Las Vegas Weekly

September 9, 2009 · 10:09 AM

Beatlemania: Music re-release, Rock Band, Love at The Mirage

By Robin Leach

Ghost Whisperer stars Jennifer Love Hewitt and Jamie Kennedy pose for photos with the cast of The Beatles Love at The Mirage.

Photo: Ana Dobrijevic

The story that begins today actually started nearly 50 years ago -- yes, it’s taken that long and is now possible thanks to modern technology! Back in the 1960s, when John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr recorded their Beatles hits, recording mastermind George Martin worked with regular tape spools and had to edit using a razor blade and sticky tape!

For Cirque du Soleil’s Beatles Love at The Mirage, George and son Giles converted every audiotape ever made by the Liverpool lads into digital remasters. So when you settle into the luxury theater seats, you listen in your seat in stereo to the music that only two of The Beatles ever heard!

Today, the entire collection of Beatles albums is being rereleased in the new digital form worldwide. Fans in Australia, Asia and both Eastern and Western Europe will now hear what we’ve taken for granted at the nightly show on the Strip! Every audiotape ever made with the genius foursome has been preserved, including their conversations between takes and those false starts along the way.

The incredible skaters of Love at The Mirage.

The biggest music video game ever also is being re-released today. The Beatles: Rock Band will now have the digitally remastered tunes, too, and will sell in its different versions for Wii, Xbox and PlayStations from $60 up to a boxed set complete with replicated guitars and mics for $750.

The old and new recordings are stored underneath The Mirage theater and -- under tougher security than Fort Knox -- are off-limits to everybody because of the value into the multi-millions. However, Giles has allowed such rockers as Fergie, Aerosmith, ZZ Top and Mick Fleetwood and stars Tom Hanks, Quentin Tarantino and Juliette Lewis in look at the sound board where those tapes were transferred into digital form for the remastering. Yes, even Sir Paul went through it in wonder.

Incidentally, this re-release today in the new digital form will benefit Michael Jackson’s estate more than The Beatles still living and widows Yoko Ono and Olivia Harrison. Michael purchased The Beatles catalog years ago as a business investment and had used it over the years as collateral for many of his large bank borrowings.

Photo: TVT

Ringo Starr is shown here in June 2007 with members of the Love cast at The Mirage, site of the Fest for Beatles Fans.

I haven’t heard the new sounds, but Giles told me once when he gave me a tour of his basement studio facilities at The Mirage, “It’s as if the boys were standing and playing right in your own home. It’s exactly the way my father’s ears heard it all those years ago, and until we began work on Love, we only had the old tapes to listen to.”

Robin Leach has been a journalist for more than 50 years and has spent the past decade giving readers the inside scoop on Las Vegas, the world’s premier platinum playground.

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