Love is a soundtrackremix 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]
The album was George Martin's final album as a producer before his death in 2016.
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]
Composition
George Martin at a performance of the Love stage show
Love contains elements from 130 individual commercially released and demo recordings of the Beatles,[9] and is a complex remix and polymix of multiple songs known as a mashup.[10] As described by Alexis Petridis, mashups were popular earlier in the 2000s, with the Beatles serving as popular material; examples included Danger MouseThe Grey Album (2004), on which the producer fuses Jay-Z's rapping with music from the Beatles' White Album (1968), and Go Home Productions' "Paperback Believer", which used the Beatles' "Paperback Writer" and the Monkees' "Daydream Believer".[11] McCartney was a fan of the "bootleg explosion", and hired mash-up producer Freelance Hellraiser as a DJ on his 2004 world tour,[11] leading to the 2005 collaboration Twin Freaks.[12]
Love has also been described as a sound collage.[13][14][15][16][17] According to Neil Spencer of The Observer, the album's 26 tracks "are set in an ambient flow of sound collages",[14] while according to David Cavanagh, Love comprises mashups and megamixes that play "plurally, in collage form", resulting in album that "[flies] in the face of tradition by placing The Beatles in a 21st century sampladelic culture."[17]
"Drive My Car/The Word/What You're Doing" – The medley features the guitar solo from "Taxman" and the horn section from "Savoy Truffle".[22][23][24] The Martins said they also remixed keyboards from "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" and backing vocals from "Helter Skelter" into the track.[25]
"Gnik Nus" – The track contains the vocal arrangement of "Sun King" played in reverse[23] and accompanied by tambura drone.[26]
"Something" (with "Blue Jay Way" transition) – The track emphasises the lead vocal[21] and George Martin's string arrangement on "Something" before transitioning into "Blue Jay Way", which also includes elements from "Nowhere Man".[27] Giles Martin said the portion from "Blue Jay Way" set the mood for the next track, which they created in response to an idea by the director of the Love show for a "macabre Victorian circus".[21]
"Strawberry Fields Forever" – This version builds from an acoustic demo[29] to incorporate sections of take 1 of the song (including harmony vocals that were cut from the edit of take 1 issued on the 1996 Anthology 2 compilation) and take 26.[30] At the end of the track, it includes the orchestral section from "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band", the piano solo from "In My Life", the brass included in "Penny Lane", the cello and harpsichord from "Piggies", and the coda of "Hello, Goodbye".[23] According to author John Winn, part of "I'm Only Sleeping" also appears in the closing mashup.[31]
"Octopus's Garden" – This track contains the string arrangement from "Good Night", sound effects and vocal elements from "Yellow Submarine", and elements from "Lovely Rita", "Helter Skelter" and ends with the beginning guitar riff from "Sun King".[20][23]
"Here Comes the Sun" (with "The Inner Light" transition) – As mentioned by Giles Martin, the track includes tabla and dilruba from "Within You Without You",[21] backing vocals from "Oh! Darling" and a bass line from "I Want You (She's So Heavy)".[34]
"Come Together/Dear Prudence" (with "Cry Baby Cry" transition) – The track contains nearly all of "Come Together", which transitions into "Dear Prudence". It concludes with the vocal part from the end of "Cry Baby Cry", strings from "Eleanor Rigby", and what Giles Martin referred to as the "climax" from "A Day in the Life".[21]
"While My Guitar Gently Weeps" – The track uses a George Harrison demo of the song, previously issued on the Anthology 3 compilation.[21][29] George Martin wrote a new orchestral score for the track, which he described as being his final Beatles string arrangement.[21][35]
Love was first played publicly on Virgin Radio's The Geoff Show. Geoff Lloyd, the show's host, chose to play the entire work uninterrupted, to allow younger fans to experience an album premiere.[46]
The album was released as a standard compact disc version, a two-disc CD and DVD-Audio package, a two-disc vinyl package, and as a digital download. The DVD-Audio disc contains a 5.1-channel surround sound mix (96 kHz 24-bit MLP), downmixable to two-channel. For backwards compatibility it also contains separate audio-only DVD-Video content with two-channel stereo (48 kHz 16-bit PCM) and 5.1-channel surround (448 kbit/s Dolby Digital and 754 kbit/s DTS).
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]
^ abc"101 Weirdest Albums of All Time". Uncut (238): 71. March 2017.
^ abcWillman, Chris (29 November 2006). "Labor of LOVE". Entertainment Weekly. Archived from the original on 6 December 2009. Retrieved 29 November 2006.
^Winn, John C. (2008). Way Beyond Compare: The Beatles' Recorded Legacy, Volume One, 1962–1965. New York, NY: Three Rivers Press. p. 363. ISBN978-0-307-45239-9.
^Winn, John C. (2009). That Magic Feeling: The Beatles' Recorded Legacy, Volume Two, 1966–1970. New York, NY: Three Rivers Press. pp. 69–70, 76. ISBN978-0-307-45239-9.
^"Czech Albums – Top 100". ČNS IFPI. Note: On the chart page, select 48.Týden 2006 on the field besides the words "CZ – ALBUMS – TOP 100" to retrieve the correct chart. Retrieved 17 May 2016.
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