The Beatles revolutionised music by putting the record centre-stage

Jef Hanlon spent decades at the forefront of live music promotion, putting on acts such as B B King, Chuck Berry, Simon and Garfunkel and Stevie Wonder. But were it not for the Beatles, says Hanlon when I interview him:

I’d probably now be a retired civil engineer living in a nice part of Lancashire … because they opened the door for the northern accents, the northern guys to get down there and do things.

Hanlon came out of retirement to produce The Sessions Live, a “live restaging of the historic recording sessions of the Beatles”, which premieres at London’s Royal Albert Hall on April 1. The complexity of the show is testament to the changes wrought on the fabric of popular music by the quartet and their production team at Abbey Road.

Hanlon stresses that this isn’t a lookalike show with “guys with wigs on their heads and tie-dyed jackets and Cuban-heeled boots”. Instead, it is an attempt to capture the sound and the recording process. It features 45 performers, including seven singers (veterans of previous Beatles shows) to recreate double-tracked vocals, a six-piece band of leading session musicians and a 21-piece orchestra. It also features actors playing technicians, Yoko Ono, recording engineer Geoff Emerick, and, of course, George Martin, the Beatles’s legendary producer.

Source: The Conversation

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