Re -Train Your Brain To Happiness: The Beatles 1 To Be Reissued With 50 Videos

One of the biggest selling albums of the last 25 years is the Beatles compilation 1 and, on November 6, Apple Corps Ltd. and UMG will release a new version in a number of formats with fifty promotional films and videos.

The 27-track CD/DVD and CD/Blu-ray pairs beautifully restored videos for each song, with new stereo and 5.1 Dolby Digital and DTS HD surround audio mixes. The brand new Beatles 1+ celebrates their career in over 200 minutes through 50 promotional films and videos. This includes the 27 No.1s, with the restored videos, along with a second disc of 23 videos, including alternate versions, as well as rarely seen and newly restored films and videos; all include new audio mixes in deluxe CD/2DVD and CD/2Blu-ray packages. The 27-track audio CD is also being made available with new stereo mixes. A 2LP, 180-gram vinyl package will follow.

The new editions of The Beatles 1 have been made possible following extensive research, and restoration of the original promo films, classic television appearances and other carefully selected videos spanning the band’s history. Apple Corps dug deep into The Beatles’ vaults to select a broad range of films and videos for their rarity, historical significance and quality of performance. An 18-person team of film and video technicians and restoration artists was assembled by Apple Corps to undertake painstaking frame-by-frame cleaning, color-grading, digital enhancement and new edits that took months of dedicated, ’round-the-clock work to accomplish.

The result is a visual rundown of The Beatles’ number one records, as well as the additional tracks on the bonus disc of Beatles 1+ that show the band in previously unseen standards of clarity and quality; many of the films and videos have never before been commercially released, in whole or in part.

The Beatles 1 and 1+ offer the restored films, including 35mm negatives scanned in 4K and digitally restored with new stereo and 5.1 surround audio remixes, produced from the original analogue tapes by the GRAMMY® winning team of Giles Martin with Sam Okell at Abbey Road Studios.

For four of the videos, Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr have provided exclusive audio commentary and filmed introductions, respectively. The 1+ Deluxe Edition is presented in an expanded 124-page illustrated hardcover book which includes ‘an appreciation’ of The Beatles’ groundbreaking films and videos by music journalist and author Mark Ellen and extensive, detailed track/video annotation by music historian and author Richard Havers.

The formats for the release:
Single CD
Single DVD
Single Blue-Ray
CD/DVD
CD/Blu-Ray
CD/2-DVD (1+)
CD/2-Blu-Ray (1+)

The track lists and more information can be found here.
With many thanks to Noise 11

Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr spruik Beatles ‘experimental’ videos

The Beatles accidentally revolutionised the music video because they were unable to meet the demand for live performances, the two surviving members of the band say.

Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr suggest that their 1960s promotional films, including footage of them eating fish and chips while messing about on an exercise bicycle, were the beginning of an art form that matured into the slick videos that gave rise to MTV and now dominate YouTube.

Although the band was not the first to be filmed performing, its members transformed the music video by appearing without their instruments while singing to a musical track, and doing novel stunts such as reversing footage so that McCartney appeared to be jumping into a tree.

McCartney and Starr’s comments relate to Tuesday’s announcement about the release in November of 50 pieces of footage for 1+, a CD-DVD package that follows on from 1, an album of remastered tracks released in 2000.

McCartney says the Beatles experimented with psychedelic imagery while making a film for Strawberry Fields Forever. “We thought that kind of surrealist art film was very appropriate for the times,” he says. “We were great admirers of Swedish art films — Ingmar Bergman and the like — and we’d met a Swedish director called Peter Goldmann in a club and said, ‘Could you direct this?’ And here we were going backwards and now running forwards and now running in slow motion.”

Starr says it was a turning point in music. “We called these videos ‘artistic movies’. We came up with the idea of making them because, suddenly, we were the biggest band in the world and we couldn’t be in all places at all times. So we thought, ‘Let’s send them the videos of the tracks’ we were promoting … And it turned into MTV.”

The spontaneous way the videos were made is shown in a video for Hey Jude, which features footage of a homeless man known to the band only as Bill, whom the Beatles befriended in London’s Soho area.

McCartney says he wanted to fill the video, recorded in 1968 for Frost on Sunday, with as many diverse people as possible. “There’s a Sikh in a turban and some mods hanging around the piano. And people with different jobs — there’s a milkman, a sailor, an army cadet and a nurse.

“And even Bill, this homeless guy who used to hang around outside the studio in Old Compton Street in Soho where we edited Magical Mystery Tour, always there with his carnation and his bottle. We saw him every day and became friends. We invited him into the editing suite and, eventually, to the filming of Hey Jude. You can see him in the video, holding his little bottle up.”

By Jack Malvern

With many thanks to The Australian

Related posts on The Beatles:

Freda Kelly Recalls Her Days of Working With the Beatles - "Good Ol' Freda"

George Harrison - My Favourite Beatle - "My Sweet Lord" Live

New Beatles Band May Form With Sons

George Harrison and Ringo Starr - It Don't come Easy

For sale: Beatles recording that led to the biggest mistake in music history

Ravi Shankar and George Harrison - Two Music Legends

Was John Lennon Really a Genius?

Ringo Starr: Solo Beatle's lonely art club brand

Becoming The Beatles

Sir Paul McCartney Gaining Back Rights To His Music in 2018, 2019?

John Lennon Reveals Torture of Beatles 'Let It Be' Album In Tape-recorded Interview Now Up For Auction

The Beatles Visit To Australia 1964 - Powerhouse Museum Exhibition

John Lennon's Childhood Home To Be Auctioned - Update: Sold for £480,000