The old addage “when you’re on a good thing, stick to it” comes to mind today as Ringo Starr announces the release of his second album with T Bone Burnett as producer – due out on April 24.
It’ll be called Long Long Road and it follows on from last year’s well-received Look Up, a welcome return to the country/Americana style that Ringo, and his audience, are very comfortable with. Under the direction of Burnett, Ringo is having something of a late career revival and reaching new audiences.
Recorded in Nashville and Los Angeles, the 10-song album features collaborations with Sheryl Crow, Billy Strings, Molly Tuttle, Sarah Jarosz, and St. Vincent.
And a CD in a good old-fashioned plastic jewel case:
Talking about the new album Ringo says “I’m blessed to have T Bone in my life right now and working with me on these records. After we did the last record, which I love listening to, this one just sort of happened. I like to say sometimes I make the right moves, like you can go left or right at any point, and one of the right moves was hooking up with T Bone for Look Up, and now for this one, which I’m calling Long Long Road, because I’ve been on a long long road.”
Renowned music photographer (and good friend of Ringo’s) Henry Diltz shot the album cover, as well as additional photos for the album packaging. If you don’t think you’ve seen his work before, it’s almost certain that you have! Check out the link above to his official page. Since the 1960s he’s been snapping rock royalty. His photographs of The Doors, Joni Mitchell, Crosby, Stills & Nash, Neil Young, James Taylor, Paul McCartney plus countless others have graced more than 250 album and magazine covers.
If I said the name Rick Ward to you, you’d probably reply, “Rick who??”
Which is interesting because if you’re a Beatle fan with even a half-decent collection you’ll definitely have at least five or six examples of his work amongst your vinyl, CDs and DVD’s.
We’re all aware that long-time Beatle mate, bass player and artist Klaus Voormann (along with fellow artist Alfons Kiefer) painted the fantastic cover art for the Anthology series, but did you know the entire Anthology concept and packaging brief was the brainchild of a guy called Rick Ward?
In 1995 Ward was working for The Team, a top London design and branding company. He’d already done some work for George Harrison, designing the sleeve and contents of his 1992 double LP, Live In Japan (now long out of print but soon to be re-issued on Dark Horse/BMG):
Ward had met George through a client of The Team, the F1 car designer Gordon Murray. They’d been working together on the graphics, marketing and launch of the McClaren F1 supercar. As we know, Harrison was a mad F1 racing fan and it turns out that he knew Murray who had given the Beatle a book for his birthday on the history of fairground art – co-authored by none other than Rick Ward:
George obviously loved that book because he called Ward and invited him to visit Friar Park. The two subsequently became friends and before you know it he was designing the Live in Japan package. A year later it was George who suggested Ward might come up with the design for The BeatlesLive at the BBC packaging. He was soon invited into Apple to discuss and produce concepts for what would be the band’s first new album of previously unreleased material since Let It Be:
Ward recounts a funny story behind the hand-written title of the front cover: “The concept was a fan’s photograph with an autograph on the front. I had found a great image, got the picture retouched, and then just wrote “Live at the BBC” in the corner. It was supposed to mimic the bootleg albums that were cropping up at the time. They instantly loved it, but we had to decide whose handwriting was going to be on the front. I asked Paul, George, Ringo and Yoko to take a pen and write “Live at the BBC” just like they were signing a photograph. I then printed all the versions out, randomly adding mine and Neil Aspinal’s to the mix. I then sent the options back to the four of them and asked them to choose their favorites. When they came back with their votes, I couldn’t believe it: It was mine!”
Ward also got involved in the cover for Baby It’s You, the four-song EP released in support of Live at the BBC which featured three additional previously unreleased songs:
So, another success. It proved worthwhile because in 1995 The Beatles and EMI started on Anthology, the largest music project ever attempted by the band: three triple albums plus a multi-part TV documentary subsequently released on VHS tape (and DVD) as boxed sets. Not to mention a book, all covering their entire recording career, released across every major format of the time. Anthology was to be a definitive statement, the band telling their own story and setting the record straight. The concept for it all, conceived by Ward, was an artist’s painting, a ‘masterpiece’ and a rediscovery of ‘their art’.
Last year when talking about the design Ward recalled: “I had always considered their music and lyrics as works of art, so that was my starting point. The idea was for the project to literally be a work of art that could be divided up into three sections that charted and reflected their career – giving equal presence to all four members…..To realise this, we invited six artists, each with their own creative connection to the band, to respond to the brief.”
Those artists were David Hockney, Peter Blake, Brian Grimwood, Humphrey Ocean, David Oxtoby and Klaus Voormann. Only five submitted their thoughts. Peter Blake (the artist behind the iconic Sgt Pepper‘s Lonely Hearts Club Band cover art) simply refused. He wasn’t going in a competition. They could either choose him outright, or not at all. Of the other five Ward recalls it was Voormann’s concept that immediately stood out. “It perfectly captured the album and importantly, it allowed us to work with pre-approved imagery, which was vital, because literally everything had to be unanimously approved by each individual Beatle before it could move forward.” Klaus later decided to take the idea further, transforming his collage into a painted work that retained its layered quality but added more depth.
“Together, we developed the vision by using the idea of a large billboard poster on the side of a fictitious concert hall they had played at from the beginning to the end of their recording career. It became both an artwork and a metaphor for their legacy.”
“A small but defining design touch came on the back covers. Since the concept revolved around a “work of art,” I chose to show the reverse of the canvas, as a teaser for the pre-release marketing. It gave the sense of seeing a masterpiece in progress, an artist’s work evolving before your eyes, while also serving as a teaser for what was to come. This gave Klaus much needed time, between each release date to then go on to do the second image, and then finally the third completed image.”
Very clever, but even so they worked right down to the strict deadline for each release to get the covers completed:
Ward also had to take into account all the different ways these images would or could be used. “It was extremely challenging to lay out due to the varying proportions of the different design formats like cassettes, 45s, 12″ LP covers, LaserDiscs, VHS covers, etc., and so on. I developed a grid matrix which we constantly laid over the rough visual to keep checking that it would fit every format, and that each of the four Beatles were equally represented.” The genius of this is well illustrated by how the individual spines of the VHS tapes present when on the shelf:
Ward was also involved in many of the Anthology spin-offs, like press kits and the quite substantial promo CD samplers for each Anthology album, not to mention the singles that came out for ‘Free As A Bird’ and ‘Real Love’. Each carried over elements of the original concept:
As is the way with these things, one thing lead to another. In 1996 Ward was also commissioned to design the Ravi Shankar retrospective compilation called In Celebration, a 4 CD box set co-produced by George Harrison:
This was followed the next year by Ravi Shankar’sChants of India, also produced by Harrison:
Interestingly, in 1997 Ward’s company The Team also designed the cover art and packaging for Paul McCartney’sFlaming Pie:
And then, in 2000, came another big one, probably the biggest – certainly from a sales perspective. Ward received a further commission from the Beatle camp to come up with ideas on how to present globally a new compilation of every Number 1 hit they’d had (all 27 of them) in an album simply to be called 1:
Speaking in PRINT Magazine in 2023 about the ideas he came up with Ward recalled: “I had always loved the graphic look of basic ticket printing for entry into dances in town halls, then we treated the bold “1” as a piece of graphic art, the “hero,” so to speak. So we kept it minimal, strong and simple. We obviously needed to have pictures of them somewhere in the album, and as the cover had turned quite pop art–ish, I was reminded of the ultimate iconoclastic photos Richard Avedon had taken of them in the ’60s for Look magazine, so I suggested using them.”
Inside the packaging was an absolute wealth of visual material for Beatle fanatics, including hundreds of picture sleeves from singles released around the world. There was also unique artwork and a common design theme which tied it all together as a musical and visual celebration of the band’s incredible success.
When asked which album design he was most happy with, Ward said, “I thoroughly enjoyed working on all of them, as they were each so different in what they were setting out to achieve and all had challenges to overcome. There is no one album that’s my favorite, and I learned so much doing each one. It was always interesting, stimulating and very challenging. Live at the BBC, being my first one, was initially quite overwhelming; being invited to design an album cover for the greatest band in the world was a bit unreal. But upon reflection, the fact that they were asking me meant that they had enough respect for me and my work, and so I was able to accept it, and take it as a compliment, and for the amazing opportunity it was.”
From time-to-time we like to bring you the background stories like highlighting some of the lesser-known players who helped The Beatles (either as a group or as solo artists) to extend their music through the art, design or photographs created for record covers, stage designs, tour programs and the like. You can find some more of those stories here:
As mentioned in December, we made some successful bids on a big Beatle and Beatle-related auction here in Sydney, Australia.
The other successful bid was on an auction lot made up of quite hard-to-find, original Australian (plus one quite rare New Zealand) Dark Horse Records singles. These are all 45’s you very rarely come across in the wild, so they’re welcome additions to the collection.
They each come in their original generic company outer sleeves too – in this case from Festival Records, which had the manufacturing and distribution rights for A&M Records (Dark Horse Records‘ parent company).
The first, which will be reasonably well-known to most, is from the George Harrison protégés Splinter. Their song ‘Costafine Town’ is lifted from the 1974 Dark Horse debut LP, The Place I Love. Harrison produced all the songs and played a variety of instruments, including electric and acoustic guitars, dobro, bass, and harmonium:
Next up another Splinter single, this time from 1975, called ‘Which Way Will I Get Home’ taken from the band’s second LP, Harder To Live produced by Tom Scott:
And there’s one other Splinter single from the Harder To Live LP, called ‘Half Way There’:
Also in this auction lot was a single from Shankar Family & Friends. It is of course ‘I Am Missing You’, taken from their self-titled 1974 LP, produced and arranged by George Harrison:
Jiva was a Los Angeles band signed to Dark Horse that released only one album with the label in 1975. From that self-titled album came this single. They had a nice funk/soft rock sound, but never made into the charts:
Attitudes was a bit of an L.A. super group consisting of killer keyboardist David Foster, brilliant guitarist Danny Kortchmar, bassist Paul Stallworth, and Jim Keltner on drums. They were all top flight session players who went onto play with just about everybody. In fact a very young David Foster met Jim Keltner while playing on George Harrison’sExtra Texture. Attitudes released two LPs on the Dark Horse label and this first single comes from their self-titled 1975 debut release:
This second single ‘Sweet Summer Music’ was included on Attitudes’ second album, from 1977, called Good News:
In this auction lot there was also an unusual New Zealand pressing of ‘Sweet Summer Music’ on the Dark Horse label but distributed there by WEA (i.e. Warner Bros. – hence the different company sleeve and small print on the labels). The label also contains a mistake as it incorrectly states under the title “from The Dark Horse Album “Attitudes” DH 3021″. It should say “from The Dark Horse Album “Good News” DH 3021″
If you want a bit more information on the Dark Horse label check out this article on the official George Harrison site.
When you see an iconic image like this one it is often fascinating to hear the backstory as to how it came about.
Photographer Chris Floyd has a fantastic tale to tell about working with Paul McCartney and the process of capturing an image of him for the ages:
If Floyd’s photographs looks familiar, that’s because another from that same shoot eventually made it’s way (some 12 years later via Paul’s own company MPL) onto the cover of Paul Du Noyer’s 2015 book, Conversations With McCartney:
As well as the YouTube above, Chris Floyd has written in detail about the session too, both in his book Not Just Pictures, and also at his substack.com page. His article there is well worth a read. It’s got some great additional information and images, plus two very surprising postscripts which add delightful new elements to the tale!
It’s been quite a while since we’ve seen a decent Beatle and Beatle-related auction held in our own hometown by a small auction house, but one happened about a week ago and it turned up quite a rare Paul McCartney/Fireman double LP from 1993, Strawberries Oceans Ships Forest.
We’ve had the CD version of this for a long time, but the vinyl has always been elusive. The problem is that you hardly ever see it for sale, and when it does come up it’s usually very pricey.
The standard edition is in a bright red/green cover with clear vinyl. But there’s an even rarer, limited edition in a white cover. And this is why we were very interested when a copy came up for grabs at a local auction place here in Sydney, Australia.
We made a single bid – and got it!
This rarer 2LP vinyl edition comes in a very plain white outer sleeve:
The album title wraps around the cover onto the rear, where there’s a limited edition number stamped in black in the centre (ours is No.263).
Apart from that, there’s no other info on the outside, except on the spine there is the catalogue number FIRE 1:
Inside there are two clear vinyl records. Both come in plain white, non-poly-lined paper sleeves:
And here are the labels in close-up. These too are different to the standard release:
So, this has been something of a grail find and Strawberries Oceans Ships Forest on vinyl can at last take its rightful place in the collection.
At the same auction we nabbed a selection of Dark Horse Records singles. These were Australian pressings from some of the more obscure bands that were signed to the label in the 1970s. More on that next time.
It didn’t last long. Some helpful readers pointed out we’d left out Ringo’sStop & Smell The Roses – the numbered, liquid vinyl edition – limited to 400 copies.
And the other Ringo Starr was a red vinyl re-issue of his 14th studio album, Choose Love from 2005. This had first been slated for Record Store Day Black Friday, but was quietly removed from official lists prior to the day. It’s popped up again on the Friday Music site, this time with a late January 2026 release date (though knowing Friday Music that is extremely likely to change):
Then Dark Horse Records announced it would be issuing a further title from the Yusuf/Cat Stevens back catalogue that the label now has the rights to. It’s called Tell ‘Em I’m Gone and it will be on yellow vinyl:
So, each of these were duly added into a revised graphic and we were just about to re-publish when last Friday came news of yet another collectable, this time linked to the Beatles’Anthology re-issue – and in particular Anthology 4. On it are the 2025 re-mixes of ‘Free As A Bird’ and ‘Real Love’ and they are now being released as a limited edition, double A-side 7″ translucent milk white vinyl single. This is the 2025 mix of both songs.
There’s been no indication of a CD version of the single being made available (except for Japan where there’s been an exclusive Japan-only CD announced). Nor has there been any talk of updated versions of the ‘Free As A Bird’ and ‘Real Love’ EPs (or “maxi-singles”) which were originally released to accompany Volumes 1 and 2 of Anthology back in 1995 and 1996. That means all of the extra tracks on those EPs will remain unavailable, with the exception of the song ‘This Boy’, which has been added to the Anthology Volume 4 discs.
The ‘Free As A Bird’ (2025 Mix)/’Real Love’ (2025 Mix) 7″ coloured vinyl single is only available from Beatles official stores (e.g. in the UK or the US), or from certain Universal Music online stores (eg. this one in Germany).
So, it has been a most busy time for any Beatle collector who is a completist. There’s been so much product so fast it’s been difficult to keep up.
To help, here’s our updated visual. If you want everything, this is what you’ll need to order. There are no fewer that 51 items here! This has got to be unprecedented in the run-up to Christmas:
It all seems timed to coincide with the release of a new children’s book, which in turn is adapted from the Academy Award winning animated short film of the same name that Sean Ono Lennon was involved in…….
Anyways, on the official John Lennon store site they’ve just announced a very special 12″ Zoetrope disc featuring the songs ‘Happy Xmas (War Is Over) (Ultimate Mix)’ and ‘Listen, The Snow Is Falling (Ultimate Mix)’ on side one, and on side two ‘War Pigeon/A Game Of Chess/A Sudden Interruption/Then Peace’, from the soundtrack to the War Is Over! animated film, composed by Thomas Newman (who has done everything from The Shawshank Redemption to Finding Nemo, two Bond films Skyfall and Spectre, to 1917 and Elemental). Suffice it to say he is up there with the best! This is the first time soundtrack music from War Is Over! has been available on a physical format.
The 12” Zoetrope picture disc is designed by Drew Tetz using still frames from the film, and features (on the front outer title sticker) an illustration by Max Narciso from the children’s book adaptation.
The disc is 180g and cut at 45rpm, and comes in a PVC clear sleeve with a title sticker featuring the credits.
It looks very cool and is set to become a definite collectors item.
Meanwhile, the team at Dark Horse Records has announced yet another pre-Christmas release. This is in addition to the three titles announced for Black Friday Record Store Day.
It’s another Yusuf/Cat Stevens back-catalogue title Tell ‘Em I’m Gone, and it will be on yellow vinyl:
The album was produced by Rick Rubin and sees Yusuf exploring some of his bluesier influences, tapping into musical traditions that have informed his own work. Fans of Cat Stevens will know that Leadbelly has always been one of his favourite artists and alongside the album’s original compositions Tell ‘Em I’m Gone contains covers of songs dear to him such as Edgar Winter’s ‘Dying To Live’, Luther Dixon/Al Smith’s ‘Big Boss Man’, and a bluesy reworking of the Jimmie Davies/Charles Mitchell song ‘You Are My Sunshine’. Interesting stuff. The album is available for pre-sale now and is released on December 5.
It’s been a busy time over the last few weeks and months for Beatle collectors.
There’s been so much product announced it’s hard to keep on top of it.
So, we decided to made a visual representation for you, the avid completist, so that you can keep track.
If you want everything, THIS is what you’ll need to order:
Screenshot
(Click on the image to see a larger version)
Have we forgotten anything?
FYI, the Ringo StarrChoose Love LP announced for Record Store Day Black Friday 2025 seems to have quietly slipped off the list again, so we have not included it here.
Magic Christian Music is the second album released by Welsh rock band, Badfinger. They recorded 5 albums for Apple Records, and were the first non-Beatle recording artists signed to the label.
This release will be the first time the 2010 remasters of Magic Christian Music are available on vinyl, and the first time the album has been re-pressed since 1996.
Magic Christian Music includes the band’s first international hit, ‘Come And Get It’, written and produced for them by Paul McCartney. Of the fourteen tracks, seven were newly recorded for the album while the remaining songs were lifted from their first album Maybe Tomorrow, which had seen only a limited release. Three of the new tracks were featured in the film The Magic Christian (starring Peter Sellers and Ringo Starr). They were produced by Paul, and the strings on ‘Carry On Till Tomorrow’ were arranged and conducted by George Martin. SIx tracks were produced by Tony Visconti and five by Mal Evans.
This 180g blue vinyl version, out on October 18, is housed in a single sleeve featuring the original artwork, with poly-lined white inner sleeves.
In other Beatle-related release news, the push by BMG to get more George Harrison/Dark Horse Records titles officially onto their catalogue continues. On October 24 they will release the next batch including the self-titled George Harrison (from early 1979) on both vinyl and CD:
The CD has one bonus track, ‘Here Comes The Moon (Demo)’:
Then in June 1981 came Somewhere In England. It too gets a vinyl and CD re-issue on Dark Horse:
The CD is interesting. It comes in the original album concept artwork and has one bonus track, a demo of ‘Save The World’:
And then comes 1982’s Gone Troppo:
The Gone Troppo CD also comes with a single bonus track, the demo version of ‘Mystical One’:
Also due for an October 24 release are CD versions of Brainwashed; Cloud Nine; and Thirty Three and 1/3. Each of these has already seen a vinyl release under the BMG distribution deal. This just makes a CD version available to collectors:
All CD’s are in Digipak packaging. You can get all the details on all these releases, and place pre-orders, at the Official George Harrison Store.
Interestingly, also listed there (for an October 3 release) is a 3LP set of All Things Must Pass. This too is to bring that classic title in under the BMG/Dark Horse Records banner as a vinyl issue (there’s already been a CD released).
The question is, will it come out with Dark Horse Records labels, or will it be on the traditional orange Apple and Apple Jam labels? The pack shot has a prominent Dark Horse hype sticker (click on the image to see a larger version):
This vinyl is the 50th anniversary mix by Paul Hicks and the set includes the original poster – but with the back of the poster containing notes by Dhani Harrison and Hicks about remixing the album.
I guess we’ll just have to wait and see if the LPs have the Dark Horse label. For some reason our money is on Apple labels……look very closely at that hype sticker and you’ll see in the small print the words “Apple and the Apple logo are exclusively licensed to Apple Corps Ltd and used with permission.” So maybe it won’t have Dark Horse labels after all….
Announced yesterday out of the blue a new Wings “best of” compilation to accompany the forthcoming book, Wings – The Story of a Band on the Run (and possibly the new documentary film, Man On The Run):
WINGS – The Definitive Collection will contain purely Wings songs (in other words no Paul McCartney solo, or Paul and Linda McCartney releases) and it will come in the shape of a 3LP set, a 2CD set, a 1CD, and there’ll be a separate, exclusive Blu-Ray Audio Disc with Atmos mixes for the first time.
This 3LP set will also be offered as a McCartney Official Store limited edition coloured vinyl exclusive:
If you don’t want to pay US$20.00 for a lithograph and a sticker sheet then you can get a standard 3LP set without the trinkets:
And there’s a single LP on black vinyl containing 12 tracks in all:
The first “exclusive”, “limited edition” coloured vinyl release of the 1LP has been announced. It’ll be available on green vinyl through Target stores in the U.S., in FNAC stores in France, also from jpc in Germany and Austria, and at JB Hi Fi in Australia. In other words, it looks like one retailer per territory will get the “exclusive”. Will this be the first of many colour and cover art variations like we saw with McCartney III?
If CD is more your thing then the 2CD set has all the tracks from the 3LP sets, including the poster:
While the 1CD replicates the 1LP track running order:
The McCartney Store and the SuperDeluxeEdition site are offering an exclusive Blu-ray Audio disc which is likely to be the format that most excites McCartney fans. As site owner Paul Sinclair writes, “For the first time, tracks are available in Dolby Atmos on a physical product. The mixes are by Giles Martin and Steve Orchard. 14 of them have been available in recent times on streaming, but 17 of them are unheard in this format, including tracks from un-reissued latter albums, such as ‘With A Little Luck’, ‘London Town’ and ‘I’ve Had Enough’ (from 1978’s London Town) and ‘Getting Closer’ and ‘Arrow Through Me’ (from 1979’s Back to the Egg). 7 out of the 10 tracks from the US version of Band on the Run also feature on this compilation.
Blu-ray Audio audio streams summary:
Dolby Atmos Mix (48/24)
5.1 Surround Mix (48/24)
Hi-Res Stereo Mixes (96/24)
This blu-ray audio contains 32 tracks and is presented as a ‘softpack’ with a 16-page booklet:
The WINGS– The Definitive Collection packaging has been designed by Paul and Aubrey ‘Po’ Powell of the famous Hipgnosis design studio. The two have worked together extensively in the past, not only on album artwork but also the art direction for McCartney tours. The first thing that hit us though was that front cover with the word WINGS populated with a photo montage of the band, and the inner sleeve replicating that was a little bit derivative. Some other band from the past used a very similar idea way back when…..
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