On a brisk summer evening in Los Angeles, a swarm of geeks fill the University of Southern California's Galen Center for an exclusive—and somewhat surreal—event. It's the day before E3 2009—the conference where the gaming industry previews its most high-profile releases of the coming year. The eager attendees are about to witness an impossible feat: the Beatles, reunited. This magical mystery moment comes courtesy of MTV, here to unveil its gaming division's most ambitious and expensive launch in recent history: The Beatles: Rock Band. This article has been reproduced in a new format and may be missing content or contain faulty links. Contact wiredlabs@wired.com to report an issue. On a giant stage, the iconic opening chord of "Hard Day's Night" blasts from the speakers, and on a billboard-sized screen, the Fab Four, or rather, their youthful, mop-topped, computer-generated avatars, are jamming like it's 1964. The attendees, nearly all born well after John Lennon died, are screaming and clapping like schoolgirls, clearly in the throes of Beatlemania. At the end of the video presentation, the two surviving flesh-and-blood band members, Ringo Starr, 69, and Paul McCartney, 67, take the stage for a surprise appearance. Standing side by side, the pair look slightly befuddled by the moment. For these been-there, done-that rockers, flogging a videogame is a first. "We love the game, it's fantastic," McCartney says. "Who would've ever thought we'd end up as androids?" No one, perhaps, except a few ambitious executives at MTV. For more, visit wired.com/video The Beatles: Rock Band Trailer On September 9, after three years of ardent courtship, tech wizardry, and dizzying legal acrobatics, MTV Games is releasing The Beatles: Rock Band, a multiplayer title spanning the group's entire career. The launch of the game (to be released the same day as a 12-album remastered CD box set) marks the first time the Beatles tunes will be legally available digitally. The game will include 45 tracks to kick things off, followed by additional releases for purchase via MTV's download-to-console service. It's an extraordinary coup for MTV. For years, the Beatles have been the refuseniks of rock and roll, turning down all entreaties, including well-publicized offers from Apple and Microsoft, to make their 24-album catalog—currently available only on vinyl, cassette, and CD—accessible online. The band's resistance is as curious as it is costly: Apple Corps, the company it founded in 1969 as a tax shelter, has undoubtedly missed out on millions of dollars in online sales, causing some fans to find illicit ways to get Beatles music. Yet the band remains one of the best-selling musical acts ever. The release of the Beatles' 1, a remastered compilation album, has sold more than 28 million copies worldwide. In April, McCartney was one of the headline acts at the hipster music festival Coachella, strumming a string of Beatles classics to thousands of under-30 music fans. So, after the Beatles turned away such desirable suitors as Apple and Microsoft, how did MTV persuade the group to make its digital debut via videogame? For starters, the money. While music industry revenue streams are shrinking, videogames offer long-term growth, with a larger chunk of profits for the copyright holder than, say, a standard deal with iTunes. Activision's rival game franchise, Guitar Hero, for instance, has sold 35 million discs, generating more than $1 billion in sales, with acts like Metallica and Aerosmith cutting fat deals for their band-name versions.

It's also a matter of control. Apple Corps is hyper-vigilant about the integrity of the tunes and the threat of piracy. (In 1987, when EMI licensed "Revolution" to Nike, Apple Corps fought unsuccessfully to block the deal.) With Rock Band, users can stream or download songs only through their game console—no importing to laptops or MP3 players. With this unprecedented deal, the execs at MTV Games (and parent company Viacom) are banking on the Beatles version of the already successful Rock Band franchise to give the fading network a boost. "Rock Band is a place we've built for people to gather," says Judy McGrath, CEO of MTV. In other words, The Beatles: Rock Band is rebooting MTV's original concept: getting kids to enjoy music through their TV sets. It all began on a secluded beach. In late 2006, Van Toffler, president of MTV Networks, took his family to a small Caribbean island for a much-needed vacation. It had been a rocky year for Toffler. His longtime friend and colleague Tom Freston had been ousted as CEO of Viacom, and MTV was struggling for ratings. Toffler had created MTV's videogame division in 2005 as part of his larger effort: to expand the network everywhere its audience convened, be that via mobile phones, the Internet, or videogames. One of his boldest moves was purchasing Harmonix, the game development company behind Guitar Hero, to create a similar title for MTV. It was risky: Harmonix would have to compete against its own best-selling game—which is owned by Activision—and hope to catch lightning in a bottle twice. For more, visit wired.com/video Game|Life talks to the creative director on The Beatles: Rock Band about new features. A few days after he and his family arrived, Toffler was invited to lunch by Planet Hollywood founder Robert Earl and ended up sitting next to George Harrison's 31-year-old son, Dhani. Harrison mentioned being exhausted from a late-night bout of Guitar Hero. When Toffler told him about the MTV purchase of Harmonix, Harrison's face lit up: "You know what would be cool. If you made a game that featured the whole band." Toffler was shocked. Harrison had no way of knowing it, but Harmonix was toiling away on Rock Band, which was building on that very idea. Toffler's wheels began spinning. It seemed too insane to contemplate, but what if MTV could get the Beatles on the new game? It would give MTV an advantage over Activision; Rock Band could blow Guitar Hero off the stage. Toffler returned to MTV's New York offices eager to pursue the prospect. He set up a meeting between Harrison and Alex Rigopulos, cofounder and CEO of Harmonix. When Rigopulos arrived at Harrison's home in Venice, California, he was elated to shake hands with the son of rock royalty and anxious about pitching the outrageous scheme. "Wouldn't it be incredible to make a Beatles game?" Rigopulos asked. To his surprise, Harrison eagerly agreed. Soon, Harrison began lobbying his mother, Olivia, and the other Apple Corps shareholders: McCartney, Starr, and Yoko Ono. His enthusiasm was contagious: In summer 2006, Rigopulos and Paul DeGooyer, senior VP of MTV's game division, flew to LA to present a Rock Band prototype to Olivia Harrison and Starr, who loved the game. DeGooyer did a repeat performance for Ono's son Sean Lennon. Rigopulos and DeGooyer still had to meet with McCartney—a task not unlike scoring a sit-down with the Pope. "You don't schedule a meeting with Paul," Rigopulos says, laughing. "You just drop everything and come when he has time for you." In August 2007, the pair got the call. They flew to London to meet with McCartney at EMI's famous Abbey Road Studios. DeGooyer and Rigopulos strapped on their plastic instruments and kicked out the jams. McCartney was friendly and listened closely to their pitch. "We were relieved," Rigopulos recalls. "He seemed genuinely interested." Still, McCartney remained noncommittal. Upon their return to New York, the duo discovered why: Apple Corps was interested in a Beatles version of Rock Band only if it used songs spanning their entire career, a demand that posed considerable—perhaps insurmountable—technical challenges. "They may have thought we would never come back," Rigopulos says. "They thought it was a polite way of saying thanks but no thanks."

Determined, Harmonix pushed forward, offering to craft a sample demo as a means of clinching the deal. To produce a song for Rock Band, however, Harmonix requires access to an original multitrack recording, in which individual instruments are put down on separate channels. But in the early '60s, when the Beatles were cutting classics like "I Want to Hold Your Hand," the band recorded multiple instrumental parts on a single track. Isolating McCartney's bass from Harrison's guitar was no easy feat. Further complicating matters, Apple Corps had given the team only hissing, low-bitrate audio files, which required extra time and care. But they did get a little help from a friend. Jeff Jones, CEO of Apple Corps, suggested they turn to Giles Martin, the son of longtime Beatles producer George Martin, for help. Martin had just completed remixing a series of Beatles tracks for the 2006 album Love (featured in a popular Cirque du Soleil show) and was intimately familiar with the band's master tapes. "The stars just aligned," DeGooyer recalls. "It turned out Giles wasn't booked at that time, and he had the trust and confidence of the Beatles." Martin had discovered a way to isolate the individual instruments and voices using software developed by Cedar, a company based in Cambridge, England. Originally created for audio forensics, the software allowed Martin and the Harmonix team to zero in on the exact frequencies of McCartney's vocals, for instance, and filter out the rest. After weeks in Abbey Road Studios, they disassembled five songs—enough to make the demo. Meanwhile, the first version of Rock Band was released in late 2007, quickly becoming a hit. In a savvy move, MTV made Rock Band as much a sales platform as a videogame, releasing 6 to 10 tracks a week that could be downloaded for a few bucks a pop. David Bowie, Radiohead, Metallica, and the Clash signed on. While overall sales of the game disc lagged behind Guitar Hero's, sales of downloadable tracks now outpace those offered by Activision. In February 2008, Rigopulos, Martin, and DeGooyer presented their five-song game demo to the Harrisons, Ono, and Starr. They got the thumbs-up. Next was McCartney. After they played the demo for him in his London office, McCartney gave them a sprig of lavender in a glassine envelope as a parting gift. Did they have a deal? Was that McCartney's idea of a handshake? DeGooyer and Rigopulos returned to the US and waited. Not long after, they got McCartney's blessing. The Harmonix team had the band; now they needed the rock. Licensing music for games like Guitar Hero and Rock Band is a fairly complicated procedure. Gamemakers pay a chunk of cash upfront to several parties to license both the master recording and the publishing rights to the underlying song. Licensing the Beatles, however, is trickier. The recording rights belong to the band's longtime label, EMI. Most of the publishing rights, on the other hand, are held by Sony/ATV (a joint venture with the late Michael Jackson). Complicating matters even further, additional publishing rights for certain tunes are held by Harrissongs, an independent entity set up by George Harrison, as well as by Starr's publishing company, Startling Music. And that's just behind the music. In order to develop the game's digital doubles, MTV had to license the artists' likenesses from Apple Corps, which meant appealing to the Beatles and their descendants—famous for conflicting views on how to manage the Beatles brand—to reach an agreement. On top of that, the company had to obtain separate rights for any materials it wanted to use for the game's marketing. After resolving the legal aspects, reviewing the demos, and considering a late-breaking offer from rival company Activision, the Beatles officially teamed up with MTV. On October 30, 2008—almost two years after the first meeting on the beach—MTV and Apple Corps issued a statement that the Beatles were coming to Rock Band. The announcement was met with disbelief and envy from the music industry and game companies alike. With the deal complete, Harmonix could finally bring all its resources to bear on the project itself. The September 9 release was less than a year away, and although Martin and Rigopulos had figured out how to marry the Beatles' music to the Rock Band format, the developers still had a long way to go. The original Rock Band let players assume the role of a generic rocker and gradually gain experience and a bigger repertoire, thus accessing more fans, cooler clothes, bigger venues, a larger entourage, and all the other accoutrements of rock-and-roll stardom. "Right away, we realized this wouldn't work for the Beatles," Rigopulos says. "They had all that stuff—fans, money, stardom—almost from the beginning."