Petition for the Beatles at the Hollywood Bowl on official CD format!
Rockestra
the Beatles At The Hollywood Bowl on official CD format...
http://www.petitiononline.com/cap1977/petition.html
To: Apple/Capitol Records
Re: THE BEATLES AT THE HOLLYWOOD BOWL
WHEN RELEASED, IT WAS THE BEATLES FIRST ALBUM TO HIT THE NUMBER 1 SPOT
IN SEVEN YEARS AND WAS TO BE THEIR LAST FOR THE NEXT SEVENTEEN!
The Beatle concerts were historically and culturally important in the
mid-sixties as they struck at the very nerve of what became
"Beatlemania" in the USA. Many Beatle fans flocked to these concerts
just to get a glimpse (and possibly hear?) the Beatles perform. Two
such American concerts were combined together and released on an LP
format by Capitol and EMI known as "The Beatles At The Hollywood Bowl."
The album was released on May 6, 1977 in the UK and made the No. 1 spot
for one week (June 18th, 1977) and charted for 17 weeks on the hit
parade.
In the Beatles Anthology book, John Lennon revered the "Hollywood
Bowl" concert as one of his favorite performances: "The Hollywood
Bowl was marvelous. It was the one we all enjoyed the most. I think,
even though it wasn't the largest crowd -- because it seemed so
important, and everybody was saying things. We got on, and it was a big
stage, and it was great. We could be heard in place like the Hollywood
Bowl, even though the crowd was wild: good acoustics." (page 150)
According to music expert Graham Calkin, "The Hollywood Bowl concerts a
year apart were recorded by Capitol Records using a three-track
recording system. The 1964 concert recording engineer was Hugh Davies
and the 1965 was Pete Abbott which were produced by Voyle Gilmore under
the supervision of George Martin." The idea of releasing the concert
back then were "technically disappointing" said Graham and so the idea
was shelved for a lengthy period. "Finally, the Capitol president
Bhaskar Menon discovered the tapes and asked George Martin to give them
another listen. George was impressed with the electric atmosphere and
raw energy and set to work in January 1977 enhancing and transferring
the performances to modern multi-track tapes. They did no redubbing of
voices or instruments."
As you can see these concert performances are indeed unique. "The
Beatles At The Hollywood Bowl" was an official release which became
part of the Beatle musical cannon. Sadly, though, since the
introduction of digital technology, neither Capitol/EMI nor Apple have
never issued this concert on a CD platform. With the release of "The
Beatles - The Capitol Albums Vol. 1", we feel the time is now right
to raise this issue requesting the Executives at Capitol and Apple and
have them release the "Hollywood Bowl" on CD using the latest
technology. Please give your support by signing the petition which
will be forwarded on to them in due course.
John Whelan
Ottawa Beatles Site
http://beatles.ncf.ca/
