Classic Pop Icons

Today (February 7) is the 50th anniversary of the day that The Beatles first touched down on US soil, beginning a 15-day trip that would change the course of US popular culture.

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The 50th anniversary of The Beatles’ first trip to the US has been celebrated with the release of “The Beatles – The US Albums” 13-CD box set. The collection includes the series of American Beatles albums released by Capitol between 1964 and 1970, each featuring a reproduction of the original vinyl packaging. The CDs have also been re-released individually, with the exception of “The Beatles’ Story”.

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The New Releases page has been updated to include this month’s music CD, DVD and Blu-ray releases from classic artists.

Highlights for January include:

• Bruce Springsteen’s “High Hopes” (14 Jan)
• The 20-CD “The Perfect Elvis Presley Soundtrack Collection” – (14 Jan)
• “20 Feet from Stardom” on DVD and Blu-ray (14 Jan – Not UK)
• “The Beatles – The U.S. Albums” 13-CD box set and individual album releases (21 Jan)
• “The Doors – R-Evolution” on DVD and Blu-ray
• “Small Faces – Here Come the Nice” 8-disc box set (28 Jan)
• David Crosby’s “Croz,” his first studio album in over 20 years (28 Jan).

The download-only collections “The Beatles Bootleg Recordings 1963” and The Beach Boys’ “The Big Beat 1963” will be released on December 17.

Both releases are designed to satisfy European copyright laws. From 2014, the EU copyright protection on sound recordings is extended from 50 to 70 years, but this protection does not extend to recordings that have never been released.

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George Smith reviews the first of Mark Lewisohn’s three-volume biography of The Beatles. “The Beatles: All These Years Volume 1: Tune In” covers the period up to 31 December, 1962.

“Every year seemed like five years,” said Paul McCartney looking back at the pre-1963 period of The Beatles. And so it is that Mark Lewisohn has done an exemplary job of recreating that feeling within his new Beatles biography, the first of a (surely definitive) three-part set. The hefty volume (946 pages) explores the many factors that went to make up the quartet in their Fab Four-mative years. So rich is the narrative that one is often astounded to find when finishing a lengthy chapter that it focused, for example, on a brief three-week period.

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