intothenitrate wrote:If I remember right, the project (LOVE) started with George before he passed away, after he had seen a Cirque de Soleil performance.
Another project that's worthy of mention is the Beatles Rock Band video game. George's son Dhani was behind that. [He's the spitting image of his dad, and a very together guy]. The release of the game [09/09/09] cause quite a stir with my boys, and clinched their fandom. There's an animated promo for the game--a pastiche of imagery set to music clips--that starts with the lads looking like sixties super spies, then some psychedelia, then some Hindi-esque imagery involving elephants. (Sorry, it's been a while since I've seen it but it's stunning.)
Your right, Harrison was friends with the Cirque Du Soleil's founder and he (George) suggested that Cirque could do a show with Beatles songs. At first they were considering doing the show with a live band playing the songs, but it was (thankfully) decided to use the original recordings. Harrison took McCartney to one of the Cirque shows and after seeing it, Paul signed up on to the idea. George Martin was brought on board and he and his son used all of the master tapes, as well as all of the demos and outtakes-- lifting a bass line from here, and a drum lick from there--to create the mashup.
While there was some manipulation of speeds, all of the recordings came from the Beatles' tapes, except for the strings added to a demo recording of
While My Guitar Gently Weeps (George Martin did the arrangement, so it's okay).
While I've never seen nor played
Rock Band, I have heard it, and it's quite fun hearing the simulation of live performances and/or of studio ambience (lots of studio ambience). The music in
Rock Band was also produced by George Martin's son, Giles.
(Your right that Dhani does look just like his father. It's very evident even in the
Concert For George. Now, to me Zak Starkey looks more like Keith Moon than Ringo, which may or may not be why he plays with The Who).
RedRiver wrote:Lennon may have been the creative motivator.
I would argue that Paul was more of the creative motivator, particularly from '66 on.
Sgt. Pepper, Magical Mystery Tour and
Let it Be were his ideas. By '66, the others had moved out of London, but Paul lived right around the corner from EMI Studios. He also mingled with many of the artists passing through London, and they influenced him quite a bit. Long before Lennon, McCartney experimented with tape loops and avant-garde audio (Revolution #9-like), he just never released them.
In the early years, Lennon was the leader, but he himself admitted that he became lazy later on (he was also using a lot of hard drugs), and after Epstein died, McCartney essentially became the band's leader. Nobody, probably even McCartney himself liked that idea, but nobody else was willing to take the helm.
"Let's be independent together." Dr. Hermey DDS