Category Archives: Beatles Collecting

A Couple of Beatle DVD Finds

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We went “op shopping” recently and discovered a little bit of Beatle treasure.

First up a copy of Paul McCartney’s 2005 concert film In Red Square:

McCartney Red 1

It comes in an outer slip-case. Here’s the rear cover:McCartney Red 2

There’s also an inner booklet included with a range of images from the historic concert:McCartney Red 3

McCartney Red 4

The other DVD we found is a 2008 documentary called Magical Mystery Tour Memories:MMTM1

This is a documentary, a behind-the-scenes/memories of making the actual1967 Beatle film Magical Mystery Tour. Narrated by actor and Beatle friend Victor Spinetti (who not only appeared in MMT but also the films Help! and A Hard Day’s Night), there are lots of stories about what happened during the filming. They range from those who were officially there as part of the cast and crew, through to the many innocent bystanders who just happened to bump into the Beatle entourage as they travelled by bus around England making their largely improvised film. There are appearances and reminiscences from the likes of Paul’s brother Mike McCartney; Beatle Fan Club secretary Freda Kelly; former Beatle insider Tony Bramwell; their press officer Tony Barrow; and Neil Innes from the Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band (and later The Rutles).     MMTM2MMTM3

It has to be said this is a fairly low-budget affair that received only mixed reviews when it was first released, but it’s an interesting documentary to have in the collection and contains some very nice stories and memories of what it was like making Magical Mystery Tour.

Imitation is the Sincerest Form of Flattery – Part Five

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Another instalment  in our occasional series on Beatle (or Beatle-related) album covers that have possibly been, well, borrowed as inspiration by others…..(see here, here, here and here).

Check out this 1976 Olivia Newton John cover art:Olivia+Newton+John+Come+On+Over+-+Original+Issue+60731

The cover photo for ONJ’s Come On Over was taken 11 years after this photo:george_harrison_living_in_the_material_world_pool_photo_the_beatles_help

Read about the origins of this striking George Harrison image here.

And thanks to Darienzo for letting us know that the rear cover image on Paul Anka’s 1974 album Anka also has a very similar photo:Anka 1

Thanks also go to Tom for sending through this image of Jackson Browne’s LP I’m Alive from 1993:Jackson Browne

The Beatles Cartoons

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As a child I can remember watching The Beatles cartoons on TV.

I don’t think they’ve ever been officially released. This six DVD set is decidedly dodgy, but it contains every episode, plus the sing-along “bouncing ball” songs, trailers and intro’s and outro’s as extras:

Beatle Cartoons 1

Here’s the rear cover:Beatle Cartoons 2

The discs are fairly obviously burned onto printable blank DVDs (read: “manufactured at home”), but they are of a reasonable quality and the makers have gone to a little bit of trouble with the graphics:Beatle Cartoons 3

The quality on screen is similar (possibly even a little bit better) to this example on YouTube:

Rolling Stone magazine has a good article on the background to The Beatles TV cartoon series.

An Unusual Beatles “1” CD

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We were at a record fair the other day and picked up The Beatles 1 compilation CD from 2000. The front cover looks familiar:Beatle 1 Not EU 1

As does the rear:Beatle 1 Not EU 2

That is, until you look more closely at the fine print – just below the barcode:

Beatle 1 Not EU 4

There it says quite clearly, in bolded letters, “Not resale in the EU“. Never seen that before. Then there’s the disc itself:Beatle 1 Not EU 3

Looks rather standard, but it too has the words “Not resale in the EU. LC 0299” in the small print around the perimeter:

Beatle 1 Not EU 3-1

Anyone seen this one before, or know what it means?

Official 12″ Remixes of ‘Nineteen Hundred and Eighty-Five’

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Following a very limited and mysterious white label vinyl issue in March of two re-mixed versions of the Paul McCartney and Wings song ‘Nineteen Hundred and Eighty-Five’, comes news of an official release on 12″ vinyl and digital download.

This puts ownership of these versions of the song within the realms of possibility for us mere mortals who couldn’t possibly have afforded the exorbitant prices the limited editions were fetching on auction sites like eBay.

The initial, white label releases had two remixes by German DJ/remixer Timo Maas and Canadian producer James Teej. The “official” release will have three. According to the track listings online, the 12″ will include a “radio edit” version of the song.

The vinyl is available for pre-order now and will be released on May 27 in Europe and Canada. No US listings for the physical product have yet appeared, but the US Amazon site is listing a digital download that’s available now.

Here’s the artwork:1985 Wings

 

Beatle Vinyl Collector Books for Spanish, French and Japanese Releases

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We received an intriguing email the other day from a marketing company called IM Digital alerting us to the publication of three new Beatle books for collectors. They are written by musician and collector Juan Carlos Irigoyen Pérez, and they detail across three separate volumes, every Beatle release in Spain, France and Japan respectively:

SpainFranceJapan

As you can see from the covers, these are Beatles discographies with full-colour illustrations of every release (single and LP) on the Odeon or Apple labels for Spain (between 1963-1972); for France (between 1963-1970); and Japan (between 1964-1970).

There appear to be both English and Spanish editions available, and the books are for sale on Amazon worldwide, both in paperback and e-book form.

Amazon has a “Look Inside” feature giving a peek at a few pages. You can see inside Spain here, France here, and Japan here.

Juan Carlos Irigoyen Pérez has also posted three youTube videos with more info:

 

HULU Wins Streaming Rights to New Beatle Film

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The Beatles official site has just posted a press release about the new Ron Howard directed feature-length documentary film, The Beatles: Eight Days A Week.hulu 2

Hulu Launches Hulu Documentary Films with Highly-Anticipated Documentary The Beatles: Eight Days A Week from Director Ron Howard.                                                                        

Hulu has secured the exclusive US streaming video on-demand rights to Academy Award Winner Ron Howard’s feature documentary The Beatles: Eight Days A Week (working title). The film is produced with the full cooperation of Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, Yoko Ono Lennon and Olivia Harrison.

Debuting in theaters and on Hulu this fall, The Beatles: Eight Days A Week is based on the first part of The Beatles’ career (1962-1966) – the period in which they toured and captured the world’s acclaim. Ron Howard’s film will explore how John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr came together to become this extraordinary phenomenon, “The Beatles.” It will explore their inner workings – how they made decisions, created their music and built their collective career together – all the while, exploring The Beatles’ extraordinary and unique musical gifts and their remarkable, complementary personalities. The film will focus on the time period from the early Beatles’ journey in the days of The Cavern Club in Liverpool to their last concert at Candlestick Park in San Francisco in 1966. The Beatles: Eight Days A Week also includes rare and exclusive footage.

The Beatles: Eight Days A Week marks the first documentary feature to premiere exclusively on Hulu following its theatrical run. The film comes to Hulu in the company’s first-ever licensing deal with Apple Corps Ltd. The film will be the first to launch under the new Hulu Documentary Films arm, which will serve as a new home for premium original and exclusive documentary film titles coming to Hulu.

Rare Beatle Footage Discovered in Australia

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On the 1st of November, 1965 The Beatles were in the Granada Television make-up room in Manchester in the UK.

They were there for a television show being taped in their honour called The Music of Lennon & McCartney. One of the make-up ladies, Australian dancer and make-up artist Dawn Swane, happened to have with her a small Super 8 movie camera. She took it out to shoot a personal memento of the band backstage. Of course The Beatles got into it, taking charge of the camera themselves to shoot their own scenes. In short, mucking around and vamping it up for the camera.

That short piece of footage has sat in moldering in a drawer – until now. It has just been donated to the Australian National Film and Sound Archive. You can view the footage on their site.

As 702 ABC Sydney breakfast radio presenter Robbie Buck said when introducing an interview with Dawn Swane’s daughter, Melinda Doring, it’s so rare these days to find previously unseen footage of such an iconic band:

You can see the opening credits and beginning of The Music of Lennon & McCartney TV program the Beatles were preparing for here:

 

The Detail Behind the Mysterious McCartney 12-inch

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This article courtesy of the very informative Super Deluxe Edition page:

The full story behind how the mysterious white label, 12-inch 45 release featuring two remixes of Paul McCartney’s Band on the Run album track ‘Nineteen Hundred and Eighty-Five’ came about in the lead-up to Record Store Day, and who was responsible for it, has been revealed…wl_phonicaMcCartney 1985 12in

As reported in a detailed interview with Billboard magazine, it turns out that German DJ/remixer Timo Maas and Canadian producer James Teej were responsible for the release, with Maas having done some work on the McCartney multi-tracks as far back as 2009. The German wasn’t really satisfied with his work at that time: “we never fully succeeded in working the parts to a point where I really felt the end result was worth passing along,” he told Billboard, and so the music lay dormant on his computer until last year, when James Teej came to visit and heard it.

Enthused, the pair then set back to work on creating the two remixes. They were sent to Paul McCartney who gave them his seal of approval.

“We secretly sneaked it [only 300 copies were made apparently] into two vinyl stores in the UK and Germany in order to test the waters and understand how people would react to the music on face value. The response was a little hard to believe,” says Maas, adding, “Phonica’s London store’s phone was ringing off the hook like crazy for copies, and it went to No. 1 on their charts overnight. All of that got picked up first by i-D magazine, and made it all the way to the UK tabloids who speculated that Kanye West might be behind it.”

It’s interesting to learn how this release came about; especially to note the fact that it wasn’t McCartney’s MPL company which put out the white label, rather Maas and his management.

And that now copies are selling on eBay for around the US$200-300 mark….

There was also a limited edition 7″ (a radio edit version) issue on Record Store Day in a run of 100 copies, also through the Phonica store.mccartney 1985 single 1

Beatles Anthology CDs – In Thin Jewel Boxes

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As we said in a previous post, our purchase history of late has been a little quiet but we couldn’t resist buying these two CD sets.

They are the Beatles Anthology 1 and Anthology 3 – but presented in 2 CD “thin” jewel cases, not the “fat box” doubles that you usually see.

Here’s the more common “fat box”: Anthology_Fat_Box

And here’s what we found:Anthology Thin 2

These have “Made in Holland” printed on the discs, and they have the exact same catalogue numbers and copyright information on them, only they are double CDs with the CD’s mounted back-to-back on a flip-out drawer inside a regular jewel case:Anthology Thin 6Anthology Thin 7The booklets in both sets are the same as those which come in the “fat box” editions.

We got Anthology 1 in this format:Anthology Thin 1Anthology Thin 3And Anthology 3:Anthology Thin 4Anthology Thin 5Now, of course, we’re on the hunt for a copy of Anthology 2! If anyone has any information on these odd re-issues please let us know.