The Beatles: Rock Band

• 1. Introduction

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  The Beatles: Rock Band arrived in stores on the 9th of September 2009, a date chosen with deliberate intent: it was the same day that newly remastered compact disc versions of the Beatles' albums hit shelves worldwide. No song by the Beatles, nor even a cover of a Beatles song, had ever appeared in a Guitar Hero or Rock Band title before that day. The game asked a simple but audacious question: what if you could step inside the music itself? What followed was a two-year collaboration between a game developer, a legendary band's company, and the surviving members of the most scrutinized catalogue in pop history. How did it come together? What did it take to make Ringo Starr's drumming playable on a plastic kit? And why did the creators choose a fantasy version of the Beatles over a historically accurate one?

• 2. A Luncheon That Changed Everything

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  The idea for The Beatles: Rock Band began not in a boardroom but at a holiday luncheon in 2006, sponsored by Robert Earl. MTV had recently acquired Harmonix, and MTV president Van Toffler happened to be seated near Dhani Harrison, son of George Harrison. Dhani already knew the Guitar Hero franchise, and when Toffler mentioned the new Rock Band plans, Dhani floated the idea of a game built around the Beatles. Both men considered it unlikely to ever happen. But the conversation sent Dhani to Alex Rigopulos, Harmonix's president, and then to Apple Corps, the Beatles' company, where the shareholders were Olivia Harrison, Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, and Yoko Ono. Harmonix built a five-song demo, including an early build for "Here Comes the Sun", and finished it in February 2008. That demo was the key that brought McCartney, Starr, Ono, and Olivia Harrison formally aboard as creative partners. One stipulation the shareholders set from the start was that the game span the band's entire career, a requirement that would shape every decision that followed.

• 3. Rescuing the Master Tapes

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  Harmonix needed something that did not exist: isolated audio tracks, or "stems", for each instrument in every Beatles recording. When a player misplayed a guitar note, only the guitar audio could fall silent; the rest of the band had to keep playing. The earliest Beatles recordings, made on two-track and four-track equipment, were never designed with that kind of separation in mind. The team recruited Giles Martin, son of Beatles producer George Martin, who had recently co-produced the 2006 remix album Love with his father and had created digital backup copies of all the original tapes during that project. At Abbey Road Studio 52, Martin and engineer Paul Hicks used audio forensics software to isolate individual instruments by filtering specific frequencies. The process reportedly took months. Apple Corps was so protective of the high-fidelity remasters that Harmonix worked only with low-fidelity versions during programming and note charting. The high-fidelity tracks were not handed over until the final stages of publishing, a precaution against unauthorized samples leaking into remixes. Even the live recordings required creative intervention: Martin felt some of them were too sloppy to be enjoyable to play. He took studio versions and layered audio effects from the live performances on top, constructing what he called a "live concert" ambiance. In some instances the endings of songs were slightly restructured, particularly tracks that originally faded out.

• 4. Building the Band in Pixels

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  Art director Ryan Lesser described Apple Corps' early responses to Harmonix's character designs as "brutal". The shareholders had strict ideas about how the four Beatles should look, and the development team spent considerable time iterating on their depictions before gaining approval. Reference material came from Apple Corps' own archive, from personal photos provided by the shareholders, and from the eight-part documentary The Beatles Anthology, which Harmonix designers watched on a weekly basis. Motion capture for the animated characters was provided by tribute band The Fab Four, and Dhani Harrison assisted directly with modeling for character animation. McCartney had hoped for hyper-realistic detail; Harmonix began instead with exaggerated cartoon-like designs and scaled them toward realism over time. Reconstructing the venues required the same forensic care. The Ed Sullivan Show set was recreated from photographs and video, including a rare color photograph in Apple Corps' archive that revealed the yellow tint used to enhance the image on black-and-white television sets. The Cavern Club, Shea Stadium, the Budokan, and the rooftop of the Apple Corps Headquarters were among the other venues reproduced. Twenty of the game's on-disc songs were paired with "dreamscape" sequences tied to the Abbey Road venue, reflecting the band's studio-only years. For inspiration on those sequences, Harmonix turned to Cirque du Soleil's interpretation of the Beatles catalogue in the Love stage show. Yoko Ono visited the Harmonix offices late in development to provide critical feedback on several visual elements, a moment that MTV's senior vice president Paul DeGooyer and Harmonix head Alex Rigopulos described as "a high point of the two-year development process".

• 5. The Soundtrack and Its Limits

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  Forty-five songs from twelve Beatles albums recorded during their 1963-1970 tenure with EMI Records appear on the disc, plus six non-album singles and the mashup "Within You Without You/Tomorrow Never Knows" from the 2006 Love album. Track information, with the exception of Magical Mystery Tour, was drawn from the British-released versions of the albums. The game's downloadable content added full albums: the remaining songs from Abbey Road, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, and Rubber Soul. "All You Need Is Love" appeared first as downloadable content, with $1.40 of its $2 price donated to Doctors Without Borders. It launched as an Xbox 360 exclusive on release day and within two weeks was announced as the fastest-selling downloadable song across any Rock Band platform. By the end of September, it had been downloaded more than 100,000 times, and by February 2010, had generated over $200,000 for the charity. Harmonix spokesman John Drake explained why the catalogue did not expand further: every additional song required a trip to Abbey Road, use of the original tape, and the separation process that cost thousands of dollars per track. On the 5th of May 2016, Harmonix ceased downloadable content distribution entirely after the license expired, though prior purchasers retained access to their downloads.

• 6. Promotion and the Agreement Behind It

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  The game was first publicly announced on the 30th of October 2008, when Harmonix, MTV Games, and Viacom revealed their exclusive agreement with Apple Corps. The announcement followed 17 months of negotiations, with the legal firm Eversheds, which also worked for Apple Corps on the abandoned Disney remake of Yellow Submarine, spending six months alone on the copyright, trademark, and publishing paperwork. Viacom's deal with the Beatles' property owners included royalties with a guaranteed minimum of $10 million, rising to as much as $40 million based on initial sales projections. Sony/ATV Music Publishing chairman Martin Bandier described the sum as "not even comparable to anything that has been done before". Gameplay footage was revealed publicly for the first time on the 18th of April 2009, during Paul McCartney's performance at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival. At E3 2009, on June 1, McCartney and Starr took the stage at the Microsoft press conference to discuss the game. The television advertisement, featuring the song "Come Together" and a live-action recreation of the Abbey Road album cover, premiered on the 28th of August 2009. Director Marcel Langenegger built an Abbey Road set in a Hollywood studio and blended archival footage of the Beatles into the video. Body doubles, vetted by the Apple Corps shareholders, appeared in some shots. On September 8, the night before release, Dhani Harrison appeared on The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien, performing "Birthday" alongside O'Brien, Tonight Show web manager Aaron Bleyaert, and band member Mark Pender.

• 7. Reception and Sales

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  Critics greeted The Beatles: Rock Band with widespread acclaim. Seth Schiesel of The New York Times called it "nothing less than a cultural watershed". Randy Lewis of the Los Angeles Times described it as a "quantum leap forward for the music video game". Johnny Minkley of Eurogamer called it "the new standard by which all band-specific game experiences will be judged". The three-part vocal harmony system, a feature new to the Rock Band series, drew particular praise. Critics found fault mainly with the game's brevity, noting that most of the content could be completed in a few hours, and with the absence of cross-compatibility with other Rock Band titles. Some reviewers also noted that the game deliberately omits certain historical figures, including former member Pete Best and collaborators such as Billy Preston and Eric Clapton. Viacom CEO Philippe Dauman reported that one quarter of the game's inventory sold in its first week alone. In the United States, September 2009 NPD Group data showed sales of 595,000 units across all platforms, generating between $59 million and $60 million in revenue. As of December 2009, Harmonix stated the game had sold more than 3 million copies worldwide. In an October 2010 interview, Harmonix president Alex Rigopulos described sales as "respectable" and confirmed the game had sold "well over three million units", though it had not surpassed other Rock Band titles. The game won Best Music Game at the 2009 Spike Video Game Awards, was named Family Game of the Year at the 13th Annual Interactive Achievement Awards, and was included in the book 1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die. Its opening cinematic won the 2009 British Animation Award for Best Commissioned Animation and a Silver Clio Award in the field of Television/Cinema/Digital Technique.