When Elvis sang with the Beatles

All thanks to the magic of editing and copyright clearances.

The Window in the Skies video is a stirring montage that features roughly 100 archival clips of various musicians performing in concert. The footage has been carefully and cleverly edited so that the performances sync up with U2’s lyrics and music — right down to Frank Sinatra conducting the soaring song to its conclusion.

Let other, lesser artistes feature video cameos by one or two of their famous friends. U2 seems to have invited the entire Rock and Roll Hall of Fame to its party, and more than a few folks showed up: Ray Charles, Joe Strummer, Smokey Robinson, Patti Smith, Jerry Lee Lewis, Robert Plant, Ronnie Spector, Roy Orbison. They were joined by some celebrated newcomers, from rapper Kanye West to the Canadian indie-rock band Arcade Fire.

“We wanted to honour these great artists,” says Gary Koepke, the video’s director. “Throughout time, they’ve been playing music and trying to achieve greatness. We wanted to celebrate them and their passion. This video had to happen.” The video’s already a hit on YouTube and VH1.

Koepke had exactly one music video credit on his resume prior to working on Window in the Skies (David Bowie’s Slow Burn). He’s an advertising executive by trade, the co-founder of a Boston agency, Modernista!, which last year teamed with Bobby Shriver and U2’s designated world-saver Bono on their Choose Red initiative to help fund medication for AIDS victims in Africa.

Koepke says the wheels began to spin almost immediately when Bono gave him a copy of a new U2 song intended for a greatest-hits package. “Everybody probably has a different interpretation,” the director says, “but to me, the song is about time and the power of love”.

Somehow, that interpretation led to the idea of a montage of … musicians.

The resulting video features 137 clips, including several Where’s Waldo?-type crowd shots in which the various members of U2 can be seen, if only briefly. There’s also footage of people dancing, people kissing, flowers blooming, and what Koepke calls “the money shot” — an atomic bomb turning into a sunset. But the guest musicians are the stars, their presence overpowering U2 and its featured song.

Jeff Estow, as director of business affairs for Modernista!, spent endless hours making licensing deals for the archival footage and trying to secure permission to use the artists’ likenesses.

In making his pitch, Estow says, he told the musicians’ reps that the video would be “a very tasteful homage to artists from across eras and genres who’ve provided particular influence and inspiration to U2”.

Sinatra’s estate attorney signed off on the project almost immediately (it didn’t hurt that Bono had worked with Sinatra before the crooner’s death). Shortly thereafter, Presley’s estate agreed to allow the singer’s iconic image to appear in the video and provided footage from a 1968 comeback special that synced exceptionally well with Bono’s singing. “Once that happened, we went to other artists and said Sinatra and Elvis are in the video, and things really got rolling,” Estow says.

“There were a few legends we missed, obviously, that we really would have liked to get,” he says. Among them: Bob Dylan, Van Morrison, James Brown, Chuck Berry and Bruce Springsteen. While the Beatles didn’t make the final cut, their representatives approved the project after the deadline, and because, well, they’re the Beatles, the video has been redone to accommodate them. The new version will likely be released this week. And then, Koepke says, that’s it: No more music videos.

“This project took a quarter of a year to finish,” he says. “If I do another one, it will just be a picture of the sun rising and the song playing over it. Very conceptual!”

—J Freedom du Lac / LA Times-Washington Post