With a brand like ‘The Beatles’ it is virtually impossible for the iconic godfathers of pop to go wrong when this week they release a video a game and remastered back- catalogue of some of the world’s best loved music.

So why now and what next?

The marketing people behind the new play-along video game have been shrewd. Just as with other legendary bands such as Nirvana, Muse and Iron Maiden – all featured on the recently US released Guitar Hero 5, by encouraging players to become part of the band, they introduce timeless pieces to a younger audience.

However, in the Beatles’ case, they go further still… The new game features nostalgic highly detailed backgrounds. That appeals to the older market which will relish in the by-gone era of the Swinging Sixties and psychedelic Seventies.

So with their remastered catalogue – and video game – in one masterstroke they address the failing sales of CDs (making the new versions collectables) as well as grab a new generation of Beatlemaniacs.

Add to all this the rumours of Apple at last releasing downloadable iTune Beatles tracks from classic albums and you have all you need for a new extension to the long and winding road where everyone cant help but say, ‘yeah – yeah – yeah’.

Beatles – Things you thought you knew

There are still Beatles songs unreleased – Carnival of Light and a 27-minute jam of Helter Skelter. A John Lennon composition called Grow Old with Me also remains unreleased.

Lennon and McCartney wrote songs for other artistes such as From A Window (Billy J. Kramer with The Dakotas), One and One Is Two (The Strangers with Mike Shannon), Step Inside Love and It’s For You (Cilla Black), Come and Get It (Badfinger) and Woman (Peter and Gordon).

James is Paul McCartney’s first name.

At the end of Strawberry Fields Forever, Lennon actually mumbles the words “cranberry sauce”.

The only Beatles single to feature another musician on the credit is Get Back/Don’t Let Me Down (credited to The Beatles with Billy Preston).

The BBC banned several Beatles songs – I Am the Walrus (for the use of the word ‘knickers’) and Fixing a Hole, Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds and A Day in the Life (all for alleged drug reference’ LSD’).

The working title for the movie Help! was Eight Arms to Hold You.

Cutouts of Adolf Hitler, Mahatma Gandhi, and Jesus Christ were requested by Lennon for the Sgt Pepper album cover.

Walking out in 1968, Ringo Starr was the first to leave the group. The remaining Beatles each played drums for some of the tracks. When Starr returned, his drum kit was showered in flowers.

The final time Lennon and McCartney played together was at the Los Angeles Hit Factory studio in 1974. The session, which also featured Stevie Wonder and Harry Nilsson, was so awful that the bootleg recording was released as A Toot And A Snore In ’74.

Lennon and McCartney each recorded unreleased demos called India.

The first song ever written by Lennon was called Hello Little Girl. McCartney’s first was I Lost My Little Girl.

Lennon was born on 9 October 1940, Sean, his son, was born 9 October, 1975. He wrote the songs #9 Dream (part of Lennon’s ninth solo album which was released in the ninth month of 1974 and reached number 9 in the US charts) and with the Beatles – One After 909 and Revolution 9.
Lenon was killed in the evening of December 8 when in his birthplace, Liverpool, UK, it was the morning of December 9.
(The release of the newly re-mastered Beatles music comes out on 09/09/09

Jonathan Gabay
Brand Forensics
www.brandforensics.co.uk

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