Remix of Beatles music due
The first authorized mash-ups of music by the Beatles, created by the group’s longtime producer George Martin and his son Giles for the Cirque du Soleil Las Vegas show “Love,” will be released Nov. 21.
The “Love” album will encompass 26 tracks covering all or parts of 37 Beatles songs that are dissected and recombined in the Cirque show, which opened in June at the Mirage. The standard CD will run 78 minutes, and a DVD surround-sound version will contain 81 minutes of Fab Four music but no video.
The Cirque show has received mostly glowing reviews for its theatrical interpretation of the group’s music and history. It is the outgrowth of a friendship George Harrison developed with Cirque founder Guy Laliberte, and it was Harrison’s wish before he died in 2001 that the Cirque collaboration provide a way for the group and their families to work together one more time.
Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, Yoko Ono and Harrison’s widow, Olivia, agreed to allow the historically tamper-proof music to be revamped by the Martins for the project from the masters.
In one number, Harrison’s vocal from “Within You Without You” is heard over the rhythm track from “Tomorrow Never Knows.” In another, the Martins set Starr’s vocal in “Octopus’s Garden” against the string accompaniment to “Good Night” from the White Album.
“It’s really powerful for me,” Starr said in a statement Tuesday, “and I even heard things I’d forgotten we’d recorded.”
Interest in the Beatles’ catalog was demonstrated when the group’s “1” hits collection from 2000 spent eight weeks at No. 1 on the national sales chart and sold more than 10 million, according to Nielsen SoundScan.
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