Some further photographs of the Beatles being photographed with records have been sent in – and so it’s time to add a Part Six to the series.
These photographs are all great and they come from Claude Defer, co-author of a recent book about all the French Beatles record releases. Claude’s first pic is of Paul, Linda and Denny Laine in the back of a limo and for some reason they have with them a copy of John and Yoko’s rather controversial 1968 release Unfinished Music No.1: Two Virgins. Paul might simply be re-acquainting himself with the quote he provided for the cover of the album: “When two great saints meet it is a humbling experience. The long battles to prove he was a Saint“….
As you can see below, John also quotes Genesis 2: 21-25:
Of course there are lots of photos available of the Beatles being presented with gold records in honour of their huge sales – but in this one for his work on Band on the Run with his new band Wings, Paul looks particularly pleased:
In this series on the Beatles with records we’ve had a lot of hastily-taken fan photographs sent in. These have been when the band members have stopped to talk and to autograph copies of their LPs and singles for waiting fans. This is another one of those, this time with John Lennon signing a copy of the single ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’/’Penny Lane’:
In the recent Martin Scorsese documentary on the life and times of George Harrison (called Living in the Material World) there’s a fantastic photograph featured of George holding up a copy of All Things Must Pass, his 1970 triple-LP box set. I remember sitting in the cinema watching the film and thinking “Hmmm. Must get that photograph and upload it to the Beatles with Records series!”
Well, Claude Defer found it and sent it in:
Finally, a fairly early publicity photograph of the Beatles in front of a display of some of their releases, including A Hard Days Night, Please Please Me and With the Beatles:
If you have any other photographs you’d like to share please send them to: beatlesblogger@gmail.com
Oh, and I almost forgot…..of course there’s also this video of John and Yoko putting their Plastic Ono BandLive Peace in Toronto 1969 onto the turntable and playing it. It’s only the very first couple of seconds of this YouTube video – but it’s worth it.You can see the other parts in “The Beatles with Records” series here:
Paul McCartney has issued a sneak preview of his forthcoming album of cover versions (plus two new McCartney originals). The full album will be released by Hear Music/Concord Records on February 7.
Wogblog has the full track-list, while the Beatles Examiner says that the album will definitely not be called “My Valentine” – this is despite the fact that it will be released in time for Valentine’s Day, 2012.
Special guests on the album include Diana Krall, Stevie Wonder and, as you can hear on the track below, Eric Clapton on guitar. The record is produced by the legendary Tommy LiPuma and looks to have a strong jazz-influenced tinge to it. It’ll certainly be interesting to hear McCartney exporing this new territory. The song “My Valentine”, while newly composed, sounds like it could have come from the same era as the other songs he has chosen to cover.
This new McCartney feature film, made by Albert Mayles (of “The Beatles First US Visit” fame), is now out on BlueRay, on DVD, and as a digital download:
If you’d like to see this trailer in a larger format click here. And there are some short comments and further information on the film here.
In the city the other day I stumbled upon this box of Beatles books:
It gathers together four books by respected British Beatles historian and writer Alan Clayson. Collectively it’s called “The Beatles Box”, and contains four individual books on each member of the group. There’s one on John Lennon (which was originally published in 2003):
One on Paul McCartney (also originally published in 2003):
One on George Harrison (originally published in 1996 as “The Quiet One: A Life of George Harrison”, but updated here in 2003):
And one on Ringo Starr (originally published in 1996 as “Ringo Starr: Straight Man or Joker?”, but also updated here in 2003):
This box of books is nicely designed. The covers are all complementary and the book spines line up when they are placed side-by-side in the box, with photos of each looking out:
“The Beatles Box” is published by Sanctuary Publishing. Alan Clayson is also a musician and has his own website.
At work we have a pretty good library. I was in there the other day and on a shelf displaying their newly-purchased books I saw this nice little item:
Of course, it captured my attention, not only because this book celebrates one thousand covers of the famous “Rolling Stone” music magazine (one of my favourites over the years), but also because of the classic Annie Leibovitz cover photograph of John Lennon and YokoOno, taken from the January 22, 1981 edition.
This book might have been new to our library, but it’s not a new publication. It actually came out back in 2006 and celebrates the publication of “Rolling Stone” over a span of almost four decades. From its humble beginnings in November 1967 to June 2006, making the cover of “Rolling Stone” meant something. And of course the Beatles (either as a group or as solo artists) feature more than a few times. This post features just a small selection of those covers.
I was surprised to learn in the book that John Lennon actually featured on the front cover of the very first “Rolling Stone” magazine ever – Volume 1, Number 1 – in a publicity shot from the 1967 film “How I Won The War“:
As you can see, back in the day “Rolling Stone” was more like a traditional newspaper.
Three years later the cover of the magazine had evolved somewhat and featured a solo Beatle in the form of Paul McCartney, who had just released his first, self-titled album “McCartney“:
In 1971 George Harrison had gathered together a fine coterie of musical friends to stage what would become the first big fund-raising concert of its kind, “The Concert for Bangladesh“, featuring Ringo Starr, members of Badfinger, Billy Preston, Leon Russell, Eric Clapton, Ravi Shankar, Klaus Voormann, and of course Bob Dylan – appearing live in concert for the first time in many years. Funds raised went to UNICEF to provide milk, blankets, clothes and food to millions of starving refugees:
The photograph of George above is another one by Annie Leibovitz. In the rear of the book there is an index of photographers and Leibovitz is by far the most credited single photographer with over 140 “Rolling Stone” cover shots to her name out of the one thousand featured.
In February 1984 “Rolling Stone” marked the twentieth anniversary of the Beatles with this special edition:
“He left this world as he lived in it: conscious of God, fearless of death and at peace….” [from a statement by Olivia and Dhani Harrison].
In January, 2002 “Rolling Stone” dedicated an issue to the life of George Harrison, who had passed away after a battle with throat, lung and brain cancer. Bob Dylan wrote of him, “He was a giant, a great, great soul, with all the humanity, all the wit and humor, all the wisdom, the spirituality, the common sense of a man and compassion for people.” :
2005 saw another Paul McCartney cover shot. This time the angle was “….a new album, new tour, new life – and nothing left to prove“. That new album was “Chaos and Creation in the Backyard“, produced by Nigel Godrich.
By my count the Beatles as a group or solo appeared some 27 times as the cover image/story of “Rolling Stone” magazine between 1967 and 2006.
The Beatles have sold millions and millions of them – but there are relatively few photographs where they’re seen actually holding LP’s, singles and CD’s.
We’ve uncovered a few though in this series (you can see all the original blog posts here: Part One; Part Two; Part Three; and Part Four). People are still sending in photos from their own collections, and so here is Part Five. Most of the photos below come from French Beatles collector and author Claude Defer. The first is John Lennon holding up the French “Ticket to Ride” EP. Claude tells me that this photograph is from the cover of a French record collectors magazine called “Jukebox”. The picture was taken in June, 1965 when the Beatles gave two shows in Paris at the Palais des Sports:
Immediately behind “Ticket to Ride” I think you can just see another French Beatles EP called “Eight Days A Week”. Here’s the cover of that one:
Here’s another Beatles EP (or Extended Play), this time it’s George and John with a copy of the UK version of “Twist and Shout”. In the UK, “Twist and Shout” was released in 1963 by Parlophone with three other tracks, “Do You Want to Know a Secret”, “A Taste of Honey”, and “There’s a Place”, from the Please Please Me album. Both the EP and album reached No. 1 :
From what must have been around the same time as the photograph above (mid-1963) comes this next photo:
It’s the Beatles with the group called Gerry and the Pacemakers at what appears to be celebratory drinks. Perhaps it was taken in April/May, 1963 when Gerry and the Pacemakers had a number one hit in the UK with “How Do You Do It?”, which came out on the Columbia label and was produced by Beatles producer, George Martin. That song was knocked from its top chart spot in May by the Beatles with “From Me to You”. It came out on Parlophone and was of course also produced by George Martin. It’s a bit difficult to tell from the photograph, but maybe band leader Gerry Marsden is holding up a copy of “How Do You Do It?”, and John is holding a copy of the new number one, “From Me to You”:
Beatles manager Brian Epstein features in previous posts pictured with Beatles records. Claude Defer sent through these next two. The first is Brian looking through a pile of what look like acetates or “test” pressings:
Wow. If some of those are Beatles test pressings (and no doubt they are) then they’d be real collectors items now! The other shot of Brian has him with a copy of “Help!” from 1965:
In 1966 the Rolling Stones released their LP “Aftermath”. Clearly the Beatles were keen to get a hold of it as soon as they could:
The caption says: “The Beatles always took a close interest in the new releases by the other top groups. Neil Aspinall (their road manager) had made a special trip to get hold of “Aftermath”, the new album by the Rolling Stones, and “Bo Dudley”, the single by Peter Cook and Dudley Moore”.
Cook and Moore were a popular British comedy act and “Bo Dudley” was the B-side to their 1966 single “Aint She a Sweetie” on the Decca label:
A year later (1967) the Beatles released “Magical Mystery Tour”. In the UK it came out as a film for TV, and also as a double EP. Here’s John signing a copy for a fan:
Not strictly the Beatles with records, but the lovely Patti Boyd who became a Beatle wife. She had a a very successful career as a model and here she is in a photo shoot featuring some of the work of her future husband, George Harrison:
Three Beatles albums are seen in the shot: “Please Please Me”, “With the Beatles”, and in her hand, “A Hard Days Night”:
John and Yoko posed for some photographs to publicise their new records in 1970. We had a couple of these in The Beatles with Records Part 2. Here’s one more, this time a picture of John and Yoko with their Plastic Ono Band LP’s. According to Claude Defer the man between them is Pete Bennett, Apple Records US promotions manager. John had just released “John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band”, and Yoko had “Yoko Ono/Plastic Ono Band”. Both titles were released simultaneously. The front covers were almost identical, but the rear artwork of Yoko’s album showed her as a young girl, while John’s showed him as a young boy:
The Lennon’s have also been photographed with an earlier release, “The Wedding Album”. It was a lavish box set celebrating their union in 1969 and contained amongst other things an LP, a wedding photo album, a picture of a slice of the wedding cake and, as you can see here, a copy of the marriage certificate pasted inside the lid of the box containing all the other goodies:
Finally, a more recent photograph – this time another of Paul McCartney out publicising his alter-ego The Fireman and a recording from 2008 called “Electric Arguments”. You can see a full report on this release here. Paul is photographed holding (upside down) the CD version, while one fan behind him holds the vinyl version, and another (on the left) is reaching for a vinyl copy of “Sgt Pepper”:
Thanks to everyone who sent in photos.
You can see the other parts in “The Beatles with Records” series here: Parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16 and 17.
This latest addition to my collection was released a little while back now – but I’ve just been able to secure a very nice copy of the very rare and limited deluxe edition of the 2008 release “Electric Arguments” by The Fireman (a.k.a Paul McCartney and his producer, Youth). This is a truly over-the-top item, a bespoke, hand-made item with unique artwork and inserts.
Before we get to the details of this release, we’ll take a look at the standard editions first – and there are a quite a few. Just the scale of the different versions and artwork created for the “Electric Arguments” project is staggering.
The most common commercially-released and readily available version of “Electric Arguments” came out as a single CD. McCartney was between labels at the time and so in the UK it was released and distributed on the One Little Indian label. In the US it was released and distributed by ATO Records.
In both markets the CD is contained in a cardboard digipac gate-fold, the cover of which looked like this in both markets:
The black square and those circles that look like stickers on the front of the cover are actually printed onto the shrink-wrap plastic around the cardboard cover, not on the cover itself. The only difference between the two countries is the catalogue number and the printing on the CD – which carries the name and logo of the record company releasing it:
The UK CD released and distributed by One Little Indian – catalogue number: tplp1003cd
The US released – distributed by ATO Records – catalogue number: 88088-21640-2/ATO 0063
(If you’d like to see larger versions of any photographs here just click on the image).
The CD gate-fold contains a 46 page booklet, which slips into a pocket inside the cover:
This official, commercial CD release was supported by three promotional CDs. These were only sent to music reviewers and to radio stations. The first contained exactly the same 13 tracks as the commercially-released album, but with a completely different cover and artwork, and different printing on the CD, which states “For promotional use only”. Its catalogue number is MPL 922:
There were also two separate, single-song promo CD’s sent to radio stations to promote the album. The first (and more common one) was for the song “Sing the Changes”. It came out in a simple digipac gate-fold with unique artwork and printing on the CD itself. It has the catalogue number MPL 1006-CDPROMO:
The second and more difficult to find promo CD contains the song “Dance ’til We’re High”. Again, like the other two promos, it is presented as a unique picture disc mounted on a clear tray in a digipak cover with alternate artwork. The CD printing was different, and the catalogue number is 1011tp7cdp:
There was also a limited edition, double LP vinyl pressing of the album (catalogue number tplp1003/5016958 1040 1 6) which has been Direct Metal Mastered at the Abbey Road studios. The two LPs are in a gate-fold cover which has the same artwork as used on the outside as the commercially released CD. Its pressed on heavy 200g vinyl and the cover comes inside a thick clear-plastic outer with a yellow limited edition numbered sticker on the outside:
Inside the gate-fold cover of the 2 LP set is a 15 page book:
The LP packaging also contains a CD copy of the album which is held in a simple custom slipcase envelope. Here are the front and rear covers:
The records themselves are also held in thick paper inner sleeves with even more artwork on them and each side of the the vinyl has these custom designed labels:
Then, a few months after all these releases above (LP and CDs) came what could only be described as a very special and limited edition of the whole “Electric Arguments” project. This version has the catalogue number TPLP1003DE. It came sealed in this large, custom-made paper satchel:
Inside the bag is a heavy-duty steel box:
Before we go any further, I must acknowledge and talk about the person responsible for the entire design of The Fireman “Electric Arguments” packaging. Art direction for the project (including the standard CD, promo CDs and the Deluxe Edition) is by Norman Hathaway, a creative director based in Brooklyn, New York who has done a number of other projects for Paul McCartney, including CD covers and books. It’s not the first time Hathaway has done a Fireman album either – he also did the artwork for “Rushes”, Paul McCartney’s second collaboration with producer Youth. His work on “Electric Arguments” though, particularly this Deluxe Edition, is very special. I’m really not sure how they manufactured it – parts really do have the look and feel of being hand-made.
Once you open the metal box you see this sheet pasted inside the lid:
As you can see, its like a replica studio reel-to-reel tape box, listing the contents, and stating it was recorded at May Hill, McCartney’s own Hog Hill Mill studio in Sussex in the UK. Down the bottom it says in Paul’s handwriting: “This is not a pizza. Enjoy it: Paul McCartney x x “. The next thing you see is the first of two art prints, exclusive to the box set:
Underneath these is a deep red cloth-bound folder, with embossed writing on the outside saying “the fireman – electric arguments – paul mccartney – youth”:
This opens up to reveal not one, but four separate CDs:
This CD holder looks truly handmade – you can see it in the image above, and it has nice detail touches, like the words “electric arguments” imprinted on the cardboard inside the place where the CD sits. The CDs are: the full 13-track album (with different printing on the disc to the standard release); a 7-track bonus song CD; a high resolution stereo audio CD with all 13 songs from the standard edition, plus a further bonus track (a dub-step remix of the song “Highway”), and three videos (“Sing the Changes”, “Dance ’til We’re High” and “In the Studio”); and finally a multi-track audio files data DVD containing mixing “stems” for 5 different tracks from the album:
OK. Then comes a 46 page art book, which is the same as the booklet you get with the standard CD but in a larger format:
And then a copy of the 200g vinyl 2 LP set:
Really, for the collector and completist it is all fairly breathtaking!
Finally, to get an idea of the Deluxe packaging in it’s entirety here are two short videos of owners “un-boxing” their copies. The first is a bit rough in places, but it gives you a good idea of the way this entire project is put together:
Paul McCartney’s first ballet score “Ocean’s Kingdom“, with choreography by Peter Martins, has it’s gala debut tonight at the Lincoln Center in New York.
In this short film Paul McCartney and Peter Martins discuss the creation of the work. It includes some great rehearsal footage – including a sneak look at some of the costumes for the dancers by Stella McCartney, audio clips from the score, and shots of Paul working with the company:
There’s also this very short preview teaser from the McCartney site:
The vinyl and CD of the score are available for pre-order on Amazon.
Earlier posts about the Beatles actually being photographed holding either their own records or those of other artists have generated a lot of interest. People are sending in more photos from their own collections and so its time to do a Part Four.
This first one is not exactly the Beatlesthemselves holding records, but William sent in this great shot of ladies on the EMI Records factory floor packing stacks and stacks of copies of “Rubber Soul”. Its from 1965:
I reckon that is a beauty. Speaking of “Rubber Soul”, Claude Defer in France sent this great photo of Paul McCartney with a copy of that LP – you can see the rear cover of “Rubber Soul” in this shot:
Claude also sent in this more recent one of Paul, this time with his 1997 LP “Flaming Pie”:
Thanks Claude! (Claude Defer by the way is a prolific Beatles collector and expert and he has released a book in France, with his co-writer Hervé Boudaillez, about the Beatles French Discography, from 1971 following the split of the Fab’s until the last vinyl record manufactured in France. The text of the book is in French, and Volume One (which deals with the 45 rpm releases) has 200 pages, including more than 1,000 pictures (sleeves and discs, with details):
Back to the Beatles with Records – Part Four…and some more Paul McCartney, this time with Mary Hopkin in 1969 with a copy of the LP he produced for her, “Postcard”:
I also found this McCartney one. It’s Paul at the HMV store in London for the 2008 release of “Electric Arguments”, a collaboration with Youth released under the pseudonym The Fireman (more on the Super Deluxe edition of this album soon). Here he’s holding the double vinyl LP pressing:
This next one comes from Canadian Jerry Levitan, author of a great little book called “I Met the Walrus“, which details John and Yoko’s visit to the city of Toronto in 1969 and an extended personal brush with fame he had with the couple. He took this photograph of John Lennon signing and drawing a caricature of himself and Yoko for Jerry on the cover of the “Two Virgins” album:
And finally to another one of John, taken on the publicity campaign trail in 1971 for his single “Power to the People”:
To see more Beatles with Records see: Parts 1, 2, 3, 5 , 6, 7 , 8 and 9.
The Beatles are up for the fight against music pirates. The surviving members of the band, and the estates of the late members, have pledged support for the anti-piracy campaign Music Matters by sanctioning a special animated short film featuring a selection of original Beatles music.
You may have seen this already (it’s been out for about a week now), but its so cute and catchy I’m adding the Beatles film below.
An eclectic range of recording artists are featured in this new online campaign. The Music Matters group describe themselves as “a collective of artists and people from across the industry, which has formed to remind music fans of the significance and value of music.” The group works to promote legal digital music and have posted a series of great little animated videos featuring the music of some big hitters including: The Beatles, Elbow, Kate Bush, Stevie Wonder, Nina Simone and Sigur Ros – to name just a few on the international site. There’s also an Australia/New Zealand sitewith a much smaller selection of videos using the music of Nick Cave, Eskimo Joe, Dave Dobyn and others. The Beatles’ film was animated and directed by Lee Gingold. According to Paul McCartney’s website, “The film focuses on the message that music is a shared experience and as such brings us all together, and for him that’s why music matters.”
You can see the other parts in “The Beatles with Records” series here:
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