The Beatles still work eight days a week

The first thing you hear are the screams,” writes Rolling Stone magazine, “which may be the most famous screams in history: fans losing their assembled minds ” and, with that, one of my favourite Beatles albums, Live At The Hollywood Bowl, is finally available on CD and digitally, but it took a movie to do so.

The Beatles: Eight Days A Week – The Touring Years is a documentary directed by Ron Howard (Inferno, Apollo 13, A Beautiful Mind) about the Beatles’ career during their touring years from 1962 to 1966, encompassing their performances at the Cavern Club in Liverpool to their final concert in San Francisco in 1966.

The film was released theatrically on September 15th in the US, and on the following day in the UK with the soundtrack album released on September 9th to support the release of the film. The movie is due on DVD on November 18th, which I have already pre-ordered.

The first time I heard The Beatles At The Hollywood Bowl was soon after its release in May 1977, which was then officially launched only on vinyl. Compiled from two performances by the band at the legendary Hollywood Bowl — located in Hollywood, California — in August 1964 and in August 1965, the album was a huge hit when originally released — peaking at no. 2 in the US, and no.1 in the UK — and now, some 39 years later, history appears to be repeating itself, with this 2016 re-release debuting on the US chart at no.7 (and, in turn, becoming the Beatles 32nd ‘Top 10’ album, although the Rolling Stones outperform them with an amazing 36!), and at no.3 on the UK chart.

Live At The Hollywood Bowl, the CD of which I bought from an online retailer, features the same 13 songs from the “original” release plus four previously unreleased songs, including a version of I Want To Hold Your Hand, You Can’t Do That, Baby’s In Black, which was previously unavailable on an album or as a digital download, and the Beatles rendition of Carl Perkins’ Everybody’s Trying To Be My Baby, a song closer to the Beatles’ heart than you would expect: George Harrison performed the song with Carl Perkins on the cable special Blue Suede Shoes: A Rockabilly Session in 1985, and Paul McCartney, through his MPL Communications, administers the publishing rights of the Carl Perkins song catalogue! The CD also contain a 24-page booklet. The album is produced by Giles Martin, son of the Beatles’ original producer, George Martin.

Although it took until last Christmas to listen to the Beatles’ studio albums on streaming services but, even then, there was still a sizeable gap in their repertoire that did not make it from analogue to digital. However, earlier this year, on April 4, at 12.01 am to be precise, the Fab Four offered a remastered version of their Anthology albums across all major streaming services. Now, of course, arrives Live At The Hollywood Bowl, but there still remains a massive catalogue of unreleased content for streaming.

There is 2003’s Let It Be Naked, a remixed and remastered version of the band’s 1970 album, Let It Be, a project that was initiated by member Paul McCartney as he had always felt aggrieved that producer Phil Spector did not accurately reflect the band’s “stripped-down” intent and, hence, reference to “naked” in the album name at the time of re-release. Love is another Beatles album, the genesis of which occurred in 2006 when Beatles producer George Martin, who passed away on March 8 this year, and his son, Giles Martin, remixed 80 minutes of Beatles music for the Las Vegas stage performance called ‘Love’, a joint venture between Cirque du Soleil and the Beatles’ Apple Corps Ltd.

There is also one of the band’s better compilations, Rock ‘n’ Roll Music, which I had purchased as a double-vinyl disc from the now historic retail outlet, Mumbai’s Rhythm House, in 1976 but, unfortunately, it was never issued on CD.

Several US-released albums (Meet the Beatles!, Something New — of which I have a German vinyl pressing that contains I Want To Hold Your Hand sung in German – Beatles ‘65; all released in 1964, and more) are still not available for streaming but, hopefully, as one of the guarded album bastions gives way with to the release of Live At The Hollywood Bowl, the balance Beatles catalogue should also be streaming soon!

The writer has been part of the media and entertainment business for over 23 years. He still continues to pursue his hobby, and earns an income out of it.