The Beatles Entertainment Art "Love" (Capitol Records) Released November 21, 2006

If you have ever seen Cirque du Soleil you know how amazing they are, and using the Beatles as a soundtrack one can only imagine what a magical mystery tour of a show they have created. For those unfamiliar, Cirque du Soleil (or “Circus of the Sun”) is a modern take on a circus created in 1984 in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. It is a circus performance with humans, not animals, that includes contortionists, jugglers, feats of strength, clowning, and trapeze artists to name a few. The show is very colorful, full of humor and, for lack of a better term, very French.

Listening to “Love” makes you want to jump on a plane and take a red eye to Vegas and catch a performance. The album officially is a collection of 26 Beatles songs that you and your parents have grown up listening to. However, there are little bits here, there and everywhere of other Beatle tunes thrown in as well. The collection could be called a Beatle “mash-up” with parts and pieces of songs mixed into others to make a new and unique way to experience those classic tunes. In the end, “Love” samples 130 songs to create this soundtrack.

The project was originally conceived back in 2000 when one of the founders of Cirque du Soleil, Guy Laliberté, began discussions with the now late George Harrison. With the entire archive at their disposal, original Beatles producer George Martin with his son Giles were kids in a candy store using alternate takes, demos and live performances to create the musical palette of “Love”. The results are subtle at times and obvious at others but with each new listening you discover a familiar bass line, a sound effect or guitar riff from another Beatle tune that you didn’t realized had been sampled in. That’s the fun that happens listening to “Love”.

“Strawberry Fields Forever” begins with John Lennon’s demo that builds into bits of “Sgt. Peppers,” “Piggies,” “Baby You’re a Rich Man,” “Penny Lane” and ends with the outro chorus of “Hello, Goodbye”; before morphing into a psychedelic mind trip mixture of Harrison’s “Within You Without You” and Lennon’s “Tomorrow Never Knows”. It is these moments that “Love” really shines.

The songs are the Beatles', and other than adding a new string arrangement to a demo version of Harrison’s “While My Guitar Gently Weeps”, the Martins are only playing with the original songs as recorded. There is no electronic trickery or distortion. However, you almost get a feeling George Martin was just too close to the material to really let go and just play around with the beats since George and his son seem to stay pretty faithful to the original tunes for the most part. That’s not to say it isn’t a successful project. But one wonders what would have happened if the archives had been handed over to say a Danger Mouse or a PartyBen to play with.

“Love” is certainly a great addition to any Beatles fan collection. Let's face it, who doesn’t like the Beatles and “Love” is a celebration of the talent and genius that were the Fab Four. This may also be a wonderful way for producer George Martin to go out and say goodbye to an amazing partnership he had with Paul, John, George and Ringo. Now handing the baton to his son Giles it will be interesting to see what he does with it and it’s obvious he has big shoes to fill.

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