Real Lyrics to Great Songs

The company behind Sean "Diddy" Combs' clothing line says it has a looming problem at its flagship New York City store - a scaffold that has been hanging over the shop for more than three years.

The company behind the rap impresario's Sean John label sued its Manhattan landlord on Wednesday.

The company, Christian Casey LLC, says the scaffold obscures the Fifth Avenue store's window displays, discouraging shoppers and cutting revenue in half.

The company wants at least $2.5 million in damages from its landlord and freedom from its more than $660,000-a-year lease.

A Delaware corporate services firm listed as an agent for landlord 475 Fifth 09 LLC declined to take a telephone message from The Associated Press on Thursday. The clothing company's lawyer hasn't returned a telephone call.

In a Dec. 28 story, The Associated Press, relying on information from Van Morrison's Hollywood-based publicist and his official Web site, reported erroneously that the Irish singer had a new baby boy with a woman identified as "his wife, GiGi."

Morrison said Thursday in a statement through his Dublin public relations firm that the report was "utterly without foundation" and planted by an unknown hacker. Morrison said he remains "very happily married" to former Miss Ireland Michelle Rocca, with whom he has two children, aged 3 and 2.

An e-mail sent to the AP on Thursday by the office of Morrison's Hollywood publicist, Phil Lobel, said the publicist's Dec. 28 announcement of the birth was based on information from Morrison's hacked Web site and that "all those with Van Morrison regret any confusion this may have caused."

Morrison's statement, issued by the Dublin branch of the U.S.-based public relations firm Fleishman-Hillard Inc., said his Web site has been hacked at least twice in recent months. The statement was issued by John Saunders, senior partner of the firm in Europe, who confirmed to the AP the authenticity of Thursday's statement.

Tim Hart, a founding member of the British folk-rock group Steeleye Span, has died of lung cancer, his daughter said Wednesday.

Hart, 61, died Dec. 24 in La Gomera in Spain's Canary Islands, where the Briton had lived since retiring from the music scene, Sally Hart told The Associated Press.

He had returned to La Gomera three weeks ago after spending a year in Britain receiving treatment, she said.

"In the last few days he became very weak, and had chest pains. His body had suffered greatly from the cancer treatment," she said.

Hart was a star of the 1960s folk scene in Britain, first gaining fame in a musical partnership with singer Maddy Prior in 1966. The duo recorded two albums of "Folk Songs of Olde England," with the versatile Hart backing their singing on guitar, mandolin, dulcimer, banjo and violin.

In 1971, Hart and Prior joined with Ashley Hutchings, who had left the Fairport Convention to form a new band. The new project, at Hart's suggestion, was named Steeleye Span after a character in a Lincolnshire folk song, "Horkstow Grange."

Hart left Steeleye Span in 1983, but appeared at a charity concert with the group in 1995. Last year, he appeared with Prior at a BBC concert in London.

Living on La Gomera, Hart developed his interest in photography. He called the island "my inexhaustible subject" and did his own pictures for his English language guide to the island, published in 2004.

"In what now feels like a previous life, I once spent 16 years as a member of the English folk-rock band Steeleye Span," Hart wrote on his Web site.

"As the Everly Brothers so rightly sang we did it for the stories we could tell. But after a few years of traveling too fast around the world I got myself a camera, a Pentax Spotmatic, in order to provide a more substantial, and accurate, archive of memories," he wrote.

Hart is survived by his wife Connie, and a daughter and son from a previous marriage. Funeral arrangements were not announced.

In this Dec. 9, 2009 photograph, a long passageway in "Graceland Too," as well as its walls and ceiling are covered with snapshots Paul MacLeod has taken of visitors to his Holly Springs, Miss., house throughout the years. (AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis) In this Dec. 9, 2009 photograph, Paul MacLeod is a perpetually caffeinated Elvis fanatic who's taking care of business 24-7-365 at the antebellum home he calls "Graceland Too," in Holly Springs, Miss.

Paul MacLeod is a perpetually caffeinated Elvis fanatic who's taking care of business 24-7-365 at the antebellum home he calls "Graceland Too."

Pound on the door at any hour - seriously, it's OK to arrive at 4 in the morning - and the 67-year-old former auto worker will escort you through his discombobulating, floor-to-ceiling collection of photos, records, figurines, cardboard cutouts, candy wrappers, clocks and other random kitsch featuring the King of Rock 'n' Roll.

"I'd give my life right now if I could bring this guy back," MacLeod says in his auctioneer's staccato, his gray hair slicked back in a '50s style.

MacLeod says he rarely leaves Graceland Too, sleeps only sporadically and is fueled by 24 cans of Coca-Cola a day - a claim at least partially verified by the aluminum pull-top tabs he collects in sandwich bags and the stacks of flattened red cardboard boxes on the back porch.

Graceland Too is in Holly Springs, a northern Mississippi town of 8,000. It's a convenient stop for fans on an Elvis pilgrimage, sitting about halfway between Elvis Presley's birthplace in Tupelo, Miss., and the King's final home and resting place, the unaffiliated Graceland mansion in Memphis, Tenn.

Until Graceland Too became a magnet for offbeat tourism, Holly Springs was best known for its traditional - and tastefully kept - white-columned antebellum homes.

"He's our number one attraction," says Suzann Williams, assistant director of the local tourism bureau.

She says that people call daily wanting information about Graceland Too, and that the Japanese and the British are the largest groups of overseas visitors. MacLeod doesn't have a telephone, but the tourism folks take him notes to let him know visitors are coming.

MacLeod is so obsessed that 36 years ago, he named his only son after the man he considers the world's greatest entertainer and humanitarian.

"My son was born Elvis Aron Presley, with one A for Aron," he says, noting the spelling Presley used for years. "I didn't put the other A to his name until Vernon Presley put it on his son's grave."

Floors creak beneath visitors' feet as they walk through the 157-year-old home warmed by space heaters that sit perilously close to raggedy shag carpet and stacks of papers and magazines.

For $5, visitors get to experience sensory overload, harshly lit by unshaded bulbs.

Doorways are decorated with several Elvis-patterned curtains in '70s-era hues of turquoise and lime. There are photocopies of a newspaper with MacLeod's all-time favorite headline: "Elvis Presley Excites Girls, Scares Critics."

A poster-sized display in the entryway declares - sans punctuation - "The Universes Galaxys Planets Worlds Ultimate Elvis Fans."

"My ex-wife told me, 'Make up your mind. Either me or the Elvis collection.' So that put an end to that," MacLeod says with a chuckle.

MacLeod says he has owned his home since the mid-1970s, and that he's had 368,000 visitors since he started opening it to strangers since the late 1980s or early 1990s.

Heaven help the fact-checker who'd have to verify the statistics he tosses out during his tours, which typically last an hour and a half.

Fans say the random, nonstop flow of information is part of the campy appeal.

Garreth Blackwell, a 27-year-old journalism teacher at the nearby University of Mississippi, said he has been to Graceland Too a half-dozen times and recently took his wife and three friends for a nighttime tour.

"It's kind of hard to talk about this guy, because you come enough you hear the same things over and over again," Blackwell says. "It kind of puts that in your mind, 'Well, maybe this is all true.' You don't ever know. But it doesn't matter because it's a good time."

MacLeod says that he became an Elvis fan when he was 13, and that he attended 120 Elvis concerts.

In Graceland Too, MacLeod claims to have 35,000 records and 25,000 CDs. He says he has 185,000 square inches of carpet that once was in Graceland. He constantly monitors radio and TV broadcasts and records any mention of his idol, claiming to have 31,000 videotapes and 43,000 audio recordings.

Then there's the scrapbook filled with teensy slivers of paper - 1 million mentions, he says, of the name Elvis Presley.

"There's my burial suit up here to come back and haunt my ex-wife," MacLeod says, pointing to a gold number in one of the front rooms.

Robert Lopez of Los Angeles, who has performed 21 years as El Vez, the Mexican Elvis, says he has toured Graceland Too at least a dozen times and is attracted to its folk-art oddness. He once donated one of his stage outfits to MacLeod's collection - a maroon crushed-velvet jumpsuit with a cape featuring a sequined Virgin of Guadalupe.

He says Elvis MacLeod is a walking encyclopedia about Elvis Presley who helped his father give tours for several years, but was a calmer presence: "The son would translate in a slower monotone: 'What my father said was ...,'" Lopez recalls.

The younger MacLeod moved to New York in the 1990s, and a phone listing for him could not be found.

Lopez also cautions that Graceland Too "might be a slight warning about what too much love can do."

The ceiling of the TV room is covered with baseball card-size Elvis pictures and visitor comments printed on fluorescent pink, blue and yellow paper. Wrote one man from Pensacola, Fla.: "This Elvis shrine is as close to Heaven as an Elvis fan can get. This is the ULTIMATE."

In this Dec. 9, 2009 photograph, virtually every inch of free space in every room on the first floor of the Holly Springs, Miss., home of Paul MacLeod, a perpetually caffeinated Elvis fanatic who calls his house "Graceland Too," is dedicated to the "King." (AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis) In this Dec. 9, 2009 photograph, Paul MacLeod is a perpetually caffeinated Elvis fanatic who's taking care of business 24-7-365 at the antebellum home he calls "Graceland Too," in Holly Springs, Miss.

In this Dec. 9, 2009 photograph, "Graceland Too," the Elvis Presley themed home of Paul MacLeod in Holly Springs, Miss., is undergoing remodeling to look more like the current Graceland. (AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis) In this Dec. 9, 2009 photograph, Paul MacLeod is a perpetually caffeinated Elvis fanatic who's taking care of business 24-7-365 at the antebellum home he calls "Graceland Too," in Holly Springs, Miss.

In this Dec. 9, 2009 photograph, a homemade electric chair is displayed at "Graceland Too," as part of the "Jailhouse Rock" tribute by owner and extreme Elvis fan Paul MacLeod at his Holly Springs, Miss., home.

In this Dec. 9, 2009 photograph, virtually anything that has the image of Elvis on it has been collected by extreme fan Paul MacLeod and is on display at his antebellum home he calls "Graceland Too," in Holly Springs, Miss. Some of the alleged 24 cans of Coca-Cola that MacLeod drinks daily share space with some of the more unusual Elvis decorations. (AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis) In this Dec. 9, 2009 photograph, Paul MacLeod is a perpetually caffeinated Elvis fanatic who's taking care of business 24-7-365 at the antebellum home he calls "Graceland Too," in Holly Springs, Miss.

In this Dec. 9, 2009 photograph, Paul MacLeod, the perpetually caffeinated Elvis fanatic who's taking care of business 24-7-365 at the antebellum home he calls "Graceland Too," in Holly Springs, Miss., left, shows off some of the Elvis related newspaper clippings he has collected over the years to Oxford residents Callie Blackwell, second from left, her husband, Garrath Blackwell, second from right, and their friend Jimi Myers of Lawrence, Kansas.

In this Dec. 9, 2009 photograph, Paul MacLeod is a perpetually caffeinated Elvis fanatic who's taking care of business 24-7-365 at the antebellum home he calls "Graceland Too," in Holly Springs, Miss. (AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis) In this Dec. 9, 2009 photograph, Paul MacLeod is a perpetually caffeinated Elvis fanatic who's taking care of business 24-7-365 at the antebellum home he calls "Graceland Too," in Holly Springs, Miss.

In this Dec. 9, 2009 photograph, video recorders stand at ready for Paul MacLeod of Holly Springs, Miss., to begin recording any program, commercial or reference to Elvis.

FILE - This Jan. 17, 2006 photo shows 'Avenged Sevenfold' drummer Jimmy "The Rev" Sullivan backstage stage during MTV's "Total Request Live" in New York. Sullivan was found dead in his Huntington Beach, Calif. home on Monday, Dec. 28, 2009.

An autopsy is inconclusive as to the cause of death for Avenged Sevenfold drummer Jimmy "The Rev" Sullivan.

Orange County sheriff's spokesman Jim Amormino said Tuesday that the coroner's office ordered toxicology, microscopic and laboratory tests to help determine why Sullivan died. It's expected to take several weeks to get the results of the tests.

Sullivan was found dead in his Huntington Beach home on Monday.

Avenged Sevenfold formed in Huntington Beach in 1999 and won Best New Artist at the MTV Video Music Awards in 2006. According to their MySpace page, the five-man metalcore band was working on their fifth album.

In a statement, the band called Sullivan "one of the world's best drummers," and "our best friend and brother."