Coming out Friday, November 10th, are remixed and expanded editions of the famed Beatles compilations "1962-1966" and "1967-1970," aka "The Red Album" and "The Blue Album."
They follow last week's release of "Now and Then," the final Beatles song, made from a John Lennon home demo from the late 70s that was considered for "The Beatles Anthology" in 1995 and finally finished thanks to new technology developed by Peter Jackson for the "Get Back" docuseries in 2021. Giles Martin, who co-produced the recordings, tells us that "Now and Then" was what led to the revamped compilations:
"We did 'Now and Then' and we had that and then there was discussion about 'What do wo do with 'Now and Then. So from that conversation it went, 'Why don't we just celebrate the 'Red' and the 'Blue' albums 'cause it's 50 years of that. They've got most of the tracks we're talking about anyway. So the delay in this ['Now and Then'] coming out was the fact we remixed the 'Red' and the 'Blue' albums." SOUNDCUE :22 OC: 50 years of that
The "Red" and "Blue" albums came out on April 2, 1973. The former debuted at No. 3 on the Billboard 200, the latter at No. 1. Both have been certified Diamond for sales of more than 15 million and 17 million copies respectively.
For the new editions Martin created new mixes for nearly 40 tracks and added nine songs to each album — with "Now and Then" as the last track on the "Blue" album.
Martin — son of George Martin, the Beatles' longtime producers — has been working with the band since 2008, when he created mixes for The Beatles: Rock Band game.
His other projects have included "1+" 50th anniversary editions of "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band," "The Beatles" (aka "The White Album") and "Abbey Road," "Get Back" and last year's "Revolver: Special Edition." He's also worked on reissues for the Rolling Stones and Elton John.