Category Archives: Beatles Music

McCartney’s “Live Kisses”

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This just a quick follow up to an earlier post pointing to Paul McCartney’s “Live Kisses” coming out on DVD, BluRay and digital video.

I got a copy of the BluRay today so I thought I’s share some photos of the packaging and what’s inside:

That’s it still in it’s shrink wrap. The front cover photo is taken by Mary McCartney. Here it is released from the plastic:

It is really quite a nicely put together package. It’s not in a standard BluRay plastic cover but is more like a small, bound  hardback book. (The DVD comes in the same packaging only in a slightly larger format). That dark black stripe you can see down the left-hand side is embossed with a shiny finish. Quite stylish. Here’s the rear cover:

There’s a 41 page book inside which contains some nice photos and the stylish layout begun on the exterior continues:

The design is reminiscent of the “Kisses on the Bottom” CD packaging, but is also quite distinctive in itself. There’s a Foreword from Mr Diana Krall –  none other than Elvis Costello:

Costello also conducts an extensive interview with Paul McCartney about the project and the recording and this takes up the bulk of the book. At the rear are a couple of pages containing info on the composers, the song publishing details, and the recording personnel for each track. The disc contents and the bonus features are detailed, and the final page is a thin slot container for the BluRay disc itself:

(click on images to see larger versions)

So, all in all, quite nicely put together. Now to go and watch it! For those wanting a preview, McCartney’s MPL site has just put up an extended promo video package.

Meanwhile, a Paul McCartney Christmas track (which sounds like it may have been recorded during the “Kisses” sessions) is part of a new holiday CD compilation called “Holiday’s Rule” featuring a variety of artists. It’s a project coordinated by Paul’s record companies Hear Music/Concord Music and MPL. He does the classic “The Christmas Song (Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire)”. You can hear the song if you visit the MPL site – it is featured on their embedded music player at the moment.

 

 

Beatles on the Radio – A BBC Feast Coming Up This Week

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There’s a veritable feast of Beatle programming coming up this week on the BBC. In this the group’s 50th year, the broadcaster has just announced a series of programmes celebrating the life and music of the band.

First up comes “A Year in the Life: The Beatles ’62“, a 53 minute documentary which goes to air and online at 1305 GMT on Monday, 19 November 2012. In it “…Roger McGough tells the story of the pivotal breakthrough year for the Liverpool beat combo via twelve interlinked recollections from those who knew and worked alongside them in 1962.”

Then on Tuesday 20 November at 1305 GMT comes “Beatleland“. The BBC press releases says: “The Beatles left Liverpool in 1962 to conquer the world, but it never left them. Craig Charles heads home to Liverpool to find out what they took with them and the legacy they left behind. Every day, tourists visit Lennon and McCartney’s childhood homes, restored to their 1950s glory by English Heritage. From Albert Dock to Mathew Street, Beatle memorials are ever-present: Penny Lane and Strawberry Field, The Jacaranda, The Casbah and The Cavern where the group learned its trade, The Grapes and Ye Cracke, where the young Beatles would sit over a pint of cider, and Gambier Terrace, where John Lennon shared a flat with fellow art student Stu Sutcliffe. The Beatles connection is worth an estimated £20 million a year to the local economy.”

The week of special Beatles programming continues next day with “Paul McCartney at the BBC” – another 53 minute doco on Wednesday 21 November, again at 1305 GMT.  “Johnnie Walker presents a portrait of Sir Paul McCartney, drawn from BBC archive interviews and performances. The programme starts with the break-up of The Beatles and traces McCartney’s career as a solo artist up to the present. It’s made up entirely of rare BBC archive interviews and performances, and presents a fascinating picture of one of Britain’s greatest musicians. Among other treats we hear Sir Paul deconstructing Band On The Run for a television ad for a domestic radio station and recording a session at the famous Abbey Road studios.”

Finally, Thursday 22 November at 1305 GMT, you’ll be able to listen in to a special on “The Magical Mystery Tour“, a 53 minute programme about “….the television film called Magical Mystery Tour devised, written and directed by The Beatles. It has a significant place in the history of The Beatles – not least, because it was viewed by many as the group’s first failure. Paul Gambaccini presents a programme revealing the story behind the making of Magical Mystery Tour.”

 

The BBC World Service schedule for the series can be seen here. There are also some programs on the Rolling Stones if you are a fan.

Beatles with Records – Part Thirteen

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In Part Twelve in our series The Beatles With Records I couldn’t identify what disc a young Julian Lennon was holding in this photograph kindly sent in by reader Ariel Caceres:

Well, thanks to Beatles Blog reader Thomas McConnell, who incidentally is a singer/songwriter from Liverpool, we now have an answer:

He is holding the UK 1978 reissue of the 45rpm single “The Ballad of John and Yoko/Old Brown Shoe” from The Beatles Collection box set. This box set contained every UK Beatles single and had specially created picture sleeves. I even have a copy of the set, but I missed connecting the Julian Lennon photo with it!  So, thank you to Thomas for solving that one.

Ariel (mentioned above) has sent in another interesting photograph. It’s of John Lennon and Harry Nilsson holding the early artwork for the 1979 Nilsson LP “Pussy Cats” – which Lennon produced and played on. It also featured the likes of Ringo Starr on drums and Klaus Voormann on bass:

If you’d like to read some more about this album – click here.

I’ve also had sent in a simple but striking candid photograph of Paul McCartney clearly enjoying a quiet browse through a box of second-hand LPs. This comes from French collector and author Claude Defer:

I reckon he looks pretty happy and contented. We’ve mulled over just which album that “Jazz Greats” LP could be at the back of the pile. Maybe Paul was doing some research for his “Kisses on the Bottom” recordings?  With only the rear cover in view the album we can see could be any number of jazz records which carry that title.  If you have any ideas contact me at: beatlesblogger@gmail.com

Russian collector Andrey sent the photo below with a bit of a story attached. In August, 1998  Ringo Starr visited Russia for the first time. Andrey was a winner of the Beatles United Radio-TV-Newspaper competition. The prize was a brief meeting with Ringo. Andrey (thats him in the picture) presented Ringo with one issue of the Russian BEATLESBEAT fanzine (released in 90s) and the bootleg CD-album “Rory Storm and the Hurricanes”:

This photo was taken on August 25, 1998 just an hour before Ringo’s show in the Russia State Central Concert Hall in Moscow (this building doesn’t exist any more). Ringo is taking a good look at the CD, which can be seen well in this enlarged fragment:

Later Ringo put his autograph on the photo specially for Andrey. Here’s the Rory Storm Russian bootleg CD cover that he’s studying:

And here’s an honorary Beatle if ever there was one. It’s their manager, Brian Epstein with a copy of their debut LP “Please Please Me”.  Parlophone rush-released the album on 22 March, 1963 in the UK to capitalise on the success of singles “Please Please Me” and “Love Me Do”:

Thanks again to everyone who provided photos and further information. You can see the other parts in “The Beatles with Records” series here: Parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 14, 15, 16 and 17.

Beatles 2012 Remastered Vinyl – Released (First Pictures)

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Is Australia the very first country to see the new Beatles Remastered Stereo Vinyl Box Set delivered?

The new records aren’t due for release in the UK and the USA until next week (12 and 13 November respectively). However, today I got a call from my local record store in Sydney saying “Come on in – your order for the Beatles box set is ready for collection today“.  (That’s Thursday, 8 November)

Naturally I high-tailed it down there – and here are the first pictures of it being unpacked. It comes in a big protective outer box:

The large sticker declaring the contents is placed on both sides of the box:

The two shipping labels on the side. Both say “Deliver Thursday”:

 

When you open the box you see what looks like another box-within-a-box:

It is held in place by two thick white foam inserts that you usually see in packaging for large electrical goods like TV’s, etc.  At this point I should say this package is incredibly heavy. You actually have to lie it on its side to slide it out:

What initially looked like an inner box is actually a thick brown cardboard wrap around the main package (above). Once you take it off you see this:

It’s just like the Beatles Remastered Stereo CD box released in 2009. There’s a thin cardboard outer sleeve around the record box itself. As you can see above it has “The Beatles” and an Apple logo printed on the front. This is what’s printed on the rear:

The outer sleeve slides off to reveal the main, lidded box:

Opening the lid – there are two pieces of black foam and two large moisture absorbing packs:

The book and all the LPs are completely sealed in heat-shrink plastic:

“Let It Be” (below) has the green Apple on the rear:

The book is really heavy and looks amazing – even in its heat-shrink wrap:

It has black-edged pages:

One side of the outer sleeve has the record and book edges printed on it. I guess that’s so it’ll look good when sitting on a shelf with that edge facing out:

Well, that’s about it for now. Hope you enjoyed this. Haven’t had time to open up any of the records or the book. Just wanted to get this up quickly for all to have sneak peek at the new Beatles Remastered Stereo Vinyl Box Set. 

(Click on images to see larger versions)

Two Small But Unusual Garage Sale Finds

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There are times at garage or yard sales when you are on the hunt for Beatles vinyl that the pickings can be pretty slim.

This was the case last weekend. After visiting quite a few, and with the prospect of going home empty-handed, I struck two very unusual and potentially rare items at the very last house I visited. Sitting in a box of old 45’s I found two New Zealand pressings. They’re both collectable – with this one probably being the most rare:

As you can see, it’s a copy of John Lennon’s “Imagine” – but on the NZ Parlophone label:

I must admit, despite seeing quite a few copies of this single in my time, I’ve never seen in on the black and yellow Parlophone label before.  Next post I’ll put up some of the great variety of label variations of “Imagine” from around the world.

Sitting with the John Lennon was another New Zealand single – a copy of the Beatles “Hey Jude” b/w “Revolution”. Unusually, it was in a UK cardboard outer sleeve:

These covers were produced for the UK Beatles box set “The Beatles Collection” containing all 25 British single releases. However, inside this one there was a New Zealand Parlophone pressing of the single – again on the yellow and black Parlophone label:

In “The Beatles Collection” box set this single looks like this:

So, the copy I found is quite strange. I’m not sure if New Zealand EMI ever produced a version of this box set where they sourced the British packaging but inserted locally pressed vinyl. In some countries that sometimes happened. If so, my single has become separated from the rest of the collection at some stage….

These are the other versions of  the “Hey Jude” single in my collection. The record was released in that period just when Apple Records had first been created and so some copies in Australia also came out on the Beatles’ old label, Parlophone:

It was also released here on a standard Apple:

And here’s an example of some weird typography being used in the song title on a later Australian Apple pressing:

Finally an example of the original UK Apple version:

So, when garage sale hunting seems fruitless sometimes its worth going to just one more house….

Mary Hopkin – Australian Vinyl

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Last weekend I was visiting a cool Sydney second-hand record store called Revolve Records and Relics. As you can see if you click here, its a full-on searching experience when you walk inside…I was actually there on the hunt for an Australian pressing of the John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band LP to send to Andrey, a Russian collector and reader of this blog.

Anyway, I didn’t turn one up for him (yet), but I did find an LP for myself that I’ve been searching for now for about ten years or so. It’s an original Australian pressing on Apple Records of the Mary Hopkin compilation “The Best of Mary Hopkin”:

You might know this record as “Those Were the Days”. In the UK and the USA that’s what it was called when released back in 1972. It has the same Apple Records catalogue number here as the UK issue – SAPCOR 23 (in the US this was SW3395) – and the same 11 tracks and running order:

There’s a bit of a backstory for me regarding this LP. I did spy a copy of it once at a garage sale about 10-15 years ago. I was just about to reach for it when another person at the garage sale spotted it first and grabbed it. It must genuinely be one of the Apple rarities as I’ve never seen another copy of it since!

So, thanks to Andrey, I have one more item ticked off in the quest to own every Apple LP on vinyl.

Label Variations Part Ten – Abbey Road (More….)

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Since I posted Label Variations Part Six – Abbey Road  I’ve had a few people sending in some further great examples from their own collections.

So, its time to share these now.

First comes from Jerry Woods who wrote:  “Saw your blog featuring various record labels (I LOVE this stuff!!) and noticed that you didn’t have a MONO version of Abbey Road on display, so I thought I would share. Although, not a true mono mix (they never “officially” did one – and this LP sounds identical from start to finish to the Stereo version when the Stereo version is folded down to Mono) this is kind of an interesting oddity – but only a fold down to Mono from Stereo.”

Here are the labels – the record comes from Brazil:

Another nice one sent in was from a reader in New Zealand and it’s really quite unusual. It is Abbey Road on an orange Apple label – very similar (but not quite) to the orange labels used for George Harrison’s All Things Must Pass. VERY collectable:

Of course there were lots of green Apples from other countries. Nice examples here from France, Italy and a green vinyl pressing of the album from the UK:

There were these two from Canada that were missed first time around. They include a couple of purple Capitol labels with two variations (one with a fairly obvious spelling mistake):

There were also a couple of other US pressings. The orange Capitol, and also the collectable Mobile Fidelity Audiophile pressing:

Finally, a couple of pressings of Abbey Road on a black and silver Parlophone label. This first one is from the UK:

While this other one, sent in by Andrey in Russia, is much more unusual. It is a rare UAR (Egypt?) label for Abbey Road:

(except for a couple, click on labels to see larger versions)

Ah, collecting….the variations sometimes seem endless. Thanks to everyone who emailed more labels.

You can see Label Variations Parts One, Two, Three, Four, and Five and Six, plus the Beatles Love LP variations here and here.

There’s a post on the variations of the McCartney/Fireman Electric Arguments release; McCartney’s Twin Freaks LP and singles; as well as his recent Kisses On The Bottom CD’s and LP. There is also a post on some George Harrison All Things Must Pass label variations.

Where “Made in the EU” Vinyl Might Be Pressed

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These days a lot of Paul McCartney’s and the Beatles vinyl LP’s and CD’s have the term “Manufactured in the EU” or “Printed in the EU” on the back cover – even some that are for sale in the US. Here are just a couple of recent vinyl examples from my collection:

(Rear of LP cover – click to enlarge)

And titles in the McCartney Archive series including:

(Rear of LP cover – click to enlarge)

There are CD examples as well (though some of these do say “Manufactured in the USA”).This means these albums are being pressed (and probably in quite large quantities) somewhere in a European Union country. Many might think that means Britain, Germany, Holland, or maybe even France where they have a rich tradition of pressing good quality vinyl and are geared up to do so.

But then again, maybe not….

I’ve had an email from Russian Beatles collector Andrey. Remember back to Record Store Day earlier this year when Paul McCartney, as part of the publicity in the lead-up to the “Ram” Archives Series reissues, released a limited-edition 45 vinyl single of the song “Another Day“?

This was a collectors item reproduction single (including a nice picture sleeve) especially made for Record Store Day. “Another Day” was a song which was recorded during the “Ram” sessions. However it didn’t come out on the original “Ram” album . It was only ever issued as a single and was a huge worldwide hit.  The RSD release from earlier this year looks like this:

Well, Andrey bought that 2012 RSD “Another Day” single from a Russian internet shop.  The interesting thing is that while the small print on the rear of the paper sleeve states (as it does around the world) that the paper sleeve was “Printed in the USA”, one of the two stickers on the back of Andrey’s copy says that the vinyl record itself was actually manufactured in the Czech Republic by a company called GZ Digital Media.

The rear cover of Andrey’s copy looks like this:

And here’s a close up of that sticker:

(click on images to see larger versions)

If you go to the GZ Digital Media website you’ll discover that they’re a well-established and very professional outfit clearly geared up to do high-quality vinyl and CD pressing runs in large numbers if need be. The company’s vinyl “Products” page lists everything from mastering through to the production of 7″, 10″ and 12″ vinyl; shaped and coloured vinyl; and they even do the printing of covers and production of box sets if required.

That got me thinking about some other releases I have with “Printed in the EU” on the back.  The Beatles vinyl editions of “1” and “Love” for instance:

(Rear of LP cover – click to enlarge)

Is GZ Digital Media in the Czech Republic the plant where these were manufactured too?  Could be.

One of the articles I read about the forthcoming box set of re-mastered Beatles vinyl stated that one of the big logistical challenges Apple faced in planning the project was to find processing plant (or plants) that could physically cope with the sheer volume of discs needing to be pressed. They all have to be high quality and stockpiled in very big numbers for distribution. Perhaps the GZ  Digital Media plant is playing a part?

If you have any more info please join in the conversation.

“Produced by George Martin” – We Have a Winner

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Our competition to win a DVD copy of “Produced by George Martin” in the previous post asked the question:

George Martin was never just about one band. There was also comedy, and in 1965  he produced and arranged and conducted the accompaniment for a mock, spoken version of the Beatles “A Hard Day’s Night”.  Who was the performer? 

The correct answer was Peter Sellers, the famous British comedian and actor who in 1965  released a single which was a comedy version of the Beatles “A Hard Day’s Night”. In it Sellers recites the lyrics to the song in the style of Laurence Olivier in Shakespeare’s “Richard III”.  The Sellers version became a UK Top 20 hit:

There were lots of entries and the first person through with the correct answer  was Eric Leon in France. Congratulations to Eric (who is a huge Beatles fan), and thank you to everyone who entered the competition.

And a very big thank you to Eagle Rock Entertainment for providing the prize.

Produced by George Martin – Win Your Own Copy

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In our last post we brought you the details of a terrific new documentary out now on DVD and BluRay about the life and work of George Martin.

The film is called simply “Produced by George Martin”.

It’s a fascinating journey through the amazing output and influence of a record producer who changed the world.

By answering the question below you could be the lucky owner of your very own copy, courtesy of Eagle Rock Entertainment. And the question is:

George Martin was never just about one band. There was also comedy, and in 1965  he produced, arranged and conducted the accompaniment for a mock, spoken version of the Beatles “A Hard Day’s Night”.       Who was the performer? 

The first correct answer to me at beatlesblogger@gmail.com will win a DVD copy of  “Produced by George Martin”.

By the way, there are two great reviews of “Produced by George Martin” here and here.