The Beatles have updated their site, to coincide with the release of The Beatles: Remastered, – a new release of their original catalog, remastered – and The Beatles: Rock Band.
The site is all that – as much a reflection of how we view our own history as it is a history of the band.
The photo above, of The Beatles meeting the Moog synthesizer, is just one of many gems in their photo archive. The Moog made appearances on Abbey Road’s Maxwell’s Silver Hammer, Here Comes The Sun, & Because.
Mike Vickers (formerly of Manfred Mann) was employed to program to Moog during the Abbey Road recording sessions.
Other treats at the site include video from Magical Mystery Tour and other seldom seen footage, a historical timeline and an interactive discography.
The site isn’t obsessively deep, but expect to loose track of time if you visit.
The Beatles Rock Band & The Beatles: Remastered
The Beatles: Rock Band lets you pick up the guitar, bass, mic or drums (but not the Moog) and experience The Beatles’ extraordinary catalogue of music through gameplay.
From the early touring days in 1963 Liverpool to the immortal, final performance on Apple’s rooftop, fans can follow in The Fab Four’s footsteps as they traverse the globe during the height of Beatlemania, unlocking real photos and videos of The Beatles – some never before seen by the public. The Beatles: Rock Band introduces three-part vocal harmonies to gameplay and features 45 songs on-disc.
Three albums from The Beatles’ epic catalogue will be made available for purchase and download including Abbey Road (1969), Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967) and Rubber Soul (1965). The Beatles: Rock Band will be available for Xbox 360 video game and entertainment system from Microsoft, PLAYSTATION 3 computer entertainment system and Wii console from Nintendo.
The Beatles’ entire original recorded catalogue has also been digitally re-mastered for the first time by a dedicated team of engineers at EMI’s Abbey Road Studios over a four-year period. The new CD releases include 14 re-mastered stereo titles available individually or collected in a box set, as well as 11 mono titles released in a limited edition boxed set.
All of the re-mastered stereo CDs are packaged with replicated original UK album art, including expanded booklets containing original and newly written liner notes and rare photos. For a limited period, 13 of the stereo CDs are embedded with a unique mini-documentary about the album.
Not just no but HELL NO!!! My Stereo cost a modest $65,000.00 excluding room treatments. I will not defile my Beatles Memories with RE-MASTERED MUSIC. Re-Mastered is just another word for Tape OVER-SATURATION. It was developed for morons too stoned or brain dead to turn up the volume on quiet parts and turn down the vollume on loud parts. I HAVE A MOBILE FIDELITY 180 gram Vinyl HALF SPEED BEATLES BOX SET which I play on my ‘unit’. SoundStage matters to me. Bass helf matters to me. Accuracy of instruments and women’s voices and piano action matter to me. Your’e re-mixing songs of my past is blastphemony!!!
You people should try to figure out how to match the throughput of Vinyl (400Kb per channel) NOT doing Remastering or, god forbid, crazy stuff like that LOVE-Jerk-de Solei abomination where they remixed classic beates songs to Justin Beiber sensibilities.
I into technology. Bob Moog’s Moog machine gave Dick Hyman the wings to craft THE MINOITAR which gave ELO the inspiration for LUCKY MAN and The Beatles Here Comes the Sun, Because, Mean Mister Mustard, Maxwell Silver Hammer, etc. Of course Abby Road sounds dated-but look what they had to work with. SGT PEPPER, on the other hand is just MIND BOGGLING—all that sound off paired 4 track tape machines…amazing!!!
The Abbey Road engineers didn’t remix it. They took the original master tapes and played them back on a better tape machine – a Studer A820. They didn’t do loudness war remastering, just some gentle limiting with a Junger D01. They still have around 10 db of dynamic ranger per album. Besides, the MFSL box set has “smiley face” eq. The new remasters have a far better tonal balance. Let’s turn this around. Can you match digital’s throughput with vinyl? A properly mastered CD with dithering can have a noise floor around 105db whereas vinyl has a realistic noise floor of around 80 db. Add wow-and-flutter and dirt and wear, and you have an inferior form of playback. What’s real blasphemy is if you claim that vinyl has greater throughput and that the MFSL box set is closer to the master tapes then the new remasters. Saying how much your system costs does not lend credibility. Neither does calling people stoned or brain dead. For all I know, you could have spent thousands of dollars on bullshit power cables. Educate yourself before you insult people and dismiss 4 years of work by experienced studio engineers.
ELP wrote Lucky Man, not ELO :]