Lennon, McCartney, Harrison and Starr all released solo albums in 1970. Their solo records sometimes involved one or more of the others; Starr's
Ringo (1973) was the only album to include compositions and performances by all four ex-Beatles, albeit on separate songs. With Starr's participation, Harrison staged
the Concert for Bangladesh in New York City in August 1971. Other than an unreleased jam session in 1974, later
bootlegged as
A Toot and a Snore in '74, Lennon and McCartney never recorded together again.
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Two double-LP sets of the Beatles' greatest hits, compiled by Klein,
1962–1966 and
1967–1970, were released in 1973, at first under the Apple Records imprint. Commonly known as the
Red Album and
Blue Album, respectively, each have earned a
Multi-Platinum certification in the United States and a Platinum certification in the United Kingdom. Between 1976 and 1982, EMI/Capitol released a wave of compilation albums without input from the ex-Beatles, starting with the double-disc compilation
Rock 'n' Roll Music. The only one to feature previously unreleased material was
The Beatles at the Hollywood Bowl (1977); the first officially issued concert recordings by the group, it contained selections from two shows they played during their 1964 and 1965 US tours.
[nb 14]
The music and enduring fame of the Beatles has been commercially exploited in various other ways, again often outside their creative control. In April 1974, the musical
John, Paul, George, Ringo … and Bert, written by
Willy Russell and featuring singer
Barbara Dickson, opened in London. It included, with permission from Northern Songs, eleven Lennon-McCartney compositions and one by Harrison, "
Here Comes the Sun". Displeased with the production's use of his song, Harrison withdrew his permission to use it.
All This and World War II (1976) was an unorthodox nonfiction film that combined newsreel footage with covers of Beatles songs by performers ranging from
Elton John and
Keith Moon to the
London Symphony Orchestra. The Broadway musical
Beatlemania, an unauthorised nostalgia revue, opened in early 1977 and proved popular, spinning off five separate touring productions. In 1979, the band sued the producers, settling for several million dollars in damages.
Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (1978), a musical film starring the
Bee Gees and
Peter Frampton, was a commercial failure and an "artistic fiasco", according to Ingham.
After the December 1980
murder of Lennon, Harrison rewrote the lyrics to his song "
All Those Years Ago" in Lennon's honour. With Starr on drums and McCartney and his wife,
Linda, contributing backing vocals, the song was released as a single in May 1981. McCartney's own tribute, "
Here Today", appeared on his
Tug of War album in April 1982. In 1987, Harrison's
Cloud Nine album included "
When We Was Fab", a song about the Beatlemania era.
When the Beatles' studio albums were released on CD by EMI and Apple Corps in 1987, their catalogue was standardised throughout the world, establishing a canon of the twelve original studio LPs as issued in the UK plus the US LP version of
Magical Mystery Tour (1967). All the remaining material from the singles and EPs which had not appeared on the original studio albums was gathered on the two-volume compilation
Past Masters (1988). Except for the
Red and
Blue albums, EMI deleted all its other Beatles compilations – including the
Hollywood Bowl record – from its catalogue.
In 1988, the Beatles were inducted into the
Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, their first year of eligibility. Harrison and Starr attended the ceremony with Lennon's widow, Yoko Ono, and his two sons,
Julian and
Sean.
[263]McCartney declined to attend, citing unresolved "business differences" that would make him "feel like a complete hypocrite waving and smiling with them at a fake reunion". The following year, EMI/Capitol settled a decade-long lawsuit filed by the band over royalties, clearing the way to commercially package previously unreleased material.
Live at the BBC, the first official release of unissued Beatles performances in seventeen years, appeared in 1994. That same year McCartney, Harrison and Starr collaborated on the
Anthology project.
Anthology was the culmination of work begun in 1970, when Apple Corps director
Neil Aspinall, their former road manager and personal assistant, had started to gather material for a documentary with the working title
The Long and Winding Road. Documenting their history in the band's own words, the
Anthology project included the release of several unissued Beatles recordings. McCartney, Harrison and Starr also added new instrumental and vocal parts to two songs recorded as demos by Lennon in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
During 1995–96, the project yielded a television miniseries, an eight-volume video set, and three two-CD box sets featuring artwork by Klaus Voormann. The two songs based on Lennon demos, "
Free as a Bird" and "
Real Love", were issued as new Beatles singles. The releases were commercially successful and the television series was viewed by an estimated 400 million people. In 1999, to coincide with the re-release of the 1968 film
Yellow Submarine, a new soundtrack compilation CD,
Yellow Submarine Songtrack, was issued.
The Beatles'
1, a compilation album of the band's British and American number-one hits, was released on 13 November 2000. It became the fastest-selling album of all time, with 3.6 million sold in its first week and 13 million within a month. It topped albums charts in at least 28 countries, including the UK and US. As of April 2009, the compilation had sold 31 million copies globally, and was the best-selling album of the decade in the United States.
Harrison died from
metastatic lung cancer in November 2001. McCartney and Starr were among the musicians who performed at the
Concert for George, organised by
Eric Clapton and Harrison's widow,
Olivia. The tribute event took place at the
Royal Albert Hall on the first anniversary of Harrison's death. In addition to songs he composed for the group and during his solo career, the concert included a celebration of
Indian classical music, which had significantly influenced Harrison.
In 2003,
Let It Be... Naked, a reconceived version of the
Let It Be album, with McCartney supervising production, was released. One of the main differences with the Spector-produced version was the omission of the original string arrangements. It was a top ten hit in both Britain and America. The US album configurations from 1964–65 were released as box sets in 2004 and 2006 –
The Capitol Albums, Volume 1 and
Volume 2 included both stereo and mono versions based on the mixes that were prepared for vinyl at the time of the music's original American release.
As a soundtrack for
Cirque du Soleil's
Las Vegas Beatles stage revue,
Love, George Martin and his son
Giles remixed and
blended 130 of the band's recordings to create what Martin called "a way of re-living the whole Beatles musical lifespan in a very condensed period". The show premiered in June 2006, and the
Love album was released that November when McCartney discussed his hope that "
Carnival of Light", a fourteen-minute experimental recording made at Abbey Road in 1967, would receive an official release. A rare live performance involving two ex-Beatles took place in April 2009 at a benefit concert organised by McCartney at New York's
Radio City Music Hall, where he was joined by Starr for three songs.
On 9 September 2009, the Beatles' entire back catalogue was reissued following an extensive digital remastering process that lasted four years. Stereo editions of all twelve original UK studio albums, along with
Magical Mystery Tour and the
Past Masters compilation, were released on compact disc both individually and
as a box set. Comparing the new releases with the 1987 CDs, which had been widely criticised for their lack of clarity and dynamism,
Mojo's Danny Eccleston wrote, "the remastered vocals are purer, more natural-sounding and give the illusion of sitting slightly higher in the mix." A second collection,
The Beatles in Mono, included remastered versions of every Beatles album released in true mono along with the original 1965 stereo mixes of
Help! and
Rubber Soul (which Martin had remixed for the 1987 editions).
The Beatles: Rock Band, a music video game in the
Rock Band series, was issued on the same day. In December 2009, the band's catalogue was officially released in
FLAC and MP3 format in
a limited edition of 30,000 USB flash drives.
Owing to a long-running royalty disagreement, the Beatles were among the last major artists to sign deals with online music services. Residual disagreement emanating from
Apple Corps' dispute with Apple, Inc.,
iTunes' owners, over the use of the name "Apple" was also partly responsible for the delay, although in 2008, McCartney stated that the main obstacle to making the Beatles' catalogue available online was that EMI "want[s] something we're not prepared to give them". In 2010, the official canon of thirteen Beatles studio albums,
Past Masters, and the
Red and
Blue greatest-hits albums were made available on iTunes.
In 2012, EMI's recorded music operations were sold to
Universal Music Group. In order for Universal Music to acquire EMI, the
European Union, for
antitrust reasons, forced EMI to spin off assets including Parlophone. EMI was allowed to keep the Beatles' recorded music catalogue, which is expected to be managed in the UK by a newly formed Capitol Records unit of Universal Music. Also in 2012, EMI reissued the entire original Beatles album catalogue on vinyl, available either individually or as a box set.
December 2013 saw the release of another 59 Beatles recordings on iTunes. The set, titled
The Beatles Bootleg Recordings 1963, had the opportunity to gain a 70-year copyright extension conditional on the songs being published at least once before the end of 2013. Apple Records released the recordings on 17 December to prevent them from going into the public domain and had them taken down from iTunes later that same day. Fan reactions to the release were mixed, with one blogger saying "the hardcore Beatles collectors who are trying to obtain everything will already have these."
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