Songs are set amid several "environments," starting with the band's scruffy days as leather-jacketed rockers playing the Cavern Club in their hometown of Liverpool, through the swan-song 1969 concert atop Apple headquarters in London.
Avatars of each band member change through the years, from the collarless suits of "The Ed Sullivan Show" appearances through the psychedelicized military uniforms of "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band."
The Beatles' decision to stop touring after 1966 to focus on exploiting the potential of the record studio presented a limitation that the game's developers at Harmonix turned into a creative opportunity to invent "dreamscapes" for many of the later songs.
Those are colorful backdrops, such as a verdant open field in which the group performs "Here Comes the Sun" or a gazebo that turns into a hot-air balloon in the title track from "Sgt. Pepper." Giles Martin also incorporated previously unreleased studio chatter among the group members in many of the songs.
At one point, Harmonix's project leader Josh Randall said it hit him that "these guys don't feel like the Beatles to me. Something was missing. I went back and scrutinized all the footage we'd been looking at for the previous year. That's when I started to realize that when these guys play, there's so much joy that just pours out of them. How do we do that?"
The answer: the creation of new game coding to allow animators more freedom with facial expressions. "We pushed as hard as we could to try to capture a little bit of that spark."
--
Getting in tune
As technically formidable as it's been to create both the CD remasters and the first edition of Rock Band fully dedicated to the music of one act, it's also been a challenge over the years to get consensus among the Apple shareholders.
McCartney, Starr, Ono and Olivia Harrison came together to see George's dying wish for Cirque du Soleil's "Love" come to life. But there was no 40th-anniversary deluxe box set for the landmark "Sgt. Pepper" album in 2007, at least in part because Neil Aspinall, the longtime Beatles associate who headed Apple for decades, reportedly opposed such anniversary commemorations.
Some of the protectionist attitude has lifted, however, since Aspinall stepped down two years ago -- he died early last year -- and former Sony BMG executive Jeff Jones was named his successor.
Jon Polk, a former chief operating officer at Capitol Records who left the label in 2007, this week started shipping "The Beatles Box of Vision," a lavish container he designed for the remastered CDs and aimed at the most ardent collectors. Polk said Aspinall turned the idea down flat when he first pitched it nearly a decade ago. But he got the OK to move ahead recently after "just one breakfast with Jeff Jones." Polk said he's taken about 10,000 advance orders for the $90 item.
Yoko Ono has been highly protective of Lennon's interests in Beatles projects in the 29 years since he was killed. Still, she gave her blessing to The Beatles: Rock Band, which makes liberal use of Lennon's image.
"We all had some input," Ono said. "On a creative level, the Rock Band people did it, but we love what they did. . . . I think Rock Band really is going to change the world in a sense, because it helps make a more musical world. And a more musical world is a more peaceful world."
--
