Category Archives: Abbey Road

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.

What Will You Be Doing For Global Beatles Day?

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This coming Wednesday is officially Global Beatles Day. How will you be celebrating?

25 June is increasingly being recognised as a day set aside to celebrate The Beatles and their music and cultural legacy around the world.

Why is GBD June 25?

Well, it was on this day in 1967 that the Beatles first premiered their song ‘All You Need Is Love’. And they did it live before an audience estimated to be between 400-700 million people. Those millions had tuned in their TV sets to the ground-breaking Our World broadcast – the first of its kind to link up national broadcasters from fourteen countries across the globe in one celebratory program using what was then-new satellite technology. The resulting two-hour show was seen across 24 countries. And when it came to the United Kingdom’s turn The Beatles allowed the TV cameras into the Abbey Road Studios and let the world witness them putting the finishing touches to a previously un-heard song, ‘All You Need Is Love’. It went something like this:

So, on Global Beatles Day why not dig out a few Beatle records or CDs and immerse yourself in the music one more time, and think about the phenomenon that somehow rolls on and on, from generation to generation.

A new Aussie Beatle Connection – Vintage Abbey Road Studio Mixing Console

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It’s not often we get to bring you news relating to The Beatles directly from here (down under in Australia) – but there is some today.

It’s been announced that an original REDD.17 mixing console, used to record and mix music at the famous Abbey Road Studios studios in London, is now the centrepiece of a brand new new recording studio at the amazing Museum of New and Old Art (MONA) located just outside Hobart, Tasmania.

The vintage console, one of only four ever built, was one of those used to mix several Beatle albums. It is now part of Frying Pan Studios on the grounds of the museum, and has become the first working recording studio housed by a museum in Australia.

The console was purchased back in 2014 by Australian businessman David Roper. He started discussions with MONA’s artistic director of music (and Violent Femmes bassist) Brian Ritchie about the studio-in-a-museum idea. They took it to flamboyant MONA founder David Walsh who liked the concept and funded the creation of Frying Pan Studios, so named because it sits opposite Frying Pan Island right next to the museum and the beautiful Derwent River.

Frying Pan is a working studio and so it’s bookable facility. You can find more details here. Maybe you’d like to record your own album using the very same mixing desk that John, Paul, George and Ringo used!

You can also visit the studio as part of your ticketed entry into MONA and, if you time it right, actually see musicians at work. It does look like an incredible place to work and create:

Frying Pan Studios have built a great interactive website that gives you more on the history, the facilities, and the amazing location.

You can also check out this article from the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) for more.

Wild Life Gets 50th Anniversary Half Speed Master

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50 years ago, on December 7, Wings released their debut album Wild Life – recorded over an eight-day period at Abbey Road Studios in London.

Now it joins McCartney and RAM in getting the Limited Edition, 50th Anniversary Half Speed Master treatment:

Paul and Linda McCartney, Denny Seiwell and Denny Laine arrived at the studios on 25 July, 1971 to begin recording with engineers Tony Clark and Alan Parsons.

“They rehearsed for a while, sang some old songs, wrote some new ones and in time headed for the big city studios. In three days they had laid down most of the tracks and by the end of a couple of weeks the album was finished. In this wrapper is the music they made. Can you dig it?”, wrote Clint Harrigan for the original album’s back cover liner notes.

On PaulMcCartney.com Paul wrote: “Wild Life was about spontaneity: the opening track ‘Mumbo’ was recorded in one take. I’d read that Bob Dylan had just made a quick album and I really liked the idea, because we tended to take longer and longer to make records. The early albums by The Beatles hadn’t taken long and it seemed to me that Dylan was getting to that. I was a great admirer of his – and still am to this day – so I thought, well, if it’s good enough for him, let’s do it.”

The 50th anniversary edition of Wild Life is cut at half speed at Abbey Road using a high resolution transfer of the original 1971 master tapes. The Half Speed 50th will be released on February 4. It is available for pre-order now.

The Beatles, Get Back and London: On the Trail of a Timeless Story

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In the lead-up to the release next week of the Peter Jackson film The Beatles: Get Back, John Harris, editor of the new book of the same name, takes us on a fascinating journey to the three key locations in the making of the Let It Be album. It is delightful:

McCartney and Rick Rubin

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Now this actually looks interesting.

Paul McCartney can be difficult to interview and get new and deeper insights from. He’s been interviewed and the subject of so many on-screen studies of his craft that he almost automatically falls back on a tried-and-true set of reactions and answers – and we (the audience) end up learning nothing new.

But chuck in a personality like veteran producer Rick Rubin – in what looks to be an in-depth, six-part examination of some of the greatest songs that McCartney has ever been involved with – and we might just have a classic on our hands.

McCartney has just teased on his website and YouTube channel “Paul McCartney x Rick Rubin. A Forthcoming Documentary Event. Coming Soon”

And it looks good:

The pairing of the two has been known about for some time, but there are scant other details as yet – not even where or when it will be shown. Rumour is it’ll be either Netflix or Apple TV+. Hence the interest in this 1’36 clip.

Deadline says the project is still untitled but it’s a six-parter, and that it marks “….the first time ever that the original masters have left Abbey Road”.

That claim is a little questionable as in 1982 the original master tapes of all 14 Beatle studio stereo albums left the EMI vaults at the Abbey Road Studios and were couriered to the Mobile Fidelity offices in California to produce this box set:

Suffice it to say, if that’s what’s happened again for this new doco, the original master tapes leaving the building nowadays is a very, VERY rare thing. A more likely scenario is that they’re using a digital copy.

Either way, it certainly looks from the footage released that Rubin and McCartney are listening to original recordings, isolating various tracks on the mixing desk, and discussing in detail the making of classics like ‘Lovely Rita’, ‘Come Together’ and ‘Live and Let Die’. This will be fascinating because the legendary producer knows his stuff and will hopefully push for detail and stories that haven’t ever been told before. Fingers crossed.

50 Years Since Abbey Road – Podcast

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Back in 2014 the ABC (the Australian Broadcasting Corporation) began hosting an ongoing series celebrating the 50th anniversary release of each British Beatle LP.

As each album reaches its anniversary ABC Radio presenter Rod Quinn speaks to US John Lennon biographer and Beatle expert Jude Southerland Kessler. Jude is the author of the extraordinary (and ambitious!) nine-volume John Lennon narrative biography. The latest instalment in the series is Volume 4: Should Have Known Better (to see the details for this volume scroll down after clicking).

The pair spoke about the 50th anniversary of Abbey Road late last year, but it has taken them a while to upload that episode onto the web. They’ve finally done it though, and you can now find it here, or just click on the Abbey Road Apple label below:

Like all the other podcasts in the series, this one is also very insightful – and really well worth a listen.

Previous broadcasts/podcasts have covered Please Please Me; With the Beatles; A Hard Day’s Night, Beatles For Sale and of course, Help! – which is in two parts: Side One here, and Side Two here.

You can hear Rod and Jude talk about Rubber Soul; Revolver; and Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band by clicking here.

And they tackle Yellow Submarine, The Beatles (a.k.a. The White Album), and The Esher Demos disc here.

The White VW Beetle and Abbey Road

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In the big marketing lead-up to the release of the 50th Anniversary editions of The Beatles Abbey Road a couple of months ago a number of companies jumped on the advertising bandwagon.

Probably most prominent among them was the car maker, Volkswagen. After all, apart from the four Beatles striding across the road on the famous front cover, one of the company’s cars is also on prominent display – a white VW Beetle, just behind George.

Well, to mark the occasion of the 50th anniversary of Abbey Road Volkswagen Sweden has produced – in limited numbers – a reprint of the album cover, only this time minus the fab Four but with the white Beetle correctly parked up against the gutter instead of up on the footpath/sidewalk as it was in the original:

The album cover is called The Beetle’s Abbey Road – Reparked Edition. Volkswagen did it to advertise a feature available on their latest models called Park Assist that automatically helps you get the tricky task of reverse parking done just right.

Here’s the rear cover (as you can see, ours got almost bent in half of the long journey from Sweden to Australia!):

The LP cover was available for mail order only through the VW Sweden site. All proceeds raised are going to Bris – a children’s rights organisation.

There’s no vinyl inside – you’ll have to provide that yourself – but it’s a cute advertising gimmick. A lot of other people must agree with that because the first run sold out in no time. We kept checking back and there was a second print run which also quickly sold out. At present the site is again showing as “SOLD OUT”, but it’s probably worth checking back from time to time to see if they do a third print run.

The good news is that if you’d like a CD-sized version of The Beetle’s Abbey Road – Reparked Edition to print up for yourself, you can download a pdf file of the front image for free from the VW Sweden site here.

(As usual, click on the images to see larger versions)

Abbey Road 50th Anniversary – Two More Teaser Audio Tracks

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Two further audio tracks from the forthcoming Abbey Road 50th Anniversary box set have been released by The Beatles on their official YouTube Vevo channel.

They are the 2019 remix of ‘Come Together’, plus an outtake version of the same song, ‘Come Together – Take 5’:

Rumour is there’ll be one more set of audio tracks next week (possibly ‘Octopus’s Garden’?), plus a new video version of the same song.

That would make sense because it would mean each Beatle has a song preview in the lead up to release day: George (‘Something’); Paul (‘Oh!Darling’); John (‘Come Together’); and Ringo (‘Octopus’s Garden’).

Only one week now until the official Abbey Road 50th Anniversary release!

EDIT/UPDATE: Apple has just announced that the final teaser track from the 2019 Abbey Road re-mix and remaster will be George’s ‘Here Comes The Sun’, and that it will be a newly-produced animated video of the song. They’ve just uploaded a 51 second long trailer of the song video to their YouTube site:

The new music video for ‘Here Comes The Sun’ can be seen in full on Thursday 26 September from 9.00 a.m. PDT (Pacific Standard Time).

Abbey Road 50th Anniversary – More Teaser Audio Released

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Two further audio tracks from the forthcoming Abbey Road 50th Anniversary box set have just been released by The Beatles on their official YouTube Vevo channel.

They are the 2019 remix of ‘Oh! Darling’, plus an outtake version of the same song, ‘Oh! Darling – Take 4’:

See also The Beatles Revisit Abbey Road.