Tag Archives: Giles Martin

Wings ‘Venus & Mars’ 50th Anniversary Edition Announced

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Much as was expected the Paul McCartney camp has announced there will be a commemorative 50th anniversary edition released this year of Wings’ fourth studio album, Venus and Mars. Also as expected it will take the form of a Half Speed Master, out on March 21, 2025.

The special 50th-anniversary vinyl edition will be cut at half speed using a high-resolution transfer of the original master tapes from 1975 by Miles Showell at Abbey Road Studios. The album will be presented as a meticulous reproduction of the original UK pressing, with recreations of the original “Venus and Mars are alright tonight” circular sticker and “comparative sizes of sun and planets” bookmark sticker. Just like the original it will come with two posters with photography by Aubrey Powell and Sylvia de Swaan. The iconic album artwork by Hipgnosis has been meticulously recreated and presented in a gatefold sleeve.

Venus and Mars will also be available in Dolby Atmos for the first time, newly mixed by Giles Martin and Steve Orchard. 

Intriguingly, the official press release says “The first Wings release for 2025, Venus and Mars follows 2024’s theatrical release of the rare Wings live-in-studio performance film One Hand Clapping……”

And, “More exciting celebratory Wings’ activities and announcements are soon set to follow”, clearly implying that there are other Wings goodies in the pipeline for 2025.

Could this mean the LONG awaited London Town and Back to the Egg archive box sets are not far off?

The other 50th anniversary Half Speed Masters released in this series are Wings Wild Life; McCartney’s RAM; the classic Band On The Run; McCartney; and Red Rose Speedway.

For more information on just what Half Speed Masters are, watch Miles Showell himself explain the process:

Also this article All You Need To Know About Half Speed Masters is good too.

Rare Beatles Live Recording Up For Sale

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A very rare Canadian recording of The Beatles live in concert is on the market.

It dates from August, 1965 and was recorded off the mixing desk from an afternoon concert at Maple Leaf Gardens, then a huge ice hockey arena in Toronto.

The two reel-to-reel tapes appear to be the only audio record of the gig in existence, and its sound quality is markedly better than most other Beatle bootlegs.

Well-known Beatle collector and historian Piers Hemmingsen (below), author of the highly-regarded book The Beatles In Canada (which traces the early days of Beatlemania in that country in forensic detail), owns the tapes and wants to use them to fund publication of his next volume, telling the story of the band in Canada up to 1970.

Journalist Ludovic Hunter-Tilney is one of the few people who have heard the recording and he writes about it glowingly in The Financial Times. “The sound quality is raw but the music comes across strongly, especially Lennon and McCartney’s vocals,” he says. “The vigour and accuracy of their singing are striking. Meanwhile, George Harrison firmly strums his guitar and Ringo Starr keeps matters moving at the drum kit.”

Hemmingsen took the tapes to Apple back in 2015, playing them to none other than Giles Martin at Abbey Road Studios. Back then they was deemed too low quality and they passed on a sale, but since that time Hemmingsen has discovered he’d been playing the tapes on the wrong type of machine. Listening back on a half-track player was a revelation. “It was like day and night,” he says.

Add to that the potential now to treat the audio using the new MAL audio technology developed by Peter Jackson’s film production company and who knows how good the result could be.

Check out the full story in Hunter-Tilney’s article here.

Beatles ’64 – A New Film Documenting the First Visit To America

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Apple and Disney+ have announced Beatles ’64, an all-new documentary film from producer Martin Scorsese and director David Tedeschi. It will stream exclusively on Disney+ beginning November 29.

The film captures the moment of The Beatles’ first visit to America and will feature never-before-seen footage of the band and their legions of fans. Beatles ’64 is to include lots of the footage filmed by the famous documentarians Albert and David Maysles, restored in 4K by Peter Jackson’s company, Park Road Post in New Zealand. There will be live performances from The Beatles first American concert at the Washington, DC Coliseum and their Ed Sullivan appearances – demixed by WingNut Films (also a Peter Jackson company). The sound is remixed by Giles Martin.

Given Scorsese and Tedeschi’s success with the George Harrison biographical doco Living In The Material World (from 2011), and Peter Jackson’s Get Back, his multi-part examination of how Let It Be came about, this latest project looks to have a top chance of being brilliant.

Beatles ’64 will of course be supported by the November 22 release of seven American Beatles albums, analog cut for 180-gram audiophile vinyl from their original mono master tapes. They include Meet The Beatles!, The Beatles’ Second Album, A Hard Day’s Night (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack), Something New, The Beatles’ Story (2LP), Beatles ’65, and The Early Beatles, available for preorder as a vinyl box set titled The Beatles: 1964 U.S. Albums In Mono. Six of the titles are also available individually.

See also the book Beatles ‘64 – A Hard Day’s Night in America.

Comparing John’s Demo to the Final Track

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This is a well put together analysis of how the original demo tape of ‘Now and Then’ compares to the finished Beatles ‘Now and Then’ just released:

It’s Confirmed: ‘Revolver’ is the next Box Set Re-Issue

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A lot of people jumped on the Variety article published last week stating that The Beatles’ Revolver is to be the next album to get the full box set re-issue/remix treatment.

One key sentence in that article made us hang back: “An official announcement of the project is not expected to come until some time in September….”, meaning that while it was interesting (and probably true), the Variety article was still just speculation. There was no independent confirmation from someone within the Beatles/Apple Records circle.

But, over the weekend we got that confirmation – and from the horses mouth so to speak.

On Sunday none other than Giles Martin Tweeted:

We think you can take that as proof-positive a re-mixed, remastered Revolver will definitely be on the shelves sometime in October or early November.

Of course details of exactly what we’ll be getting are still scarce, so we await the official announcement with great interest.

A subsequent Giles Martin Tweet indicates that a 5.1 surround mix is definitely on the cards:

So, it’s happening!

White Album 50th – Martin and Okell on How They Did It

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The versions unboxed:

The details: The Beatles

On Valentines Day – A Beatles “Love” Find

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What more could you want on Valentines Day than to find a bit of Beatle Love treasure?

Rummaging through some old theatre programs at our local St Vincent de Paul Society thrift shop (the equivalent of Goodwill stores in the US), what should we come across than a thick, lavishly illustrated program from the Beatles/Cirque du Soleil production Love, which is still showing at the Mirage Hotel in Las Vegas.

This is a beautifully produced book, about the same size and shape as an LP record, and it’s filled with photographs, drawings, cast details and information about this long-running success story – which last year celebrated its tenth year in production. love-cover

Inside there are fantastic drawings, illustrations, and photographs from the stage show – like these:

love-1 love-2 love-3

Impressively laid out, with some four page fold-out sections included, this particular theatre program seems to date from around February, 2008 as inside on the credits page in small print it says “Love.02.08”. The photograph of co-Music Director, Giles Martin is a decidedly youthful one:

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Right in the very centre of the book there are two pages of Beatle Love stickers. In the copy we found the previous owners have only removed two – the rest are perfectly intact:love-stickers

Here’s that full credit page in more detail:love-creditsAnd the rear cover:love-rearA nice Valentines Day find……(click on the images to see larger versions).

Giles Martin on Live at the Hollywood Bowl

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Bob Boilen at the NPR show All Songs Considered has interviewed producer Giles Martin about how he and the engineers at Abbey Road studios cleaned up the newly found tapes of The Beatles at the Hollywood Bowl, due out on September 9.Beatles Hollywood

Martin clearly sent over some additional recordings for the program to use during the interview and these give us some more indications of what to expect. During the conversation there’s a comparison between the 1977 vinyl release of ‘She Loves You’ directly alongside the 2016 version, and then a lengthy extract of how ‘Ticket to Ride’ now sounds.

The new versions of ‘Twist and Shout’ and ‘A Hard Day’s Night’ are now available for purchase on iTunes. ‘A Hard Day’s Night’ is also up on Vevo in full as a stream on the All Songs Considered page.Beatles Hollywood 1Beatles Hollywood 2

And don’t forget, there’s another interview with producer Giles Martin (covering similar ground – and more) by the boys at the Fab 4 Free 4 All podcast.

More on The Beatles: Live at the Hollywood Bowl

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Apple and Universal Music have now officially announced details of the expanded and newly remixed version of The Beatles’ 1977 live album At The Hollywood Bowl.

The new release will be known as The Beatles: Live At The Hollywood Bowl, and it is directly sourced from the original three track tapes of the concerts. Producer Giles Martin and engineer Sam Okell have remixed and mastered the recordings at Abbey Road Studios. The album will include the thirteen tracks from the original album produced by George Martin, plus four bonus tracks – 3 of which are previously unreleased recordings from the concerts. Those tracks are: ‘You Can’t Do That’ and ‘I Wanna Hold Your Hand’ (both from 23 August, 1964) and ‘Everybody’s Trying To Be My Baby’ and ‘Baby’s in Black’ (both from 30 August, 1965).

Giles Martin gave this background:

“A few years ago Capitol Studios called saying they’d discovered some Hollywood Bowl three track tapes in their archive. We transferred them and noticed an improvement over the tapes we’ve kept in the London archive. Alongside this I’d been working for some time with a team headed by technical engineer James Clarke on demix technology, the ability to remove and separate sounds from a single track.

With Sam Okell, I started work on remixing the Hollywood Bowl tapes. Technology has moved on since my father worked on the material all those years ago. Now there’s improved clarity, and so the immediacy and visceral excitement can be heard like never before. What we hear now is the raw energy of four lads playing together to a crowd that loved them. This is the closest you can get to being at the Hollywood Bowl at the height of Beatlemania. We hope you enjoy the show…”

Live at the Hollywood Bowl will include a 24-page booklet with an essay by music journalist David Fricke, and will be issued on CD on 9 September and as a gatefold double vinyl LP on 18 November 2016.LATHB-EMAIL-BANNER

Read more at Rolling Stone and Billboard magazines.

Here Comes the Sun – New Guitar Solo

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There is a great little video from the deluxe materials included with the “Living in the Material World” DVD and BluRay sets. It features George Martin, Giles Martin and Dhani Harrison (George and Olivia’s son) filmed at the mixing desk listening back to the Beatles “Here Comes The Sun” – complete with a previously unheard guitar solo from the song which never made the final mix. Nice.