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McCartney: Beatles Should Go Digital Next Year

Paul McCartney

November 14, 2007, 11:10 AM ET

Gary Graff, Detroit

As he rolls out a new DVD and expanded edition of his latest album, Paul McCartney is predicting the Beatles' catalog will make its long-awaited and long-desired arrival in the digital realm next year.

 

McCartney tells Billboard.com that "it's all happening soon. Most of us are all sort of ready. The whole thing is primed, ready to go -- there's just maybe one little sticking point left, and I think it's being cleared up as we speak, so it shouldn't be too long. It's down to fine-tuning, but I'm pretty sure it'll be happening next year, 2008."

 

McCartney adds that any delays in bringing the Fabs' music to the Internet have been due to "contractual" issues as well as deliberate planning by all parties involved. "You've got to get these things right," he explains. "You don't want to do something that's as cool as that and in three years time you think, 'Oh God, why did we do that?!"

 

In the meantime, McCartney is giving fans plenty to hear -- and see. "The McCartney Years" is a three-DVD set that features videos and concert footage from throughout his solo career, including newly recorded McCartney commentary tracks and a wealth of rare and unreleased material. McCartney says he was initially not inclined to do a video collection -- "It's almost like your memoirs; you want to wait 'til your sort of done," he explains -- but was convinced by director Dick Carruthers and executive production consultant Ray Still.

 

"They sold me on it," says McCartney, who served as the set's executive producer. "They cleaned up the picture and sound, and I was like, 'Geez, I've never heard it like this. I've never seen it like this,' so I started to get excited. They really did all the work; I just sort of approved and smiled and admired what they were doing."

 

"The McCartney Years" comes out in tandem with an expanded edition of his latest album, "Memory Almost Full." The new version features three bonus tracks -- including a rare instrumental called "In Private" -- videos for the singles "Dance Tonight" and "Ever Present Past" -- and a DVD from his June 7, 2007, concert at London's Electric Ballroom.

 

"We differentiated it from the others so you weren't buying the same thing twice," McCartney says. "It's a completely new album, in a way, and for people who don't have the (original) one, you get the regular album as well. It's nice to do that."

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In 1996 McCartney had tried to release the track on the compilation album The Beatles Anthology 2. But it was George Harrison who voted to reject it: according to McCartney, the reason being was that "he didn't like avant garde music" and felt it was more a John and Paul track rather than a The Beatles song. This, according to some, explains why the instrumental backings of "Eleanor Rigby" and "Within You Without You" appear on Anthology 2 instead.

 

In August that year, McCartney claimed (in an interview for Mojo) that he was working on a photo collage film of the Beatles that was similar to a film made about the Grateful Dead in 1995 called Grateful Dead -- A Photo Film. He was planning to use Carnival of Light in the soundtrack, however, as of 2007, this project has yet to be seen and McCartney has not commented on the film's status since 2002.

 

I don't think I have ever heard it.

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