December 09, 2023

Listen to all 12 Beatles Christmas Messages in Auto Play + Christmas Songs from John & Paul


For this year, if you would like to listen to a full hour of Beatles Christmas Messages, you can stream them all in great fidelity at the below link. These are the Christmas messages included here:

Beatles - Wish you a Happy Xmas 1963/1969:
1-Crimble medley (BBC Saturday Club 12-21-1969).
2-Christmas time is here again(edit version 1995).
3-From us to you 1963.
4-Another Beatles Christmas 1964.
5-Third Christmas record 1965.
6-Everywhere it's Christmas 1966.
7-Christmas time is here again 1967.
8-1968 Christmas record.
9-Seventh Christmas record 1969.
10-Hello Dolly(1964 outtake).
11-Speech(1964 outtake).
12-Christmas time is here again (full version).














Two more Christmas songs from John and Paul:



From John, Happy Christmas War Is Over, and
From Paul, Wonderful Christmas Time... Enjoy









The Beatles Christmas Messages are available on the below collections along with outtakes:



















December 07, 2023

Beatles Christmas Messages Recordings

As a special treat for Christmas, I've posted the Beatles Christmas Messages recordings. 
Below are details on each of the recordings and their audio to enjoy. These bring back fond memories.



Each year from 1963 through 1969, the Beatles recorded a special Christmas greeting for their fans. The Official Beatles Fan Club in England sent flexi-discs containing the Christmas messages to its members each holiday season.The American fan club, Beatles (U.S.A.) Ltd., was established in 1964, and for their first Christmas, the American fan club sent fans the 1963 Christmas message on a soundcard, which is like a flexi-disc, but is "printed" on the post card that is mailed. No message was sent to the American fans in 1965 because the tape was not received on time.[Read more →] The Beatles Christmas flexis are very rare, and sell, in excellent condition, anywhere from $200 to $500.


These recordings offer a unique time-capsule glimpse into the personalities and evolution of the Beatles from 1963 through 1969. In the early years, like their appearances in A Hard Day’s Night, even though these messages were scripted by “somebody’s bad hand-wroter” (their Press Agent Tony Barrow), the Beatle’s geniune wit and humor shines through, for example, in 1963, when as John mentions taking part in the Royal Variety show, the boys extemporaneously launch into a whistling version of God Save The Queen, or in 1964, when Paul mentions that they don’t really know where they’d be without the fans, John says, off-handedly, “In the Army, perhaps…”


For older Beatles fans who remember hearing these messages over the years, “these little bits of plastic” are a fond holiday tradition, while for younger Beatles fans they offer a whole new insight into a pop music phenomenon which might never be repeated.


We present the Beatles Christmas Records here as a Christmas present to you from the Internet Beatles Album. Happy Crimble!

 



1963
The Beatles Christmas Record
Released December 6, 1963
Recorded October 17, 1963
EMI Abbey Road Studio 2
Engineer: Norman Smith
Recorded after a session for I Want To Hold Your Hand and This Boy.
About 30,000 total copies were manufactured.
This recording was sent to US Fan Club members in 1964.









 

1964
Another Beatles Christmas Record
Released December 18, 1964
Recorded October 26, 1964
EMI Abbey Road Studio 2
Engineer: Norman Smith
The only Beatles Fan Club Christmas record that played at 45 RPM instead of 33 1/3 RPM.
Recorded on the same day that they recorded Honey Don’t for Beatles For Sale.
US Fan Club members received the 1963 Christmas message this year.







 


1965
The Beatles Third Christmas Record
Released December 17, 1965
Recorded November 8, 1965
EMI Abbey Road Studio 2
Engineer: Norman Smith
Recorded during the Rubber Soul sessions, on the same day they recorded Think For Yourself. Cover photo taken on November 1 during the taping of Granada-TV’s ‘The Music of Lennon and McCartney’.








 


1966
Pantomime (Everywhere It’s Christmas)
Released December 16, 1966
Recorded November 25, 1966
Recorded in the basement studio of Dick James Music in London
Mixed at Abbey Road, December 2, 1966. Produced by George Martin.
Cover designed by Paul.







Some of the historical info on this page is from the books The Beatles: A Day In The Life by Tom Schultheiss, The Beatles Day By Day by Mark Lewisohn and The Price Guide for the Beatles American Records by Perry Cox and Frank Daniels As the 60’s evolve, so do the Beatles, and so do their Christmas records.


The previous year, the Christmas message changed from scripted messages talking directly to the fans, to sketch comedy, mostly Paul’s idea, but enthusiastically joined in by the other three. 1967 brings a similar production, but as the members of the group start desiring to go their separate ways, this is also reflected in the Christmas records, as the final two years bring messages recorded in bits and pieces recorded separately by each Beatle and assembled together later.







1967
Christmas Time (Is Here Again)
Released December 15, 1967
Recorded November 28, 1967
EMI Abbey Road Studio 2
Produced by George Martin
Special guest: Victor Spinetti

The script was written earlier in the day by the band. Last Christmas record the Beatles recorded together as a group. Cover designed on November 29 by John and Ringo.

The song Christmas Time (Is Here Again) was later released on the Real Love single in 1995.










1968
Happy Christmas
Released December 20, 1968
Recorded in November, 1968 at John’s home in London, Paul’s home in London, in the back of Ringo’s van in Surrey, with George in America and at George’s house in Esher during rehearsals for the White Album.
Special guest: Tiny Tim.

Created by Radio 1 disc jockey Kenny Everett who edited together separately-recorded messages from John, Paul, George and Ringo, and inter-cut random fragments from the White Album.











1969
Happy Christmas 1969
Released December 19, 1969
Recorded in fall of 1969 at John and Yoko’s home in Ascot, Ringo’s home in Weybridge, Paul’s home in London, and the London offices of Apple.
Edited by Maurice Cole (Kenny Everett’s original name)
Cover designed by Ringo










Because the Beatles officially broke up in 1970, no Christmas message was prepared for that holiday season.


In early 1971, fan club members were sent an album on the Apple label containing all seven of the Christmas messages.
Pictured is the American version of the LP. The British LP entitled From Then To You included a reproduction of the cover of the 1963 Christmas record.




Along with Let It Be and Introducing The Beatles, this is one of the notoriously most heavily counterfeited of Beatles albums. Counterfeits can be identified by blurry cover photos and an indentation ring much larger than 1 1/2″.

Some of the historical info on this page is from the books The Beatles: A Day In The Life by Tom Schultheiss, The Beatles Day By Day by Mark Lewisohn and The Price Guide for the Beatles American Records by Perry Cox and Frank Daniels.


You can listen to all Christmas Messages here:
https://brunchradio.com/beatles-christmas-messages-all-7/

Below is my previous post of scans of the covers:
http://jfnmusicmemories.blogspot.com/2009/07/christmas-messages-covers.html

You can get the recordings here:
http://teenagedogsintrouble.blogspot.com/2009/12/very-merry-beatles-christmas.html




Source :
http://www.ringofstars.ru/across/?p=2767







December 04, 2023

Christmas Messages Covers- Updated HQ Scans

Each year the Beatles would send a studio message thanking all their fan club members for a wonderful year. Below are the covers for each year from 1963 thru 1969 and a link where you can get them. Enjoy http://returntopepperland.blogspot.com/2006/11/beatles-christmas-records.html


1963 -














1964 -








1965

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1966 -






1967 -






1968 -







1969 -






Listen to the Beatles Christmas Messages: 7 Vintage Recordings for Their Fans: 1963-1969

1963: 
Every year from 1963 to 1969, the Beatles recorded a special Christmas greeting to their fans. It started when “Beatlemania” took off and the band found itself unable to answer all the fan mail.  “I’d love to reply personally to everyone,” says Lennon in the 1963 message, “but I just haven’t enough pens.” The first message was intended to make their most loyal fans feel appreciated. Like those that followed, the 1963 message was mailed as a paper-thin vinyl “flexi disc” to members of the Beatles fan club. The recording features the Beatles’ trademark wit and whimsy, with a chorus of “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Ringo” and a version of “Good King Wenceslas” that refers to Betty Grable. It was made on October 17, 1963 at Abbey Road Studios, just after the band recorded “I Want to Hold Your Hand.”





1964:
The band recorded their next holiday greeting, Another Beatles Christmas Record, on October 26, 1964, the same day they recorded the song “Honey Don’t.” Lennon’s rebellious nature begins to show, as he pokes fun at the prepared script: “It’s somebody’s bad hand wroter.”





1965:
Recorded on November 8, 1965 during the Rubber Soul sessions at Abbey Road, the 1965 message features a re-working of “Yesterday,” with the refrain “Oh I believe on Christmas Day.” The band’s gift for free-associational role playing is becoming more apparent. One piece of dialogue near the end was eventually re-used by producer George Martin and his son Giles at the end of the re-mixed version of “All You Need is Love” on the 2006 album Love: “All right put the lights off. This is Johnny Rhythm saying good night to you all and God Blesses.”






1966:
You can sense the band’s creative powers growing in the 1966 message, Pantomime: Everywhere It’s Christmas. The recording was made at Abbey Road on November 25, 1966, during a break from working on “Strawberry Fields Forever.” The Beatles were just beginning work on Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Heart’s Club Band. Instead of simply thanking their fans and recounting the events of the year, the Beatles use sound effects and dialogue to create a vaudeville play based around a song that goes, “Everywhere it’s Christmas, at the end of every year.” Paul McCartney designed the cover.




1967:

This was the last Christmas message recorded by the Beatles all together in one place. Titled Christmas Time (Is Here Again), it reveals the group’s continuing experimentation with sound effects and storytelling. The scenario, written by the band earlier on the day it was recorded (November 28, 1967), is about a group of people auditioning for a BBC radio play. Lennon and Ringo Starr designed the cover.
 

You can listen to the entire Christmas Message for 1967 here:

https://oildale.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/22103423/Beatles-Christmas-Time-Is-Here-Again-1967.mp3





1968:

By the Christmas season of 1968, relations within the Beatles were becoming strained. The holiday message was produced around the time the “White Album” was released, in November of 1968. The four members’ voices were recorded separately, in various locations. There’s plenty of self-mockery. Perhaps the most striking moment comes when the American singer Tiny Tim (invited by George Harrison) strums a ukulele and sings “Nowhere Man” in a high falsetto.





1969:
The Beatles were in the process of breaking up when they recorded (separately) their final Christmas message in November and December of 1969. A couple of months earlier, just before the release of Abbey Road, Lennon had announced to the others that he was leaving the group. Yoko Ono appears prominently on the recording, singing and talking with Lennon about peace. Fittingly, the 1969 message incorporates a snippet from the Abbey Road recording of “The End.”



This post was written by Open Culture contributor Mike Springer.


December 02, 2023

George & Giles Martin: Remixing The Beatles- The Making of the Love Album

When the Beatles' record company tempted their producer out of retirement for one last project, no-one had any idea how radical the resulting album would be.


Part high-concept mash-up, part elaborate restoration job, the Beatles' Love was originally conceived as the soundtrack to Cirque du Soleil's Las Vegas show, but became much more. Upon its release as an album, listeners were invited to play spot-the-elements, as well as to hear new mixes of classic recordings. The project also marked the first collaboration between George Martin and his son Giles. The legendary producer, who turned 81 in January, had in fact gone into retirement, but the thought of returning to the Beatles' masters proved too tantalising a prospect.

"It's a funny word, 'retirement'," he says. "Because it suggests you're giving up everything, and I certainly haven't done that. But I've given up recording, because my ears aren't good enough. This, however, was an offer I couldn't refuse, when they asked me to produce the music for the show. It was such a challenge. But I couldn't have done it without Giles. He's my ears."

"He refuses to get old, which is great," laughs Giles. "I would rush forward and do stuff, then find myself lost without him. Even though his hearing is bad, he has a great ability in his brain to work things out."

"One day," George recalls with a smile, "I was apologising to Giles because I couldn't hear the top. He said 'Dad, how many 80 year-old people do you know who're experts in sound?'"

Through The Ages

Martin joined EMI as a producer in 1950, initially working mostly on classical recordings. "But of course you'd have to chop up the music into little bits and pieces," he explains. "Four minutes, 15 seconds was about the length of a disc. So if you've got a 15-minute overture, you have to chop it up into four parts. You, the producer, had to tell the conductor where he should end. You had to say 'I think the good place is bar 191, but resolve the chord so it doesn't sound too bad, and when we start again we'll start with that chord, OK?' And that's the way you did it."

Branching out into comedy recordings with the likes of Peter Sellers and Spike Milligan and enjoying crooner hits with Matt Monro, Martin was on the lookout for a rock & roll band when Brian Epstein brought the Beatles in to audition. Three years later, in 1965, when his contract with EMI expired, he made the shrewd move into independent production.

"I was forced into it," he recalls. "Before I met the Beatles, I had been lobbying my bosses, saying 'I want some kind of recognition of the sales I'm achieving. Your salesman are getting a commission on their sales. I'm making the damn things and I'm getting nothing.' I was on a salary of £3200 a year, no car and nothing else. When the Beatles came along I was making a fortune for EMI."

Sitting in the small studio ('At the end of the corridor next to the loos,' Giles points out) in Abbey Road where the majority of the work on Love was done, I wonder if it's strange for George Martin, returning to a building where's worked on and off for close to 60 years. "Well, the building itself hasn't changed at all," he states. "Number Two studio is very, very similar to the time with the Beatles. The control room is different: when I first came here, the control room of Number Two was on the ground floor because we didn't have tape machines then. We had lathes in the control rooms cutting discs. We had to wear a suit and a tie and the engineers wore white coats. Nobody sat down. We did have tape machines but they were considered to be rather inferior, which they were. Because the tape in those days was pretty raw stuff and the signal-to-noise ratio wasn't very good so you got a hell of a hiss, which you never got on the disc. The disc was a very clean sound. And of course everything was mono: 78rpm shellacs, which were breakable."

Give The Drummer His Due

Something that both producers agree on is that Ringo Starr is the star of Love. "Listening to this recording, he drives that band right through the show," says George. "Fantastic stuff. And it isn't just the technique of playing the drums, but it's also thinking up what he's going to play. If you listen to 'Come Together', for example, his work on that is very, very thoughtful and very clever. And the stuff he did on 'Day In The Life' with the toms... magic."

"It's great that his drumming has come out so well," Giles agrees. "He's not even louder, it's just I guess his drums are slightly bigger than they were. I've had the ability to take Ringo off the Beatles' records and put them back on, and the great thing is that he plays stuff you wouldn't imagine a drummer playing. As a producer or a musician, you can go 'Right, what would I have the drummer doing now?' And it's never what Ringo plays."

Chopping & Changing

It's incredible to think that George Martin has been working with sound for so long that he's not only seen shellac made obsolete by tape, but has watched tape lose out to DAWs. "Isn't it incredible?" he says, gesturing towards the Apple Mac studio display.

"He finds it amazing what can be done," says Giles. "At first he said 'Why don't we use tape?' I said 'Well Dad, you know I'm enthusiastic about that world, but we couldn't do this on tape.' The way that we worked was I would do the chopping and changing and play it to him and he sort of produced me doing it. One day he watched me grab something and turn it around and he said 'My God, sound is like putty nowadays, you can just mould it into any shape you want.'"

"The brief on this show," George says, "was that I should use all previous recordings in any form I wanted. It gave us carte blanche to muck about."

Preliminary work on Love began in November 2003, when Apple Records' Neil Aspinall gave Giles a brief to create a mash-up demo of 'a gig that never happened,' using elements of the Beatles' catalogue. The resulting 13-minute piece comprised the opening section of Love, from the 'A Hard Day's Night' guitar chord through to 'Get Back', a 5.1 mix of 'I Am The Walrus' and his clever pasting of 'Within You Without You' over 'Tomorrow Never Knows'.

Speaking of the latter, George says "It was Giles's idea and he did it without my being here. I thought, fantastic. So did Ringo, he thought it was amazing."

"To begin with," Giles continues, "it was just going to be the Beatles remixed, and the idea of chopping and changing didn't really come to fruition until we tried stuff out. Apple are the four Beatles' families, so we played them to Paul, to Ringo, to Yoko, to Olivia Harrison, and they gave the green light for the whole thing to go ahead. There wasn't actually that much politics, it was just 'Does it sound good or not?'"

Wasn't Giles slightly intimidated by the thought of setting to work on the Beatles' masters? "Yeah. But I didn't believe it was going to happen, to be honest. When I first came to Abbey Road, in people's eyes they were looking at me thinking 'You're only going to get so far into doing this.' Because it's kind of like the Holy Grail. I thought it was never going to see the light of day, so that kind of helped me. I just launched into it without worrying too much, presuming that things were going to go wrong. The funny thing about Beatles stuff is that if the Beatles aren't happy, then no-one hears it. There's no A&R teams or record companies, there's only them and my Dad involved, so it kind of makes it easier in a way. The pressure is really whether you are gonna get fired or get the job!"

The Tools For The Job

Once he'd secured the job, Abbey Road engineers set to work building a studio to Giles's specifications ("Which is always nice," he laughs). He chose to work in Pro Tools ("They've only just updated me — I was on 6.4 for ages") run on a Mac, using Adam S3A monitors ("They're the best cross between nearfield and big studio speakers").

The Love project began life as the soundtrack for Cirque du Soleil's Las Vegas show.


His first task when work got under way properly in 2004 was to load almost all of the old Beatles' one-inch four-track and eight-track masters into Pro Tools. "I realised that none of the Beatles' tapes had been backed up properly at Abbey Road, so I thought that might be a good idea! It also gave me a chance — and my Dad, to be honest — to listen to all the stuff again. So we went through everything, and we did it by album. It's catalogued as albums, singles, 'B' sides, miscellaneous. We listened to absolutely everything and backed it up. Everything that's been released we loaded up. We wanted to use the best takes possible, trusting that my Dad had chosen the best takes before, and also to use as many elements of the songs as possible. The way the Beatles worked is they'd lay something down and if they weren't happy with the take, then they'd lay nothing more on top.

"We were trying to keep a clean signal path, so we just went straight from a tape machine into Pro Tools. The whole idea was to copy the tapes as exactly as possible. I had a Pro Control desk as a way of having faders for my Dad. We kept on running out of RAM after a while. The funny thing is, even if I'm compiling songs, I'm not really going above 16 or 20 tracks. So I didn't really need as much as perhaps someone making a modern record."

Critics of the choice of material on Love have pointed out its bias towards mid-to-late-period Beatles. There is, however, as Giles insists, a fairly obvious technical reason for this. "The earlier stuff is sonically similar. It lacks the imagery the later stuff has. Bearing in mind we're doing a show, 'Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds' lends itself more to a visual thing perhaps than 'I Should Have Known Better'. On top of that, a lot of the earlier Beatles stuff has no separation on it at all. We were pushed by the Beatles to change things: they wanted experimentation, and you can't really do that with the earlier stuff. A lot of people say to me 'Why didn't you use the drums from this?' But there's only a certain number of clean drum tracks in the entire Beatles catalogue. There's not much stuff from Let It Be, because it's all live with no separation."

In returning to the earlier masters, Abbey Road's Allan Rouse came up with a suggestion that would help shape the sound of songs like 'Eleanor Rigby': going back to the original, unbounced masters as well as using the mixed-down four-tracks. "We would sync up the fours to fours," Giles says. "So 'Eleanor Rigby' was recorded originally on a four-track one-inch as a double string quartet, and then we'd sync the bounce of the strings that was done, so we could then have a six-track of a four-track."

Keep To The Rules

The Martins set themselves two fairly severe rules for the creation of Love: never to loop the drums or pitch-change the voices. And they managed to stick to them. Almost. "We mucked about with rhythms," says George, "but we never sampled anything, we thought that was wrong. We wanted to keep the performances, particularly in the rhythm sections, so that if you hear Ringo playing, it's Ringo playing. It's not a sample of one bar and then repeating it. The only thing that was anywhere near [a time-stretch] was 'Octopus's Garden', because we had to chop it up into pieces so it fitted a slow orchestral section at the beginning, which it wasn't designed for. But it worked very well."

"Of course," Giles goes on, "On 'Within You Without You/Tomorrow Never Knows' the voice has been stretched. The screams in 'I Want You (She's So Heavy)/Helter Skelter' I put down a tone. The end of 'Strawberry Fields' has been looped, but after a very long period of time, and there's a slight loop in 'Drive My Car', but generally it's them playing. When I started doing it, I was using modern techniques, as it were. I put a tempo map out which was 122.5bpm and put in the drums from the intro of 'Get Back', and then put 'Get Back' in time with it and it just sounded like I'd removed all the soul from the Beatles."

"Another complication," George adds, "was that a lot of the recordings I did with the Beatles we used to record at different speeds. Not necessarily at half-tone intervals, but just a wee bit off. You know, maybe instead of being 60 cycles, we'd be 59 cycles, or 61. We didn't care too much about tuning, about making the things work together and run into each other. So when we came to merge these tracks, sometimes they were out of tune with one of the other ones. So one of my jobs was to physically tune them, bring them into pitch, just slightly up or down to make them work within the limits of the even-tempered scale."

Giles remembers: "With 'Here Comes The Sun', I realised that the original was much brighter-sounding, and it's actually up a quarter tone. So I went back and reimported everything at a quarter tone up in order to make it like the original. So we did actually keep to the originals as much as possible. 'Here Comes The Sun' not sped-up sounds like a different record. It makes such a difference, varispeed."

One happy accident occurred when the pair pasted a live recording of 'I Want To Hold Your Hand' from the Hollywood Bowl over the studio master. "I wanted to use the Hollywood Bowl recordings, the atmosphere of the Beatles live in the early days," George explains. "But they weren't awfully good from the point of view of the technology. So we overlaid the studio recording on top of the Hollywood Bowl recordings, which meant matching every beat so that you couldn't tell the difference. Giles painstakingly plastered in each beat, and the result was that we got the Hollywood Bowl recording with all the tremendous screams in the audience and these great sounds."

"It probably took about three days," Giles says. "The funny thing is you had to do it before you realised it was going to work. The Hollywood Bowl sits behind the other one. It's amazing how loud the screams are."

Getting The Sound

Of the more traditional restoration mixes on Love, tracks such as 'I Am The Walrus' and 'Being For The Benefit Of Mr. Kite!' come across as less psychedelic, revealing the band arrangements more. Starr's drums and McCartney's bass, in particular, enjoy more 21st century punch.

"I love his bass lines," Giles enthuses. "In fact the bass took a lot of work. McCartney's bass is such a great sound, so myself and [remix engineer] Paul Hicks re-looked at it because I wasn't happy with it. We didn't get it quite right at the beginning. For 'Walrus' we could suddenly open it out — we had nine tracks or something to play around with — there's two drum kits. I think the original is really nicely claustrophobic and ours is more of an in-your-face rock number."

Revisiting 'Mr. Kite' reminded George of the incredible work that had gone into creating the effects on the original. "John was never definitive," he remembers, "he lived in a kind of dreamworld. He would have an adjective, he would talk about 'orange sounds'. With 'Kite', he said 'I want it to sound like a circus, I want to smell the sawdust.' I said we should have a calliope and he was thinking about the Magic Roundabout signature tune, the little pipey sound. I said 'Yeah, I was thinking of the little organ that the seven dwarfs played in Snow White.' We laid it down with organs first of all. The double-speed technique came in because I couldn't handle all those chromatic runs at real speed. Then we cut the steam-organ tapes into 18-inch sections, threw them up in the air and joined them up again. That was the background mush that made the thing sound effective."

The elder producer admits that, particularly around the time of Sgt. Pepper, he found himself in a more experimental mood which matched the ambitions of the Beatles perfectly. "They were continually coming to me saying 'What can we do here, George? What other instruments can we use?' I would show them how to do backwards sounds or how we could edit things and make them different and change the speed of the tape to give us a different sound on the bass drum. They wallowed in this, they thought it was great. The backwards sound, the first time I used it was on 'Rain', and when John heard it, he didn't believe it was his voice and they loved it so much they wanted to do everything backwards."

In terms of modern effects for Love, was Giles at all wary of using digital reverbs and delays?

"We'd use mostly all old gear, just because it sounds good. The only digital thing we used a lot of was Waves' Z-Noise. It's really good at taking hiss off tracks. On 'While My Guitar Gently Weeps', we used that on the vocal and guitar and it gave us more of a dimension without affecting the sound. We used the old plates in Studio Two, we used the old compressors, the Neves, the Fairchilds. We used a lot of the EMI EQs in the desks and there's a company called Chandler who make copies of the EMI limiters and compressors and we used a couple of their things as well. We just tried to keep it as analogue as possible. We used the original delays. Occasionally we'd rig up a tape delay or we'd just use the Pro Tools digital delay. All we were looking for was something really simple. Sometimes we'd ADT things using a tape machine, the same way that it was done 40 years ago."

New Guitar Strings
Given the nature of the project, of course, there are hardly any new sounds or recordings on Love, apart from the birdsong atmospherics that backdrop 'Because'. However, George Martin did write a new string arrangement, recorded at his AIR Studio in London, for George Harrison's demo of 'While My Guitar Gently Weeps'. George recalls: "Dominic Champagne, the director of the show, loved George's demo recording of 'While My Guitar Gently Weeps', and it is very touching. It's in a lower key than the master; it's also slower, much more gentle and shorter. He wanted to put it in the show and Olivia didn't think it was good enough — it had always sounded what it was, a demo, she said. It was done here, take three. So this was a revival and Dominic said 'Well, what if we make it more official? Why don't we ask George to write a score?' I was put on the spot, y'know, because his widow is going to listen to it... But she did love it, thank the Lord."

Going To The Circus

When it came to the mastering of Love the album, Giles opted for both digital and analogue approaches. "We were running at 96k for the whole project and we mastered onto Pro Tools, but we mastered on two-inch eight-track as well, and we ended up using the tape and not Pro Tools to cut the album, because it sounded better. Tape seems to join sounds together in the way that digital gives you separation."

The audio production for Love, the show, was a more complicated affair. Giles travelled to Montreal, where Cirque du Soleil were rehearsing the show, and then to Las Vegas, where a purpose-built theatre had been erected at the cost of $120 million. In both locations, the Abbey Road studio had been replicated almost to the millimetre.

"The funny thing is I'm fairly slapdash," Giles states. "I'm very perfectionist when it comes to sound, but studios are just a space to work in. They'd measured everything and put my piano in the same place, even my old Yamaha beatbox that I use to tap tempos. It was like walking into the Giles and George Martin museum. Then they had the same thing in the Mirage in Vegas. I had hand-recognition systems to go into my room because of the security around the Beatles' drives."

The Love auditorium boasts 360-degree sound through 8000 speakers. A mixing nightmare? "It's done in sections. We'd mix at night off laptops and then we'd bounce our mixes onto a 16-track Gigasampler, all the effects and everything. It means that we can have things flying around your head. For 'A Day In The Life', we have left and right in the headrests and a centre speaker in the seat in front of you, so I stuck John's voice right in your head and the band 50 feet away, up in the rafters. It's the same principles as 5.1, but a lot more outputs."

Giles admits that the hairiest part of the project was letting the ex-Beatles hear the results of his three years of work. "With 'Lady Madonna' I put 'Hey Bulldog' in the middle. I remember thinking 'What's Paul going to think?' Because he arranged the song. And he said 'That's the single, that's cool'. We played him stuff loud in the theatre and he said 'You've taken our music and you've been so sympathetic with it and yet you've added stuff to it that I wouldn't even think of.' So we went out and got absolutely hammered. Well, I did, anyway."

I Wanna Shake Your Hand

George Martin reckons that Love will be the last airing for the Beatles' masters: "I would think so. It'll be my last for sure." His son, however, begs to differ. "I don't know... he's lied before about this stuff."

Even if he has clearly enjoyed the process of putting together Love, George Martin insists that he isn't one for nostalgia. "Not really. I don't really look back, I look forward. In fact, until we'd decided to do the Anthology, I hadn't really listened to the old stuff at all. You don't dig 'em out and say, 'Let's listen to this again.' You've done it, you move on. So there's an awful lot of records I've made which I have a great affection for... but in the main I don't go back."

It's a measure of Martin's characteristic modesty that even as an octogenarian he still can't quite get his head around the fact that he's regularly named the most successful and influential record producer of all time. He shakes his head and chuckles at the memory of the PLASA (Professional Lighting And Sound Association) show at Earl's Court that he attended last year. "I was there for a purpose," he recalls. "I had to present an award but also [he laughs] I was on the scrounge for stuff for my Montserrat auditorium. As I walked through the show, people would come up to me and say 'Can I shake your hand?' And that's a bit cringe-making really. I say 'Well, that's very kind of you, thank you very much.'"

Ultimately, it seems, George Martin, like the rest of us, is still trying to get to grips with exactly what he achieved with the Beatles. He allows himself a polite laugh. "In the end," he says, "it's quite difficult to come to terms with, really."



Source: https://www.soundonsound.com/people/george-giles-martin-remixing-beatles









December 01, 2023

Beatles Love Album Review

The Beatles Love album was released on CD and DVD in November 2006 with one of the highest quality music in the Beatles catalog. Below is a review of this groundbreaking album along with CD album scans. Enjoy. 

Stereo CD will contain 78 minutes of newly mixed and mastered music packaged in a jewel box with a 28-page booklet including liner notes by George and Giles Martin. First time ever special edition will include both the stereo CD and a BONUS AUDIO DVD packaged in a digi-package with O-card. The DVD is audio only and will contain 81 minutes of music in both 5.1 surround sound and stereo (presented in DVD-Audio MLP, DTS, Dolby and PCM).




Tracks

1. Because

2. Get Back

3. Glass Onion

4. Eleanor Rigby/Julia (Transition)

5. I Am The Walrus

6. I Want To Hold Your Hand

7. Drive My Car/The Word/What You're Doing

8. Gnik Nus

9. Something/Blue Jay Way (Transition)

10. Being For The Benefit of Mr. Kite!/I Want You (She's So Heavy)/Helter Skelter

11. Help!

12. Blackbird/Yesterday

13. Strawberry Fields Forever

14. Within You Without You/Tomorrow Never Knows

15. Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds

16. Octopus's Garden

17. Lady Madonna

18. Here Comes The Sun/The Inner Light (Transition)

19. Come Together/Dear Prudence/Cry Baby Cry (Transition)

20. Revolution

21. Back In The U.S.S.R.

22. While My Guitar Gently Weeps

23. A Day In The Life

24. Hey Jude

25. Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (Reprise)

26. All You Need Is Love


Review by Rick Kosmick - October 31, 2015

"Love" is an interesting soundtrack created for the Cirque du Soleil theatrical production that opened in Las Vegas in 2006. The soundtrack is a collage formulated from original Beatles recordings that for some would invite controversy in the use of this music. ‘Love’ was created by the legendary Beatles producer, George Martin and his son Giles Martin from over a 100 clips of original multi-track recordings with the permission of Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, Yoko Ono (estate of John Lennon) and Olivia Harrison (estate of George Harrison).

The use of original Beatles recordings for this soundtrack could have been expected to receive some negative comments or criticisms upon face value of any changes to the presentation or mixes. Comments such as ‘bewildered’ or ‘befuddled’ were expressed upon the initial release of "Love" on CD and DVD Audio (2006) with detractors ignoring the basic premise of a soundtrack created as a celebration of Beatles music and irrespective of the notable approval from members of The Beatles. I personally found it odd in many statements from critics who commonly ignored the experimental nature of Beatles music in its development and sophistication. ‘Love’ is resplendent with experimentation.

In the DVD-Audio format, "Love" is available only in multi-channel 5.1 MLP 96kHz 24Bit. Suffice it to say, this 5.I mix is absolutely stunning! The first thing that comes to mind is the realization the original Beatles recordings were magnificently recorded by the audio engineers. Even more important, you hear the energy of this quartet that were so talented they set a standard that remains unparalleled in popular music. Their song writing skills and musicianship set them apart and their accomplishments remain unrivalled. The Beatles were magnificent performers in the studio.

On the opening track “Because“, the instrumentation is stripped away as you hear the vocal harmonies a cappella in gorgeous immersive sound. Quickly and uninterrupted, the next track starts with the opening guitar chord from “a Hard Days Night” followed by a brief Ringo Starr drum solo from “The End” before jumping into the song “Get Back” with its full intensity that still strikes me with a chill every time I hear it.

The early 1963 Beatles song “I Want to Hold Your Hand” was their first recording to utilize four-track equipment but the fidelity has limitations. In the 5.1 mix, the presentation disguises the sonic constraints with a live audience as background (a la The Ed Sullivan Show) for a very effective ambient sound. It fits extremely well as it takes you down memory lane when the Beatles first exploded onto the North American music scene and the ensuing sheer madness of fans during live performances.

The original audio quality on the multi-tracks really show their stuff on the instruments. For example, on the song “Something”, you hear the heartfelt vocals from George Harrison but equally striking is how well Ringo Starr’s drum sound was miked in the studio (on a ballad!) as if you're standing just a few feet away. On “Come Together”, some superb bass playing from Paul McCartney is aurally present in a distinctly bold and deep tone. These are but a few examples that reveal Beatles instrumentation as never heard before.

The "Love" soundtrack is a great reminder as to the adeptness of The Beatles to write and perform rock songs. On “Revolution” John Lennon's impassioned vocals are equally supported by his distorted lead guitar work that resonates with shocking clarity. Revolution is immediately followed by another rocker “Back in the U.S.S.R” sung exuberantly by Paul McCartney with a nifty lead guitar break from George Harrison with its excellent tonal quality. Such was the vitality of the Beatles to knockout these great rock songs with flair and energy.

The closing track is “All You Need Is Love” and it actually seems quite appropriate for the last song on the soundtrack. Certainly there is the clear message behind the song but it is the crazy and freaked-out prolonged ending of the original recording that represents the experimental essence of The Beatles and a similar experimental approach is taken with a mash-up by adding snippets of vocals from "Baby You're A Rich Man", "Rain" and "Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band" to this ending. All in all, there is over 80 minutes of glorious music on "Love" that is a tribute to a group of artists that changed the world of music.

The production of George Martin and Giles Martin maintains the character of the original recordings. At the same time, it can be summed up as a daring mix as it opens another door to the potency of The Beatles music. The 5.1 mix is inventive and the balance achieved is outstanding. The transparency is astonishing. The use of the rear channels is discreet for the most part but conceptually steers away from being overly aggressive. It is one of the best multi-channel mixes I have had the pleasure to hear. I consider this DVD-Audio as a spectacular surround soundtrack with a front row seat to the Cirque du Soleil presentation of The Beatles "Love".

As an additional note, high resolution audio for the original recordings of The Beatles has been a long in coming but the time has finally arrived. In a few days on November 6, 2015, Blu-ray versions of The Beatles: 1 and The Beatles: 1+ will be released. Giles Martin is the producer as he continues his work on their catalogue of original recordings. For the multi-channel enthusiasts, to say these Blu-ray releases are highly anticipated would be an understatement.

Copyright © 2015 Rick Kosmick and HRAudio.net

Source: https://www.hraudio.net/showmusic.php?title=11100&showall=1





From Wikipedia:

Love is a soundtrack remix album of music recorded by the Beatles, released in November 2006. It features music compiled and remixed as a mashup for the Cirque du Soleil show Love. The album was produced by George Martin and his son Giles Martin, who said, "What people will be hearing on the album is a new experience, a way of re-living the whole Beatles musical lifespan in a very condensed period."[1]

The album was George Martin's final album as a producer before his death in 2016.

Background

George Martin and his son Giles began work on Love after obtaining permission from Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, Yoko Ono and Olivia Harrison (the latter two representing the estates of John Lennon and George Harrison, respectively).[1] The idea for using the Beatles' music in a Cirque du Soleil production had originally come from Harrison, who died in November 2001,[2][3] through his friendship with the company's founder, Guy Laliberté.[4]

Speaking to Mojo editor Jim Irvin in December 2006, Giles Martin said that he first created a demo combining "Within You Without You" with "Tomorrow Never Knows", which he then nervously presented to McCartney and Starr for their approval. In Martin's recollection, "they loved it", with McCartney saying: "This is what we should be doing, more of this."[5]

In discussing the project, Giles Martin commented that elements were used from recordings in the Beatles catalogue, "the original four tracks, eight tracks and two tracks and used this palette of sounds and music to create a soundbed".[1] Because he was concerned that they might not get the green light to proceed with Love, he began by making digital back-ups of the original multi-track recordings, just to get started on the project. He also said that he and his father mixed more music than was eventually released, including "She's Leaving Home" and a version of "Girl" that he was particularly fond of, with the latter eventually being released in 2011 as a bonus track on the album on iTunes.[6]

McCartney and Starr both responded very positively to the completed album. McCartney said that it "puts The Beatles back together again, because suddenly there's John and George with me and Ringo". Starr commended the Martins for their work, adding that Love was "really powerful for me and I even heard things I'd forgotten we'd recorded".[7][8]

Composition

Martin smiling to the camera
George Martin at a performance of the Love stage show
Love contains elements from 130 individual commercially released and demo recordings of the Beatles,[9] and is a complex remix and polymix of multiple songs known as a mashup.[10] As described by Alexis Petridis, mashups were popular earlier in the 2000s, with the Beatles serving as popular material; examples included Danger Mouse The Grey Album (2004), on which the producer fuses Jay-Z's rapping with music from the Beatles' White Album (1968), and Go Home Productions' "Paperback Believer", which used the Beatles' "Paperback Writer" and the Monkees' "Daydream Believer".[11] McCartney was a fan of the "bootleg explosion", and hired mash-up producer Freelance Hellraiser as a DJ on his 2004 world tour,[11] leading to the 2005 collaboration Twin Freaks.[12]

Love has also been described as a sound collage.[13][14][15][16][17] According to Neil Spencer of The Observer, the album's 26 tracks "are set in an ambient flow of sound collages",[14] while according to David Cavanagh, Love comprises mashups and megamixes that play "plurally, in collage form", resulting in album that "[flies] in the face of tradition by placing The Beatles in a 21st century sampladelic culture."[17]

Track element notes

"Because" – According to an interview with the Martins in Entertainment Weekly, the opening track includes the bird sounds used in the World Wildlife Fund version of "Across the Universe", as well as "Free as a Bird".[18] In addition, a new recording of a wood pigeon was implemented "to make it more British", according to George Martin.[18]
"Get Back" – The track uses the opening guitar chord from "A Hard Day's Night", the drum and guitar solos from "The End", percussion from "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (Reprise)", and the orchestral swell from "A Day in the Life".[19][20]
"Glass Onion" – This track includes guitar from "Things We Said Today".[21]
"I Want to Hold Your Hand" – George and Giles Martin stated that elements from both the studio recording and the Hollywood Bowl live performance were used in the 5.1 surround sound mix.[18]
"Drive My Car/The Word/What You're Doing" – The medley features the guitar solo from "Taxman" and the horn section from "Savoy Truffle".[22][23][24] The Martins said they also remixed keyboards from "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" and backing vocals from "Helter Skelter" into the track.[25]
"Gnik Nus" – The track contains the vocal arrangement of "Sun King" played in reverse[23] and accompanied by tambura drone.[26]
"Something" (with "Blue Jay Way" transition) – The track emphasises the lead vocal[21] and George Martin's string arrangement on "Something" before transitioning into "Blue Jay Way", which also includes elements from "Nowhere Man".[27] Giles Martin said the portion from "Blue Jay Way" set the mood for the next track, which they created in response to an idea by the director of the Love show for a "macabre Victorian circus".[21]
"Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite!/I Want You (She's So Heavy)/Helter Skelter" – The track contains the whole of "Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite!", guitars from "I Want You (She's So Heavy)", and heavily delayed vocals from "Helter Skelter". It also includes horse sounds from "Good Morning, Good Morning", harmonium and other elements from "Cry Baby Cry" and laughter from "Piggies".[28]
"Strawberry Fields Forever" – This version builds from an acoustic demo[29] to incorporate sections of take 1 of the song (including harmony vocals that were cut from the edit of take 1 issued on the 1996 Anthology 2 compilation) and take 26.[30] At the end of the track, it includes the orchestral section from "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band", the piano solo from "In My Life", the brass included in "Penny Lane", the cello and harpsichord from "Piggies", and the coda of "Hello, Goodbye".[23] According to author John Winn, part of "I'm Only Sleeping" also appears in the closing mashup.[31]
"Within You Without You/Tomorrow Never Knows" – This track combines the vocals and the dilruba from "Within You Without You" with the bass and drums from "Tomorrow Never Knows".[20]
"Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" – The track includes horns and guitars from "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band", clavioline from "Baby, You're a Rich Man", and sound effects from "Tomorrow Never Knows".[32]
"Octopus's Garden" – This track contains the string arrangement from "Good Night", sound effects and vocal elements from "Yellow Submarine", and elements from "Lovely Rita", "Helter Skelter" and ends with the beginning guitar riff from "Sun King".[20][23]
"Lady Madonna" – The song includes the percussion intro from "Why Don't We Do It in the Road?", the piano from "Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da", the guitar riff from "Hey Bulldog", Billy Preston's organ solo from "I Want You (She's So Heavy)" and Eric Clapton's guitar solo from "While My Guitar Gently Weeps".[33]
"Here Comes the Sun" (with "The Inner Light" transition) – As mentioned by Giles Martin, the track includes tabla and dilruba from "Within You Without You",[21] backing vocals from "Oh! Darling" and a bass line from "I Want You (She's So Heavy)".[34]
"Come Together/Dear Prudence" (with "Cry Baby Cry" transition) – The track contains nearly all of "Come Together", which transitions into "Dear Prudence". It concludes with the vocal part from the end of "Cry Baby Cry", strings from "Eleanor Rigby", and what Giles Martin referred to as the "climax" from "A Day in the Life".[21]
"While My Guitar Gently Weeps" – The track uses a George Harrison demo of the song, previously issued on the Anthology 3 compilation.[21][29] George Martin wrote a new orchestral score for the track, which he described as being his final Beatles string arrangement.[21][35]
"All You Need Is Love" – The track includes elements from "Baby You're a Rich Man" and "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band",[36] and ends with orchestration from "Good Night" and the sign-off from The Beatles Third Christmas Record.[21]

Release and reception

Professional ratings
Aggregate scores
Source Rating
Metacritic 83/100[37]
Review scores
Source Rating
AllMusic [22]
Blender [38]
Entertainment Weekly A[39]
The Guardian [11]
NME 8/10[40]
The Observer [14]
Pitchfork 8.5/10[41]
PopMatters 6/10[42]
Q [43]
Rolling Stone [44]
Slant [45]
Uncut [4]

Love was first played publicly on Virgin Radio's The Geoff Show. Geoff Lloyd, the show's host, chose to play the entire work uninterrupted, to allow younger fans to experience an album premiere.[46]

The album was released as a standard compact disc version, a two-disc CD and DVD-Audio package, a two-disc vinyl package, and as a digital download. The DVD-Audio disc contains a 5.1-channel surround sound mix (96 kHz 24-bit MLP), downmixable to two-channel. For backwards compatibility it also contains separate audio-only DVD-Video content with two-channel stereo (48 kHz 16-bit PCM) and 5.1-channel surround (448 kbit/s Dolby Digital and 754 kbit/s DTS).

Love placed at number 3 on the UK Albums Chart during its first week of release, trailing Westlife's The Love Album and Oasis' Stop the Clocks compilation.[47] In the United States, it debuted at number 4 on the Billboard 200, where it was certified Platinum in late 2006.[48] At the 50th Grammy Awards in February 2008, Love won in the categories Best Compilation Soundtrack Album and Best Surround Sound Album.

Legacy

Chris Willman of Entertainment Weekly wrote in 2007: "LOVE really does feel fresh in a way that other latter-day Beatles products like Let It Be... Naked and even the Anthology collections haven't, quite. Freed from the need to adhere to chronology or chart success like the 10-million-selling 1's collection of a few years back, this instantly replaces that uninspired hits set as the album you'd give a kid who needs to discover the Beatles for the first time. It also manages to be the album you'd give the jaded boomer who's hearing these songs for the ten thousandth time."[49]

In 2017, Uncut ranked the album at number 75 in their list of "The 101 Weirdest Albums of All Time".[17]

Track listing

All tracks written by Lennon–McCartney, except where noted.

"Because"  – 2:44
"Get Back"  – 2:05
"Glass Onion"  – 1:20
"Eleanor Rigby" (with "Julia" transition)  – 3:05
"I Am the Walrus"  – 4:28
"I Want to Hold Your Hand"  – 1:22
"Drive My Car/The Word/What You're Doing"  – 1:54
"Gnik Nus"  – 0:55
"Something" (with "Blue Jay Way" transition) (George Harrison)  – 3:29
"Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite!/I Want You (She's So Heavy)/Helter Skelter"  – 3:22
"Help!"  – 2:18
"Blackbird/Yesterday"  – 2:31
"Strawberry Fields Forever"   – 4:31
"Within You Without You/Tomorrow Never Knows" (Harrison/Lennon–McCartney)  – 3:07
"Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds"  – 4:10
"Octopus's Garden" (Richard Starkey)   – 3:18
"Lady Madonna"   – 2:56
"Here Comes the Sun" (with "The Inner Light" transition) (Harrison)  – 4:18
"Come Together/Dear Prudence" (with "Cry Baby Cry" transition)  – 4:45
"Revolution"  – 2:14 (CD version) / 3:23 (DVD and iTunes version)
"Back in the U.S.S.R."  – 1:53 (CD version) / 2:34 (DVD and iTunes version)
"While My Guitar Gently Weeps" (Harrison)  – 3:46
"A Day in the Life"  – 5:08
"Hey Jude"  – 3:58
"Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (Reprise)"  – 1:22
"All You Need Is Love"  – 3:39
Digital bonus tracks

"The Fool on the Hill"  – 3:30
"Girl"  – 2:43


Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Love_(Beatles_album)

Bonus: You can listen to the entire album here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6bdqdO5LAIA&list=PLvEL0n-EFBuX7sNQN0PRN-s4m9e2LYA7l