Music review: The Beatles, live at the Hollywood Bowl

The Beatles. Photo supplied by Studio Canal

In just three hours all 17,526 tickets to the Beatles concert at the Hollywood Bowl on August 23, 1965, sold out.

Their last live concert, save for the gig they performed on the roof of the Apple building as they were breaking up, was just a year later, at San Francisco's Candlestick Park.

This is a re-packaged and re-engineered version of material first released back in 1977, but really there's no comparison, thanks to today's technology and a hunger to give a better sound by the set's producer, George Martin's son Giles.

The first thing you realise is just how TIGHT, John, Paul, George and Ringo sound.

I guess not surprising, given their well-documented apprenticeship in the notorious clubs in Hamburg between 1960 and 1962, and then their hectic touring schedule following their breakthrough single Love Me Do in late 1962.

This schedule saw them traverse the UK, followed by three massive tours across the Atlantic, and to Australasia.

Live at the Hollywood Bowl in this format also delivers an additional four songs from the 1977 version, 17 tracks in total.

It's an excellent representation of where the Fab Four were at in 1965 and 1966, with the hits that Lennon and MacCartney had co-written, along their favourite covers from the likes of Little Richard, Chuck Berry, the Isley Brothers and the Shirelles' Boys sung, of course, by Ringo.

This is a pivotal album in rock history, and with the new production allowing us to better hear the band over the audience's screaming, it's pretty darn special.

More-so if you get to see the Ron Howard produced rock-umentary Eight Days a Week, which has also just arrived at cinemas.

- Tony Nielsen