All Together Now by Adrian Wills

In 1966, after deciding to quit their frenetic worldwide touring, The Beatles - guided by almighty arranger and producer George Martin - started to spend all their time in the Apple studios. Here they experimented with all kinds of cutting-edge recording tricks, developing their expressiveness and touch. Most of the band’s masterpieces actually come from these sessions.

A new, colourful world populated by weird characters and surreal images slowly emerged. Fuelled by LSD, meditation trips to India and peace movements, the golden guys’ discography went on to become a kind of audio manifesto of the decade. It seems then somehow appropriate that 40 years later the world-famous Cirque du Soleil was creating a huge Fellini-esque stage show (entitled ‘LOVE’), in honour of their legacy. All Together Now is essentially a ‘making of’ film following the long, hard preparation for the show. Yet it can also be more valuable for real fanatics, as it demonstrates to what extent every dramaturgic choice by LOVE’s creators was dependent on the approval of the surviving heroes and inheritors of the Beatles’ odyssey.

So, here come the sun (circus), featuring a hoary George Martin and his trainee son, a moderately immodest Paul McCartney, a young-at-heart Ringo and two nit-picking widows.

Alberto Angelini