Cirque Du Soleil - LOVE

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It’s All in the Music
As the new Beatles collaboration with Cirque du Soleil prepares to open in Las Vegas, George Harrison's widow, Olivia, talks about the music, the spats and the 'Love.'

WEB EXCLUSIVE
By Steve Friess
Special to Newsweek
Updated: 5:26 p.m. ET June 23, 2006
June 23, 2006 - The world may seize upon the June 30 opening of the Cirque du Soleil-Beatles collaboration “Love” in Las Vegas as a chance to re-examine the Beatles legacy in all its glory and gossip, but for George Harrison’s widow, it will be a much more personal event. The $150 million surrealist spectacle, scored with an extensive remix of newly digitized Fab Four recordings, was Harrison’s last great idea, so seeing it through has been a bittersweet mission for Olivia since his death in 2001.

Harrison is due to attend the gala opening at the Mirage Hotel-Casino along with the two surviving Beatles, Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr, as well as John Lennon’s widow, Yoko Ono, in a rare reassemblage of the extended, and sometimes dissonant, Beatles family. Harrison, 58, spoke to Steve Friess this week via phone from London about the show and her husband’s legacy. Excerpts:

NEWSWEEK: “Love” came about because your husband befriended Cirque founder Guy Laliberte. How did it all come to pass?
Olivia Harrison: George and Guy met in the 1990s on the Formula One circuit. Guy hosts a party after the Montreal Grand Prix, so George went. George came home and said, “You know, there was a man and a woman sitting in a lake. She had a tuxedo on and he had a ball gown on and they sat at a table all night long having a candlelit dinner with water up to their waist. There were people in feather costumes swinging in the trees like birds.” This really was right up George’s alley. Guy was the visionary and so was George. They had a lot of excited conversations. George instigated a meeting with Paul, George, Yoko, Ringo and Guy. Everyone wanted to have fun, be creative and have someone else be the vehicle for that.

Have you seen the show yet?
I saw one of the first run-throughs and I’m really excited about the whole thing. It’s a big sensory overload. I think it’s a lot to take in. I’d like to see it several more times.

Well, I’m sure there’s always a seat for you.
[Laughs.] Well, it’s funny, because I haven’t even been able to sit with the music yet. I want to listen to the music over and over again quietly, and I haven’t had a chance to do that. They were very careful not letting the music out of Abbey Road [Studios], so we haven’t even had our own copies to listen to.

What parts of the show moved you?
I’m not sure I can be that specific. I tried not to be so personal about it. All of us are so emotionally involved. I tend to look at George’s music, see what they’re doing with that; somebody else might look at some of their songs. I wanted to just see how I felt about the whole thing and I came away feeling that it feels good. You can dissect any show and there will be parts of it you may have had a different vision. That’s the case with this. I might have had a different vision of certain characters that you have in your mind. Everyone has a different concept of what they think something is. That’s how it is with music. [But] I always love to see [George’s] face. I thought it was beautiful.

Was it hard to watch?
Well, yes. I often think, “Would he like it? Is it what he thought it was going to be?” I don’t know. The music is great, and for me, the minute I hear those harmonies at the beginning, it’s so pure right there. It has fantastic moments, it has moments that will probably be improved. Overall, it’s meant to uplift. It’s meant to make people happy, and it does that.

Along with Yoko, Paul and Ringo, you had to approve what producers George and Giles Martin were doing with the music. [Sir George Martin produced most of the Beatles' albums; Giles, his son, is also a noted producer.] The other three were veteran musicians. What guided you?
I have ultimate respect for Ringo and Paul, and I would obviously trust their judgment. I just felt what was up to me was making sure [George] was well represented. From the very first sampling that they did, the one that we all heard in the studio, we loved it. I found it amazing that each one of those elements of the music—the harmony, the guitar part, the drum part—you can pull them apart and put it on something else and each part carried as much character as the whole song.

Since your husband’s death, you’ve become tasked with handling an important legacy. Is it awkward to find yourself his proxy to the world now?
Yes and no. "The Concert for Bangladesh" [album rerelease in 2005], the Cirque thing, some of George’s albums that we’re remastering now for rerelease, are all things he started. So I don’t feel like I’ve yet created anything that doesn’t have his approval. I just feel very privileged. It would be hard for me to see anyone else doing it.

Which song of George’s is your favorite? He must have written songs for you, right?
Yeah, I’m not going to go down that road. I love a song called “Be Here Now.” He wrote songs while he was in the Beatles that didn’t come out until “All Things Must Pass.” I was just listening to one actually today, one line I was saying to Giles, "Why couldn’t you use this," and it was from a song called “It’s All Too Much.” The line is, “Floating down the stream of time from life to life with me.” I find that very comforting.

You’re scheduled to appear at the premiere with Paul, Ringo and Yoko. Do you all get along these days?
Yes, we do. Well, I do. I see all of them. They’ve all been really supportive and I consider them all good friends.

Yoko and Paul. Is it true?
That they have issues? They never, ever talk about each other in a way that’s negative to me.

Las Vegas wasn’t the first choice to host this show, was it?
No. When George was alive, there was a plan to create it here in London. That didn’t happen, and then it was going to be in New York, and of course September 11 happened, and that was a very difficult time. So it wasn’t always the idea, but I think it’s a good place and it’ll be fun.

Did you and George like Las Vegas? Did you go on vacations there?
No. Never. It’s not really our sort of place, to be honest. George and Paul and Heather [McCartney’s now-estranged wife] and I flew in to see [Cirque du Soleil’s] “O” [early in the development of “Love”]. That was the first time I was ever in Vegas.

Has your impression of the city changed since you’ve visited?
I’d rather be in my garden, let’s put it that way.

Why do you think the world is still so fascinated by the Beatles all these years later?
I don’t know the answer to that; they don’t know the answer to that. We all keep asking that question. Maybe it’s just the obvious thing that there’s something in the music that’s very pure that somehow, it is communicating something. It must be. Why else would people still be feeling it like that?

Since this show brings a lot of attention back to the Beatles and their legacy, what was George Harrison like and what do you want people to know about him?
I don’t want them to know anything. And he didn’t really want them to know anything. Everything he was or had to say was in his music. That was it, really. People used to ask him how he wanted to be remembered, and he said he didn’t really care. If they remembered him, fine. If they don’t, that’s fine. But I think they will when they listen to his music.

© 2006 Newsweek, Inc.

It's big-top Beatles, by George
June 30, 2006
Sir George Martin tells Sunanda Creagh how he adapted the Fab Four's music for the circus ring.

A HUGE sheet of white silk engulfs the crowd, pressing softly against their faces. Suddenly, it's pulled forward, forming a mushroom shape as it disappears in the centre of the stage. A trapeze emerges from a starlit ceiling carrying a beautiful redhead dressed in white. She smiles broadly and begins to swing as the familiar strains of Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds waft through the theatre.

If John Lennon was thinking about LSD when he wrote the song, he couldn't have wished for a more psychedelic visual accompaniment than this performance by world-famous circus troupe Cirque du Soleil.

The scene is part of LOVE, a new $150 million production set to the music of the Beatles. The soundtrack has been developed by Sir George Martin, who produced most of the band's albums including the groundbreaking 1967 recording, Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. Working with his son, Giles, the 80-year-old English producer has used the group's master tapes to create fresh Beatles songs for the circus performers to bend, stretch and juggle along to.

LOVE opens in Las Vegas tonight. Paul McCartney will be in the audience, along with Ringo Starr, Olivia Harrison and Yoko Ono. John Lennon and George Harrison will be there too, in digital form at least - brought to life by a 90-minute soundtrack which features previously unheard music, snippets of conversation between the band members and "mash-ups": musical hybrids created from the elements of several songs.

On Good Night, for example, drummer Starr warbles along to a backing track that combines the sound effects from Yellow Submarine and the drums from Lovely Rita. On another track, the music and percussion from Tomorrow Never Knows are sprinkled with the vocals from Within You, Without You. And Martin has embellished While My Guitar Gently Weeps with a score for strings.

"We have been very audacious, but that was our brief," says Martin, at a preview of the show in Las Vegas. McCartney advised him to stretch boundaries, he said, and he was happy to oblige.

Australian fans will get to hear the music later this year when the soundtrack album is released. Martin acknowledges that not all of them will approve.

"I'll probably get a few brickbats for what I have done," he says. "I am changing the holy grail. There are an awful lot of very, very fervent Beatle fans who will say that this is wonderful music that should never be touched. But one of the great burdens about working with the Beatles' music is that it's so well known it becomes elevator music. People don't listen to it any more. What we will try to do with this show is to make the music sound as though it's live and the Beatles are really here."

The LOVE project began six years ago when Cirque du Soleil's founder, Guy Laliberte, met Harrison at the Montreal Grand Prix. Laliberte politely invited Harrison to a party, but didn't really expect him to turn up.

"He was just starting to come out in public again after being stabbed and he was also fighting cancer," Laliberte says.

"He said he'd only stay 30 minutes but he came within the first half an hour and was the last one to leave."

The pair became friends and were soon discussing the possibility of creating a Cirque-Beatles project.

"George told me that his dream, before all the Beatles go, was to make another creation."

Apple Corps Ltd, the record company that represents the Beatles, is notoriously protective of the Beatles brand and has turned down countless collaborative offers since the company formed in 1968. This time, however, Harrison and his wife Olivia, McCartney, Starr and Ono were all on board. After much legal to-ing and fro-ing ("there were a lot of lawyers involved," says Laliberte), the Martins, pere et fils, began work on the music. The Cirque du Soleil director, Dominic Champagne, began designing the visual elements of the show.

"I didn't want to go in the direction of Beatles look-alikes," says Champagne. "I focused on emotional touches rather than historical touches."

In Champagne's world, Lady Madonna is a heavily pregnant black woman, surrounded by yellow-booted helpers doing a frenetic South African gumboot dance. The Octopus's Garden is inhabited by acrobats swinging shooting stars as a fog of dry ice wafts out from underneath umbrellas.

"The thing is we all have our deep memories of the Beatles. This is my Yesterday, this is my Eleanor Rigby. Of course, some people will see this on stage and think, 'Oh, that's not how I imagined it,"' says Champagne.

Few people knew the Beatles better than Martin, who signed the four "cheeky devils" to Parlophone in 1962 and produced all their albums up to 1970's Abbey Road. Does he think Lennon would have approved of LOVE?

"I think he would think about it what Yoko thinks, because they were very close," Martin says. "She's been very supportive, quite critical but in a supportive way. She thinks what we have done is great."

For Martin, whose hearing is fading, the hours spent listening to the Beatles' master tapes brought mixed emotions.

"It was like revisiting the scene of our previous triumphs," he says. "But it was a bit traumatic listening to John talking to me in the studio."

The LOVE project began six years ago when Cirque du Soleil's founder, Guy Laliberte, met Harrison at the Montreal Grand Prix. Laliberte politely invited Harrison to a party, but didn't really expect him to turn up.

"He was just starting to come out in public again after being stabbed and he was also fighting cancer," Laliberte says.

"He said he'd only stay 30 minutes but he came within the first half an hour and was the last one to leave."

The pair became friends and were soon discussing the possibility of creating a Cirque-Beatles project.

"George told me that his dream, before all the Beatles go, was to make another creation."

Apple Corps Ltd, the record company that represents the Beatles, is notoriously protective of the Beatles brand and has turned down countless collaborative offers since the company formed in 1968. This time, however, Harrison and his wife Olivia, McCartney, Starr and Ono were all on board. After much legal to-ing and fro-ing ("there were a lot of lawyers involved," says Laliberte), the Martins, pere et fils, began work on the music. The Cirque du Soleil director, Dominic Champagne, began designing the visual elements of the show.

"I didn't want to go in the direction of Beatles look-alikes," says Champagne. "I focused on emotional touches rather than historical touches."

In Champagne's world, Lady Madonna is a heavily pregnant black woman, surrounded by yellow-booted helpers doing a frenetic South African gumboot dance. The Octopus's Garden is inhabited by acrobats swinging shooting stars as a fog of dry ice wafts out from underneath umbrellas.

"The thing is we all have our deep memories of the Beatles. This is my Yesterday, this is my Eleanor Rigby. Of course, some people will see this on stage and think, 'Oh, that's not how I imagined it,"' says Champagne.

Few people knew the Beatles better than Martin, who signed the four "cheeky devils" to Parlophone in 1962 and produced all their albums up to 1970's Abbey Road. Does he think Lennon would have approved of LOVE?

"I think he would think about it what Yoko thinks, because they were very close," Martin says. "She's been very supportive, quite critical but in a supportive way. She thinks what we have done is great."

For Martin, whose hearing is fading, the hours spent listening to the Beatles' master tapes brought mixed emotions.

"It was like revisiting the scene of our previous triumphs," he says. "But it was a bit traumatic listening to John talking to me in the studio."

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