go for it, then they are shooting themselves in the foot, because someone else is going to do it. Someone else is going to get their own game.

“In the way the media works these days, in the way that music delivery systems work these days, I find it quite often best to be first,” Harrison explained. “If you were the first person ever to design an application for the iPhone and you patented it, you would be very, very better off than we are right now, you know? But you’ve got to be the first one to do it. So I figured that Led Zeppelin or The Stones were going to do it unless we just got on to it. So I got cracking with the guys from Apple. I kind of almost bullied them into believing how amazing it was. They really didn’t need much convincing if you looked to the fourth quarter, the month of December 2007, I think they sold something like 10,000,000 units of ‘Guitar Hero 2′ in just one month, and they are $50.00 each. I said, ‘If you do the math, if you go 50/50 with ‘Rock Band’ and you sell a Beatles ‘Rock Band’ game, that’s a big deal’ you know. And not to mention that, once the game is made, you can just keep adding songs to it. You could do the Bangladesh pack, you could do the ‘Live and Let Die’ pack, you could do the ‘Imagine’ pack…”

Are you salivating yet? Better clean yourself up. You’ve got ’til September 9th until the Beatles’ “Rock Band” hits stores.

Beatles fans and Rock Band fans can celebrate – The Beatles version of the popular game will be released in September 2009.

Here are the highlights from the press release:

• The game takes players through an “unprecendented experiential progression” of the musical career of the band.
• The game will be available as standalone software and hardware, as well as a limited edition bundle. The game will be compatible with all Rock Band instrument controllers and other current music-based video game peripherals.
• There will be limited edition hardware modelled on instruments used by John, Paul, George and Ringo.
• The numbers:
- The Beatles: Rock Band Software – Xbox 360, PLAYSTATION 3, Wii: $59.99 MSRP
- The Beatles: Rock Band Standalone Guitars – Xbox 360, PLAYSTATION 3, Wii: $99.99 MSRP
- The Beatles: Rock Band Limited Edition Premium Bundle: Xbox 360, PLAYSTATION 3, Wii: $249.99 MSRP
- International pricing to be announced at a later date
• Giles Martin, co-producer of The Beatles innovative LOVE album project, is providing his expertise and serving as Music Producer
• Fans who pre-order the game will get access to exclusive content created by Apple Corps, MTV Games and Harmonix over the next few months.

Save your pennies!