The Beatles at the Hollywood Bowl is still the black sheep of Fab Four albums

After being out of print for more than 30 years, the sole official Beatles live album is being reissued. Are there better ways to add to the band’s legacy?

The Beatles at the Hollywood Bowl is the black sheep of the Fab Four recordings. The new, expanded reissue announced this week marks not just its first time as a digital album, but also its first release on CD. It’s been out of print for decades and, even when it was available, it was the only Beatles album that wasn’t kept at a premium price point – in 1984, seven years after its first release, EMI sent it to its budget Music for Pleasure imprint, the traditional home of the baffling album by a major artist that it couldn’t justify charging an arm and a leg for. It was deleted the following year.

The new release, which adds four tracks not released first time round, is being billed as “an entirely new release”. Capitol Studios had apparently discovered some three-track tapes in its US archive that were better than the versions in London, and Giles Martin, son of George, who has overseen the album, said: “Technology has moved on since my father worked on the material all those years ago. Now there’s improved clarity, and so the immediacy and visceral excitement can be heard like never before.”