The Beatles Live Project – possible byproducts
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| The Beatles in Holland |
In 2014, we saw a flurry of new releases from The Beatles/Apple/Universal Music/Calderstone. The US albums on CD, the Japan albums on CD, the mono vinyl albums, the Long Tall Sally EP, what have you. In 2015, so far it looks like everything is geared towards The Beatles Live Project, for which we have no date yet.
As it has presented to us so far, the Beatles Live Project is a documentary about the Beatles’ live years 1963-1966, as seen through the eyes of the fans. It will have amateur footage from the shows, as well as interviews with fans, promoters and the like, in addition to more professionally shot footage of the Beatles in concert.
But the possibilities of releasing material in the wake of the film seems to be too tempting for Universal Music to miss out on the opportunity. And in selecting stuff to include, The Beatles Live Project itself will have digitised and cleaned up a lot of archive material, both sound and picturewise.
Among the material collected by the filmmakers, there are two items Beatlesfans have been complaining about the non-availability for decades: The Hollywood Bowl live album, so far only available on vinyl and cassettes (and 8-track cartridges), and The Beatles at Shea Stadium, so far only having been televised.
It would be foolish not to release these as byproducts of The Beatles Live Project, and they can easily both be made available through iTunes.
Here’s our list of candidates for Beatles releases in 2015:
VIDEO
The Beatles Come To Town – (Manchester, England, November 1963)
The Beatles First US Concert (Washington D.C. February 1964)
The Beatles Sing For Shell (Melbourne, Australia, June 1964)
The Beatles at the Palais de Sports (Paris, June 1965)
The Beatles At Shea Stadium (New York, N.Y., August 1965)
The Beatles at Budokan (Tokyo, Japan June/July 1966)
of these, the Washington is already on iTunes, although only available if you buy the complete Beatles collection.
AUDIO
Live at the Star Club, Hamburg, 1962
It’s The Beatles, Empire Theatre, Liverpool, 1963
Live at the Hollywood Bowl, 1964
Live at the Hollywood Bowl, 1965
The Beatles in concert at the Sam Houston Coliseum, Houston, TX, 1965
Candlestick Park, San Francisco, August 1966 (for historic purposes)
MEMORABILIA
You just know they’re going to cook up SOMETHING for this, the Beatles’ most lucrative business in later years.
The Beatles as solo artists have already published a few videos to iTunes, and as The Beatles, two videos from the Let It Be…Naked project is available.
About The Beatles Live Project:
THE BEATLES LIVE FILM PROJECT will tell the story of the band’s exceptional touring years – from the perspectives of the band, its world, the fans, and their world.
It will examine the impact of those years on each of The Beatles – the toll that touring took on their relationships and the effect it had on their musical evolution, as well as the colossal boost the tours gave to their lifestyle and fame.
But while the band created the spark, it was young people around the world who created the firestorm.
The film will also explore the incomparable electricity between performer and audience that turned the music into a movement – a common experience into something sublime.
I hope that will surface something about the 1965 Uk tour.
To hear Yesterday played with organ would be awesome!
You forget Munich, Germany (June 1966) which is also available, sadly not complete.
Yes, that's the reason I left it out. The six available songs are much better performed in Munich than in Japan
Oh, so is that why you listed "It's The Beatles" under audio and not video? With much of the footage of the performance having appeared on Youtube and elsewhere the last few years, I wonder if Apple has a full copy of the video in their possession.
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The remastered Shea Stadium is said to be fantastic and even better with a soundtrack in full stereo, than the Ron Furmanek remaster that goes around in collector circles. I sincerely hope that if this is indeed released the original (non overdubbed) soundtrack is at least optional.
Minor correction – The Beatles at the Hollywood Bowl was also available on 8-track tape.
Yes, the "It's The Beatles" video tape was unfortunately mangled through the years by editors in training at the BBC. There's some footage that has appeared in later years from other television companies, but none of these seem to have captured anything more than bits and oieces.
Does the two omitted Shea Stadium songs footage still exist?