Hard Rock rolls out in Moscow

THE Beatles, the Monkees and Jimi Hendrix arrive in Moscow today in the latest sign that Russia is plugging into Western ways.

Hard Rock Cafe, a subsidiary of Rank Group, is opening a swish restaurant in the city's pedestrianised Arbat Street. Its low-key arrival in Russia is a sign of how far Moscow has come since McDonald's and Pizza Hut paved the way for foreign food chains when the red flag still flew over the Kremlin.

Then, queues snaked outside the novelty restaurants as Russians waited hours for their first taste of the West.

'It's nice to have another choice of somewhere to eat with my friends,' said 20-year-old student Tanya as she looked around the new Hard Rock Cafe.

'But there are so many now that no one is any more surprised. We have Friday's, Planet Hollywood, Pizza Express, plus all kinds of British and Irish pubs.'

Rock-and-roll memorabilia in the new cafe includes a rare Russian-language LP cover for the Beatles' Back in the USSR and a Hendrix multicoloured lambswool coat. A second cafe is planned in St Petersburg and another is due to be opened in Riga, Latvia.