The Beatles will celebrate the 50th anniversary of Abbey Road, their final recording, with a slew of new offerings in various formats. The new Abbey Road will feature the album’s 17 tracks newly mixed by producer Giles Martin and mix engineer Sam Okell in stereo, high-res stereo, 5.1 surround and Dolby Atmos, accompanied by 23 session recordings and demos, most of which are previously unreleased.
All packages will be released September 27 via Apple Corps Ltd./Capitol/UMe.
Abbey Road’s Super Deluxe box set presents 40 tracks—including “The Long One” Trial Edit & Mix for the album’s epic Side 2 medley—on three CDs (stereo) and one Blu-ray disc (Dolby Atmos, 96kHz/24 bit high resolution stereo, and 96 kHz/24 bit DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1). The four discs are housed in a slip-sleeved 12” by 12” 100-page hardbound book with McCartney’s foreword, Martin’s introduction, chapters written by Beatles historian, author and radio producer Kevin Howlett covering the months preceding the Beatles’ Abbey Road sessions, track-by-track details and session notes, the cover art and photo shoot and the album’s reception upon its release, in addition to an essay by music journalist and author David Hepworth looking at the album’s influence through the last 50 years.
The book is illustrated with rare and previously unpublished photographs—including many taken by Linda McCartney—never before published images of handwritten lyrics, sketches and a George Martin score, Beatles correspondence, recording sheets and tape boxes, and reproduced original print ads. The Super Deluxe digital audio collection presents all 40 tracks for download, purchase and streaming in standard and MFiT formats, as well as in high resolution audio (96kHz/24 bit) for download.
Other formats include a three-LP or two-CD Deluxe Edition, a one-CD or one-LP Anniversary Edition or a one-LP Picture Disc.
In his forward for the anniversary edition packages, Paul McCartney writes, “The Beatles recording journey had gone through many twists and turns, learning curves and thrilling rides. Here we were—still wondering at the magic of it all.”
Rich is the co-author of the best-selling Nöthin' But a Good Time: The Uncensored History of the '80s Hard Rock Explosion. He is also a recording and performing musician, and a former editor of Guitar World magazine and executive editor of Guitar Aficionado magazine. He has authored several additional books, among them Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck, the companion to the documentary of the same name.
