Release Date and Formats Revealed for Beatles Expanded ‘Sgt. Pepper’ Reissue
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Details have started to emerge as the Beatles prepare an expanded 50th anniversary reissue of 1967’s Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band – including the extra content, a release date and information regarding various formats.
A sprawling six-disc Super Deluxe Edition is being offered, as are two-CD, two-LP and single-disc configurations. Confirmed among the extras are “previously unreleased sessions takes” that “capture the band in the studio as the album was made,” according to the above promotional video.
The super-deluxe edition is specifically promising “100 minutes of of outtakes, many previously unheard and unreleased,” as well as a special mono mix that features six extra tracks, including a “lost” version of “Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds.” The set is rounded out with DVD and Blu-ray versions of a documentary on the making of Sgt. Pepper plus 5.1 surround sound and hi-res stereo mixes, a 114-page booklet, two posters and a replica insert from the original album release.
The video also confirms that the Beatles have restored both “Strawberry Fields Forever” and “Penny Lane,” two standalone singles recorded during the same sessions. George Martin, the Beatles’ longtime producer, was once quoted as saying that releasing those two tracks four months before the arrival of Sgt. Pepper, rather than including them in the original running order, was “a truly terrible mistake.”
George’s son Giles Martin helped oversee this much-anticipated reissue. He comes with his own Beatles-related credentials, having remastered 2016’s Live at the Hollywood Bowl. He also collaborated on the Cirque du Soleil production Love, the George Harrison documentary Living in the Material World and on Paul McCartney‘s most recent studio album, New.
The Sgt. Pepper Super Deluxe Edition is listed for $149.98, while the others range from $18.98-$38.98. They all share the same release date of May 26, 2017.
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