Archives
November 2006
11/30/06
11/29/06
11/28/06
11/27/06
11/22/06
11/22/06
11/22/06
11/22/06
11/22/06
11/21/06
11/20/06
11/20/06
11/20/06
11/20/06
11/20/06
11/19/06
11/18/06
11/18/06
11/18/06
11/17/06
11/17/06
11/16/06
11/16/06
11/15/06
11/15/06
11/15/06
11/15/06
11/14/06
11/14/06
11/13/06
11/13/06
11/13/06
11/12/06
11/10/06
11/9/06
11/8/06
11/8/06
11/7/06
11/7/06
11/7/06
11/7/06
11/6/06
11/6/06
11/4/06
11/3/06
11/2/06
11/2/06
11/2/06
11/1/06
11/1/06
11/1/06
Special 'LOVE' Luxe Life: Exclusive Interview With Legendary Beatles Producer
Wednesday, November 1, 2006
Security was so tough that not even George Clooney's casino criminal cohorts from Oceans 11,12 or 13 could have penetrated the double-air-lock, vacuum-sealed doors, or bypassed the two hand-scan coded machines, to gain top-level access to Cirque du Soleil's Beatles 'LOVE' recording studio, backstage at The Mirage.
First, I signed legal documents that, if violated, carry severe punishment and penalties. I had to guarantee Luxe Life wouldn't publish until the imposed 12:01AM, Wednesday, Nov. 1 embargo. Then, in a scene from a James Bond movie, our cell phones were politely confiscated and my tape recorder was kept in full view of a burly bodyguard, to prevent any unauthorized recording. I was one of a very small and privileged group invited to the first listening session of the new, 26-track Beatles 'LOVE' album, to be released worldwide on November 21. My recorder was turned on only when the music tracks were silenced! The super security and secrecy was in place to prevent any copyright infringements, audio duplication and also because it's where record producers Sir George and Giles Martin at one point housed the only backup copy of those valuable 50-year-old Abbey Road studio masters!!! The 'LOVE' CD has 78 minutes of music and its DVD surround-sound version has 81 minutes.
The final version, that contains more music than the Mirage show, has the complete approval of the Beatles and their Apple company. Said Paul McCartney: "This album puts the Beatles back together again, because suddenly there's John and George with me and Ringo." George Harrison's widow, Olivia commented: "The music is stunning. The most amazing thing about it is that you can pull it apart and find that all the elements carry with it the essence of the entire song." And Yoko Ono Lennon added: "The album has the feeling of love and that's why the title is Beatles LOVE. They have let everything that is beautiful and daring come out." Ringo Starr summed up: "It's really powerful for me and I even heard things I'd forgotten we'd recorded."
Stay tuned to this space for the Beatles podcast, but for readers, here's the transcript of our extraordinarily candid conversations with the producers, in between listening to each track of the memorable history of the Beatles songbook. Click here for AOL's audio-visual promotional excerpt from the 'LOVE musical.'
Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame producer Sir George Martin and son Giles.
RL: So, would you say this new album is 45 years in the making?
GEORGE MARTIN: Could be longer. Feels like 45 years. I have been working for 56 years. The people we played it to in England looked at it like a new piece of work. It is a reconstruction. It is not a remix, or a mash up, it is a reconstruction. You don't need to see the show to enjoy the music. I think a mash up is when you start taking tracks and sampling of sounds and putting them together and making something different. This is not. It is the same people. It is still Ringo playing drums; it is still Paul playing the bass guitar. They are not broken down into fragments, they are complete tracks. They have heart. We try to keep the feeling of a live performance.
RL: As a layman, tell us why you can do this now, but you could not have done this back then.
GEORGE MARTIN: You know what technology was like 46 years ago. There are amazing things youcan do with music now. You can treat music like putty or pudding. You can mix it and stretch it. In the days of tape you couldn't do that. That made our job easier and Giles was doing all the manipulation and he's a master of this technology. This was experimentation and trying out. Giles cataloged every song in terms of key in terms of tempo and he trieddifferent things.
GILES MARTIN: He was producing me playing around with the music.
GEORGE MARTIN: We did have fun.
GILES MARTIN: The technology allows you to leave the things as they sound on tape. My dad recorded back then on a four-track. Then you have a double string quartet we have violins and cellos on four tracks. They bounce onto a different track and we can go to the original, so they sound clearer. The show aside, it is almost kind of a valid thing. You hear the Beatles. The end of the spectrum is doing mad crazy things like 'Get Back' going into 'Glass Onion' with trumpets over the top. It is trying to create everything in Beatles essence, which is valid for Beatles fans.
RL: What was the number of people in the Beatles backup studio orchestra back then?
GILES MARTIN: It depends on what track it was. Double string quartet is eight players. The largest was 82 for Dead Life and Crescendo. A Symphony orchestra is how it turns out. You can't rebuild a track that is already made. People would ask me, 'why didn't you use the drums from this?' There are very few clear drums in Beatles recording. It is good in a way and it stopped the temptation. What we really want is the performance. The whole idea behind the show, and our first reaction, when we first started to create, this was to make a live show. It occurred to me that all the stuff is live and the thing that struck me was the fact that they were a really good band. That is a stupid thing to say, but people don't see them as a really good band, people see them as iconic and for what they did. They were good players and performed really well. That version of 'Get Back' is them just playing on the roof. There is nothing else going on. No chopping or editing. We wanted to do a transition into 'I Am the Walrus.' We managed to go through and separate so of the instruments, but we managed to keep the originals and be able to hear everything. It sounds contemporary. It doesn't sound old. We were not trying to be retrospective at all. I think it is so boring about the good old days. What I have learned from my dad is that you don't feel any olderand you don't feel any younger when you get older. He sees himself as being the same age as I am and I see myself as being 21. That is that thing. The Beatles are captured in their 20's really well and they sound like they are in their 20's so why make it different?
RL: Was there any deterioration to the 50-year-old master tapes?
GILES MARTIN: No, there wasn't. We used the original tapes. It was lucky. They used EMI tape. It doesn't deteriorate the same way as Decca tape or DTK or whatever they used. The Rolling Stones tapes have to be baked, but the Beatles tapes sound like that. We don't add anything. It is just what they had. It was probably a mistake. They hadn't been backed up. Everything came from the original tapes. They did back it up in the 80's and it really sounds awful, then when we got the original tapes I thought this sounds great. We recorded everything in 96 Kilohertz, which is a very high. So I backed up the whole catalog in order to do this project. I thought even if I get fired, at least they have a backup.
RL: Where are the original masters now?
GILES MARTIN: They never left Abbey Road. We transferred everything onto one disk and did it that way, but I still get lie-detected and screened everyday, so don't feel bad about you undergoing such scrutiny.
RL: Paul and Ringo heard what we heard and they signed off on it?
GILES MARTIN: It is funny. They heard it for the show. A lot of sound effects get taken off. We did actually use stuff from across the universe, then we needed original stuff. So there are three sound effects. All the rest is Beatles music and they love it. Paul and Ringo came in and they said I've got some notes on the album, I had thought we finished it, and he goes 'it is really great, and I love it and those are my notes.' He was like it is great to hear us playing.
RL: You need two types of talents; you need the talent of the artists, you guys mixing it and then you need the talent of the guys in the studio.
GILES MARTIN: I think the artists spend too much time thinking about how they are marketed. I had a girlfriend who was being marketed to a label in America and I said 'who is this guy?' She said this is my business manager, this guy is my lawyer, this guy is my accountant and I said you don't have a record deal yet. So that is a concern.
RL: Do you remember the entire timeline and the amount of hours that you put in into making 81 minutes? D you remember the day that you started this and how many times have you listened to this?
GILES MARTIN: A lot of times. I have become a Beatles expert. I mean I started doing the first demos in 2003, where I put the drums with 'Get Back' and 'Glass Onion.' And that was the first one we touched. Then we started again and stopped again so it was off an on for about two years. This was only working on the tracks. Copyrights are up to other people. It was great in a way because from the word go, and it is one of those things where you don't even get paid to do something, so you can't get fired, if that makes sense. It was a demo period. And when Ringo and Paul heard it they absolutely loved the idea. They were at the stage where they loved to come to the studios and they are pitching in and it is the kind of thing opposed to "how dare you ruin that." We are not deleting anything. I am not saying this is a version of 'Abbey Road.' We compared the two and we always ran things in sync in case we missed something. The fun thing was trying different things and the songs are so familiar that they stopped listening to them. Someone in LA said to me, 'you know I could do without hearing them again,' but she heard it and she really enjoyed listening to it. It is one of those things that, if you make a slight change, like a girlfriend dying their hair a different color, you sort of notice them again and there is just a slight change and you get back into the song again.
RL: Is it safe for us to say that over 2,000 or 3,000 hours went into this?
GILES MARTIN: I would say yes. Over 3,000. I was surprised how long it took to mix it. The show was hard work especially for producer Dominic Champagne and myself. It was high-pressure stuff. When we finished doing the show, everyone went on holiday. I went with my wife and took three days off, then I went back to Abbey Rd. And I was there for the whole time. In the beginning it was like detention, I knew everyone else was on holiday and I am thinking... Then you get back into it and inspired. You have to be careful to respect the music.
RL: Other than it being Christmas and Thanksgiving, is there any other significance in the Nov. 24th release?
GILES MARTIN: That is when I have to get it finished by. No, I think that we just spent a long time doing it. They want the records to come out before Christmas and they wanted the records to come out as close tothe show as possible. They all linked and married together and the album is as bigasthe show and the show is big.
RL: Would the idea have been to release the album a week after the show opened.
GILES MARTIN: Yeah, but that was impossible. We finished the show the 30th of June and then we spent 4 months mixing and there was no way we could have finished it. Because it is the Beatles, it is important to create and album that isn't rushed. The first thing is that we did stuff that the show had to fit around. On top of that, you go and do the show and we had to cut some things for the show, but they are full-length on the album. You notice things when there aren't 60 acrobats in front of you. If you are in Brazil and you buy the Beatles album, it is in a different part of the world and it may make people come to Vegas. The album flows really well because we practiced it in front of a live audience. By its nature, it is a compilation of the greatest sounds of the Beatles. It takes all the great things about the songs and compiles them. That is the passage of the album. It works as a record and it takes on a journey the same way that does out there and that has been the best. I think every album should have a show based on it because it makes it a lot easier to compile. It is a bit expensive though. We wanted to do things that no one has heard before. If they were going to do this show and this record it had to be as left as possible. The people are enjoying the band. It is still a modern take, I am pleased that they themselves didn't want to go down and make beats for the records. We did this based on the idea that this is supposed to last a long time.
RL: Thus the question arises; from the inside of being so close to this recording and the Beatles themselves, why are we the media making a big deal about it and why does everyone else make a big deal out of it?
GILES MARTIN: I think for different reasons to be honest. Certain generations make a big deal about it because they remember the time. I have a different view. My dad was obviously the man thatsignedthe Beatles and made all of their records. I rebelled against the Beatles when I was 19, but doing this and listening to the extraordinary work they did in 8 years, it is amazing. I was confused by things they went through -- this huge period of experimentation -- and you think selfishly and think that maybe I will get other work from this and what bands could you do this with? Led Zeppelin would be good and you could do a lot of really interesting sorts of things with that. But they don't have the same breadths of sounds that the Beatles have.
RL: Is that the amazing thing?
GILES MARTIN: I think their talent outputs are the amazing thing. But when I dove into them there were lots and lots of stuff to find, not just Beatlemania. That is what you are hearing now. It is an image in 3-D and you find there are more and more things to find out. I hope that people want this album because they want to listen to it and it is really good to listen to, not just because it is a Beatles album. That is that. The hyperbole that gets attached and that puts them over the top. They were a phenomenon within themselves. They needed each other. I had the privilege of taking some of the members away. It is funny how things don't work as well. If you think about what you would play it is never as interesting as what they play. So you listen to Mr. Kite and you listen to Paul's baseline and John's vocal. I think that they drove each other to genius. They pushed each other to great things.
RL: It is hyperbole, but are they a once in a lifetime band? Were they geniuses?
GILES MARTIN: Once in their lifetime. I think they were yes. I think now they have reached that stage. I was born in 69 and I grew up in the 80's and the Beatles were old-fashioned and now they are what happened. I don't think it is nostalgia that is part of the Red and Blue album. I think they seem like nostalgia to me, but this is a new technology. When you talk about it and the mixing of different tracks together it sounds degrading. Then people listen to it and it is the Beatles and they enjoy it. It is the first time a band has ever had a chance to sample themselves and it makes sense if you are going to take a drum track and put another drum track over it, you might as well use the same drummer because he has the same feel. No other band has done this and it is a new and different thing to do. It makes it relevant to a new generation. Thereis stuff coming out next week that sounds older than this. There are 250 songs in their catalog and we had to squeeze a lot into the show. There are always people that are going to say 'why didn't you put...' It was great because there was no direction. People always say thatit must have been so difficult to work with them because of their reputation and it is harder working for a record label than working for them. All they cared about was if it sounded good. Yoko would just say if John's voice sounded good she wouldn't say that the politics seemed to be stripped down... Most of the time when they did music they really enjoyed it. I think the Beatles always followed a premise that there were no rules. Even when they were going through a struggle they were happy to try other ideas. They would work on a song and in the same day if they did something my dad and myself don't like they knew it wasn't going to get on the album so they would never say before you do this I don't want you to do this. Kite was heard by Paul and Ringo and it was hard to do we wanted to make it dark and they heard it and were like, 'OK, what are you going to do with 'Help?'' Double up the guitars. 'OK, what's next?' It was that sort of thing. Everything was there already. It is not like we have added any music. The genius is them. All we have done is compact their ideas into one, but it is all their ideas.
REVOLUTION -- THE LOUNGE
It will be Vegas' hippest, most technologically advanced ultra-lounge, cum nightclub when it opens on or around December 18, and the 9-foot-tall Revolution logo will actually be shown a little backwards -- so reverse the four letters after the initial R and E V O L spells LOVE!! Mirage president Scott Sibella gave Luxe Life the very first peek inside the $10-million 7,000 sq.ft electronic marvel and commented: "The club doesn't duplicate the Beatles show, rather it is a natural extension of the entire experience." A full color model was made up to win full approvals by Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, Yoko Ono and Olivia Harrison. The Abbey Road bar, complete with the four famous lines the Beatles walked on for the original album cover inset into the floor, will be open 24-hours to lead into the Revolution ultra-lounge open from 5PM nightly. Beatles music will play until10:30PM,but DJs will then switch over until pre-dawn to today's house-music using the same sound system installed for Celine Dion's show.
There will be no Beatles memorabilia on display and contrary to previous reports no Cirque performances. Staff and servers, who will be hired at a casting call next Wednesday, Nov. 8, will be uniformed, but not in the expected Cirque costume look. To recreate some of the big-screen effects of the actual Beatles 'LOVE' musical, 4 projectors will display the images on the back bar wall. But it's the 7 interactive table-areas that will amaze and astound partygoers. Each has a $150,000 camera built beneath to capture whatever images are created on the surface above. Those are then linked to a master control suite to reproduce them back onto the tabletop itself creating wild duplicated 3-dimensional effects that also flash up on a larger screen so revelers at Table 1 could communicate with their own creative visual ideas to Table 7 or any other table. Be careful what you say and do, though, because everybody will be able to see the 'LOVE' messages. The grand opening is a hoped for Valentine's Day bash on February 14 with the Beatles family of Paul, Ringo, Yoko and Olivia hopefully returning for the champagne christening. Cirque's very large cast and crew of its 5 Vegas shows will have one-night each week specially dedicated for them. Check back to Luxe Life for a photo tour once construction is fully completed and the interior decor and furnishings have been added.
The Beatles once sung, "Here Comes the Sun" but I can assure you that when the ultra-lounge nightclub opens it will be "here comes the fun."
CONTACT US
You can show your 'LOVE' with an email to robinsvegas@aol.com To ensure you don't miss one drumbeat of the new edition, click here or at the 'Alert Me' up top if you'd like to know the split-second we post the brand new Luxe Life.
Go to AOL Vegas for much more on hotels, casinos, restaurants, nightlife, and everything Las Vegas! Check our travel section for great deals on hotels, airfare and much more! And when visiting Vegas, be sure to see Las Vegas Magazine in your hotel suite featuring a print edition of AOL Vegas Luxe Life.
robinsvegas at 12:02:00 AM PST Blog about this entry |
Add to del.icio.us | 
digg this
Special 'LOVE' Luxe Life: Exclusive Interview With Legendary Beatles Producer
Security was so tough that not even George Clooney's casino criminal cohorts from Oceans 11,12 or 13 could have penetrated the double-air-lock, vacuum-sealed doors, or bypassed the two hand-scan coded machines, to gain top-level access to Cirque du Soleil's Beatles 'LOVE' recording studio, backstage at The Mirage.
First, I signed legal documents that, if violated, carry severe punishment and penalties. I had to guarantee Luxe Life wouldn't publish until the imposed 12:01AM, Wednesday, Nov. 1 embargo. Then, in a scene from a James Bond movie, our cell phones were politely confiscated and my tape recorder was kept in full view of a burly bodyguard, to prevent any unauthorized recording. I was one of a very small and privileged group invited to the first listening session of the new, 26-track Beatles 'LOVE' album, to be released worldwide on November 21. My recorder was turned on only when the music tracks were silenced! The super security and secrecy was in place to prevent any copyright infringements, audio duplication and also because it's where record producers Sir George and Giles Martin at one point housed the only backup copy of those valuable 50-year-old Abbey Road studio masters!!! The 'LOVE' CD has 78 minutes of music and its DVD surround-sound version has 81 minutes.
The final version, that contains more music than the Mirage show, has the complete approval of the Beatles and their Apple company. Said Paul McCartney: "This album puts the Beatles back together again, because suddenly there's John and George with me and Ringo." George Harrison's widow, Olivia commented: "The music is stunning. The most amazing thing about it is that you can pull it apart and find that all the elements carry with it the essence of the entire song." And Yoko Ono Lennon added: "The album has the feeling of love and that's why the title is Beatles LOVE. They have let everything that is beautiful and daring come out." Ringo Starr summed up: "It's really powerful for me and I even heard things I'd forgotten we'd recorded."
Stay tuned to this space for the Beatles podcast, but for readers, here's the transcript of our extraordinarily candid conversations with the producers, in between listening to each track of the memorable history of the Beatles songbook. Click here for AOL's audio-visual promotional excerpt from the 'LOVE musical.'
Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame producer Sir George Martin and son Giles.
RL: So, would you say this new album is 45 years in the making?
GEORGE MARTIN: Could be longer. Feels like 45 years. I have been working for 56 years. The people we played it to in England looked at it like a new piece of work. It is a reconstruction. It is not a remix, or a mash up, it is a reconstruction. You don't need to see the show to enjoy the music. I think a mash up is when you start taking tracks and sampling of sounds and putting them together and making something different. This is not. It is the same people. It is still Ringo playing drums; it is still Paul playing the bass guitar. They are not broken down into fragments, they are complete tracks. They have heart. We try to keep the feeling of a live performance.
RL: As a layman, tell us why you can do this now, but you could not have done this back then.
GEORGE MARTIN: You know what technology was like 46 years ago. There are amazing things youcan do with music now. You can treat music like putty or pudding. You can mix it and stretch it. In the days of tape you couldn't do that. That made our job easier and Giles was doing all the manipulation and he's a master of this technology. This was experimentation and trying out. Giles cataloged every song in terms of key in terms of tempo and he trieddifferent things.
GILES MARTIN: He was producing me playing around with the music.
GEORGE MARTIN: We did have fun.
GILES MARTIN: The technology allows you to leave the things as they sound on tape. My dad recorded back then on a four-track. Then you have a double string quartet we have violins and cellos on four tracks. They bounce onto a different track and we can go to the original, so they sound clearer. The show aside, it is almost kind of a valid thing. You hear the Beatles. The end of the spectrum is doing mad crazy things like 'Get Back' going into 'Glass Onion' with trumpets over the top. It is trying to create everything in Beatles essence, which is valid for Beatles fans.
RL: What was the number of people in the Beatles backup studio orchestra back then?
GILES MARTIN: It depends on what track it was. Double string quartet is eight players. The largest was 82 for Dead Life and Crescendo. A Symphony orchestra is how it turns out. You can't rebuild a track that is already made. People would ask me, 'why didn't you use the drums from this?' There are very few clear drums in Beatles recording. It is good in a way and it stopped the temptation. What we really want is the performance. The whole idea behind the show, and our first reaction, when we first started to create, this was to make a live show. It occurred to me that all the stuff is live and the thing that struck me was the fact that they were a really good band. That is a stupid thing to say, but people don't see them as a really good band, people see them as iconic and for what they did. They were good players and performed really well. That version of 'Get Back' is them just playing on the roof. There is nothing else going on. No chopping or editing. We wanted to do a transition into 'I Am the Walrus.' We managed to go through and separate so of the instruments, but we managed to keep the originals and be able to hear everything. It sounds contemporary. It doesn't sound old. We were not trying to be retrospective at all. I think it is so boring about the good old days. What I have learned from my dad is that you don't feel any olderand you don't feel any younger when you get older. He sees himself as being the same age as I am and I see myself as being 21. That is that thing. The Beatles are captured in their 20's really well and they sound like they are in their 20's so why make it different?
RL: Was there any deterioration to the 50-year-old master tapes?
GILES MARTIN: No, there wasn't. We used the original tapes. It was lucky. They used EMI tape. It doesn't deteriorate the same way as Decca tape or DTK or whatever they used. The Rolling Stones tapes have to be baked, but the Beatles tapes sound like that. We don't add anything. It is just what they had. It was probably a mistake. They hadn't been backed up. Everything came from the original tapes. They did back it up in the 80's and it really sounds awful, then when we got the original tapes I thought this sounds great. We recorded everything in 96 Kilohertz, which is a very high. So I backed up the whole catalog in order to do this project. I thought even if I get fired, at least they have a backup.
RL: Where are the original masters now?
GILES MARTIN: They never left Abbey Road. We transferred everything onto one disk and did it that way, but I still get lie-detected and screened everyday, so don't feel bad about you undergoing such scrutiny.
RL: Paul and Ringo heard what we heard and they signed off on it?
GILES MARTIN: It is funny. They heard it for the show. A lot of sound effects get taken off. We did actually use stuff from across the universe, then we needed original stuff. So there are three sound effects. All the rest is Beatles music and they love it. Paul and Ringo came in and they said I've got some notes on the album, I had thought we finished it, and he goes 'it is really great, and I love it and those are my notes.' He was like it is great to hear us playing.
RL: You need two types of talents; you need the talent of the artists, you guys mixing it and then you need the talent of the guys in the studio.
GILES MARTIN: I think the artists spend too much time thinking about how they are marketed. I had a girlfriend who was being marketed to a label in America and I said 'who is this guy?' She said this is my business manager, this guy is my lawyer, this guy is my accountant and I said you don't have a record deal yet. So that is a concern.
RL: Do you remember the entire timeline and the amount of hours that you put in into making 81 minutes? D you remember the day that you started this and how many times have you listened to this?
GILES MARTIN: A lot of times. I have become a Beatles expert. I mean I started doing the first demos in 2003, where I put the drums with 'Get Back' and 'Glass Onion.' And that was the first one we touched. Then we started again and stopped again so it was off an on for about two years. This was only working on the tracks. Copyrights are up to other people. It was great in a way because from the word go, and it is one of those things where you don't even get paid to do something, so you can't get fired, if that makes sense. It was a demo period. And when Ringo and Paul heard it they absolutely loved the idea. They were at the stage where they loved to come to the studios and they are pitching in and it is the kind of thing opposed to "how dare you ruin that." We are not deleting anything. I am not saying this is a version of 'Abbey Road.' We compared the two and we always ran things in sync in case we missed something. The fun thing was trying different things and the songs are so familiar that they stopped listening to them. Someone in LA said to me, 'you know I could do without hearing them again,' but she heard it and she really enjoyed listening to it. It is one of those things that, if you make a slight change, like a girlfriend dying their hair a different color, you sort of notice them again and there is just a slight change and you get back into the song again.
RL: Is it safe for us to say that over 2,000 or 3,000 hours went into this?
GILES MARTIN: I would say yes. Over 3,000. I was surprised how long it took to mix it. The show was hard work especially for producer Dominic Champagne and myself. It was high-pressure stuff. When we finished doing the show, everyone went on holiday. I went with my wife and took three days off, then I went back to Abbey Rd. And I was there for the whole time. In the beginning it was like detention, I knew everyone else was on holiday and I am thinking... Then you get back into it and inspired. You have to be careful to respect the music.
RL: Other than it being Christmas and Thanksgiving, is there any other significance in the Nov. 24th release?
GILES MARTIN: That is when I have to get it finished by. No, I think that we just spent a long time doing it. They want the records to come out before Christmas and they wanted the records to come out as close tothe show as possible. They all linked and married together and the album is as bigasthe show and the show is big.
RL: Would the idea have been to release the album a week after the show opened.
GILES MARTIN: Yeah, but that was impossible. We finished the show the 30th of June and then we spent 4 months mixing and there was no way we could have finished it. Because it is the Beatles, it is important to create and album that isn't rushed. The first thing is that we did stuff that the show had to fit around. On top of that, you go and do the show and we had to cut some things for the show, but they are full-length on the album. You notice things when there aren't 60 acrobats in front of you. If you are in Brazil and you buy the Beatles album, it is in a different part of the world and it may make people come to Vegas. The album flows really well because we practiced it in front of a live audience. By its nature, it is a compilation of the greatest sounds of the Beatles. It takes all the great things about the songs and compiles them. That is the passage of the album. It works as a record and it takes on a journey the same way that does out there and that has been the best. I think every album should have a show based on it because it makes it a lot easier to compile. It is a bit expensive though. We wanted to do things that no one has heard before. If they were going to do this show and this record it had to be as left as possible. The people are enjoying the band. It is still a modern take, I am pleased that they themselves didn't want to go down and make beats for the records. We did this based on the idea that this is supposed to last a long time. RL: Thus the question arises; from the inside of being so close to this recording and the Beatles themselves, why are we the media making a big deal about it and why does everyone else make a big deal out of it?
GILES MARTIN: I think for different reasons to be honest. Certain generations make a big deal about it because they remember the time. I have a different view. My dad was obviously the man thatsignedthe Beatles and made all of their records. I rebelled against the Beatles when I was 19, but doing this and listening to the extraordinary work they did in 8 years, it is amazing. I was confused by things they went through -- this huge period of experimentation -- and you think selfishly and think that maybe I will get other work from this and what bands could you do this with? Led Zeppelin would be good and you could do a lot of really interesting sorts of things with that. But they don't have the same breadths of sounds that the Beatles have.
RL: Is that the amazing thing?
GILES MARTIN: I think their talent outputs are the amazing thing. But when I dove into them there were lots and lots of stuff to find, not just Beatlemania. That is what you are hearing now. It is an image in 3-D and you find there are more and more things to find out. I hope that people want this album because they want to listen to it and it is really good to listen to, not just because it is a Beatles album. That is that. The hyperbole that gets attached and that puts them over the top. They were a phenomenon within themselves. They needed each other. I had the privilege of taking some of the members away. It is funny how things don't work as well. If you think about what you would play it is never as interesting as what they play. So you listen to Mr. Kite and you listen to Paul's baseline and John's vocal. I think that they drove each other to genius. They pushed each other to great things.
RL: It is hyperbole, but are they a once in a lifetime band? Were they geniuses?
GILES MARTIN: Once in their lifetime. I think they were yes. I think now they have reached that stage. I was born in 69 and I grew up in the 80's and the Beatles were old-fashioned and now they are what happened. I don't think it is nostalgia that is part of the Red and Blue album. I think they seem like nostalgia to me, but this is a new technology. When you talk about it and the mixing of different tracks together it sounds degrading. Then people listen to it and it is the Beatles and they enjoy it. It is the first time a band has ever had a chance to sample themselves and it makes sense if you are going to take a drum track and put another drum track over it, you might as well use the same drummer because he has the same feel. No other band has done this and it is a new and different thing to do. It makes it relevant to a new generation. Thereis stuff coming out next week that sounds older than this. There are 250 songs in their catalog and we had to squeeze a lot into the show. There are always people that are going to say 'why didn't you put...' It was great because there was no direction. People always say thatit must have been so difficult to work with them because of their reputation and it is harder working for a record label than working for them. All they cared about was if it sounded good. Yoko would just say if John's voice sounded good she wouldn't say that the politics seemed to be stripped down... Most of the time when they did music they really enjoyed it. I think the Beatles always followed a premise that there were no rules. Even when they were going through a struggle they were happy to try other ideas. They would work on a song and in the same day if they did something my dad and myself don't like they knew it wasn't going to get on the album so they would never say before you do this I don't want you to do this. Kite was heard by Paul and Ringo and it was hard to do we wanted to make it dark and they heard it and were like, 'OK, what are you going to do with 'Help?'' Double up the guitars. 'OK, what's next?' It was that sort of thing. Everything was there already. It is not like we have added any music. The genius is them. All we have done is compact their ideas into one, but it is all their ideas.
REVOLUTION -- THE LOUNGE
It will be Vegas' hippest, most technologically advanced ultra-lounge, cum nightclub when it opens on or around December 18, and the 9-foot-tall Revolution logo will actually be shown a little backwards -- so reverse the four letters after the initial R and E V O L spells LOVE!! Mirage president Scott Sibella gave Luxe Life the very first peek inside the $10-million 7,000 sq.ft electronic marvel and commented: "The club doesn't duplicate the Beatles show, rather it is a natural extension of the entire experience." A full color model was made up to win full approvals by Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, Yoko Ono and Olivia Harrison. The Abbey Road bar, complete with the four famous lines the Beatles walked on for the original album cover inset into the floor, will be open 24-hours to lead into the Revolution ultra-lounge open from 5PM nightly. Beatles music will play until10:30PM,but DJs will then switch over until pre-dawn to today's house-music using the same sound system installed for Celine Dion's show.
There will be no Beatles memorabilia on display and contrary to previous reports no Cirque performances. Staff and servers, who will be hired at a casting call next Wednesday, Nov. 8, will be uniformed, but not in the expected Cirque costume look. To recreate some of the big-screen effects of the actual Beatles 'LOVE' musical, 4 projectors will display the images on the back bar wall. But it's the 7 interactive table-areas that will amaze and astound partygoers. Each has a $150,000 camera built beneath to capture whatever images are created on the surface above. Those are then linked to a master control suite to reproduce them back onto the tabletop itself creating wild duplicated 3-dimensional effects that also flash up on a larger screen so revelers at Table 1 could communicate with their own creative visual ideas to Table 7 or any other table. Be careful what you say and do, though, because everybody will be able to see the 'LOVE' messages. The grand opening is a hoped for Valentine's Day bash on February 14 with the Beatles family of Paul, Ringo, Yoko and Olivia hopefully returning for the champagne christening. Cirque's very large cast and crew of its 5 Vegas shows will have one-night each week specially dedicated for them. Check back to Luxe Life for a photo tour once construction is fully completed and the interior decor and furnishings have been added.
The Beatles once sung, "Here Comes the Sun" but I can assure you that when the ultra-lounge nightclub opens it will be "here comes the fun."
CONTACT US
You can show your 'LOVE' with an email to robinsvegas@aol.com To ensure you don't miss one drumbeat of the new edition, click here or at the 'Alert Me' up top if you'd like to know the split-second we post the brand new Luxe Life. Go to AOL Vegas for much more on hotels, casinos, restaurants, nightlife, and everything Las Vegas! Check our travel section for great deals on hotels, airfare and much more! And when visiting Vegas, be sure to see Las Vegas Magazine in your hotel suite featuring a print edition of AOL Vegas Luxe Life.
robinsvegas at 12:02:00 AM PST Blog about this entry |
Add to del.icio.us | digg this
