Apple’s Yellow Submarine

Since we first reported about the new edition of the “Yellow Submarine” movie, the story has gone global. One of the sentences in Apple’s press release that has been repeated the most in the media is this one: “Due to the delicate nature of the hand-drawn original artwork, no automated software was used in the digital clean-up of the film’s restored photochemical elements. This was all done by hand, frame by frame”. We think this is old news, and applies to the 1999 release. The “hand-cleaning” process was done already before MGM released it in 1999, so this is probably just a new transfer in higher definition. With any luck, they may have found a better copy of the 1968 documentary about the film, “A Mod Odyssey” for the bonus material this time. Apart from that, it’s just repackaging – but it was necessary for Apple to re-release “Yellow Submarine”, because the 1999 MGM DVD is not available any more in the USA, and the rights to release the film has reverted back to Apple. They should have included the 1999 promo film of “Hey Bulldog”, though.

The original 1968 “Lady Madonna” promo film

When the Beatles recorded “Hey Bulldog” back in 1968, they were being filmed and the film footage was used to create a promotional video for their latest single at that time, “Lady Madonna”. Some bright head found that the footage could be recompiled to reflect the song that they actually recorded, and in their PR campaign in 1999, the then press officer at Apple, Geoff Baker, came close to state that “Hey Bulldog” was actually a new discovery. It was really just an old film that finally had been married to the correct song.

The 1999 promo film for “Hey Bulldog”

In 1999 it was used to promote the new edition of “Yellow Submarine” and broadcast by several TV stations, but it was not included as a bonus clip of the video release. Possibly because it was released by MGM and not by Apple, but this time around it would have been nice of them to include it.

One other thing I’m concerned about, is the re-release of the 1999 accompanying album to the film, “Yellow Submarine Songtrack” in remastered form. Upon it’s original release, “Yellow Submarine Songtrack” was praised by many fans, not because it was another compilation of the songs from the film, but because the songs had been dramatically remixed. The 1999 remix gave the songs a more modern stereo picture because instruments and vocals were rearranged and made them sound fresh. The Beatles sounded up to date, and fans thought that this method of thinking was going to be applied for the rest of The Beatles’ catalogue of recorded material. Not so. The year after, The Beatles released their greatest hits compilation “1”, and used those same old sixties stereo images. Only once in the aftermath has the Beatles songs been remixed again, and that was for the mash-up project “Love”.

We are hoping that the remastered version of “Yellow Submarine Songtrack” will either remix the songs again (Paul’s vocals on “Eleanor Rigby” was slightly out-of-synch with the backing, they can fix that) or that the previous remix will be kept or duplicated. If they decide to revert the album back to the sixties stereo image, it will just be another insignificant compilation of songs.  The album has the following songs:

1. Yellow Submarine

2. Hey Bulldog

3. Eleanor Rigby

4. Love You To

5. All Together Now

6. Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds

7. Think For Yourself

8. Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band

9. With A Little Help From My Friends

10. Baby You’re A Rich Man

11. Only A Northern Song

12. All You Need Is Love

13. When I’m Sixty Four

14. Nowhere Man

15. It’s All Too Much

Back in 1999, it was released both on CD and vinyl, and also came as a yellow coloured vinyl LP.

Technical details for the DVD/Blu-ray release in Europe:

Yellow Submarine [DVD, Blu-ray] contains the film lasting 89 minutes in the original format 1:66-1, completely restored in 4K.

Audio:

English DTS 5.1

German DTS 5.1

Italian DTS 5.1

English Dolby Stereo

Original Mono

Audio Commentary – Heinz Edelmann (Artistic Director) and John Coates (Producer)

Subtitles: English, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, Polish, Finnish, Japanese.

Bonus features:

“Mod Odyssey” documentary [duration: 7:30]

Original Trailer [duration: 3:30]

Storyboard:

Sea of ​​Monsters [duration: 4:20] – Battle of the Monsters [118 images] – Pepperland [64 images]

Interviews: – Paul Angelis (Ringo’s voice and the head Blue Meanie) [duration: 1:39 ]

Clive John (voice of John) [duration: 2:03]

David Livesey (animations) [duration: 1:11]

Millicent McMillan (assistant to Heinz Edelmann) [duration: 1:12]

Jack Stokes (Director of animations) [duration: 3:42]

Erich Segal (co-writer) [duration: 1:38]

Original drawings [29 images]

Behind the scenes photos  [30 pictures]