Beatles on iTunes? Oh no, Yoko says 'don't hold your breath'

We’ve so been hoping music from The Beatles would make it to iTunes, if only to prevent the current download generation missing out on the band as a slice of cultural history, but it looks like bad news with John Lennon widow, Yoko Ono, telling us “don’t hold your breath”.

“(Apple CEO) Steve Jobs has his own idea and he’s a brilliant guy,” Ono, the 77-year-old widow of John Lennon, told Reuters. “There’s just an element that we’re not very happy about, as people. We are holding out.

Yoko teased us last year with a claim — later deleted — that music from the band would reach iTunes. She’s not teasing anymore, saying, “Don’t hold your breath … for anything.”

We won’t. We’ve kind of given up hope. A shame, as the Yellow Submarine movie seems made for the digital age, at least to our eyes.

One refused to be drawn into any further comment, and suggested that her opinion may not be 100 per cent matched by the other three stakeholders, McCartney, bandmate Ringo Starr and Olivia Harrison, the widow of George Harrison.

I don’t think it will ever happen — at least, not before all the band’s real fans have expired.