Love (Beatles album)
Love is a soundtrack remix album of music recorded by the Beatles, released in November 2006. It features music compiled and remixed as a mashup for the Cirque du Soleil show Love. The album was produced by George Martin and his son Giles Martin, who said, "What people will be hearing on the album is a new experience, a way of re-living the whole Beatles musical lifespan in a very condensed period."[1]
Love
20 November 2006
1963–1969
EMI, Trident, Olympic and Apple studios, London,
EMI Studios, Bombay and Hollywood Bowl, Los Angeles; mixed 2004–2006 at Abbey Road Studios
78:38 (CD)
79:06 (vinyl)
80:28 (DVD-audio)
86:41 (iTunes)
George Martin
The album was George Martin's final album as a producer before his death in 2016.
Background[edit]
George Martin and his son Giles began work on Love after obtaining permission from Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, Yoko Ono and Olivia Harrison (the latter two representing the estates of John Lennon and George Harrison, respectively).[1] The idea for using the Beatles' music in a Cirque du Soleil production had originally come from Harrison, who died in November 2001,[2][3] through his friendship with the company's founder, Guy Laliberté.[4]
Speaking to Mojo editor Jim Irvin in December 2006, Giles Martin said that he first created a demo combining "Within You Without You" with "Tomorrow Never Knows", which he then nervously presented to McCartney and Starr for their approval. In Martin's recollection, "they loved it", with McCartney saying: "This is what we should be doing, more of this."[5]
In discussing the project, Giles Martin commented that elements were used from recordings in the Beatles catalogue, "the original four tracks, eight tracks and two tracks and used this palette of sounds and music to create a soundbed".[1] Because he was concerned that they might not get the green light to proceed with Love, he began by making digital back-ups of the original multi-track recordings, just to get started on the project. He also said that he and his father mixed more music than was eventually released, including "She's Leaving Home" and a version of "Girl" that he was particularly fond of, with the latter eventually being released in 2011 as a bonus track on the album on iTunes.[6]
McCartney and Starr both responded very positively to the completed album. McCartney said that it "puts The Beatles back together again, because suddenly there's John and George with me and Ringo". Starr commended the Martins for their work, adding that Love was "really powerful for me and I even heard things I'd forgotten we'd recorded".[7][8]
Legacy[edit]
Chris Willman of Entertainment Weekly wrote in 2007: "LOVE really does feel fresh in a way that other latter-day Beatles products like Let It Be... Naked and even the Anthology collections haven't, quite. Freed from the need to adhere to chronology or chart success like the 10-million-selling 1's collection of a few years back, this instantly replaces that uninspired hits set as the album you'd give a kid who needs to discover the Beatles for the first time. It also manages to be the album you'd give the jaded boomer who's hearing these songs for the ten thousandth time."[49]
In 2017, Uncut ranked the album at number 75 in their list of "The 101 Weirdest Albums of All Time".[17]