Beatles man 'mixes things up'
2006-07-03 13:42
Las Vegas - Legendary Beatles producer
Sir George Martin knew he was walking on hallowed ground when
he decided to take some of the Fab Four's greatest hits apart
and throw them back together for the first Beatles-approved
live stage show.
The Cirque du Soleil show Love, which opened in Las Vegas
on Friday, was born out of the friendship between the late George
Harrison and the acrobatic troupe's French-Canadian founder Guy Laliberte.
"I knew it was going to be quite tricky. I was planning an
early retirement and then this came out of the blue and I
thought 'don't go into your casket just yet,'" said Martin, 80, the man behind every Beatles album bar one.
"This is the first time that the Beatles have agreed to use
their songs and voices in a live theatre show," he told
Reuters. "It was a question of trust."
No one wanted to make just another tribute show to the band
that changed the face of pop music 40 years ago, so when
Martin, the self-effacing so-called "Fifth Beatle", and his
record producer son Giles Martin were appointed musical
directors, they decided to mix it up a bit.
"It was a dangerous thing to do, but the Beatles themselves
were always pushing the envelope," George Martin said.
More than two years later what they produced is less a
twiddle and a tweak and more of a 90-minute medley of original
Beatles music created by remixing favourite songs, playing drum
solos backward and blending riffs from one tune with another.
Beatles were friendly
Surprisingly, they got the backing of Paul McCartney and
Ringo Starr and the support of Apple - the company the Beatles
started in 1967 and which has so fiercely guarded their legacy
that previous requests for their use in film and on stage have
been turned down.
"I thought the big problem was going to be the Beatles
themselves but they were great from the word go. They all just
wanted things to be as good as possible," said Giles Martin,
who was born in 1969, a year before the band broke up.
The Martins worked from the original master tapes from the
Abbey Road studios to produce a clarity so startling that one
can almost hear McCartney's fingers squeaking along the neck of
his guitar on Yesterday.
"Strawberry Fields" begins with John Lennon's original demo
tape, and Harrison's "Within You Without You" is played to the
drum-track of "Tomorrow Never Knows."
Giles Martin was apprehensive when he showed Starr their
version of "Octopus's Garden."
Digital technology allowed the Martins to experiment in a
way undreamt of in the 1960s when Martin had a four-track tape
recorder and "used to edit with razor blades".
The Martins are now working on the Love soundtrack album
which is likely to bring the Beatles music to yet another new
generation of fans.