Beatles News
Giles Martin on Producing the Beatles’ ‘Now and Then,’ Remixing the Red and Blue Albums, and How Technology Is Enabling a Mass Emotional Experience
Of the newly completed 'Now and Then': 'It's not some cynical marketing exercise to try and push catalog sales.… I think Paul just misses John and he wants to work on a song with him.'
Christmas has come early for Beatles fans… who fortunately have been granted a week between gifts, so they don’t have to choose which to unwrap first. There was Thursday’s release, of course, of the newsmaking “Now and Then” single, a track that features the late John Lennon and George Harrison that was recently completed by Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr, with Martin on board as McCartney’s co-producer. Following a week later, only slightly in the new song’s shadow, are new iterations of the “1962-66” and “1967-70” collections that came out in the early ’70s, featuring dozens of tracks newly remixed by Martin to be heard in modern stereo or Dolby Atmos.
Source: Chris Willman/variety.com
e's the music legend adored by fans around the world.
And on Wednesday, Sir Paul McCartney was all smiles as greeted his fans after his arrival in Brisbane for the Queensland leg of his tour after playing two sold-out concerts in Sydney.
The 81-year-old Beatles star appeared in good spirits, waving and flashing the peace sign with his hands and a whole lot of thumbs-ups from his car at fans who hoped to catch a glimpse of the star.
The British rocker was dressed in a blue button-up shirt that he teamed up with a grey jacket.
If the Sydney shows are anything to go by, Brisbane fans can expect a nostalgia-filled setlist including Beatles tunes like Can't Buy Me Love, Got To Get You Into My Life, and Love Me Do.
Source: Matt Demarco/dailymail.co.uk
Giles Martin, who co-produced “Now and Then” with Paul McCartney, talks to TIDAL about how the historic new track came together — and what John Lennon is expressing through it.
“When you’re working on something like this, you can’t think of the scale,” the producer Giles Martin says with equal parts affability and awe in his voice. “If you do, you’d be like a rabbit in headlights and be constrained by what you’re doing.”
When Martin uses the term “scale,” he’s alluding to a project of towering importance and poignancy — a kind of musical fantasy made real for countless rock and pop fans. As we speak, the powers that be at Apple Records and Universal Music, alongside the musical Rushmorian figures of Sir Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr, are gearing up to release what is being considered the last-ever new Beatles song. Ruminated on, rumored about and salivated over for years, the track dubbed “Now and Then,” out Nov. 2, marks the final chapter of a musical legacy that began all those many years ago: a journey from the Cavern Club to The Ed Sullivan Show, down Abbey Road and on to global cultural impact that doesn’t cease.
Source: Rob LeDonne/tidal.com
Yoko Ono revealed she likes one of The Beatles' albums better than 'Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band'. She also named her favorite Beatles song, which was a huge hit.
Yoko Ono revealed she likes one of The Beatles‘ albums better than Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. She also named her favorite Beatles song, which was a huge hit. Blasphemous though it may seem, John Lennon wasn’t the biggest fan of Sgt. Pepper.
During a 2016 interview with US Weekly, Yoko discussed her attitude toward two of The Beatles’ albums. “I don’t know if people will hate me for saying this, but I always preferred The White Album to Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band,” she said. “Don’t get me wrong, I love Pepper’s too.” At this point, plenty of Beatles fans would agree with Yoko’s conclusion.
During a 2012 interview with The Telegraph, Yoko named “All You Need Is Love” as her favorite Beatles song. “I’m glad they were saying all you need is love, not anything like all you need is money!” she said. Interestingly, her explanation of why she likes the song so much has everything to do with its lyrics and nothing to do with its composition.
Source: Matthew Trzcinski/cheatsheet.com
In addition to busting myths about the final days of the Fab Four and providing an intimate glimpse into one of the most beloved musical partnerships of the modern era, Peter Jackson’s 2021 docuseries Get Back introduced fair weather Beatles fans to Mal Evans. Whether having the time of his life taking an anvil solo on early rehearsals of “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer,” distracting the London bobbies trying to bust up the infamous rooftop gig, lugging guitars or delivering endless cups of tea, the nattily dressed, shaggy-haired gent became one of the breakout stars of the eight-hour epic, lightening tense moments with his good-natured grin and the mischievous twinkle behind his horned-rimmed glasses. His moment at center stage was long overdue, since he spent most of his life on the very edge of the Beatles’ white hot spotlight.
Source: Jordan Runtagh/people.com
Australian weather presenter Sam Mac has come under fire from his TikTok viewers after surprising his dad with tickets to see Sir Paul McCartney and went on to leave his mom abandoned.
Australian weather presenter Sam Mac has been criticized by a number of his 2.3 million viewers on TikTok after he shared a video of him surprising his dad for his 70th birthday.
Dressed in their best evening outfits, Sam had told their parents they were looking for a bar called SPM in Sydney, Australia. However, they were confused when Sam told them the bar actually didn’t exist.
“So I’ve been lying to you both,” says Sam in his sneaky video.
“There is no bar called SPM. SPM stands for Sir Paul McCartney.” Sam’s mom gasps off-camera and shouts: “Paul McCartney!”
Unfortunately, this is the moment viewers learn that Sam’s mom has not been invited to join her husband and her son at the concert.
“Sorry mom, you’re not invited,” he says to her smiling face.
Source: Alice Sjöberg/dexerto.com
Sir Ringo Starr says the new Beatles song "Now and Then" is the "closest we’ll ever come to having" the late John Lennon back.
The 83-year-old drummer became very emotional whilst working with Sir Paul McCartney, the only other surviving member of the iconic band, on their new Artificial Intelligence-assisted song.
The track is a demo recorded by Lennon, who was killed in December 1980 at the age of just 40, in the wake of The Beatles break-up. It features his voice and him playing the piano at his Dakota building apartment in New York.
Ringo and Paul, 81, used the same technology to isolate and improve Lennon's vocal that was employed to enhance the audio in Peter Jackson’s documentary The Beatles: Get Back.
Discussing the recording process with Radio Times magazine, Ringo said: "He called me up and said he’d like to work on 'Now and Then’, ‘What do you think?’ ‘I think it’s great. So he put the bass on, he sent the files to me. I put the drums on. It was the closest we’ll ever comes to having him [John] back in the room so it was very emotional for all of us. It was like John was there, you know?”
Source: loudwire.com
Following his acclaimed documentary Get Back, director Peter Jackson is continuing his relationship with the Beatles by directing his first ever music video for the band’s final song, Now and Then.
It will feature unseen footage of the band, including what Jackson describes as “a few precious seconds of the Beatles performing in their leather suits, the earliest known film of the Beatles and never seen before.”
Now and Then features performances from all four Beatles, including guitar parts recorded by the late George Harrison in 1995, and vocals by John Lennon drawn from a late-70s demo prior to his death in 1980. Jackson was part of the team who used AI-assisted software to isolate Lennon’s vocal from the demo recording, having already used the technology during the making of Get Back to isolate different parts of the recording process for songs that appeared on the Beatles’ final albums Let It Be and Abbey Road.
Source: Ben Beaumont-Thomas/theguardian.com
Lady Judy Martin passed away on Sunday - seven years after her husband died in 2016.
The couple married in June 1966
Tributes have flooded in for the former Abbey Road secretary.
The Liverpool Beatles Museum said: "Very sad news to hear of the passing of Lady Judy Martin. Reunited with George.
"Our thoughts and prayers our with the Martin family. May she RIP."
Lady Judy married Sir George - known as the fifth Beatle - the year he signed the group.
Source: Holly Christodoulou/thesun.co.uk
What do you get when you put the Rolling Stones and Paul McCartney in a studio together? A “fucking blast”, says producer Andrew Watt, as he recalls the former Beatle’s excitement while recording the Stones’ new album Hackney Diamonds.
Discussing the record’s making in a new interview with Rolling Stone, Watt reveals the reason the band decided to have McCartney feature on its fourth track, Bite My Head Off.
“It would be expected to have him play on a great big ballad like Depending on You, or one of the softer songs to get that ‘melodic Paul McCartney’ thing,” says the producer.
“But you’ve got to also understand, Paul McCartney loves to fucking rock. So I thought, “Why not pick the most punk-rock fucking song – the one where everyone’s on 10 the whole time – and let these guys have the time of their lives rocking out together?”
Watt also shares that the ’64 lefty Hofner he’d gifted Macca at the time was responsible for the Beatles’ fuzzy bass sound on the track: “My guitar tech, Mark, put in a Univox Super Fuzz circuit into the bass, so when he hit one of the Hofner switches it gives the loudest, most wicked fuzz bass you ever heard in your life,” he says, adding that McCartney was “crying laughing” by the end of it.
Source: guitar.com
