Release Notes:
On September 9, 2009, after a nearly 22-year wait, digitally remastered
versions of all of the Beatles studio albums will be released, a press
release has confirmed. Each album will feature the track listings and
artwork as it was originally released in the U.K. and come with
expanded booklets including original and newly written liner notes and
rare photos. For a limited time, each of the Fab Four s 12 proper
albums will be embedded with a brief documentary about its making
The rereleases will include the Beatles 12 studio albums and Magical
Mystery Tour as well as Past Masters Vol. I and II, which will be
packaged as one collection. All 14 discs will be available with DVDs of
the documentaries in a stereo box set, and a set titled The Beatles in
Mono featuring 10 discs will also be released
(Look back at the Beatles studio albums and Rolling Stone s stories on
the LPs.)
A crew of engineers at London s Abbey Road Studios have spent four
years working on the remasters using new technology and vintage
equipment, the press release says, in an effort to preserve the
authenticity and integrity of the original analogue recordings and
ensure the highest fidelity the catalog has seen since its original
release
9/9/09 promises to be a huge day in Beatles lore, as it s the same day
The Beatles: Rock Band will hit stores. This weekend brought a bit of
Beatles news, too, as Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr reunited onstage
at a New York benefit for David Lynch s Transcendental Meditation
foundation (see photos here). Preorders for the remasters are already
popping up on Amazon.co.uk. Demand for Beatles remasters has steadily
increased since 1987, when Capitol/EMI first released the Beatles
discography on CD with what many audiophile fans deemed substandard
sound quality compared to the original vinyl
While it seems like other artists remaster their entire catalog every
several years, Capitol/EMI have barely touched the Beatles discography
since 1987, with the exception of 2004 s The Capitol Albums, Vol. 1 box
set, which compiled and remastered the band s first four American
releases in stereo and mono formats. The soundtrack for the Beatles
Love show also gave listeners a brief tease of how fantastic the band s
songs would sound if properly remastered
The Beatles in Mono will include the 10 albums originally mixed for
mono release, as well as two additional discs the press release says
features similar songs to those on the Past Masters compilations. The
mono versions of Help! and Rubber Soul will boast bonuses: the albums
original 1965 stereo mixes, which have not been previously released on
CD, per the press release. The mono collection, like the stereo one
will include all original inserts and label designs, and the CDs are
designed as tiny vinyl replicas
The press release didn t include news regarding a possible deal with
iTunes or another digital-music vendor to distribute the catalog
digitally: Discussions regarding the digital distribution of the
catalog will continue. There is no further information available at
this time, the press release reads. Both Apple Corps. and Paul
McCartney have expressed reluctance to release the Beatles music
digitally until all the albums had been remastered. The solo work of
each of the four Beatles is available on iTunes
