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May 13, 2005
May 13th: This Day In Beatles History
May 13th is a significant day in the history of the Beatles. In Steve Matteo's book on the Beatles' final album "Let It Be" from the Continuum 33 1/3 series, he mentions that the group posed for their famous photo in the EMI stairwell that reprised an earlier photo from their Please Please Me album on May 13, 1969.
All four Beatles gathered in the stairwell at EMI House, at Manchester Square, for a photo shoot for the cover of an album that was still going to be called Get Back. The photo was taken by Angus McBean, who in February of 1963 had photographed the Beatles in the exact same pose and location for the cover of Please Please Me, which, of course was only released in the UK. As it turned out, the shot was not used for the released Let It Be album. Instead, it appeared on the cover of The Beatles 1967-1970 (the Blue Album), a double album released in the U.S. in 1973.
The furry-faced and hippified Beatles looked quite different from the fresh and youthful young lads of the Please Please Me cover photo.
Steve Moss, whose photo is shown above, took the concept a little further. He merged the 1963 and 1969 stairwell photos together in Photoshop.
May 13, 1970, marked the day that the film version of that album Let It Be premiered in America, almost a month after Paul McCartney announced the Beatles break-up in a press release for his McCartney album. And that ends this installment of "This Day In Beatles History."I had so much time on my hands that day that I decided to try to combine the 2 pictures, putting the young Beatles on the balcony above the older Beatles. First, I scanned the two covers on my housemate's scanner and brought them into Photoshop. Deciding to work with the Blue album's cover as my main image, the first thing I realised I had to do was match the colors on both covers - the photo on the Blue cover is balanced more toward more blue than white, and the Red cover's is conversely redder that white. Having done that, I had to correct for angle and scale on the Red cover, rotating it slightly and shrinking the young Beatles down to fit on that upper balcony. Then came the key: rather than simply joining the two pictures along a cut line, the image you see is 90% the Blue album's photo. After sizing the 1962 Beatles down and positioning them properly, I removed every part of that picture EXCEPT the Beatles themselves, leaving them floating in place. A large part of the remaining work lay in placing them believably into the shot, adding shadow and reflections where they would naturally go. After that, I took pieces of the Red album's photo (the ceiling and a few actual balconies) and merged them into the shot, correcting for perspecive changes (the depth of field on the 2 photos are very different). To finish it off and enhance the blending, I added a slight, fading red tint to the upper half of the photo so that toward the top of the image it would more closely match the palette of the Red album. That was pretty much it.
Posted by timothompson at May 13, 2005 04:30 PM