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."
I'm thinking of buying every Beatles album, ripping them, isolating every musical note and spoken phenome and combining them however I want. Throw on a little post production and you can have the Beatles singing or saying anything. Maybe my first release will be "Beatles: Gangsta' Rap".
That'll be the day, pilgrim......
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"The LOVE you take...
...is equal to...
.......the LOVE you MAKE" ..The BEATLES
"Praise GOD that...
...LOVE is the Only Reality and...
.......GOD is LOVE" ..A Freeper
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I'd agree with you. I'm not really a big oldies fan, but my parents are, and I find the Who's songs are generally more fun to listen to than most of the Beatles' songs.
The Who are 'oldies'? Why do I feel like I need a walker right now?
They were so avant-garde at the time. Now they look like choirboys.
Man, they are total greed heads, aren't they? "All You Need is A Billion Dollars."
Listened to the preview and purchased it almost immediately (from ebay, of course :) I was a huge Beatles fan "back in the day." Thanks for the heads-up!
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The blessed Theme Song for our U.S. 7th Cavalry's "Walk" thru the Valley of Death known as the IA DRANG Valley of November 1965 ... http://www.lzxray.com ...,
...was The BEATLES' brand new 'We Can Work It Out' song as we first heard it on our portable Armed Forces radio broadcasts at Pleiku Airstrip, South Vietnam...,
...while processing our many resultant Battle casualties. ...http://www.lzxray.com/guyer_set3.htm
It was the closest thing we had to HOPE.
True ART reflects True LIFE..?
http://www.RickRescorla.com/The%20Statue.htm
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OK, I'll agre with you there, but there sure is plenty of the Beatles "worst" out there.
LOL ......
Saying, as you moronically did, that the Beatles are right up there with the Clintons is shear idiocy. Is that more clear?
I happen to have just been listening to John's "Accross The Universe" last night. What a hauntingly beautiful song!
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Images of broken light which dance before me like a million eyes,
and call me on and on across the universe.
Thoughts meander like a restless wind inside a letter box,
They stumble blindly as they make their way across the universe.
****
Pretty fine.
No, don't bother being ashamed. Just realize that you were writing like a freaking moron for comparing the Beatles to the Clintons.
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The love you take is equal to the love you make........
Indeed, ALOHA RONNIE.
Methinks you were there when they were there? Another wonder: Here Comes the Sun.
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 don't disagree with most of your points, especially "Won't Get Fooled Again". The Who's performance at the post 9/11 concert was one for the ages. You can't paint with such a broad brush regarding Beatle's tunes feeling stale. Yeah, how many times can you hear "Love Me Do" or "Yesterday" with wanting to chuck your nuggets BUT "Tomorrow Knows", "Dr. Robert", "It's All Too Much", are just a few that never get their due and never get stale.
Again, the Who, the Beatles, the Stones are all different. Zak Starkey, Ringo's son, is the Who's tour drummer. You probably knew that, I'm sure, but it might come in handy for Trivial Pursuit someday.
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I love that song........... George's. George was a really good guy.
This time, the album really will be bigger than Jesus!
I still listen to some Oasis. Not much, but then I'm not a big fan of the Beatles either.
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