''Lonesome" George Thorogood is far better equipped than most to speak about the ongoing steroids controversy in baseball. Prior to being 'Bad to the Bone,' Thorogood was a semi-pro baseball player who, even today, speaks as passionately about Sandy Koufax versus Bob Gibson as the Rolling Stones versus the Beatles.

So, who does the guitar slinger think is responsible for the steroids controversy that has dogged baseball for more than a decade and has implicated such major players as Barry Bonds, Mark McGwire, Roger Clemens and Alex Rodriguez? "If Keith Richards wrote the number one song of all time back in 1973 and he was mixing cocaine with heroin to do it, what do you think the president of that company and the producer of the record would give him?" Thorogood asks Spinner. "They all understood what was going on. Everybody knew what was going on. Nobody cared because the ball was going into the seats. That thing had been going on for years; somebody was gonna find an edge."

The summer of 2000 belonged to 'Thong Song' and 'Who Let the Dogs Out.' The dog days of 1997 would have been unrecognizable without 'MMMBop.' But the truly timeless songs of summer are the ones written about the season itself. These all-time summer hits are hotter than black vinyl car seats in Arizona and more fun than running through the sprinkler.

10. 'In the Summertime,' Mungo Jerry

Sun-soaked lyric: "When the weather's fine, you got women, you got women on your mind"

Not a lone bloke named Jerry but a British jug band named after a T.S. Eliot poem. This warm-weather classic is dated by its no-no suggestion of road beers ("Have a drink, have a drive"). But it was also ahead of its time: Check the pre-hip-hop beatboxing.

Julian Lennon, the son of late Beatle John Lennon, is throwing his support behind childhood friend Lucy O'Donnell, -- the girl behind the Beatles tune 'Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds' -- who is suffering from the auto-immune disease lupus.

"I've been able to help out a bit," Lennon said of O'Donnell, now Lucy Vodden, 46, from Surrey, England. "I was so upset to hear what happened."

Julian Lennon met Lucy in nursery school, drew a picture of her with diamond-shaped eyes and showed his father, thus inspiring the song, which appeared on 1967's 'Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.' The song has long been the subject of speculation, however, with many maintaining that it's a reference to LSD. The Beatles have admitted to using the drug around that time.

Inbar Bakal is a little nervous about the trip to Israel she's making this month. Sure, it's been three years since she's been there. But it's where the Tel Aviv native grew up, where she learned and performed music both in classical choirs and folk contexts, and where she served in the military -- two years as an intelligence officer in the anti-aircraft division (the first female to hold that position) and two doing international relations.

Six years living in the U.S., though, has brought some changes, she says. To her perspective on her identity. And to her music.

On the former, she returns with some deeper appreciation and a sense that maybe she needed to be outside Israeli life for a bit to realize how much a part of her it is.

"Being a Jewish person in Israel, I was taking it for granted," she says, even with coming from a mixed heritage of an Iraqi-born father and a Yemenite mother. "You're not really thinking about your identity. Holidays are holidays. You're with your family. Everyone around you is Jewish. Coming here it was very much, 'OK, I'm without my family, without my friends. How do I fit in my identity?' And finding that was important to me."

George Harrison's son, Dhani, has been working with Harmonix, the makers of the wildly successful 'Rock Band,' while making his own music with the NewNo2. But Dhani Harrison tells Spinner it was through his own music he was able to bring the Beatles to 'Rock Band,' which hits shelves September 9. "I had a few of my own songs on there before I brought the project to the Beatles," he says. "Then, I could go to Apple [Corps Ltd.] and say, 'This is what I'm doing with my music and I intend to do this with the George Harrison catalog and the Beatles catalog, if you will let me. This is a great music delivery system.'"

Having now brought the most popular rock band of all time to the digital age, who would Harrison like to see follow the Beatles? "Radiohead and Led Zeppelin," he says without hesitating. "Radiohead are reluctant to give up their masters. They don't like people having the stems because they don't want them to remix their stuff. If you've been Radiohead for this long you shouldn't really worry about that because it's not as if anybody's going to remix your tracks better than you've done. And Zeppelin would just be great, straight-up rock 'n' roll."

Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr reunited onstage yesterday to promote 'The Beatles: Rock Band' video game at the Electronic Entertainment Expo. The two surviving Beatles appeared alongside Yoko Ono and Olivia Harrison, the respective widows of John Lennon and George Harrison, at a conference at the University of Southern California in advance of the game's September 9 release.

"Whoever thought we'd end up as androids?" McCartney joked. To which Starr added, "The game is good, the graphics are good and we look great."

When engineer Geoff Emerick first entered a studio with Nellie McKay, he was recording her debut album, 'Get Away From Me,' in 2004. This month, the two enter the studio again for a very different project -- a tribute to the Beatles' 'Revolver.' It's an album with which Emerick has close ties -- he started work on it his first day as head engineer at EMI.

"I'm tickled to work with Geoff again," McKay tells Spinner. "I hope it'll just be a big party."