Monthly Archives: September 2025

National Album Day 2025, Plus More Harrison/Dark Horse

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Apple has announced it will re-issue Badfinger’s Magic Christian Music on a striking blue vinyl as part of National Album Day in the UK.

You might recall last year the theme was ‘Great British Groups’ and The Beatles A Hard Day’s Night was issued on white vinyl to celebrate.

Well, this year the theme is ‘Rock’:

Magic Christian Music is the second album released by Welsh rock band, Badfinger. They recorded 5 albums for Apple Records, and were the first non-Beatle recording artists signed to the label.

This release will be the first time the 2010 remasters of Magic Christian Music are available on vinyl, and the first time the album has been re-pressed since 1996.

Magic Christian Music includes the band’s first international hit, ‘Come And Get It’, written and produced for them by Paul McCartney. Of the fourteen tracks, seven were newly recorded for the album while the remaining songs were lifted from their first album Maybe Tomorrow, which had seen only a limited release. Three of the new tracks were featured in the film The Magic Christian (starring Peter Sellers and Ringo Starr). They were produced by Paul, and the strings on ‘Carry On Till Tomorrow’ were arranged and conducted by George Martin. SIx tracks were produced by Tony Visconti and five by Mal Evans.

This 180g blue vinyl version, out on October 18, is housed in a single sleeve featuring the original artwork, with poly-lined white inner sleeves.

In other Beatle-related release news, the push by BMG to get more George Harrison/Dark Horse Records titles officially onto their catalogue continues. On October 24 they will release the next batch including the self-titled George Harrison (from early 1979) on both vinyl and CD:

The CD has one bonus track, ‘Here Comes The Moon (Demo)’:

Then in June 1981 came Somewhere In England. It too gets a vinyl and CD re-issue on Dark Horse:

The CD is interesting. It comes in the original album concept artwork and has one bonus track, a demo of ‘Save The World’:

And then comes 1982’s Gone Troppo:

The Gone Troppo CD also comes with a single bonus track, the demo version of ‘Mystical One’:

Also due for an October 24 release are CD versions of Brainwashed; Cloud Nine; and Thirty Three and 1/3. Each of these has already seen a vinyl release under the BMG distribution deal. This just makes a CD version available to collectors:

All CD’s are in Digipak packaging. You can get all the details on all these releases, and place pre-orders, at the Official George Harrison Store.

Interestingly, also listed there (for an October 3 release) is a 3LP set of All Things Must Pass. This too is to bring that classic title in under the BMG/Dark Horse Records banner as a vinyl issue (there’s already been a CD released).

The question is, will it come out with Dark Horse Records labels, or will it be on the traditional orange Apple and Apple Jam labels? The pack shot has a prominent Dark Horse hype sticker (click on the image to see a larger version):

This vinyl is the 50th anniversary mix by Paul Hicks and the set includes the original poster – but with the back of the poster containing notes by Dhani Harrison and Hicks about remixing the album.

I guess we’ll just have to wait and see if the LPs have the Dark Horse label. For some reason our money is on Apple labels……look very closely at that hype sticker and you’ll see in the small print the words “Apple and the Apple logo are exclusively licensed to Apple Corps Ltd and used with permission.” So maybe it won’t have Dark Horse labels after all….

Beatles and Solo News Update

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Woke up this morning to a couple of intriguing emails.

First was big news from Apple. Seems they’ve listened to fan reaction and have decided to offer Anthology 4 as a separate purchase:

By popular demand, Anthology 4 is now available as a standalone triple LP and double CD — 36 tracks including 13 previously-unreleased demos, rare sessions from 1963–69, the band’s 2023 final single ‘Now and Then’, and new mixes by Jeff Lynne of ‘Free As a Bird’ and ‘Real Love’.

This means collectors won’t have to buy the box set just to get the much sought after 4th installment in the Anthology series. Good news!

Then came a mysterious email from the official John Lennon Store saying that the ‘Happy Xmas (War Is Over)’ 7″ single on green vinyl was now available for pre-order:

A “What?”, closely followed by a “Why?” was heard. Hmmm. “Must investigate this some more. There has to be a reason this has randomly appeared out of nowhere.”

Then, scrolling further down the morning’s emails came this, with the headline: Introducing The Classic Holiday’s Singles Box Set!

Clicking through takes you to Universal’s udiscovermusic.com site and the announcement of a box set of 14 coloured vinyl Christmas singles from across the ages:

Of course it includes the John & Yoko/Plastic Ono Band green vinyl single, but also in there is the Paul McCartney holiday fave, ‘Wonderful Christmastime’ – on canary yellow vinyl:

The box set is kinda expensive but fortunately for those of you who collect coloured vinyl, as was just announced for Anthology 4, these too are available for purchase separately. Yay!

You can find ‘Happy Xmas (War Is Over)’ here or here, and ‘Wonderful Christmastime’ here or here. Release date is October 31.

And, while we’re on the subject of coloured vinyl, last week Apple announced there’s to be a green vinyl release of Abbey Road:

This comes on heavyweight 180g green vinyl and is pressed using the version remixed from the original 8-track tapes by Giles Martin in 2019. In the UK this is exclusive to HMV stores, Target in the US, JB HiFi in Australia, Bravado in Germany, FNAC in France, Tower Records in Japan, The Circle in Denmark, etc. In other words, there will be one retailer per territory. It is released on October 10.

Another Day, Another Wings Compilation….

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Announced yesterday out of the blue a new Wings “best of” compilation to accompany the forthcoming book, Wings – The Story of a Band on the Run (and possibly the new documentary film, Man On The Run):

WINGS – The Definitive Collection will contain purely Wings songs (in other words no Paul McCartney solo, or Paul and Linda McCartney releases) and it will come in the shape of a 3LP set, a 2CD set, a 1CD, and there’ll be a separate, exclusive Blu-Ray Audio Disc with Atmos mixes for the first time.

This 3LP set will also be offered as a McCartney Official Store limited edition coloured vinyl exclusive:

If you don’t want to pay US$20.00 for a lithograph and a sticker sheet then you can get a standard 3LP set without the trinkets:

And there’s a single LP on black vinyl containing 12 tracks in all:

The first “exclusive”, “limited edition” coloured vinyl release of the 1LP has been announced. It’ll be available on green vinyl through Target stores in the U.S., in FNAC stores in France, also from jpc in Germany and Austria, and at JB Hi Fi in Australia. In other words, it looks like one retailer per territory will get the “exclusive”. Will this be the first of many colour and cover art variations like we saw with McCartney III?

If CD is more your thing then the 2CD set has all the tracks from the 3LP sets, including the poster:

While the 1CD replicates the 1LP track running order:

The McCartney Store and the SuperDeluxeEdition site are offering an exclusive Blu-ray Audio disc which is likely to be the format that most excites McCartney fans. As site owner Paul Sinclair writes, “For the first time, tracks are available in Dolby Atmos on a physical product. The mixes are by Giles Martin and Steve Orchard. 14 of them have been available in recent times on streaming, but 17 of them are unheard in this format, including tracks from un-reissued latter albums, such as ‘With A Little Luck’, ‘London Town’ and ‘I’ve Had Enough’ (from 1978’s London Town) and ‘Getting Closer’ and ‘Arrow Through Me’ (from 1979’s Back to the Egg). 7 out of the 10 tracks from the US version of Band on the Run also feature on this compilation.

Blu-ray Audio audio streams summary:

  • Dolby Atmos Mix (48/24)
  • 5.1 Surround Mix (48/24)
  • Hi-Res Stereo Mixes (96/24)

This blu-ray audio contains 32 tracks and is presented as a ‘softpack’ with a 16-page booklet:

The  WINGS – The Definitive Collection packaging has been designed by Paul and Aubrey ‘Po’ Powell of the famous Hipgnosis design studio. The two have worked together extensively in the past, not only on album artwork but also the art direction for McCartney tours. The first thing that hit us though was that front cover with the word WINGS populated with a photo montage of the band, and the inner sleeve replicating that was a little bit derivative. Some other band from the past used a very similar idea way back when…..

For the full news story and background on this release see the official Paul McCartney page.

WINGS – The Definitive Collection is out on November 7.

The Background to the “One To One” Concerts

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Ever wondered why the concerts, which form the centrepiece of the forthcoming John Lennon/Yoko Ono Power to the People box set, were called the One To One concerts?

The BBC has just released a backgrounder as part of it’s Witness History podcast series explaining it. You may need to register to listen (it’s free), but it is well worth it for a very informative 9-minute listen.

In 1972, after leaving The Beatles, John Lennon and Yoko Ono performed in the United States at the One to One benefit concerts at Madison Square Garden, New York.

They were helping to raise money for children with disabilities from Willowbrook State School, after a television exposé by journalist Geraldo Rivera showed the conditions and failings. It was watched by millions of people and led to a public outcry.

Sean Allsop speaks with Geraldo Rivera about breaking the story and organising the concerts.

If you want to view Rivera’s original documentary that blew the lid off the pain and misery of the the young Willowbrook residents who were being so appallingly treated check it out here. (Warning: it contains some very confronting scenes). This is what motivated John and Yoko:

Geraldo Rivera kept in touch with John and Yoko. Later in his life he reflected on meeting the pair and how he worked with them on such an important cause:

When you witness injustice “It’s up to you, yeah, you!”