New reissue rumors: October MOJO reveals first solid details about remastered Beatles CDs

abbeyrd.com (Beatles forum)

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(8/30/2008) We received an email earlier this week from Joseph DiCupolo regarding the October issue of MOJO (the next one due out in the UK) that, we have to admit, we shrugged off because it didn't make sense that a magazine would have the first details of the Beatles remastered CDs.

We were wrong.

 

First, here's what he told us in his email:

 

 

Although I do not have the new issue yet, the cover of the new issue of Mojo has a Paul interview, and next to his photo reads "My White Album" Plus! The Beatles Remastered"

 

Could this be the exclusive news promised? The long awaited remasters?! I hope it dosen't turn out to be some wishful thinking in the Paul interview to keep us all happy like he and Yoko have done so many times already, promising that it's almost ready on and on... But I highly doubt that mojo would bill it as exclusive Beatles news unless it's definitely happening... anyway fingers crossed. I'll let you know as soon as I get the issue!

 

But then we received this note from Neil Richardson:

 

Hi Steve,

 

Further to your report of the October issue of Mojo magazine, I have just received my copy. Quickly scanning through the article reveals that Mojo has been invited to a playback of ten White Album tracks. The verdict is "Better even than we'd hoped."

 

Important information revealed includes; all the albums, including Yellow Submarine, Magical Mystery Tour and the Past Masters sets have been remastered, but not The Hollywood Bowl. Rubber Soul and Revolver will have three different mixes available, mono, original stereo and the 1987 stereo rebalances. There will be no 5.1 mixes of any of the tracks.

 

Original recording equipment has been located and used for the project and the bass sound that the original cutting engineers reduced has been restored.

 

Expected release date is now off the record set as 2009, "Apple/EMI are not going to bodge the packaging for the sake of a bumper Christmas."

 

Regards,

Neil Richardson.

 

 

In addition to the details in MOJO, unconfirmed possible details of the remastered CDs have been floating around the Internet. No surprise there. But two posts on different message boards, one the respected Steve Hoffman forum, the other on Quadrophonic Quad, have similar information. Both indicate that the regular editions of the reissues will have the mono mixes plus newer stereo mixes. Deluxe versions (bigger bucks, obviously) will include 5.1 mixes and a hardback version of the CD booklet.

 

Here are the the preview descriptions from the magazine's website of part 2 of the White Album feature:

 

THE BEATLES + PAUL McCARTNEY: The second part of our White Album extravaganza features another track-by-track breakdown, an in-depth look at the Manson Murders and an exclusive interview with one Paul McCartney. “We were rock ‘n’ roll!” he tells Mat Snow.

 

and the second White Album CD:

 

FREE CD!: THE WHITE ALBUM RECOVERED – DISC #2. The Beatles' 1968 masterpiece re-imagined by the likes of The Neil Cowley Trio, Sarabeth Tucek, Rachel Unthank & The Winterset, The Ruby Suns, My Brightest Diamond and Gemma Ray. PLUS! A bonus track from a very, very special guest indeed!

Apple to confirm Beatles iTunes deal and new iPods on Tuesday?

 

Fab four's entire back catalogue remastered for release

 

Speculation is mounting that The Beatles' back catalogue could be available in remastered form on iTunes in 2009.

 

The October 2008 issue of Mojo magazine features an interview with Paul McCartney and describes a playback of ten remastered White Album tracks that sound "better even than we'd hoped."

 

Reportedly, all of The Beatles' albums including Yellow Submarine, Magical Mystery Tour and the Past Masters LPs have been remastered, but not the rare – and actually rather good – Hollywood Bowl live album.

 

Rubber Soul and Revolver are expected to be available in three mixes: mono, original stereo and the 1987 stereo rebalances, but no 5.1 mixes are planned for any of the albums.

 

According to Mojo, Apple Corps plan to release the remastered albums in 2009 and get it right rather than attempt to cash in on Christmas sales.

iTunes deal?

 

You may rightly be wondering how this relates to the Apple company that make those rather ingenious little iPod things. Well, what we do know is that Apple Inc are set to hold a publicity event on Tuesday 9 September entitled Let's Rock at which all-new iPods, including a redesigned iPod touch, are expected to be announced.

 

But could Let's Rock also mark the announcement that a deal to bring The Beatles' back catalogue to iTunes has finally been inked? It seems unlikely that Apple Corps would remaster the band's entire back catalogue for the flagging CD market alone, and back in late 2007 Paul McCartney told Billboard magazine he expected a deal to be done with Apple Inc in 2008.

 

We'll just have to wait until Tuesday to find out, and start saving our pennies to buy all of The Beatles' albums. Again.

 

see : http://www.musicradar.com/news/guitars/app...-tuesday-172271

Yet another article on this

 

Hard Day’s Night for Beatles Reissues

 

If you still believe in Santa Claus, you might also have expected to wake up on Christmas morning and find an iPod stocked with the long-promised reissues of all the Beatles albums. But if you know the shocking truth about Santa, you probably know that the vaunted Beatles reissues don’t exist either, outside the vaults of EMI, the group’s record label, and Apple, the company the band set up in 1967 to oversee its interests.

 

Other long-anticipated Apple projects, like DVD versions of the Beatles’ Shea Stadium concert and the “Let It Be” film, failed to turn up for the holidays as well. And if you put any faith in Paul McCartney’s passing mention, in November, that the 1967 avant-garde track “Carnival of Light” might be released, don’t hold your breath: this track has been dangled before (about a decade ago, when Mr. McCartney used it as the soundtrack of an unreleased “photofilm,” made from photographs of the Beatles taken by his first wife, Linda).

 

Indeed, whenever Mr. McCartney releases a new album (as he did the week “Carnival of Light” was mentioned), reports of “long-lost” Beatles tracks that “might be released” suddenly surface, but the recordings themselves do not.

 

Even the most believable of reports, floated by EMI insiders, proved fruitless this year. During the summer EMI was said to be preparing a deluxe remastered edition of the “The Beatles” (popularly known as “The White Album”) to celebrate the 40th anniversary of its release. The anniversary came and went, with no sign of the reissue.

 

Instead, Apple sent e-mail messages to fans directing them to beatles.com, the official Web site, where they could celebrate the anniversary by buying a $395 “White Album” fountain pen. Also on offer were a “White Album” hoodie and T-shirts. Presumably, the wizards at Apple think people will want these things in time for the Beatles edition of Rock Band, the computer game to which the group agreed, this fall, to lend its name and music.

 

What’s wrong with this picture?

 

It is not for lack of interest at either end of the food chain that the Beatles can’t manage to get upgraded versions of their classic recordings onto the market, except by way of a video game or a site-specific show (Cirque du Soleil’s “Love,” in Las Vegas).

 

EMI, which owns the group’s recordings, remastered them at least two years ago. According to a 1989 agreement that ended 20 years of lawsuits between the Beatles and EMI, the label can do nothing without an O.K. from Apple. But Apple is supposedly keen: early in 2007 it hired Jeff Jones, a record executive whose last job was overseeing historical reissues for the superb Sony Legacy series.

 

There would have been no reason to hire someone with that background if archival reissues were not in the company’s plans, and since Apple acts only with the unanimous consent of its four shareholders — Mr. McCartney, Ringo Starr, Yoko Ono and Olivia Harrison — presumably all four have agreed to a release program, at least in principle.

 

And how many record labels, just now, are facing an army of consumers who are saying, in effect: “We’ve bought this music several times already — on mono and stereo LPs, on picture discs and audiophile vinyl, perhaps on cassette and most recently on CD — but please, we beg you, sell it to us again.”

 

So what’s the holdup? No one is willing to say, but Mr. McCartney recently asserted that EMI was demanding an unspecified concession that the Beatles were unwilling to make.

 

Frankly, the reasons hardly matter at this point: to collectors awaiting these releases, either on physical CDs (improved sound being the main point of remastering) or as digital downloads (where convenience trumps audiophile considerations), the inability of Apple and EMI to get this music onto the market is a symbol of how pathetic the record business has become, and how dysfunctional Apple continues to be. On Beatles chat boards and Web sites, the $395 pen, in particular, was greeted with derision.

 

This must be intensely frustrating for Mr. Jones; in fact, people close to EMI and Apple say he has a significant list of projects that he would love to release. But in the nearly two years he’s been at Apple, he has presided over the video game agreement and a DVD documentary about the making of the “Love” show (which, in truth, includes a few revealing moments, showing the difficulties of dealing with Apple’s shareholders, from Cirque du Soleil’s point of view).

 

While EMI and Apple have been squabbling, collectors have taken matters into their own hands, pooling unreleased tracks and compiling anthologies that are far more ambitious than anything EMI is likely to release. Usually, these unauthorized desktop bootleg projects (which are of course illegal) have attractive cover art and copious annotations, and these days money rarely changes hands for them: the people who compile them distribute them freely (and encourage others to do so) either on home-burned CDs and DVDs or, increasingly, on the Internet.

 

Some are curatorial masterpieces. A label called Purple Chick has assembled deluxe editions of each commercially released album, offering the original discs in their mono and stereo mixes, along with the singles (also in mono and stereo) released at the time, as well as every known demo, studio outtake and alternative mix.

 

Drawing mostly on an earlier generation of less obsessively organized bootlegs and adding otherwise unbootlegged rarities when they turn up, Purple Chick has generally chosen the best-sounding and most complete takes (editing together fragments where necessary) and has done some speed correction and other sonic tweaking.

 

It offers upgrades, as well: when copies of the unmixed, unedited four-track masters of four songs from “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” began circulating at the end of last year, Purple Chick revised its “Sgt. Pepper” compilation to accommodate them.

 

So if you wanted to celebrate the anniversary of “The White Album,” you could turn to Purple Chick’s “Beatles Deluxe,” which covers 10 CDs. And if you want to begin the new year by commemorating the 40th anniversary of the “Let It Be” sessions, which ran from Jan. 2 to 31, 1969, you still have a few days to find Purple Chick’s “A/B Road,” which offers nearly 96 hours of those sessions on 83 CDs.

 

It can be a slog — songs are rehearsed endlessly — but its best moments are magical. Along with discussions, fights and jam sessions, you hear classic tracks coming together, from the first time one of the Beatles walks the others through its chord progression, straight through to the finished arrangement, with lyrics taking shape along the way.

 

Purple Chick has also compiled the group’s BBC radio performances on 10 CDs and a CD-ROM (compared with EMI’s two-CD official release), and is currently working its way through all the available concert recordings.

 

Another label, Lazy Tortoise, is compiling chronologically all the Beatles’ television and radio interviews. And on DVD, the FAB label is doing the same with the group’s film and television appearances, from 1962 to the present.

 

Nobody who collects these things would hesitate to buy officially released archival projects, if only Apple and EMI would release them. Perhaps by the time the 40th anniversary of the “Abbey Road” album rolls around, on Sept. 26, Apple and EMI will have gotten it together.

 

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/27/arts/music/27beat.html

A very interesting read.

I don't think we will be getting them before Easter.

Yet another article, seems to be keeping up momentum:

 

Sir Paul McCartney: sort out Beatles iTunes deal

 

SIR Paul McCartney has called for an end to the deadlock stopping Beatles fans being able to download their back catalogue.

 

The Fab Four’s work is not available online due to legal wrangling between two companies – Apple Inc and Apple Corps.

 

The former is the firm behind iTunes and the iPod, while the latter was set up by Sir Paul with the rest of The Beatles in 1968 to look after their affairs and recordings.

 

He said: “I hope it happens.

 

“It is out of our hands, really. It is a business thing and there is some gridlock somewhere.

 

“It is the usual thing – when it is a Beatles deal, it is a big deal. It is not like we are just some new act.

 

“When you are talking about iTunes, obviously we have got to get a great deal. I think we are right, because we are The Beatles!

 

“It is being held up, but I definitely hope it comes through because it is about time it happened.

 

“We have been goofing around enough, so if you are reading this, whoever is holding it up, stop it!”

 

Sir Paul recently released Electric Arguments, his third album with Youth under their Fireman name.

 

It is the first to feature vocals from the former Wings frontman after their previous two offerings, Strawberries Oceans Ships Forest and Rushes, were full of ambient instrumental music.

 

Sir Paul’s involvement on the last two albums were only confirmed by then-label EMI after some time had passed.

 

Their latest work was written and recorded in “about 13 days”.

 

Sir Paul said: “We do not count the days, we do not bother with that. We just go in my studio in Sussex, then if I have got a week spare I might do something, or we might leave it a week and then go in another day.”

 

Sir Paul said the name Fireman was used because his “reputation walks ahead of you”.

 

He added: “It can get in the way sometimes.

 

“It is enough of a trick to make you look at things differently.

 

“With Electric Arguments, I was thinking ‘this can go any way, because this is The Fireman, and he can do anything he wants’.”

 

TALE OF TWO APPLES

 

APPLE CORP

 

Founded by the Beatles in 1967, Apple was intended to offer help to struggling writers, musicians and writers.

 

There were many divisions to Apple, including Apple Films and Apple Records, as well as Zapple, a spoken word arm.

 

Its biggest signing apart from the Beatles were the group Badfinger, who scored a hit with the McCartney-penned Come and Get It in 1969.

 

After the Beatles’ partnership was legally dissolved in 1975, Apple Corps continued to trade and reaps 80% of all profits from Beatles records

 

APPLE INC

 

Formed in 1976 by Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, Apple launched its first computer in July of that year, priced $666.

 

The company became a household name in 1984 with the launch of the Macintosh, the first personal computer with a mouse.

 

The California-based electronics giant has a series of other firsts to its name, including a prototype laptop, the Macintosh Portable, and the Newton, the world’s first personal digital assistant.

 

Its biggest successes of recent years have been the introduction of the iPod music player and the iPhone.

 

The company employs 32,000 people worldwide and made $32bn in sales this year. It has a net income to date of $4.83bn.

 

Source: http://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/liverpool-n...00252-22571566/