http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1920294,00.html
By RICHARD CORLISS
Sep. 14, 2009
In a 40th-floor studio above the MTV offices in Times Square, the
Beatles were together again, playing '60s hits like "A Hard Day's
Night" and "Day Tripper." It wasn't exactly that final rooftop 1969
gig at the Abbey Road studios in London, and these weren't the
original moptops. They were us three generations of Beatles fans
sitting in for you and getting to be them.
The occasion was an unveiling of The Beatles: Rock Band, developed by
Harmonix with MTV and Apple Corps, the Beatles' music company. As
with other music video games in the Rock Band and Guitar Hero series,
this one invites players to take the musical parts of their favorite
groups, playing replica instruments and scoring more points as they
reach higher levels of dexterity. But winning is not the goal, as our
group, whose ages ranged from 28 to ... quite a bit older,
discovered. The idea is to form a musical community with your friends
in the basement and the bands you venerate even if, like most of
our group, you've never played a video game before.
On Sept. 9 (09/09/09, for you "Revolution #9" fans), the Rock Band
format takes a giant leap, as fans achieve something novel and, in a
way, precious: not just meeting the Beatles but getting a taste of
how John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr felt
performing their work onstage or in the studio. In the process,
antiquated Beatlemaniacs may be able to forge a bond with kids who
just like good music.
Rock Band is just part of the Sept. 9 Fab Four onslaught. Apple
Corps/Capitol is issuing a box set of all 13 original Beatles LPs,
from Please Please Me to Let It Be, plus the Yellow Submarine movie
score and the two-disc singles set Past Masters. They all sound great
in versions remastered for the first time since the 1987 editions
(which are still fine). Each CD comes with the original album art, a
booklet of new information and rare photographs of the quartet and a
minidocumentary on the making of each album. For truly obsessive
completists, there's also The Beatles in Mono. If you want to hear
how every Beatles song sounded on your (or your dad's or granddad's)
car radio in the '60s and have a spare $298.98, this is the one for you.
Rock Band, though, is the big news for anyone who wants to get inside
the top pop quartet of the 20th century, whether you're an
experienced gamer or not. It arrives with the blessings of McCartney
and Starr, the group's surviving members, and of Yoko Ono and Olivia
Harrison; all were on board to expand and exploit a form that didn't
exist when the Beatles were shaking up the world. Harrison's son
Dhani, 31, helped bring Apple and Harmonix together; Giles Martin,
son of Beatles record producer George Martin, devised intros for the
songs culled from the band's studio banter. Like the Cirque du
Soleil's Las Vegas Beatles show Love, on which both Martins worked,
this Rock Band is a grand, meticulous production meant to keep the
flame burning and the profits soaring. Both MTV and the
music-video-game industry could use the boost: sales in the format
are down 46% this year.
So MTV turns to a band that made records under its own name for just
eight years, at the bright high noon of rock 'n' roll, and broke up
nearly four decades ago. Another anomaly: only in their earliest
gestation, playing in Germany and in Liverpool's Cavern Club with
Pete Best as their drummer, were the Beatles truly a Rock Band. For
40 years and more, that term has been applicable to the Rolling
Stones and their spawn, whose songs are easily reproducible in their
indefatigable concert tours and whose appeal is as much theatrical as
musical. Truth is, the Beatles, even in their touring days, didn't
care much for performing; they couldn't hear themselves play over
their fans' screams. From 1966 on, they were studio musicians, and
when McCartney composed his artful melodies, he often did it not on
guitar but on piano.
Recognizing that the Beatles were more a vocal group than a Rock
Band, the game includes opportunities for three-part harmony, so you
can try out those castrati woooos on "She Loves You." (It's as much
karaoke as music video game.) The 45-song playlist emphasizes
guitar-heavy songs things the Beatles could have sung live. Some of
the most infectious are those early, primitive classics from their
first album, Please Please Me, which was released in 1963. As you
start playing, especially if you're a novice, you may share Lennon's
testy frustration, heard on the earliest of the box-set minidocs.
"Get that bloody little mike out of my way," he grumbles, and
McCartney soothingly replies, "Don't be nervous, John."
The five folks trying out the game at MTV headquarters were nervous
too, though they had varied musical credentials. Christopher
Porterfield, TIME writer and editor emeritus, had played jazz in
college and, as a young TIME staffer in 1964, traveled with the
Beatles on their first American tour. He played bass. On drums was
Leo Sacks, a Grammy-nominated music producer of vintage R&B who is
making a documentary on the New Orleans gospel icon Raymond Myles.
TIME writer Gilbert Cruz, the only participant who knew his way
around the Rock Band platform, took lead guitar. The vocals were
shared by TIME Arts editor Radhika Jones, whose father Robert was a
folksinger in the '60s and whose mom once dined with George Harrison,
and yours truly, who saw the Beatles perform at Philadelphia's
Convention Hall in 1964 and for months afterward affected an
unintelligible Liverpudlian accent.
We got a quick master class from an MTV exec, Paul DeGooyer, and four
Beatle stand-ins, who directed us to "gems" cascading down the
screen. The color of the gem tells you which fret to hit on your
guitar. "If you don't hit it," DeGooyer explained, "you'll hear some
dissonance or you won't hear anything at all." (It's a very forgiving game.)
Chris, Leo and Gilbert assaulted their instruments, which take some
getting used to. After the first song, Chris said, "I'm so
concentrated on getting those notes, and loving it when a note comes
through as it should, that I'm not really into the song. If I did
this for a while, I'd relax a little more and probably miss a few
notes. And it'd be worth it." Same with the vocals. Radhika and I
dutifully read the lyrics passing before our eyes until we
realized, hey, these words are in our muscle memory. Then we could
loosen up and have fun.
We learned that our vocals may not sound as great as they do in the
shower or the car, and in the Beatles' instrumental interludes, we
may not play their guitar as well as our air guitar. Mercifully, Rock
Band doesn't record your amateur Beatling (though an incriminating
video of our session will be available at time.com/video) But even if
your performance is less Beatles than dung beetles, it's hard not to
get into the spirit of the game. Leo told us, "I'm going to be a
first-time father at 52 in a few weeks, and I can really see this as
a wonderful teaching tool in our home." And video-game veteran
Gilbert announced, "I'm going to buy the game the day it comes out."
That's three make it five satisfied customers.
We'll never be zillionaires, or bigger than Jesus, but for one
afternoon, the team from TIME was, kind of, the Beatles. And we felt fine.
.
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