It seems Paul McCartney was listening, and closely, when a Junkie XL remix of Elvis Presley's 'A Little Less Conversation' topped the charts in nine different countries back in 2002. 'I'd been getting a little bit jealous', McCartney tells Steven Van Zandt. 'I was seeing remixes of, like, Elvis' things coming out - and I was thinking: 'That sounds good, man'. You know, it's still Elvis, but they've put a new beat behind it. I thought: 'I kind of like that'.
To this point, however, McCartney didn't have a ready excuse for such an Elvis Presley-style reexamination of the Beatles' music. Then, a few years later, he was approached about doing a Fab Four-themed Cirque du Soleil production, which eventually became 2006's Love. McCartney, no doubt still remembering Elvis Presley, says he jumped at the chance to oversee a series of remixes - hand picking Beatles producer George Martin's son Giles to do the work.
'I remember me and Ringo (Starr), saying to Giles: 'Look, don't be frightened', because everybody is a little frightened to mess with Beatles stuff', McCartney says. The flamboyance of Cirque du Soleil, and the setting at the legendary Mirage, he adds, inspired them too.
'I thought: 'You know what? There's going to be acrobats flying about everywhere. It's going to be in Las Vegas. It's a crazy idea for a show, anyway. It's going to be very surreal. This might be the first opportunity we've got to mess with Beatles stuff,' McCartney says. 'So, we were encouraging Giles to mash it up. … Anybody who's a purist is gonna worry about it, so you say: 'Go back to the original records. They're there anyway'. But for the show, we encouraged him to mash it - and, I must say, he took the ball and ran with it'.
McCartney has since worked with the younger Martin on his 2013 release New (on which Giles produced or co-produced a half dozen tracks including 'On My Way to Work'), as well as McCartney's current single - a video game-themed track titled 'Destiny'. Turns out, it all started (once again) with Elvis Presley.
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