Love - The Beatles Album Review

Album Review

All you need is LOVE to make your Beatles collection complete. Week commencing December 3 it’s at number 5 after two weeks on chart.

Endorsed by surviving members Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr and widows of George Harrison and John Lennon, legendary Fab Four producer George Martin was commissioned to re-work their back-catalogue for Cirque du Soleil.

If proof was ever needed that Martin is the greatest producer of all time – then this is it. Tampering with the past can be dodgy business, but it has to be said that this is UNBELIEVABLE. Co-produced with son Giles Martin, they’ve effectively dusted down the originals and perfectly made them adaptable for the Las Vegas show. Some might say it’s just a mash-up of originals which it is; nevertheless the overall work is another masterstroke by the Martins. Having seen a production by Cirque du Soleil in Manchester, I can see exactly how it would fit their magnificent artistic creations. Choosing songs principally from their hippy period, including hit song and album tracks they elected to

ignore most of their early period except I Want To Hold Your Hand (’63) Help! (’65).

Opening with the a capella Because (featured in the flick American Beauty) it lays the perfect template for Cirque to lead into a thumping

Get Back with its misleading Help! intro which thrusts into a belting 1 minute 20 seconds of Glass Onion followed by Martin’s sensitive and emotion drenched string prefix of Eleanor Rigby. I Am The Walrus is typical Lennon at his best…’Cookoo cactchoo’ to perfection which is something CdS will have a ball with. Neatly dropped in, is I Want To

Hold Your Hand complete with dubbed hysterical fans. Further in, the lead to Something, a reversed Sun King – Gnik Nus – is yet another clever bit of fiddling, bringing the Harrison classic to greater heights than the original. Bursting out of the drippy – hippy splash is Help! as it goes out to remind us of the swinging 60s. By now you’re sure to be tingling with emotion – as I am right now. A pinch of Blackbird fuses into Yesterday. Then it’s back to the ‘Summer Of Love’ as Strawberry Fields Forever takes us all retro as does the psychedelic Lucy In The Sky with Lennon doing some deft vocal dexterity. The hand-clapping intro to Lady Madonna is magnificent as The Fab Four go Ba Ba Ba Ba, clunk click … Lady Madonna. Haunting tabla sequences bring new life to Here Comes The Sun, one of their most memorable songs ever, segued by the funky stripped pub rocker Come Together that eventually flows into rasping rockers Revolution and Back In The USSR.

Following the blistering crescendos, it goes downbeat – Harrison’s While My Guitar… A Day In The Life (voted best Beatles song ever) and anthemic Hey Jude with Macca singing out of his skin. Closing, there’s the seamless join of St.Pepper’s, going right into hippy anthem All You Need Is Love leaving us in awe at its wonder.

Ok, so we’ve heard it all before , but not quite like this.

Next stop – Las Vegas !

Elly Roberts