Tag Archives: Half Speed Master

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.

‘Band On The Run’ at 50

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To mark the 50th anniversary of its release in December of 1973, most fans were expecting an LP of Paul McCartney and Wings’ Band On The Run in Half Speed Mastered form. This would follow the pattern of previous releases for McCartney, RAM, Wings Wild Life and, earlier this year, Red Rose Speedway.

What we didn’t expect was that Band On The Run would be accompanied by a whole bonus LP featuring previously unheard music that is being termed “underdubbed mixes”. In other words, early mixes without overdubs.

These “underdubs” aren’t newly created in 2023. They come from 1973 and were prepared by the album’s engineer, Geoff Emerick. They’re basically a previously unreleased mix of Band On The Run, but without any of the orchestral and string overdubs written by Tony Visconti that were used on the final release. Interestingly, the tracklisting for these “underdubbed mixes’ doesn’t follow the original sequencing of album. The bonus LP mirrors the original analogue tapes as discovered in the MPL archives (see the changed running order below).

As Paul McCartney said:

“This is Band on the Run in a way you’ve never heard before. When you are making a song and putting on additional parts, like an extra guitar, that’s an overdub. Well, this version of the album is the opposite, underdubbed.”

There’ll be three physical releases for the 50th Anniversary, and these will be available from February 2, 2024.

You can get a stand-alone Half Speed Master of the original LP, cut from the original master tapes from 1973 by Miles Showell at Abbey Road Studios. The single vinyl album configuration mirrors the US tracklist, which added the song ‘Helen Wheels’ to the end of the LP. The 50th anniversary album includes the original inner sleeve and poster featuring a series of Polaroid photos taken by Linda McCartney during the making of Band On The Run :

Then there’s the 2 LP edition featuring the original US album, remastered at half speed as above, plus a second LP titled Underdubbed Mixes Edition. The two LPs are housed in a premium slipcase. The set includes two Linda McCartney Polaroid posters:

The 2 LP slipcase version can only be purchased from Universal Music’s own online stores around the world, as well as from Paul McCartney’s own online store.

And there’ll be a 2 CD set, with one disc containing the original US album, and a second disc with the “underdubbed” mixes. There’s a double-sided fold-out poster of Polaroids taken by Linda included:

Band on the Run (Underdubbed) will also be released digitally. The album itself has also been newly mixed in Dolby Atmos by Giles Martin and Steve Orchard – but there is no physical edition of this mix.

Here’s the running order for Disc Two – Band on the Run (Underdubbed Mixes):

1. Band on the Run
⁠2. Mamunia
⁠⁠3. No Words
4.⁠Jet
⁠5. Bluebird
⁠6. Mrs. Vandebilt
⁠⁠7. Nineteen Hundred and Eighty Five
⁠⁠8. Picasso’s Last Words (Drink to Me)
⁠9. Let Me Roll It

RSD 2023 Beatle-related Titles Announced

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The Record Store Day 2023 release list has just come out and come April 23 there’ll be at least three titles of interest to Beatle collectors.

Probably the most interesting and hard-to-get will be a re-imagining of John Lennon’s Gimme Some Truth best-of compilation which is being re-issued as a boxset containing 9 x 10” white vinyl EPs. Each EP will feature four tracks. Only 500 copies of this will be produced, hence the ‘hard-to-get’ moniker….

Next is the highly speculated 50th anniversary release of Paul McCartney’s Red Rose Speedway in limited edition, Half Speed Master vinyl form:

According to the RSD list there will be 5,000 pressed so this should be much easier to secure. It follows similar Half Speed Master editions of McCartney, Wings Wild Life and RAM.

Then there’s a re-issue of the 1981 Ringo Starr title Stop and Smell the Roses. This is being re-issued on vinyl as a 2LP with six bonus tracks for the first time. It will come in a gatefold with printed inner sleeves, original record labels and specialty color vinyl described as lava lamp effect clear red/white for LP1 and lava lamp effect clear red/pink for LP2. There are 2,500 copies being pressed.

Stop and Smell the Roses will also be issued on RSD as a CD (500 copies).

So, that’s John, Paul, and Ringo for Record Store Day 2023.

But wait, there is a George connection too. Dark Horse, the record label he started up (now run by son Dhani Harrison) is releasing not one but two LPs.

The first is by Stairsteps, a band originally signed to the label back in 1975. For Record Store Day 2023 we’ll see their 1976 album 2nd Resurrection re-issued on black vinyl. Billy Preston played synthesizer and served as co-producer alongside Robert Margouleff.

Dark Horse will also have a 20th Anniversary edition of the Joe Strummer & The Mescaleros album Streetcore as a limited edition pressing on white vinyl for RSD:

Wild Life Gets 50th Anniversary Half Speed Master

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50 years ago, on December 7, Wings released their debut album Wild Life – recorded over an eight-day period at Abbey Road Studios in London.

Now it joins McCartney and RAM in getting the Limited Edition, 50th Anniversary Half Speed Master treatment:

Paul and Linda McCartney, Denny Seiwell and Denny Laine arrived at the studios on 25 July, 1971 to begin recording with engineers Tony Clark and Alan Parsons.

“They rehearsed for a while, sang some old songs, wrote some new ones and in time headed for the big city studios. In three days they had laid down most of the tracks and by the end of a couple of weeks the album was finished. In this wrapper is the music they made. Can you dig it?”, wrote Clint Harrigan for the original album’s back cover liner notes.

On PaulMcCartney.com Paul wrote: “Wild Life was about spontaneity: the opening track ‘Mumbo’ was recorded in one take. I’d read that Bob Dylan had just made a quick album and I really liked the idea, because we tended to take longer and longer to make records. The early albums by The Beatles hadn’t taken long and it seemed to me that Dylan was getting to that. I was a great admirer of his – and still am to this day – so I thought, well, if it’s good enough for him, let’s do it.”

The 50th anniversary edition of Wild Life is cut at half speed at Abbey Road using a high resolution transfer of the original 1971 master tapes. The Half Speed 50th will be released on February 4. It is available for pre-order now.

RAM Gets 50th Anniversary Half Speed Master

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In March last year we got news that there was to be a 50th anniversary Half Speed Master edition of Paul McCartney’s first solo outing – which of course was simply called McCartney.

This year it’s the turn of RAM, Paul and Linda’s great LP from 1971.

The new RAM vinyl will be very limited (reportedly just 2000 copies for the UK) and it will only be available via independent stores and the usual McCartney/Universal channels.

The RAM Half Speed Master will be released on May 14, so if you want a copy you’d better get your skates on.