- Title: UNITED KINGDOM: THE FIRST BEATLES WEBSITE IS UNVEILED AT THE ABBEY ROAD STUDIOS
- Date: 9th November 2000
- Summary: CLOSE UP OF WEBSITE
- Embargoed: 24th November 2000 12:00
- Keywords:
- Location: LONDON, UK
- Country: United Kingdom
- Topics: Entertainment
- Reuters ID: LVAGKQ4DFVNBHQUXNI7GHVIQF2G
- Story Text: The FIRST official Beatles website has been unveiled at the world famous Abbey Road Studios in London. The surviving members of the band, and Lennon's widow Yoko Ono have all collaborated with designers to create the most comprehensive site yet dedicated to the Fab Four.
The biggest band of all time have made their first ever official release in cyberspace - www.thebeatles.com.
The innovative new site is linked to the release of a new Beatles compilation album "1", which features all 27 of their UK and US number one singles - and contains both archive material and completely new interactive images.
"There's two main sections to the site, the first section is like a hub section, and there's 27 different singles pages in the hub section, " says Anthony Cauchi, Wthe Website's project manager.
"What you find there is recording materials, sleeves and labels, pictures from each of the single's periods, so you can come on and find out what the band looked like, and what the press was like at the time, and in the charts what was number 2, 3 and 4 when that single was number one, so just the whole experience behind that single, and aside from that, there's 27 new pieces that we have created, interactive pieces, for each of the singles, we're actually going to launch with 10 of these on the 13th, and build them on-line every week so people can come back and find new things.
"These pieces range from Yellow Submarine shoot-em-up games for the younger audience, to the Get Back piece where we have recreated the rooftop concert so you can walk around it and see it from every angle, to sort of brand new promo videos for I Feel Fine and Hard Day's Night, so quite a lot of different things really and different experiences, like a whole museum, or gallery of experiences."
The mammoth project, masterminded by Abbey Road Studios, the recording home of The Beatles, and Apple Corps, the band's company, has drawn on a wealth of international internet talent- and Paul, George, Ringo and Yoko Ono have all injected their creative ideas.
"It's taken a good six to eight months to do really," says Anthony Cauchi.
"What we decided to do was go to one company and say come up with a Beatles site, it's not very Beatles to be in one company in one country, so we actually went to different companies all round the world, in Japan, New York, LA, London, France and said do a section of the site each, so they have actually been working simultaneously on stuff, that way we actually got things done quicker but also go different experiences and different styles of artwork because the Japanese style of web deign is completely different to German, to French, so that make s the site quite different and I think it really works, that idea."
The Beatles have undoubtedly one of the most impressive careers in recent musical history - the joint release of the album and Website comprehensively charts their successes, and development, both musically and visually.
Vice President of EMI International Chris Windle is well aware of the ever-lasting demand for The Beatles : "The biggest catalogue we have, the biggest selling catalogue within EMI world, is The Beatles, and the people that are buying The Beatles today aren't all people my age, so basically what we put together here is an album that reflects their career, of all their huge singles, from the first one to the last one, and gives everyone a real taste of what a fantastic band they were, the music is a fresh and as vibrant today for those newer audiences, which is why we decided we would build the website to give them a lot more information, have some fun with the music, and also get some visual impact from the band."
The official Beatles website - www.thebeatles.com goes on-line worldwide on Monday 13th November.
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