Beatles producer Martin mixes it up for "Love"

Legendary Beatles producer Sir George Martin knew he was walking on hallowed ground when he decided to take some of the Fab Four's greatest hits apart and throw them back together for the first Beatles-approved live stage show.

The Cirque du Soleil show "Love," which opened in Las Vegas on Friday, was born of a friendship between the late George Harrison and the acrobatic troupe's French-Canadian founder Guy Laliberte.

"I knew it was going to be quite tricky. I was planning an early retirement, and then this came out of the blue and I thought, 'don't go into your casket just yet,"' said Martin, 80, the man behind every Beatles album bar one.

"This is the first time that the Beatles have agreed to use their songs and voices in a live theater show," he told Reuters. "It was a question of trust."

No one wanted to make just another tribute show to the band that changed the face of pop music 40 years ago, so when Martin, the self-effacing so-called "Fifth Beatle," and his record producer son Giles Martin were appointed musical directors, they decided to mix it up a bit.

"It was a dangerous thing to do, but the Beatles themselves were always pushing the envelope," George Martin said.

More than two years later what they produced is less a twiddle and a tweak and more of a 90-minute medley of original Beatles music created by remixing favorite songs, playing drum solos backward and blending riffs from one tune with another.

Surprisingly, they got the backing of Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr and the support of Apple -- the company the Beatles started in 1967 and which has so fiercely guarded their legacy that previous requests for their use in film and on stage have been turned down.

BEATLES WERE FRIENDLY

"I thought the big problem was going to be the Beatles themselves but they were great from the word go. They all just wanted things to be as good as possible," said Giles Martin, who was born in 1969, a year before the band broke up.

The Martins worked from the original master tapes from the Abbey Road studios to produce a clarity so startling that one can almost hear McCartney's fingers squeaking along the neck of his guitar on "Yesterday."

"Strawberry Fields" begins with John Lennon's original demo tape, and Harrison's "Within You Without You" is played to the drum-track of "Tomorrow Never Knows."

Giles Martin was apprehensive when he showed Starr their version of "Octopus's Garden."

"It has strings of 'Good Night,' drums from 'Rita Meter Maid,' percussion section from 'Polythene Pam' then into 'Helter Skelter' and then goes into 'Sun King,"' said Giles Martin.

"Meanwhile there's 'Baby I'm a Rich Man' percussion going on in the middle lane. Really the kitchen sink is thrown at that one," he said. "It absolutely floored him (Ringo)."

Digital technology allowed the Martins to experiment in a way undreamt of in the 1960s when Martin had a four-track tape recorder and "used to edit with razor blades."

Martin said the only track in the show that he wished he had 40 years ago was his son's treatment of "Within You Without You" which "I think is fantastic and it should have been on the original Pepper. But Giles wasn't born at the time."

The Martins are now working on the "Love" soundtrack album which is likely to bring the Beatles music to yet another new generation of fans.

"I respect them way more now, having been so close to their music, than I did before," said Giles Martin.

"And your grandchildren," he told his father fondly "have suddenly realized you're cool."