Paul McCartney and Wings’ ‘Venus and Mars’ is set to receive a half-speed remaster in celebration of the album’s 50th anniversary. The remaster will be released in March, available from McCartney’s website.
Originally released in May 1975, ‘Venus and Mars’ had the momentous task of following the hugely successful ‘Band on the Run’, released a year and a half earlier. Despite commercial success, including two weeks atop the UK album charts, critics and fans had mixed opinions, with criticism focussed around McCartney’s lyrics.
Jim Bollinger from The New Beatles Fan Club said, “And there’s Paul’s subject matter: who is this man we are or are not supposed to listen to? What do Venus & Mars have to do with a sports arena or a cathedral? Why would Lucifer shine, looking like snow in a Broadway show?” Contemporary reviews have been kinder to the album, with Far Out Magazine describing it as “quintessentially 1970s in tone and feel, yet it never falters.”
‘Venus and Mars’ is always mentioned alongside ‘Wings Over America’, a live album released in 1976. Nine different songs from ‘Venus and Mars’ made it onto the track list of the live album, and some reviews have gone as far as to say that every one of those live versions beats its studio counterpart.
This new remaster has been engineered by Miles Showell, an Abbey Road engineer who is also an expert in half-speed mastering, having worked on many McCartney and Beatles projects, as well as albums from The Rolling Stones and Simple Minds. Listed on the Abbey Road website, some of the highlights of Showell’s work include the 40th anniversary of ABBA’s ‘Arrival’, as well as original recordings such as Dua Lipa’s ‘Illusion’ and the controversial ‘Do They Know It’s Christmas? (2024 Ultimate Mix)’.
The process involves playing back the source material at half its normal speed while the cutting lathe also runs at 16 2/3 RPM, allowing the recording stylus twice as long to carve the groove into the master lacquer, resulting in a much higher quality copy. Showell joked that one drawback is listening to a slowed down version of an album for an hour and half.
The 50th anniversary edition of ‘Venus and Mars’ follows last year’s remaster of ‘Band on the Run’, which was also released as a half-speed master. That reissue included an additional album of “underdubs”—raw mixes of the original recordings before final overdubs and orchestrations were added. John Heaton, a well-known Beatles YouTuber, was full of praise for the bonus album, and Paul McCartney fans will be hoping that ‘Venus and Mars’ gets the same treatment.
The new edition of ‘Venus and Mars’ is currently available for pre-order and will be released on March 21 with a price tag of £35.99. It appears that the remaster will be available exclusively on vinyl, mirroring the ‘Band on the Run’ reissue, which remains available for £29.99. However, if ‘Venus and Mars’ follows ‘Band on the Run’, there’s hope that a digital version will be made available as well.
If this pattern continues, ‘Wings at the Speed of Sound’ could be next in line for a half-speed remaster when it celebrates its 50th anniversary in 2026. The link to pre-order can be found here.
