A Beatles Children’s Song to Sell Alcohol?
OK, OK, I admit it. I like it. At first I thought I was going to call for a ban on Budweiser over their use of the Beatles All Together Now in a beer commercial. But, after watching the ad, I actually like the new version and accompanying video.
Maybe it’s a good thing to keep the Beatles music in front of the masses so it will live forever. Or, does it cheapen the music to use what McCartney says was written as a children’s song to push alcohol? Leave your comments below!
Budweiser had the commercial filmed over 5 days from a regularly scheduled Chicago train. The opening shot of the Chicago skyline looks conspicuously like the opening shot of Liverpool in the Yellow Submarine movie. The beer ad shows a marching band, a bee on a trampoline, football players, cheerleaders, a bride and groom and other characters all over the city, on rooftops and streets spelling out the lyrics to the song.
Budweiser doesn’t have the rights to the recording of the Beatles version of All Together Now, so they enlisted a group called The Hours to record an extremely similar cover version. Their version of All Together Now is similar all the way to the party sounds and ending toy bicycle horn. I guess the song wouldn’t end properly without the little honk honk. The major difference is the lead vocal is a female, but with very Beatle sounding voices singing backup.
Supposedly the group recorded their song in a hotel room using a fire extinguisher banging a radiator for percussion. Sounds very influenced by Lennon’s Give Peace a Chance Bed-In recording session. I have my doubts if it really was recorded in a hotel room. But supposedly there is footage of them recording it. So, I’ll be proved wrong.
The members of The Hours have played with Joe Strummer, Robbie Williams, Pulp, Elastica, Black Grape. They are currently opening for U2 on tour.
The advertising agency behind the creative commercial say they spent 50 hours over 5 days filming the 300 actors from the train attempting to keep everything in sync with the song lyrics. Looks like they did a lot of editing to make it work in the end. Definitely not one long continuous shot, which would have been impressive but near impossible.
The ad took a crew of 125 people and an additional 35 sets along with the natural Chicago backdrop and commuter train.
The ad will appear in the UK on July 4th. I guess as payback for our declaring independence from England, we don’t get to see the ad in the US.
Leave a comment and let everyone know what you think of the Beatles Budweiser commercial…
- Pete the Beatle Geek
Beatles Gifts .com