YELLOW SLICK ROAD

Yesterday: the Fab Four resurface in Yellow SubmarineTram 109 to Mont Albert seems a strange place to advertise a Liverpudlian band that folded almost 30 years ago.

But the Beatles are on course again to prove their unparalleled marketability with the Yellow Submarine project.

With last week's simultaneous release of a CD, video and DVD, the Fab Four present their finale for the century with the resurfacing of Yellow Submarine.

The original 1969 album included only six Beatles' songs from the film and a B side of instrumentals written by Parlophone producer George Martin.

The remastered and remixed album - the Yellow Submarine Songtrack - has dumped the instrumentals to include all 15 songs from the animated film, which premiered at the London Pavilion on 17 July, 1968.

It was met with some bemusement, even by the Beatles, who had little involvement in its making.

A psychedelic swirl of fancy, the film is the story of music loving Pepperland, which enlists the help of John, Paul, George and Ringo against the Blue Meanies.

Restorers had to deal with a film negative full of dirt and scratches. At MGM Studios, computers removed the glitches and recoloured the original. Though the film was considered way out for its time, its soundtrack was a primitive mono that lacked the depth heard in modern feature films.

Digital remastering has resulted in a cleaner, more vibrant sound. Treble and bass extremes have much greater clarity - the string quartet on "Eleanor Rigby", for example, seem so much closer.

George Harrison's "It's All Too Much" sounds fantastic - the sound engineers have provided a greatly improved stereo soundscape with more distinct instruments.

"I loved the sound," Ringo Starr says. "Paul (McCartney) and I went over to Abbey Road to hear the mix and it was exciting. It was like hearing it all for the first time, it's so clear now."

George Harrison admits feeling the film was "a little cheesy" when he first saw it.

"It probably looks a bit more cheesy to me because it's from 30 years ago, but at the same time it's pretty cute," Harrison said.

A boon to Beatlephiles is the inclusion of the long lost sequence of "Hey Bulldog", which, for some unexplained reason, was included in only the early US prints of the film.

McCartney reckons this song is a classic example of John Lennon nonsense.

"One of the things I liked about John's songwriting style is its quirkiness... I think "Hey Bulldog" is very surreal," he says.

A clip for "Hey Bulldog" has also been made based on studio footage from 1968.

"It makes a really cool video," McCartney says.

"I like the bit when I'm harmonising with John and he says something about a dog and I just start barking."

"The spirit of that session is brought back by the recording. It's a very cool riff, I think the lyrics are great and I think my dog impression is terrific!"

The Yellow Submarine Songtrack's 15 tracks are from five albums, the earliest being "Nowhere Man" and "Think For Yourself" from 1965's Rubber Soul.

There are four tracks from Sgt. Pepper and three from the Revolver album of 1966.

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