The Beatles are set to celebrate the 50th anniversary of their landmark 1967 album Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band with a series of special edition releases featuring 34 previously unreleased recordings.
The new editions will include mixes in stereo and 5.1 surround audio, with rare session tracks, video features and new packaging.
The edition’s Super Deluxe Boxed Set will also feature the previously unreleased and restored 1992 documentary film, The Making of Sgt. Pepper.
The announcement was made in London on Tuesday morning, ahead of the release of the special editions on May 26 and the June 1 anniversary.
This is the first time Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band has been remixed and presented with additional session recordings, and it is the first Beatles album to be remixed and expanded since the 2003 release of Let It Be . . . Naked.
Surviving Beatle Paul McCartney has written a new introduction to the anniversary edition in which he says: "It’s crazy to think that 50 years later we are looking back on this project with such fondness and a little bit of amazement at how four guys, a great producer and his engineers could make such a lasting piece of art."
His fellow Beatle Ringo Starr said: "Sgt. Pepper seemed to capture the mood of that year, and it also allowed a lot of other people to kick off from there and to really go for it.”
The album is newly mixed by Giles Martin, the son of late Beatles producer George Martin, and Sam Okell in stereo and 5.1 surround audio and expanded with early takes from the studio sessions.
For Record Store Day on April 22, a limited edition seven-inch vinyl single of The Beatles’ Strawberry Fields Forever and Penny Lane will also be released.
