Dark Horse Records has announced just what will be on sale at its pop-up Friar Park x Niwaki x Dark Horse in Tokyo this week (October 14-15).
To celebrate the launch of the Friar Park x Niwaki collection on October 12, a two-day-only pop-up will be held at Light Box Studio in Tokyo. This pop-up store will feature the limited edition collection of Friar Park x Niwaki Japanese garden tools, workwear and accessories, along with a selection of rare out-of-print titles and collectibles from Dark Horse Records:
There are two pop-up store exclusive colour vinyls: Extra Texture in blue, and The Radha Krsna Temple in “fire red” which look interesting, plus Living in the Material World on purple vinyl – previously only available as a George Harrison Store exclusive when the 50th anniversary editions of that album came out in 2024.
The others are re-issues of all six Record Store Day Zoetrope vinyls released so far, plus ‘Be Here Now’ a fairly rare 12″ single that came out for Record Store Day 2025. This has George performing the song on one side and Beck giving his interpretation on the other.
And Dark Horse has just posted a second list of titles that will be available at the pop-up – this time the focus being on Joe Strummer:
Its our understanding that these Strummer and the George Harrison LPs will also be available at a second, limited-time pop-up store in Tokyo. It will be on the 6th floor of Tower Records, Shibuya from October 20 to 26.
Tower Records will be the main launch site for 13 titles (11 from George Harrison and 2 from the Traveling Wilburys) which are newly remastered and being released as limited SHM-CD/mini-LP editions. In addition, three of George’s LPs — All Things Must Pass, Living in the Material World and Cloud Nine — will be released simultaneously on the super-high-end “100% Pure” 45rpm vinyl format. Not only that, Dhani Harrison will be at Tower Records Shibuya on 20 October to give a talk, meet fans and sign CDs and an exclusive Japanese red vinyl edition of Dragonflies, the album he recently released with Nigel Godrich.
Oh to be in Tokyo and have the ability to drop into either the Light Box Studio or Tower Records Shibuya.
This month two very hard-to-get George Harrison 7″ singles hit the market. You’ll need deep pockets to get hold of both of them.
The first is part of a Harrison Estate collaboration with Niwaki, purveyors of high-quality Japanese gardening tools, clothing and other equipment. The collab is called Friar Park x Niwaki and it feeds into a Japan-focused series of events, initially in Tokyo, in the lead-up to the release of a new series of eleven George Harrison titles as Japanese SHM-CDs later in the month. These will be accompanied by three limited edition Harrison LPs also in Japan (All Things Must Pass 1500 copies, Living In The Material World and Cloud Nine 1000 copies), each on 45rpm high quality audiophile vinyl. Not only that, there’s two Traveling Wilbury SHM-CDs to be released as well.
But back to the limited edition 7″ singles….
There’s going to be a Tokyo Friar Park x Niwaki event on 14 and 15 October which will launch a limited edition collection created with Dhani Harrison and inspired by the gardens of Friar Park.
Part of that will include a Friar Park x Niwaki Collectors Edition tool bag, and in it will be a George Harrison 7″ single containing two songs inspired by Friar Park: ‘The Ballad of Sir Frankie Crisp (Let It Roll)’ b/w ‘Crackerbox Palace’. Its on the Dark Horse label and sits in the tool bag in a unique picture cover:
Now, that tool bag will set you back around £666 or US$882 (and for us here in Australia, about $1,264)! It’s not clear if the single will be sold separately, but the marketing info suggests it will be at the event in Tokyo: “In addition to the tools and workwear of the Friar Park x Niwaki collection, there will also be a selection of highly collectable rare and limited edition vinyl available.” It looks like the collection will be for sale at the Niwaki store in London – but pre-sales are already sold out. There’s no indication that the 7″ is being sold separately in London. It might be, but you can’t order it online, at least not yet.
The other collectable 7″ single out this month we’ve already told you about. Its the previously unreleased George Harrison track called ‘Apres Moi’. It comes exclusively in the deluxe edition of his book of photographs, The Third Eye. The deluxe edition is £500 and US$500 (and an eye-watering $1,400 here in Australia).
The only Beatle-related action comes from Dark Horse Records. They’re continuing the quest to slowly release the whole of the George Harrison back-catalogue as Zoetrope picture discs. The next two installments will be Thirty Three and 1/3 from 1976:
Both are limited editions and come in numbered die-cut jackets. They should also include inserts with cover art and credits and a small Zoetrope viewing instruction sheet. Both are limited to 2900 copies in the US, and probably the same again for the ROW.
Dark Horse is soon to re-issue the Traveling Wilbury back-catalogue, first as SHM-CD’s in Japan on 21 October, and then on black vinyl on 23 October worldwide. For RSD Black Friday they’ll issue the group’s second album, Traveling Wilburys Vol.3, as a picture disc.
Dark Horse says “…this is the perfect companion piece to the 2018 picture disc release of ‘Vol. 1’.” The picture disc will be available exclusively for RSD Black Friday only at participating stores. 2,500 copies in the US.
[BTW, that Japan re-issue campaign will be associated with a whole lot of activations and collaborations in Tokyo. Check out the Dark Horse news page for more.]
As has been the case for the last few Record Store Days, Dark Horse has been working its way through the Yusuf/Cat Stevens back-catalogue too. This time it’ll be Majikat Earth Tour 1976.
This is a double LP on black vinyl and comes in a lenticular cover. Just 1,050 copies for the US (UK figures unknown) so this will be harder to get.
And that’s about it this time around.
Those of you who collect Dhani Harrison will be interested to pick up an LP by his band, thenewno2.
For RSD Black Friday he’s put together the band’s first two EPs, ep001 & ep002, collected on a smokey clear colour LP. Newly remastered and available on vinyl for the first time ever, this limited edition release sees their debut EP on side 1, and sophomore EP on side 2.
Record Store Day Black Friday is on Friday, 27 November.
There’s an out-of-reach-for-most-of-us Deluxe Edition coming on 26 October:
It is a cloth-bound book that comes in a clamshell box and has four fine art prints, a 5×7″ letterpress print signed and numbered by Olivia Harrison, and a vinyl single with a previously unreleased George track of him covering a 1950’s Eartha Kitt song called ‘Apres Moi’:
Why ‘Apre Moi’, and why Eartha Kitt? Instgrammer @innerlightpodcast explains:
Anyhow, for the rest of us it’s most probably going to be the standard edition at around US$65.00….which is due for release on October 6. It really does look to contain some special images – all taken by George:
Is it just me, or are there a lot of books about Beatle managers around at the moment?
There are not one but three new books (out now or soon to be released) looking into what it is like to work at building the Beatle business.
The first is a new release by Philip Norman called Mr. Moonlight – Brian Epstein and the Making of The Beatles. As it’s title suggests, this is a new examination of the life of Beatle manager Brian Epstein.
Philip Norman is a British writer, novelist, journalist and playwright, probably best known for his first book, Shout!: The Beatles in Their Generation (also published as Shout!: The True Story of the Beatles). First published in 1981 it has sold over a million copies and has often been re-issued and updated. No doubt you’ve seen or heard of this one. His other works have been on the Rolling Stones, Buddy Holly, and Elton John, and he’s penned individual biographies of John Lennon, Paul McCartney, and George Harrison.
Now Norman turns his attention to Brian Epstein.
From the press blurb: Brian Epstein didn’t just manage the Beatles – he transformed them into the most famous band the world has ever known. A young record-shop owner from Liverpool, he took four relatively unknown musicians and set out to make them ‘bigger than Elvis’, changing pop music, celebrity, and British culture forever. Only a few years older than John, Paul, George and Ringo, he called them ‘the Boys’, guiding, protecting and relentlessly believing in them as no one else did. Without Brian Epstein, there would have been no Beatles as we know them.Drawing on a remarkable cache of exclusive interviews with those closest to him, Philip Norman delivers the most intimate and revealing portrait yet of this complex, conflicted and ultimately tragic figure. Mr Moonlight reveals the depths of Brian’s many trials and tribulations – how he almost lost the Beatles to organised crime; the antisemitism and homophobia he endured even at the height of his success; his intense and fraught relationship with John Lennon; and the haunting circumstances of his lonely death during the so-called Summer of Love.
Mr Moonlight looks worthwhile and it’ll be interesting to see if after all this time if any truly new material and insights emerge.
The second new book is also about Brian Epstein, but it comes from a very different perspective indeed.
1967 – The World of Brian Epstein and The Beatles: The Address Book That Defined an Era is by Gary Kemp and Simon Halfon. It isn’t published until October in the UK (and not until January 2027 in the US), but it looks to be a fascinating insight into the life of Brian Epstein through an unlikely primary source: his 1967 personal address book. Kemp, one of the UK’s most successful songwriters and guitarists – and founding member of the iconic 80s band Spandau Ballet, secured the address book five years ago at a Sotheby’s auction.
“When I first saw Brian Epstein’s black Twinlock binder, I was struck by how small and unassuming it was – just 160 by 100 millimetres, the kind of thing you could slip into a coat pocket. But inside, it held a universe. The book felt alive, buzzing, ready and waiting to be explored. So I dug deeper.”
Simon Halfon is one of the UK’s leading graphic designers, so the book should be visually interesting as well.
This book looks very cool and different. It explores Epstein and the Beatles’ world using 404 contacts in that unique personal address book from that pivotal year. Through detective work and biographical research the authors illustrate and unpack some of the extraordinary characters who appear, each one telling a different part of Brian’s story. A really interesting and unusual approach! Genuinely looking forward to this one.
The third book also promises a unique insight into managing a Beatle, away from the bright lights and public face. What’s it really like?
Richard Ogden was Paul McCartney’s manager from 1987 to 1993. In his self-published memoir, Bigger Than The Beatles – Sixty Years in Showbusiness he looks back on those years working in the pop music industry with more than 200 artists – from some never-heard-of’s, to a handful of the all-time biggest names. Ogden’s book includes chapters on Shirley Bassey, Black Oak Arkansas, Black Sabbath, Ted Nugent, The Motors, Michael Jackson, Aerosmith, Mariah Carey, Ricky Martin, and Van Morrison amongst many others. But none are bigger or enormously famous than Paul McCartney, to whom he devotes three chapters.
It was during Ogden’s time with McCartney that he embarked on one of his biggest world tours. It saw him set a Guinness Book of Records first as he performed in front of 184,000 people at the Maracana Stadium in Rio De Janeiro. The Brazil gig was particularly special for Ogden as it was when Sir Paul said the words that inspired the title of this new memoir: “It’s what Paul McCartney shouted at me when he came off stage in Rio in April 1990″.
Speaking to The Liverpool Echo though Ogden said it wasn’t success and fun all the time. “It wasn’t all roses and champagne, I can assure you. We fell out. After three years, we fell out. I don’t know why. It’s a mystery to me. I pursue that in the book, trying to understand why it happened. We parted on very bad terms. It was a great shame because I did great work with him. Why it ended the way it did, you’d have to ask him. I’ve never been really sure.”
“You could say that he just didn’t renew my contact. But we had a bit of a to-do. At one point this was the title of my book, but I changed it. I said to him, ‘All you want around you is yes men.’ But he said, ‘I tell you what I don’t want. A no man like you.’ My book for a while was called No Yes Man.”
Ogden doesn’t pull any punches when it comes to describing what it was really like working for Paul McCartney: “Dealing with him had become even more difficult than it was when I first started. And his dissatisfaction with me was affecting Linda who, as everybody who worked at MPL [McCartney Productions Ltd] knew, tended to ‘get it in the neck’ first when the boss was unhappy… it wasn’t unusual for my ‘McCartney hotline’ phone to ring first thing and for a tearful Linda to warn me that all was not well with His Nibs.”
If you were wondering what direction Tom Greene, the new CEO of Apple Corps Ltd., was going to take the Beatle franchise, then wait no more. The brief official notification says it all:
The first-ever official Beatles fan experience, opening in London in 2027
3 Savile Row is one of the most famous locations in The Beatles’ history as the original headquarters of Apple Corps, the recording studio for Let It Be, and the location of the legendary rooftop concert in 1969. Now, 3 Savile Row will open its doors to all for the first time. The Beatles at 3 Savile Row will feature seven floors of never-seen-before archive material, rotating exhibitions, a fan store, and the recreation of the original studio where Let it Be was recorded. It will also give fans the opportunity to tread in the band’s footsteps as they relive the iconic rooftop concert – as immortalised in Peter Jackson’s Get Back – on exactly the spot it happened.
Word is that Apple Corps has re-acquired the famous building in Mayfair in central London and plans to open it to the public as a new tourist attraction called The Beatles At 3 Savile Row. Setting up a physical space for fans to come and explore Beatle history and honour the band’s legacy seems at odds with Greene’s previous expertise in the world of e-commerce. Before being hired to run the Apple he worked with the biggest video game developers and publishers in the world on the production, commercialization and audience growth of e-sports programs. And prior to that he was helping to manage the ginormous Harry Potter franchise in the digital realm with “over 50 million members, supported by immersive digital experiences, daily content publishing and an innovative e-commerce offering.” Greene’s digital background seems at odds with creating and operating a physical space, a Beatle theme park in London for fans.
According to The Guardian, the building – across all its seven floors – “…will showcase items from the Apple archives and host temporary exhibitions and a shop. The biggest attractions, however, will be a recreation of the basement studio where the band recorded their last album, Let It Be, and access to the rooftop where that poignant final concert was performed.”
Paul McCartney, who recently revisited the Georgian mansion house, said: “There are so many special memories within the walls, not to mention the rooftop. The team have put together some really impressive plans and I’m excited for people to see it when it’s ready.”
McCartneytold the BBC that the idea to move back was proposed by Tom Greene. “He’s a live wire and he’s bringing a lot of energy into looking at what the Beatles mean, and what people want these days from us. There are so many special memories within the walls, not to mention the rooftop. The team have put together some really impressive plans and I’m excited for people to see it when it’s ready.”
The timing couldn’t be better. Four movie-length biopics – directed by Sam Mendes – are currently filming. There’s one film for each band member and they are due for simultaneous release in April, 2028. The “four-film cinematic event” will star Paul Mescal as Paul McCartney, Harris Dickinson as John Lennon, Joseph Quinn as George Harrison, and Barry Keoghan as Ringo Starr.
You can sign up to find out more about The Beatles at 3 Savile Rowhere.
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.
The people at Record Store Day have just dropped the 2026 list of titles for April 18 and it contains eight titles of interest to Beatle-related collectors.
First up is John Lennon – or maybe that should be Sean Ono Lennon channeling his Dad? What’s coming is like a Part Two to the Mind Games Meditation Mixes, which came out back in October, 2024 in the wake of the big LennonMind Games re-issues of that year. This time it’s the turn of the 1970 song ‘Love’ to get the Meditation Mix treatment:
Love Meditation Mixes will be a Limited Edition 3 LP set produced by Sean Ono Lennon and it will be on “Iridescent Pearl Arctic”, 180g transparent vinyl in a reflective triple gatefold lilac mirrorboard sleeve. The album contains nine re-imagined Meditation Mixes of the John Lennon ballad ‘Love’ from the album John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band.
Ono Lennon says, ‘After the surprising success of the Mind Games Meditation Mixes, and our collaboration with Lumenate the MeditationApp, we are very pleased to bring you Volume Two – a collection of ambient re-imaginings of John Lennon’s classic song, to create a meditation on ‘Love’.”
Like the Mind Games Meditation Mixes it is a rather beautiful package:
Also coming for Record Store Day (and this is only listed on the UK RSD site at the moment) is the Badfinger LP No Dice, the band’s second studio album issued by Apple Records. No Dice will be reissued on limited edition 180g orange vinyl, using the 2010 remaster of the album available on vinyl for the first time. It will come in a gatefold sleeve that faithfully reproduces the original artwork. It contains the hit single ‘No Matter What’, and ‘Without You’ – which went on to be one of their best-known songs – covered by the likes of Harry Nilsson. We’re expecting this to come with Apple labels:
Those of you who collect Dark Horse Records will not be disappointed. There are no fewer than six titles announced for RSD.
The label is steadily working it’s way through the George Harrison back catalogue as Zoetrope pressings. This time it is the turn of George’s 1974 title Dark Horse:
And also his 1975 release, Extra Texture:
These Zoetropes are all limited, and come in numbered covers with replica album artwork inside.
Dark Horse have been big on re-issuing the Joe Strummer back catalogue and for RSD 2026 it’s a 25th anniversary edition of the second album by Joe Strummer and The Mescaleros a spectacular limited splatter vinyl pressing:
Dark Horse also have the rights to selected Leon Russell re-issues. They’ve already done his Signature Songs, an album of Christmas songs, and an album of songs by Russell’s country alter-ego, Hank Wilson. This time there’s another Hank Wilson offering – a Best Of 2LP on black vinyl which will be a first-time pressing of the title:
Hearkening back to the Badfinger release above, there’s another former Apple being re-issued, but this time under the Dark Horse banner. It is The Radha Krisna Temple, the 1971 album produced by George Harrison. It contains the two hit singles, ‘Hare Krishna Mantra’ and ‘Govinda’ along with other Sanskrit-worded mantras and prayers recorded with Harrison from 1969 onward. Out of print since 1993 and released on the Dark Horse imprint for the first time. It will be on orange vinyl:
In keeping with the label’s interest in and support of world music there’s another first for Record Store Day, an album by Native American flautist R. Carlos Nakai. Dark Horse is issuing a 2LP set called Canyon Trilogy, which is appearing on vinyl for the first time. Nakai’s music features original compositions for the flute inspired by traditional Native American melodies. He’s received 11 Grammy Award nominations for his albums. This double LP features updated liner notes and an exclusive forward by Dhani Harrison:
So, that’s it for Beatle and Beatle-related releases for RSD this year. Which will you be seeking out?
If you’re an avid collector of Dark Horse it’s going to be an expensive couple of months. Along with the promised RSD albums there are also two more George Harrison titles on the way – all part of the continuing push to have his entire catalogue under the BMG/Dark Horse stable.
On February 20 they’ll re-issue black vinyl editions of Harrison’sWonderwall Music:
Also due February 20, again on black vinyl, is Electronic Sound:
And then on March 20 comes his Live In Japan on Dark Horse, a long out of print 2LP on black vinyl – remastered from the original analog stereo master tapes:
Dark Horse is further mining the Apple Records vault too – this time for re-issues of Billy Preston’s two Apple LP’s. Encouraging Words (produced by Billy and George Harrison) will be out on gold vinyl on March 13:
And That’s The Way God Planned It (produced by George) is out the same day – on purple vinyl:
And he wrote and directed the new 50 minute Episode 9 of the Disney+ series, so Apple is obviously sending quite a bit of work his way. Hopefully soon we’ll get the Oliver Murray take on the making of ‘Real Love’, with even more previously unseen footage?
