The number “9″ was a favorite of John Lennon’s (n.b., “Revolution 9,” “#9 Dream”), so it’s quite fitting that The Beatles’ record company is releasing the first major updating of The Beatles’ CD catalogue since the discs were first released twenty years ago on 09-09-09, or this Wednesday, September 9th.
Box sets with the entire band’s original recorded output in stereo and another one in mono are coming out that day, each painstakingly remastered with technology not available when the CDs first hit the ears of Fab Four fans in the late 1980s.
To give you a sampler platter of these reissues, WYEP will play one song from the stereo remasters each hour from 6am to 6pm on Wednesday. We’ll select a dozen of the most interesting songs with updated sonics and let you taste for yourself.
Allen Klein, the brash music mogul whose five-decade career included stints as the business manager for the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, died Saturday in New York. He was 77.
Klein died after a lengthy battle with Alzheimer’s disease, according to Bob Merlis, a spokesman for Klein’s ABKCO Music & Records. The independent label owns or controls the rights to music by the Rolling Stones, Sam Cooke, the Animals, the Kinks, Chubby Checker and Bobby Womack, among others.
John Lennon once called Klein “the only businessman I’ve met who isn’t gray right though his eyes to his soul.” George Harrison concurred in a way, saying “Because we were all from Liverpool, we favored people who were street people.” Klein co-produced Harrison’s Concert for Bangladesh with the Beatles guitarist. Klein also co-produced a 1971 movie, Blindman, which featured Ringo Starr)
Klein’s hardnosed tactics, however, managed to alienate himself from his clients in a haze of acrimony. The Rolling Stones fired him as manager in 1970, sparking lawsuits back and forth. Lennon was Klein’s major champion within The Beatles, but by 1974, Lennon was so disenchanted with Klein that he unleashed his trademark vicious wit on Klein in the song “Steel and Glass.”
Watch Klein’s persona satirized in The Rutles’ All You Need Is Cash parody (and note that one of the henchmen to the Klein character, Ron Decline–played by John Belushi–is new Senator Al Franken):
