What The Analagoues have chosen to accomplish doesn’t seem that complicated: they perform songs from the latter part of The Beatles’ career. They do this album by album, each of which they play from beginning to end. However it’s not quite as simple as it sounds, especially in the case of Magical Mystery Tour, which wasn’t really an album to start with.
It was originally released in Europe as a double EP with six songs that served as the soundtrack to the film of the same name. However, the American market wasn’t big on EPs, and six songs weren’t enough to fill a LP. Therefore the singles that the band had previously released in 1967 were added to the original soundtrack, making a grand total of eleven tracks – and it’s this ‘complete’ version of the album that The Analogues bring to life.
It's rather ironic that Magical Mystery Tour, a cut and paste job, was the successor to the first ever concept album (Sgt. Peppers). But this turn of events didn’t bother the press or the public: Magical Mystery Tour was a huge critical and commercial success.
Replicating the exact same sounds that the fab four made in the studio does require a lot of attention to detail, but this brings its own rewards for audience and band alike: just check out the tubular bell that’s brought on stage especially for one part of ‘Penny Lane’. Other highlights include the stunning string and horn arrangements that come to the fore in ‘I Am The Walrus’ and ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’, guitarist Jac Bico’s turn on the flute for ‘Fool On the Hill’, as well as lesser known gems like ‘Flying’ and ‘Blue Jay Way’ that truly take off in The Analogues’ expert hands.
The Beatles; to us, it's modern classical music. We’re The Analogues; we think that you simply can’t achieve a real, authentic sound with digital short cuts. We use the same instruments that The Beatles used in 1967. It’s just different, and better, we think. It’s a lot of hassle too. We have to look for instruments all over the world. You really come across some amazing stories doing this kind of thing. That actually sums up quite nicely what we do: We’re obsessed with creating the perfect sound – but the story behind it is just as important for us.
Check out the pages with an overview of the instruments we used to recreate Magical Mystery Tour and Sgt. Pepper’s!
