The Beatles: Rock Band might have been the peak of the plastic instrument boom – a lavish passion project built in tribute to arguably the most influential rock and roll group of all time. The developers at Harmonix were serious about getting it right, and that meant enduring meetings with Yoko Ono where she’d tell them just how much their in-development depiction of John Lennon sucked.
“I would have meetings where it’s like, ‘OK, Yoko, here is our depiction of your dead husband singing this super impassioned song … What do you think?'” studio creative director Josh Randall recalls as part of The Oral History of Guitar Hero, Rock Band and the Music Game Boom, a new book by journalist Blake Hester. An excerpt from that book, in part running down Harmonix’s experience working with Ono, was recently published by Design Room.
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“The thing is, she was totally right,” Randall admits. “I don’t know how this happened – I mean, I know how it happens, because videogames are hard. John was less developed by the time Yoko came to visit us, compared to some of the other band members. He looked like a mopey shoe-gazer guy. He was like this, looking down at the ground. We hadn’t figured out how to depict his personality. And so in this meeting, she’s like, ‘No, he was a tough guy. He could be mean. Like, that’s not him. Who is this guy?'”
“She was holding the development team to a very high standard with respect to how John was represented in the game – as she should have,” CEO Alex Rigopulos says. “She was a tough customer – as she should have been.”
So how did they address Ono’s criticisms? By scrutinizing some footage from the height of Beatlemania – a recording of the group’s legendary 1965 performance at Shea Stadium in New York City.