Beatlemania Starts Again
12 September 2009
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Almost forty years after splitting and nine years since last appearing in the charts, Beatlemania is once again poised to grip the western world as the Fab Four prepare to move into the 21st century.
To place the Beatles into context, anyone who is "so two thousand and late" will most likely be familiar with their songs, and have had at least a few years of their childhood or adolescence soundtracked by their sweet pop nuggets and fond memories of them passed down by parents or grandparents.
The younger among us, however - those who cannot remember life without the internet, and have grown up on a musical diet of Take That, Black Eyed Peas, Dizzee Rascal and Coldplay - are unlikely to have shared the same affinity with the popular 1960s 'beat combo'.
But even they can't hide for long, as The Beatles are set for a brand new chart invasion and are also on the cusp of taking the video game world by storm, with the newly released 'Beatles: Rock Band', allowing players to impersonate the group in painstakingly accurate re-imaginings of stages from their career.
Simultaneously this week, 14 of the band's albums have been re-released in a digitally re-mastered and enhanced format, eliminating hiss, improving the sound quality of the originals and bringing the group -John Lennon, Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr and George Harrison - back to the forefront of public consciousness.
Remasters are by no means a big deal usually, a recent collection of Rolling Stones re-masters went by almost unnoticed, but this is the Beatles. While the Arctic Monkeys - one of Britain's most popular bands - sold some 200,000 copies worldwide of their recent album 'Humbug' in the first week of release, the last time a Beatles record came out - a compilation of their number one hits in 2000, '1' - it shifted 3.6 million copies worldwide in its first week.
But we all know records aren't enough in the digital, multimedia age of convergence, which is where 'The Beatles: Rock Band' comes into play. When listening to the greatest rock band isn't enough for you, the only way you can surely take it higher is to become one of them.
With 'Rock Band', the player gets a replica of their chosen Beatle's instrument and the opportunity to play out their hits in painstakingly recreated scenes from throughout the bands career, in which they dominated the pop charts in the UK and US from 1963 to 1970.
The game is so realistic, bassist Paul - one of the two surviving members of the group - gets a little freaked out by it.
He says: "I haven't played it, actually. I'm kind of, you know, looking forward to playing it. My excuse is, I play guitar. I was on the real record. So the idea of pushing buttons and things in time is kind of slightly intriguing for me, but it's actually more interesting to do a show."
So the idea of pushing buttons and things in time is kind of slightly intriguing for me, but it's actually more interesting to do a show
The Beatles always embraced new technologies during their career and their step into the digital world is indeed another leap forward, as the new Beatles game is unlike others in the series or before it. For the game to reach the level of realism required for the trustees of the group's members to agree to it being made and to keep their legacy intact, the developers had to push themselves to a new creative plain at a level of detail far beyond anything they ever have before, and rigidly stick to the band's chronology.
Alex Rigopulos, co-founder of Harmonix, who developed the game, revealed he had specific instructions from Paul.
He said: "He wasn't aloof at all. He really did care about accuracy. There were some ideas we had about mixing and matching times and places that intentionally disregarded historical accuracy, and he put his stake in the ground. He said, 'No. There are some things we can play with, but some aspects of the design we should be true to.' "
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