Category Archives: Beatles Music

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.

Making of ‘While My Guitar Gently Weeps’ Video (Love version)

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With the 10th anniversary of The Beatles/Cirque du Soleil Love album and stage show coming up on July 14, the official Beatle YouTube site has uploaded a “making of” style video for the George Harrison song ‘While My Guitar Gently Weeps’.

It includes a tribute to the late George Martin and information on how elements of the Las Vegas show are being tweaked and updated with fantastic new graphical elements for 2016:

The official Beatles site also has the song in full – complete with the fancy new graphics – all part of the 10th anniversary revamp:

Pure McCartney TV Ad

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Featuring a range of vintage and sometimes strange play-back formats – check out the cool robot-inspired 8-Track Cartridge player. It all ends with a current and very nice British-made turntable, a white Rega Planar RP1.

The Beatles: Eight Days A Week – The Touring Years

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Lots more detail on the forthcoming new Beatles film Eight Days A Week – The Touring Years have been released today. Here’s the poster:TheBeatles_EightDaysAWeek_A4

And here’s the official trailer:

And here is the official press release from the distributors, StudioCanal:

THE BEATLES: EIGHT DAYS A WEEK – THE TOURING YEARS

 TEASER TRAILER AND POSTER FOR RON HOWARD’S

         DOCUMENTARY FEATURE FILM RELEASED TODAY, WORLD PREMIERE                                                                  CONFIRMED                                                                 

STUDIOCANAL ANNOUNCES INTERNATIONAL RELEASE DATES AS PART OF A WORLDWIDE THEATRICAL EVENT

LONDON, PARIS June 20, 2016 – Academy Award®-winner Ron Howard’s authorized and highly anticipated documentary feature film about The Beatles’ phenomenal early career The Beatles: Eight Days A Week – The Touring Years has set its World Premiere Date in London’s Leicester Square 15 September 2016 and debuts the first trailer from the film and the official poster to launch the campaign, it was announced today by Imagine Entertainment, White Horse Pictures and Apple Corps Ltd. STUDIOCANAL is an anchor partner on the film having acquired UK, France, Germany and Australia and New Zealand rights.

Featuring rare and exclusive footage, the film is produced with the full cooperation of Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, Yoko Ono Lennon and Olivia Harrison.  White Horse Pictures’ Grammy Award®-winning Nigel Sinclair, Scott Pascucci and Academy Award®-winner and Emmy® Award-winner Brian Grazer of Imagine Entertainment are producing with Howard. Apple Corps Ltd.’s Jeff Jones and Jonathan Clyde are serving as executive producers, along with Imagine’s Michael Rosenberg and White Horse’s Guy East and Nicholas Ferrall.

STUDIOCANAL RELEASE DATES:

UK – 15 September 2016 – WORLD PREMIERE / IN CINEMAS

FRANCE – 15 September 2016

GERMANY – 15 September 2016

AUSTRALIA / NZ – 16 September 2016

Richard Abramowitz’s Abramorama will handle the US theatrical release of the film on September 16. The US release is set to be an event driven experience with a few special surprises planned for cinema goers.

The Beatles: Eight Days A Week – The Touring Years 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.

Hulu is championing the film in the US as presenting partner. Hulu has the exclusive US streaming video on-demand rights to the film on SVOD beginning September 17th – marking the first feature film to debut on Hulu following its theatrical premiere. The Beatles: Eight Days A Week – The Touring Years is the first film acquired by Hulu’s Documentary Films arm which will serve as a new home for premium original and exclusive documentary film titles coming to Hulu.

Award-winning Editor Paul Crowder is the editor. Crowder’s long-time collaborator, Mark Monroe, is serving as writer. Marc Ambrose is the supervising producer.

www.thebeatleseightdaysaweek.com

 #thebeatleseightdaysaweek

 Official Twitter handle: @thebeatles

Facebook:  facebook.com/thebeatles

YouTube:  youtube.com/thebeatles

Official Beatles website:  www.thebeatles.com

 BACKGROUND INFORMATION ABOUT THE BEATLES: EIGHT DAYS A WEEK – THE TOURING YEARS

This project was originally brought to Apple Corps by One Voice One World, which has conducted extensive research around the globe, including inviting Beatles fans to send in clips of home movies and photos that they acquired during this extraordinary period. OVOW’s Matthew White, Stuart Samuels, and Bruce Higham are co-producing the film.

Nicholas Ferrall is the executive in charge of production for White Horse Pictures, assisted by executives Jeanne Elfant Festa and Cassidy Hartmann. The Beatles documentary is one of the first projects under Nigel Sinclair’s new White Horse Pictures banner, which he founded in 2014 with long-time business partner Guy East.  Their recent documentary, David Gelb’s A Faster Horse, had its world premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival where it received rave reviews.

The Beatles began touring Europe in late 1963, after an extraordinary arrival on the British scene in 1961 and ‘62.  However, it was their much-heralded Ed Sullivan appearance on February 9, 1964 that caused The Beatles’ popularity to explode. By June, the band had commenced their first world tour, and continued on a relentless schedule for two subsequent years.  By the time the band stopped touring in August of 1966, they had performed 166 concerts in 15 countries and 90 cities around the world. The cultural phenomenon their touring helped create, known as “Beatlemania,” was something the world had never seen before and laid the foundation for the globalization of culture.

Beatlemania was not just a phenomenon. It was the catalyst for a cultural shift that would alter the way people around the world viewed and consumed popular culture.  This film explains what it was about that particular moment in time that allowed this cultural pivot point to occur, examining the social and political context of the time, and revealing the unique conditions that caused technology and mass communication to collide. The film also explores the incomparable electricity between performer and audience that turned the music into a movement – a common experience into something sublime.

 

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?

Martin Scorsese Exhibition – George Harrison Documentary

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Scorsese Sign2The Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI) at Federation Square in Melbourne, Australia is currently hosting a massive exhibit featuring the work of legendary film director Martin Scorsese.

Scorsese of course was responsible for George Harrison: Living in the Material World, the 2011 landmark documentary on the life and work of George Harrison.george-harrison

In the exhibition, which we visited last week, there’s a section on Scorsese’s love of music and the numerous documentaries he’s made over time including The Last Waltz (from 1978 detailing The Band’s last ever concert); No Direction Home: Bob Dylan (his 2005 documentary on Dylan’s early years); and Shine A Light (a 2008 concert film featuring the Rolling Stones live at the Beacon Theatre in New York).

Playing on a large screen within the exhibition are extracts from George Harrison: Living in the Material World: Scorsese Screen Shot2 Scorsese Scree Shot1

The Scorsese exhibition runs at ACMI until September 18. It’s well worth a look.Scorsese Sign (1)

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.