The new 4K digital restoration on BluRay and DVD of the Beatles film A Hard Day’s Night, approved by director Richard Lester and with 5.1 surround mix supervised by Giles Martin at Abbey Road Studios, is not officially out in the US until June 24.
And it’ll be July 21 until you can buy it on disc in the UK….
But AHDN is already up and available to buy or rent right now at the US iTunes store (click on image to see full size):
The key part of the page is here. All you need is a US iTunes account:
Interestingly when the film is released in hard copy it will have different covers for the US and European markets. It will also have different special features included for each version too – see Wog Blogs post on this here.
If the image quality seen in the official trailer is anything to go by this newly restored version will be well worth getting:
For those Beatle collectors who just have to have everything…..another collectable in now in the shops in Japan.
Timed to coincide with Paul McCartney’s concert performances there (which start in Tokyo tonight and continue tomorrow night and on May 21, followed by Osaka on May 24), it’s a special limited edition of New, the album he released last year.
In this package you get the 15 track Japan-only version of New which, like the 2013 Japanese edition, has the extra track “Struggle” included – making it different to the both the Standard and Deluxe versions of the album released in all other countries. Plus you get a bonus DVD containing:
1. Save Us (Live at Tokyo Dome 2013)
2. Everybody out There (Live at Tokyo Dome 2013)
3. A Rendezvous With Paul McCartney (a Canadian documentary)
4. New (Lyric video)
5. Queenie Eye (Music Video)
6. Something New (the documentary on the making of the album New)
Presented in a clear plastic protective sleeve with an Obi strip on the left and an orange and white sticker on the outside, this new CD/DVD set looks like this:
When you open it up it turns out that hybrid cover joining the images from the covers of the Standard (orange/pink) and the Deluxe (blue/pink) editions together is actually a single, separate cardboard sleeve containing the bonus DVD:
The CD disc of the New album is contained in a separate, triple gatefold cover. Interestingly, this comes in the orange/pink colouring of the Standard editions released worldwide last year, despite the fact that it’s actually a Japanese Deluxe version:
This makes it unique as the 2013 Japanese Deluxe version (like other versions around the world) is normally presented in the blue/pink tinted New cover which makes it identifiable as the Deluxe. When it came out last year in Japan it looked like this:
Inside this new 2014 limited edition you get the CD booklet that is common to all versions:
Plus you get a Japanese booklet containing the album and DVD credits, track listings, information on the “Out There” Japan tour in 2013, and song lyrics both in Japanese and English. The cover of this second booklet is black and white:
Meanwhile, a new video for the song “Appreciate”, taken from the New album, was premiered in Japan during the week and has since been released globally:
The press release says “Paul teams up with Newman the robot for his NEW video ‘Appreciate’ & Japanese tour dates.
Introducing Newman…
Paul has collaborated with some of the biggest names in the world. In recent years his videos have featured a stellar line up of guests including Meryl Streep, Johnny Depp, Kate Moss, Jude Law, Tom Ford, Sean Penn and Natalie Portman.
Today, Paul announced his first artistic collaboration with a robot. Newman, the robot, has teamed up with Paul for his new music video for the song ‘Appreciate’. ‘Appreciate’ is taken from Paul’s latest studio album NEW, which was launched last year.
The video sees Newman on patrol in a museum of humans. Newman is drawn to one exhibition in particular. In a dimly lit sound studio he sees Paul sitting on a stool holding his iconic Höfner bass guitar. Paul twitches making a sound on the guitar and to Newman’s astonishment he starts to come to life as the song ‘Appreciate’ starts up. Paul comes closer to Newman staring at him through a force field that encloses him. Newman reaches through the force field and pulls Paul out of his exhibition. As the two of them move around the museum all the exhibitions start coming to life too.
Speaking about Newman, Paul said: “I woke up one morning with an image in my head of me standing with a large robot. I thought it might be something that could be used for the cover of my album NEW but instead the idea turned out to be for my music video for ‘Appreciate’. Together with the people who had done the puppetry for the worldwide hit ‘War Horse’ we developed the robot who became Newman.”
We know. Seems odd in the Beatles 50th anniversary year to be writing about what was done in the UK for the 20th anniversaries of each of their single releases, but as we recently acquired a complete set of those anniversary singles here goes…
Back in 1982, to mark the 20th anniversary of the release of “Love Me Do” – the Beatles first UK single, EMI released the record in a special picture sleeve. (They also released it as a picture discs as well, but that’s another story).Then over the following eight years, on the 20th anniversary release date of each the official UK singles, they continued to do the same for each and every disc. That means it took some collectors eight years to complete the set! All singles were released on black vinyl and, as already mentioned, in picture disc versions too. (A 12″ single of “Love Me Do” was also released to correct an error made by EMI in choosing the wrong version for the 7″ single. Sound familiar?). They are all either on the Parlophone label (a red label for “Love Me Do”, and then in black and silver for the remainder), or on the green Apple label.
Here’s a small selection of the covers and labels used:
The release program for this set of singles was as follows:
Love Me Do / P.S. I Love You (Parlophone/October 4, 1982)
Please Please Me / Ask Me Why (Parlophone/January 10, 1983)
From Me To You / Thank You Girl (Parlophone/April 11, 1983)
She Loves You / I’ll Get You (Parlophone/August 22, 1983)
I Want To Hold Your Hand / This Boy (Parlophone/November 28, 1983)
Can’t Buy Me Love / You Can’t Do That (Parlophone/March 19, 1984)
A Hard Day’s Night / Things We Said Today (Parlophone/July 9, 1984)
I Feel Fine / She’s A Woman (Parlophone/November 26, 1984)
Ticket To Ride / Yes It Is (Parlophone/April 9, 1985)
Help / I’m Down (Parlophone/July 23, 1985)
We Can Work It Out/ Day Tripper (Parlophone/December 2, 1985)
Paperback Writer / Rain (Parlophone/June 9, 1986)
Yellow Submarine/ Eleanor Rigby (Parlophone/August 5, 1986)
Strawberry Fields Forever / Penny Lane (Parlophone/February 16, 1987)
All You Need Is Love / Baby You’re A Rich Man (Parlophone/July 6, 1987)
Hello Goodbye / I Am The Walrus (Parlophone/November 23, 1987)
Lady Madonna / The Inner Light (Parlophone/March 14, 1988)
Hey Jude /Revolution (Apple/August 30, 1988)
Get Back / Don’t Let Me Down (Apple/April 10, 1989)
The Ballad Of John And Yoko / Old Brown Shoe (Apple/May 30, 1989)
Something / Come Together (Apple/October 30, 1989)
Let It Be / You Know My Name (Look Up The Number)(Apple/March 3, 1990)
Of course if you had the ready cash back in December 1982 you could have purchased all these singles at once in a blue and gold box set called The Beatles Singles Collection which contained each single with the same unique picture covers. The box was a limited issue and held twenty-six vinyl 7″ singles in all – each of the standard twenty two UK singles listed above, plus another four singles that had been released since 1976. These were: “Yesterday/ I Should Have Known Better”, “Back In The U.S.S.R./ Twist and Shout”, “Sgt.Peppers/With A Little Help From My Friends/ A DAy in the Life”, and “The Movie Medley”.
This box was different to the 1976 black and gold UK singles box set (which had a different set of picture covers) and was only ever available via mail order. We have the 3rd edition of that particular box, which was issued containing 25 singles in 1978:
Another Beatles book has come into the collection. It is an impressive one which we are surprised we missed when it was released just last year. Maybe it became overshadowed by Lewisohns’ massive Tune In, and Howlett’s Beatles BBC Archive books – also released last year and both with great publicity and much fanfare.
All The Songs – The Story of Every Beatles Release is up there with them as a reference work and a piece of research. Principally the work of two Frenchmen, Philippe Margotin and Jean-Michel Guesdon (assisted by American Scott Freiman, and with a Preface by the legendary Patti Smith), this book huge and is pretty much as it states in the title – each album and each song on that album dissected and explained in great detail.
Here’s the rear cover:
It is a big, heavy book – 671 pages in all – and with a great layout, lots of photos, memorabilia, and artistic flair in the design and layout:
There is a good amount of detail too, plus lots of snippets of information if you just want to casually browse:
Some background on All the Songs from the official press release:
Drawing on decades of research, the authors recount the circumstances that led to the composition of every song, the recording process, and the instruments used. Organized chronologically by album release and illustrated with 600 black & white and color photographs, this information-packed book provides readers a comprehensive look at how The Beatles changed music forever.
Throughout the song-by-song recording history are informative details such as John Lennon’s purchase of a 1958 Rickenbacker 325 Capri for £100 in Hamburg, in 1960. Diving into The Beatles’ song and album recording process, readers discover that The Beatles’ first album, Please Please Me, was recorded in one epic 12-hour session in 1963 for £400. In contrast, they spent month after month in 1967 layering sounds on a four-track recorder to create their masterpiece, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.
Praise for All the Songs:
“Enough technical tables to please everyone’s inner nerd” — The Wall Street Journal
“[This] doorstop collects a galaxy of Beatles song data into impressively simple and digestible form. Beautifully illustrated.” — SPIN
“If you’re looking for yet another attractive book to place with a Beatles coffee-table tableaux, there’s Jean-Michel Guesdon and Philippe Margotin’s ‘All the Songs: The Story Behind Every Beatles Release’ ”— Chicago Tribune
“[All the Songs] should delight casual listeners and make even hard-core Beatlemaniacs smile.” — The Dallas Morning News
There are more reviews here, and here, and there’s an interesting Q&A with the authors here.
You can see the first 21 pages in high quality on the publishers (Black Dog & Leventhal) website, and Amazon has a “Look Inside” if you would like to see more.
A few posts ago we wrote about some Beatle treasure discovered during a recent visit to the city of Newcastle in New South Wales. Here are some details about more finds from that same trip – which included a run up to the seaside town of Nelson Bay (45 minutes north of Newcastle) as well.
A second-hand book and record store called Rice’s Bookshop on Newcastle’s famous Hunter Street turned up this Australian George Harrison 45 which we previously didn’t have in the collection:
It’s a very clean copy of this 1971 single release, taken from the All Things Must Passtriple LP.
Quite some time back (many, many years ago in fact) we were given one of those black, wooden roll-top Beatles boxes, sometimes known as the “Bread Bin” box: Our box was perfect, but it was given to us without any of the CD’s…..
So, for some time now we’ve been gradually stocking it with Australian pressings of the 15 discs that should be in there. We had every one – except the White Album. It looked like a kid with a missing front tooth! That is until this trip to Newcastle.
In the seaside town of Nelson Bay (which is just a little bit further up the coast from Newcastle) we discovered the final piece in the jigsaw in a small second-hand book and CD store there. And for just A$13.00 it was a real bargain:
(click on the images to see larger versions)
The Beatles “Bread Bin” set was released in 1988 as a limited edition box containing fifteen CD abum releases. They are housed in a custom-made, fitted roll-top “bread bin” style wooden outer box with a 64-page colour booklet featuring rare photo’s and the stories behind every song. The booklet slots into a tray just under the CDs.
A couple of new Beatles book titles have come into the collection. Two were from a visit to the very well-known Berkelouw Book Barn in the Southern Highlands of New South Wales (in Australia). Berkelouw’s offer a huge selection and sell both new, second-hand and rare books. The two titles we found there recently are both “pre-loved”. First up was John, Paul, George, Ringo & Me – The Real Beatles Story by Tony Barrow:
This book is the paperback version and was released in 2006 by Andre Deutsch publishers. Barrow of course was a Beatle insider who served as their Press Officer throughout the height of their fame. As such he brings a unique view of the band, from the birth of Bealtemania through to the establishment of the Apple Records company. As with many others, Apple meant that Barrow and the Beatles parted ways. Google has one of those look inside pages if you would like to see more on this book.
If the name Tony Barrow sounds familiar it’s probably because you know it from the back covers of many of the Beatles British releases. He wrote the sleeve notes (popular in the day) for the LP’s Please Please Me; With the Beatles; and A Hard Day’s Night, as well as for the EP’s The Beatles’ Hits; Twist and Shout; The Beatles (No.1); All My Loving; A Hard Day’s Night (Extracts from the Film); (Extracts from the Album) A Hard Day’s Night; and Beatles For Sale: Next book up was a biography of Paul McCartney which we hadn’t seen before:
Like the Barrow book this hard back also came out in 2006. It is published by Century Press (a division of Random House) and this is the Australian edition. Christopher Sandford is a prolific music writer and biographer, having also penned books on The Rolling Stones, Bowie, Clapton, Jagger, Sting, Springsteen and Kurt Cobain. I haven’t delved into the book yet, but some initial research using the web on this book doesn’t auger well. It is clearly not that well-liked by the fans….
FYI here’s another of those Google links so you can have a look inside Sandford’s McCartney if you wish to check it out more for yourself.
We also recently ordered online a copy of Jude Southerland Kessler’s latest instalment in her ongoing John Lennon project and it arrived safely in the post a couple of weeks back. She Loves You isVolume 3 in Jude’s ambitious nine-volume series on the life of John Lennon. It has onlyjust been released and the timing is perfect because this book takes us right up to the Beatles US invasion – now being celebrated across this 50th anniversary year:
Southerland researches exhaustively and writes biography in the style of a novel, telling Lennon’s life story like an unfolding drama. She tries to get beyond merely what happened when and into the complexity of his character, relationships and career. Like the previous two volumes, She Loves You is a very thick and weighty paperback. It is published by On The Rock Books. When you put the three volumes produced so far side-by-side they are impressive:
Each book has taken two to three years to complete. By the time we get to Volume 9 in the series we’ll need a very sturdy bookshelf to display them! Jude’s Facebook page is here.
We were recently able to do a big Beatles crate dig while visiting the city of Newcastle in New South Wales, Australia. It yielded a few treasures.
Ah, Newcastle. A former steel city now more focussed on tourism, education, health services and coal exports, it must also be second-hand central when it comes to the large number of shops it has selling vintage books, records and CDs. We got around to some (but not all) the outlets due to time constraints. But those we did get to were worth it.
Found this great book in a second-hand bookshop called Indigo Books on Hunter Street:With this year being the 50th anniversary of the Beatles invasion of the USA, who could resist a book with the title Beatles ’64 – A Hard Day’s Night in America….
Yes, it has a small rip in the dust jacket, but this book is a fantastic memento and really worth having.
First released in 1989 to mark the 25th anniversary, Beatles ’64 has extensive text by journalist A.J.S. Rayl. But perhaps its most striking feature is one hundred and fifty (then) never-before-seen photographs of the band taken by freelance photographer Curt Gunther who accompanied them on that first historic US tour:
Gunther’s photographic career spanned over four decades. He met the Beatles in 1964 and a friendship was formed. Asked to pay his own way on the tour he offset his expenses with winnings from nightly poker sessions with the band! Find out more about Curt Gunther here, and see more of his Beatle images.
As the Amazon Books review says of his work: “….[as you flip through the book] every so often a picture jumps out by capturing the essence of both the premiere British pop invaders and the tenor of the time.” Here are couple of those images from Beatles ’64 – A Hard Day’s Night in America:
I liked this one of their guitars backstage:
And this one of Paul driving (and smoking) in the US:
Finally – the look on the face of the young lady who pulled up alongside the Beatles in their limo says it all:
It’s a book really worth having in the collection – especially in this the 50th anniversary year. Here’s an interesting review which also contains a couple more of the Curt Gunther images.
We’ll definitely be heading back to Newcastle again soon as there is certainly more Beatles treasure to discover there. In coming posts we’ll feature a couple of other nice things we found.
With the Beatles 50th anniversary of the arrival in the US now well under way, it was intriguing to come across a re-issued example of one of the earliest efforts to cash in on that US success.
Hear the Beatles Tell All was an interview disc which consisted of two lengthy conversations between the Beatles and Los Angeles radio disc jockeys. On Side One Dave Hull interviews John Lennon, while Side Two was titled “Jim Steck interviews John, Paul, George, Ringo”. No Beatles music was included on this interview album, rather a quite odd but jazzy percussion backing edited and scored by Lou Adler, and played by then top LA session drummer named Hal Blaine.
Originally released in September, 1964 on the Vee-Jay Records label, what we have here is a 1981 re-issue by the British record label Charly Records:
Charly Records have faithfully reproduced the cover. If you have the original Vee-Jay release the label will look like this:
The 50th year has kicked off with a bang – the big release of the BeatlesThe U.S. Albums in a 13 album box set, and as individual titles on CD or digital download. Yesterday the Beatles official website unveiled a new interactive page dedicated to the release (just click on the image below to go there):
Meanwhile on YouTube, this guy was amonst the very first to get a copy of the box set and upload an “unboxing” video showing the contents in detail:
Interestingly when the film is released in hard copy it will have different covers for the US and European markets. It will also have different special features included for each version too – see Wog Blogs post on this here.
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