3CD collection, enlarging on the inspiration for The Beatles' post-live experimentation.

Providing examples which will cast light on the genesis of such imperishable pop masterpieces as 'Yesterday', 'Tomorrow Never Knows', 'Strawberry Fields Forever', 'Penny Lane', 'Eleanor Rigby' and 'A Day In The Life'.

"The Beatles have developed into the single most creative force in pop music. Wherever they go, the pack follows. And where they have gone in recent months, not even their most ardent supporters would ever have dreamed of. They have bridged the heretofore impassable gap between rock and classical, mixing elements of Bach, Oriental and electronic music with vintage twang to achieve the most compellingly original sounds ever heard in pop music." Time Magazine 1967

"What matters to me is whether the music is good, not whether it's classical or jazz or flamenco." Paul McCartney

"Because we knew that the Beatles wouldn't ever have to play the songs live, there were no creative boundaries." Geoff Emerick, chief sound engineer at Abbey Road

At the end of August 1966, The Beatles gave the final formal concert performance of their career at Candlestick Park in San Francisco.

They were mentally and physically exhausted by the rigours of touring; their weariness compounded by a dissatisfaction at the quality of their concerts, not helped by the relatively primitive sound technology of the time. They therefore decided to retire from public performance in order to devote themselves to working with George Martin at Abbey Road. With their groundbreaking album ‘Revolver’ already in the can, The Beatles were eager to resume their investigations into the new art of pop.

This they did with unequalled originality, a panache that culminated in ‘Sgt. Pepper'; the most ambitious and most successful record album ever issued.

The Beatles' pioneering would involve the assimilation of musical and cultural influences from well beyond the realm of mainstream pop; from modernist composers in the fields of electronics, Musique Concrète and Serialism (Stockhausen, Berio, Cage, Stravinsky, Varese, Schaeffer, Henry and the BBC Radiophonic Workshop); from the Late Romantic and Impressionist eras (Debussy, Ravel, Mahler, Sibelius); from the outer limits of Jazz (Ornette Coleman, John Coltrane, Eric Dolphy, Albert Ayler); from the perfumed gardens of Indian Classical Music (Ravi Shankar, Ali Akbar Khan); from such diverse and singular literary figures as Lewis Carroll, Aldous Huxley and Dylan Thomas to the anarchic Surrealist comedy of The Goons.

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