Posted on 11/22/2006 4:57:28 AM PST by mcg2000
LONDON (AFP) - Fans have rushed to buy the first "new" Beatles album for a generation -- a radical remixing of some of the group's most famous songs -- more than 35 years after the break-up of the iconic band.
"Love", which has the backing of surviving Beatles Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr, comprises 26 of the Fab Four's hit songs, but many of them mixed together using previously unheard material from the studio.
"I hope this will help people to hear Beatles music again," said Giles Martin, son of the group's original producer Sir George Martin who is often referred to as the fifth Beatle.
Martin and his son worked for three years on the project, which forms the soundtrack to a Beatles stage show of the same name, put on since June in Las Vegas by Canadian entertainment company Cirque du Soleil.
Using archives and master tapes at the Abbey Road studios in London originally used by The Beatles, they put together songs by a complex mixture of overlaying, dubbing and synchronizing to produce sometimes startlingly new compositions.
For example, elements of "Penny Lane" are mixed with "Strawberry Fields Forever", while "Blackbird" is combined with "Yesterday" in a process called a "mash-up" by sound engineers.
Other track combinations on the new album include "Get Back" feeding into "Glass Onion", before weaving into the chords of "Eleanor Rigby", giving an appropriately psychedelic texture to the 1960s originals.
At each stage the surviving Beatles -- plus John Lennon's widow Yoko Ono and George Harrison's widow Olivia -- were consulted on the developing work, and they were almost always approving.
On one occasion though, as a test, the Martins presented McCartney with a version of "Hey Jude" featuring a reggae intro.
"It was a Jamaican 'Hey Jude'. You had to see his face. He just said: 'I don't think that really goes'. It was wonderful," George Martin said, according to The Guardian newspaper.
In theory, the producers' golden rule was that only original Beatles music could be used. But there was one exception: an acoustic version of "While My Guitar Gently Weeps", for which George Martin wrote an original orchestral score.
"The project was a labour of love and rounds things off. In 1965 I did my first score for "Yesterday" and this is my final score ... it's a sort of top and tail of my life," said the 80-year-old producer on Monday.
The Las Vegas show, which features an international cast of 60 acrobats performing aerial gymnastics, extreme sports and urban, freestyle dance, has been a roaring success.
It has been staged for the last five months in a custom-built theatre at The Mirage hotel with 360-degree seating and high definition video projections of 100-feet (30-metre) high moving images.
The album's producers are reasonably confident the record will enjoy similar success, and that the late Beatles Lennon and Harrison would have approved of it.
"I think they would have liked it," said the elder Martin at the album launch. "To be honest, I believe they were there with us as we worked on it."
He's trashed The Beatles before.
Let's see if we are still listening to Oasis songs 40 years from now. Or four years from now.
I'll take the Beatles over the Clintons any day.
I'll take neither....give me Miles Davis
Mom..?
;-)
Because the Beatles were great .......... on the other hand, Clinton is just like cancer without a cure.
By the way ....... real, real stupid comment!
Well said.
I'm glad you're not comparing apples and oranges.
Oh golly, I disagree with a Beatles fan....I'm so ashamed!
Stones be damned, the Beatles were the greatest rock and roll band in history. Most innovative, most revolutionary.
And The Who kicked both of them up one wall and down the other. I'll put Townsend's core rock innovations against the Beatles - they, IMO, went too far down the pop music trail while The Who remained rockers.
And those dang horseless carriages.
Oh darn I am late. gotta get to the buggy whip factory.
Never liked the Who. And, for what it's worth, Pete Townshend and John Entwhistle sat through our entire set at the Troubadour in 1976 and when we finished, Townshend came up and slapped me on the back and said, "Eh, good show, wot?"
While the Beatles did not.
They brought "Art" into 'Rock & Roll' and created the genre we now call 'Rock'.
Without them, no Pink Floyd, no Steely Dan, no Moody Blues and so on.
They are like Frank Lloyd Wright. I'm sure there are plenty of architects whose buildings were better built...better suited...etc.
But who will be remembered?
And The Who kicked both of them up one wall and down the other. I'll put Townsend's core rock innovations against the Beatles - they, IMO, went too far down the pop music trail while The Who remained rockers.
Tough call, considering all three were different genres inside the rock whole. I will say though, the first band with "feedback" were the Beatles on "I Feel Fine". The Beatles were the only group that was more than a band, though. They were fed off the time, while the time fed off them.
But why on God's green earth do people keep forgeting about the Kinks?
You should be! Now drop and give me 50.
The Beatles were incredibly original in both lyrics and music. I'm picking up a copy this weekend.
Townsend invented longer rock songs (A Quick One While He's Away). Invented the Rock Opera (Tommy). And pioneered the incorporation of synthesizers into kick-butt rock tunes (Baba O'Reilly, Won't get Fooled Again).
In addition, Pete never went for that hippy nonsense like the Beatles did (his quote about Woodstock - "I 'ated it"). The Beatles, IMO, sound stale across time with their foray into Sixties psychodelia - whereas Won't Get Fooled Again was declared the greatest conservative rock song of all time and resonates no matter what era we are in.
I'd call the genre Pop, myself.
Pink Floyd was a separate branch, IMO - they were contemporaries with the late Beatles and defined their own path.
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