Tomorrow Never Knows

Wednesday, July 5th, 2006

Some of you may be aware that there is a Beatles authorised Cirque Du Soleil show, “Love”, recently opened in Las Vegas.

Now, regardless of what you think about Blockbuster shows such as this, it’s amazing to find out that for the soundtrack of the show, Sir George Martin and his son Giles, with the blessing of McCartney, Starr, Yoko Ono and Olivia Harrison, have mashed themselves up to provide the soundtrack.

…Mr. Starr’s childlike “Octopus’s Garden” gets a fantastic restructuring that begins with the string introduction to “Good Night” and then places Mr. Starr’s vocal, unaccompanied, in a foggy ambience (using effects from “Yellow Submarine” and drums from “Lovely Rita”) before the full band kicks into the more familiar arrangement. And a juxtaposition of the drum figure from “Tomorrow Never Knows” and the vocal line from “Within You, Without You” creates a link between those mystical songs, recorded nearly nine months apart…

Now, we’ve never used The Beatles as source material for private reasons, but I thought it worth congratulating every remixer and producer that has – I bet none of you thought you’d end up actually influencing the authorised output of the band themselves, did you?

It will be interesting to hear the soundtrack album when it arrives, no doubt, but in the meantime, I can’t think of a higher and more convincing justification of the benefits of remix culture.