BUY NOW FROM CURVEBENDER
Even with a recent wave of new Beatles Anthology material – both on record and in a remastered version of the multi-part documentary on Disney+ – it appears there’s always something new to learn about The Fab Four and the work they did. A newly-announced collectible puts that in extraordinary focus: a collection of score manuscripts from the personal archive of their producer George Martin, covering The Beatles and beyond.
Announced last weekend to mark what would have been Martin’s 100th birthday on January 3, George Martin: The Scores will offer three volumes spanning more than 40 years of his studio work through life-size reproductions of music he orchestrated and annotated in studio sessions with The Beatles and others – kept in his own personal archive and offered with his full cooperation, the project having started before his passing in 2016. (A full list of songs has not been revealed, but manuscripts to The Beatles’ “Yesterday,” “A Day in the Life,” “Strawberry Fields Forever,” “Here Comes the Sun” are included; alongside possible additional material from Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, the group’s self-titled “White Album” and Abbey Road as well as Paul McCartney’s James Bond theme tune “Live and Let Die.”)
The first volume starts in 1965 – when, after years as a staff producer for EMI, Martin formed his own Associated Independent Recording (AIR) – and ends with the recording of Pepper. Volume II kicks off in September 1967 and ends during the recording of The Beatles, while the final volume spans Abbey Road all the way to 2006. McCartney, the Beatle who most frequently collaborated with Martin after their 1970 breakup, has penned a new foreword to the set. New commentary on the works, billed as “accessible even to individuals who do not read music,” are printed throughout; even more exciting for fans, several arrangements have been exclusively re-recorded for this set at Studio Two in Abbey Road, and presented in multitrack form for an in-depth listening experience.
George Martin: The Scores, printed by Curvebender Publishing, will be available in three formats: a standard edition, offering the three volumes in a slipcase and the re-recording multitracks on a USB drive; a deluxe edition, offering the volumes and USB drive in a clamshell box with additional collectibles, including a standalone replica of one of the scores, a conductor’s baton, and a CD/Blu-ray offering the final mixes of the re-recordings and behind-the-scenes footage of their completion; and finally, a “signature edition” which adds to the deluxe edition a page signed by Martin before his passing.
You can pre-order the versions of George Martin: The Scores at Curvebender’s official site; the publisher also announced plans for a 20th anniversary expansion of Kevin Ryan and Brian Kehew’s book Recording The Beatles, their 2006 deep dive into the technical side of the group’s recording sessions, covering equipment, technique and personnel alongside illustrations and unseen photos from the sessions.