The Beatles – remastered box set – any good?

I’ve been offline for about three or four hundred years now, mainly because Sky are morons. Now, if you’re reading this and you work for Sky, please don’t take that as a personal affront – but Sky are morons. And if you’re one of the people I or Sarah spoke to trying to set our phone line up, you actually are a moron. Anyway – what better way to welcome myself back online, I thought, than a Beatles blog. And what more appropriate and topical Beatles blog could there be than a full scale epic review of the recently released re-mastered CDs. I bought mine in a giddy rush during a lunch break and proceeded to spend every journey to and from work for the next two weeks listening avidly back through the world’s most famous back-catalogue. And I thought there might be like-minded Beatles fans out there who are concerned about whether or not it would be worth it to buy these CDs when they already own every last thing the Beatles ever recorded, like I do.

There are a number of problems with reviewing something like this, and the main one is that Beatles fans can’t resist a good opportunity to eulogise the band, and I will try and avoid that – but at the same time I make no apologies whatsoever for the times that I do it. The Beatles are my favourite band, and while they occasionally curled out a steamer (see my earlier blog on that topic), and it’s arguably fair to say that they never made an album without a fairly rubbish song on it, when they were good, they were really very very good.

Another problem is that this is a re-mastering, not a remixing. The Love album from a couple of years ago was remixed, and it was (to my humble ears) a revelation. But this is just the exact same songs in the same order that they’ve always been. So there’s relatively little to say about it. It sounds loads better, and so you should buy it if you like the Beatles. But that wouldn’t do as a blog. So, let’s begin at the beginning.

1962 – 1970, The Beatles release studio albums and however many singles it was. Lots of people like them, swinging 60s, love and peace, drugs and psychedelia, bigger than Jesus, blah blah, good good. Oh, all albums are released on LPs. They think they can be businessmen and set up Apple. They fail miserably. They fall out a lot and get bored of each other, and split up so George can do meditation stuff, John can live with Yoko, Paul can live on a farm, and Ringo can go country, and mental.

1970 – 1980, everyone keeps asking the Beatles if they will reform, and they say no. They slag each other off in songs. All release at least one good album, and at least one stinker. McCartney forms Wings, has mental success. Lennon doesn’t really do anything consistently, Harrison meditates and runs out of material and Ringo goes country, then goes mental. Loads of Beatles compilation albums come out – they are largely rubbish.

1980 – John Lennon is murdered outside his home. People are sad.

1981 – 1987 – People miss John. Other Beatles respond to sad loss by being terrible at music, a lot.

1987 – The Beatles catalogue is mixed for Compact Disc, which is a new-fangled technology. People who bought the LPs are very cross, because the sound is a bit drudge, and they start bemoaning the lack of quality and “how dare they, this is the Beatles and blah blah” and all the rest.

1996 – Beatles Anthology is released. New songs are recorded. They are great. Albums of old out-takes are released, they’re mediocre. TV show is put together, it is rubbish – well, apart from the first episode. Harrison and McCartney pretend they like each other, it’s clear they don’t. Ringo talks in half Scouse, half American accent, McCartney bobbles his head, Harrison appears remarkably chirpy for someone who didn’t want to do it, Lennon’s absence is hugely conspicuous. Beatles fans rush out and buy it, and go “don’t they look young” at the old footage of the band in the cavern. They do.

1997 – 2008 – Everyone babbles on about the Beatles, swinging 60s, love and peace, drugs and psychedelia, bigger than Jesus, blah blah, good good. George Harrison dies, which is sad. He and McCartney make up which is nice. McCartney suddenly remembers how to be a brilliant songwriter and makes good albums again. Ringo randomly gets a monk on about signing memorabilia and posts a message online about peace and love while simultaneously showing neither to anyone.

2009 – The Beatles Rock Band is announced. Beatle fans can’t work out if this is selling out or not. Music critics decide John would not be happy. People who actually knew him say he would. This annoys most people, as it is mind-numbingly irrelevant. Giles Martin is son of George Martin, Beatles producing genius. Giles Martin realises that there have been 20 years of technological progress since the CDs last came out. Like a genius, decides to remaster the original tapes so they don’t sound gash. They are released, I buy them.

And here we are!

And so, onto my opinions about the CDs. Well, first of all, there isn’t much of a notable improvement in the early albums, but there was never going to be. Their first album was recorded in a day, using absolutely no studio techniques, so in terms of an adventurous sonic landscape, there’s not much to work with. Also, the songs aren’t really very good. Even George Martin admits that when he first met them, it was their attitude and energy that attracted him to the band, not the fact that they were any good at song-writing, because they weren’t. And all the remastering in the world can’t hide that fact. But of course, if you’re going to end up being lauded for the speed and dexterity of your songwriting development – you have to have a starting marker, and from Please Please Me, while it isn’t true that the only way was up, they certainly didn’t have to move mountains to improve. The quality is undoubtedly clearer than it was on the 87 issue, but really if you can tell the difference, then you’ve been listening to too much Beatles. I noticed the difference immediately. This is true for Please Please Me, With The Beatles AND A Hard Days Night – although those albums do showcase a genuinely meteoric rise in quality of songwriting, performance, studio knowhow, musicianship and delivery – they were still recorded on rubbish 4 track, and while the quality again is noticeable, there isn’t any kind of revelation in terms of what you can hear and how it’s been cleaned up.

But then along comes Beatles For Sale – and the difference suddenly becomes truly apparent. The murky quality of this tired and rushed album has been polished to a beautiful shine – and in fact, listening to Rock and Roll Music and Kansas City is like hearing new songs. The rest of the album is quite obviously better, and there are points when it feels like new material – and it’s fabulous. Not the best album originally, and not the best now either, but at the very least you can hear it as it was meant to be heard. Once you’ve dispensed with the first 4 albums, you get on to the most critically acclaimed period in the band’s history. Now, there was nothing wrong with Rubber Soul, Revolver and Sgt Pepper in 1987, but it is great to hear them sounding so sharp, with the instrumentation coming more to the fore. Ringo was oft maligned as a drummer, even by Lennon at one point (when asked if Starr was the best drummer in the world, Lennon famously replied that he wasn’t the best drummer in the Beatles) – and while that may have been hilarious and cheeky, people seem to have jumped atop that bandwagon with all the hurried enthusiasm of Daily Mail readers when they want to blame foreigners for something, complain about something they didn’t hear on the radio or lament the loss of Princess Diana. But listen to the way that drummers (or in fact anyone who understands music) talk about Ringo. Hushed tones, my friends – and on these albums we start to see why. The rhythm section that he formed with McCartney (who is another under-rated musician in my opinion) is remarkable, and it is brought right to the fore here. In a time before click tracks and Pro Tools, Ringo was the glue that held that group together, and you can hear his effectiveness as a drummer finally get the airing it deserves. Peace and Love.

That being said, Ringo also sings sometimes, and it’s no exaggeration to say that the only way you could remaster “What Goes On” and “Yellow Submarine” into listenable tracks is if you wiped the tape completely. And they haven’t. It’s too bad, because they were awful before, but now they’re crystal clear awful.

Sgt Pepper is disappointingly un-different. I don’t know quite what I was expecting, but it didn’t quite deliver. That being said, it’s a brilliant album which is suddenly much better to listen to, and you can’t argue too far with that.

The White Album was always a bit of a sprawling mess, and again, the remastering doesn’t help it much. The Beatles could be excused below-par material on their first album since it was their first album and nobody knew what below-par really meant for the band, but by 1968 they really should have known better. Not only are some of the songs absolutely awful, but actually the whole album resembles something that was recorded in a skip, with little or no effort paid to mixing, and in some cases, tuning. This isn’t solved by the remastering, and I suppose it’s right that it isn’t – after all, if you start messing too much with levels etc, you run the risk of remixing it, and while that wouldn’t necessarily be a bad idea, it isn’t the point here. BUT – for every Bungalow Bill, there is a Blackbird. If McCartney ever wrote a more endearing love song than “I Will”, I’d like someone to play it to me. Now it is as clear as the Indian day on which it was written, and can’t be flawed really. Helter Skelter retains its near violent hysteria and is all the meaner and more virulent now. The arrangement of “Good Night”, already lush, takes on new dimensions. Revolution 9 is still a bit of a mauling, but a bit of tape cleaner was never going to change that sad fact. This album was always one of the murkier in the Beatles canon – partly because the band were getting stroppy with each other, and so couldn’t be bothered, and George Martin left because he got sick of them fighting and so the production gang was effectively the youth team. But the best of a bad job has been made of the album and the sound is about as good as you could hope for – and it’s a relief for someone who has always been ambivalent about the White Album.

Yellow Submarine is a strange album to add to the canon – most of the songs on it had already been released, and the second side is entirely made up of instrumentals by George Martin – which are actually very nice to listen to, but still seem a bit odd. The songs that we hadn’t heard before should really have stayed that way. All Together Now, Only A Northern Song, and It’s All Too Much add nothing but a sense of atypical sloth in terms of songwriting and production. I suppose it all needs to be covered in the catalogue, but if you’re going through the albums, just listen to the second half of this one. I love the Beatles dearly, but little on God’s earth could entice me to listen to this album again. When you only made 13 albums, and are considered one of the greatest bands of all time, then a half-arsed selection like this shouldn’t be among your offerings.

Let It Be has already been remastered, and remixed into a new album – the fan-dividing-but-nevertheless-let’s-be-honest-now-it’s-absolutely-loads-better-than-the-original-except-for-maybe-I’ve-Got-A-Feeling-but-other-than-that-it-is Let it Be...Naked. So the only new things we really get to hear on this album are Maggie Mae and Dig It – and who cares about them anyway? They were terrible the first time and they’re terrible now. So, nothing wrong with it, but nothing amazing either. I was struck on re-listening to the album just how good the title track is. Just an aside there.

Abbey Road has always been a pleasant listening experience. In fact, I would probably have rated it as my favourite Beatles album before the remastering, and that opinion is only enforced by the updated version. I never hated Maxwell’s Silver Hammer as much as everyone else (including every Beatle that wasn’t McCartney) does – or Octopus’ Garden either for that matter, being as it is about three million times better than Starr’s other compositional credit, Don’t Pass Me By. As for the other songs, McCartney’s gravel on Oh Darling, Harrison’s tender guitar solo on Something, Lennon’s anguished cries on I Want You and the transcendent beauty of Because are glorious in their clarity – as are the drum fills of Here Comes The Sun, the harmonies on You Never Give Me Your Money and the scorching guitar solos of “The End”. Even Her Majesty sounds better. There was nothing wrong with this album, but they fixed it anyway, and for once, that tactic worked to perfection.

And finally the Past Masters CDs. Well, the same goes for them as went for all the other albums. The early songs sound very similar, and the later songs begin to take on a clarity that wasn’t available back in the mid to late 1960s when they were recorded. You Know My Name is still ridiculous, but is genuinely hilarious in parts, and a nice note on which to close the singles collection. The two German songs are still on there, sounding exactly the same as they always did – that is to say, nice novelty but actually a waste of two tracks on the CD, and other than that, the songs are brilliant and a timely reminder of a time when artists didn’t put their singles on their albums. The Beatles canon is already considered a masterpiece, what would we have thought had Sgt Pepper contained Penny Lane and Strawberry Fields? If Let It Be had been permitted the odd but wonderful Old Brown Shoe, if Rubber Soul had replaced What Goes On and Run for Your Life with Day Tripper and We Can Work It Out? How about Revolver not having Paperback Writer on it or the fact that I Want To Hold Your Hand and She Loves You never appeared on an album? Why were Lady Madonna, Hey Bulldog, The Inner Light and Hey Jude left off the White Album when Wild Honey Pie, Bungalow Bill, Revolution 9, and Don’t Pass Me By stayed on? Who can say – still, makes you think.

If you like the Beatles, then you will be glad you bought this. If you don’t like them then this isn’t going to change your mind. But for my twopenneth, I didn’t half have fun rediscovering the music I grew up to. God Bless those four lads and their cheeky mop-top/acid gobbling ways.

The 5 Worst Beatles Songs.

I’m always talking about how brilliant the Beatles were, and they were – for me the greatest band of all time and my ultimate childhood, teenage, and adulthood heroes. People think therefore that I am boring, and also have been brainwashed by the Beatles bandwagon that has been rolling since late 1962 and seems to place the band above all reproach. I take issue with this.

They weren’t infallible. Oh no. Whilst I don’t think that they ever consciously ripped their audiences off by putting out songs that they knew were crap, their efforts sometimes have to go down as a swing and a miss. With that in mind, I have constructed a shortlist of their 20 worst songs and picked the top 5 for an alternative look at their output.

EXCEPTIONS:
These songs are not counted in the list because it would make it far too predictable.

• That entire second side of the Yellow Submarine album. Not because they’re bad – as instrumental pieces, they’re alright – but because they’re not Beatles songs.
• Revolution 9. Is it a song? If it is, it’s terrible. But it isn’t, it’s an avant-garde project and therefore is probably quite good. Terrible to listen to though.
• Maggie Mae – doesn’t count. Why did they put this on the album? Why does it even exist?
• Dig It – Not a song, just a jam session, indicative of the lack of effort, enthusiasm and enjoyment that went on during these sessions, and sadly indicative of how little they cared about the band by this point.
• Any Tony Sheridan/Anthology/Live at the BBC songs. No – because they’re often out-takes, and un-released for a reason, so they’re collector’s items more than they are a part of the legacy that the band wanted to create for themselves.
• The German songs. They’re just great songs, but sung in German – I don’t think you can reasonably count them.
• You Know My Name (Look Up The Number) – Yes, it is terrible, but it’s also not a real song, quite hilarious, and has Brian Jones on sax, so I think it just about survives.
• Any of the individual songs on the Abbey Road medley. Several of these would qualify on their own, but as part of a greater entity they all hang together well enough to class as one whole great song, I think.

The Shortlist: (An asterisk * denotes that the song is a cover)

1. Wild Honey Pie (White Album, 1968)
2. What Goes On (Rubber Soul, 1965)
3. Run For Your Life (Rubber Soul, 1965)
4. PS I Love You (Please Please Me, 1962)
5. Mr Moonlight* (Beatles for Sale, 1964)
6. What You’re Doing (Beatles for Sale, 1964)
7. Another Girl (Help, 1965)
8. Yellow Submarine (Revolver, 1966)
9. Lovely Rita (Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, 1967)
10. Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da (White Album, 1968)
11. Cry Baby Cry (White Album, 1968)
12. All Together Now (Magical Mystery Tour, 1967)
13. Little Child (With The Beatles, 1963)
14. Words of Love* (Beatles for Sale, 1964)
15. Don’t Pass Me By (White Album, 1968)
16. Flying (Magical Mystery Tour, 1967)
17. Love Me Do (Please Please Me, 1962)
18. I’m Happy Just To Dance With You (A Hard Day’s Night, 1964)
19. I Need You (Help, 1965)
20. I’ll Get You (B-side, 1962)

The final 5, and why...

5. Wild Honey Pie
I’m all for McCartney in “experimental” mode, and I’m also all for him in “recording acoustic songs on his own” mode, after all, that method brought us Blackbird and pretty much every good song on McCartney too. That being said, he and the other Beatles ought really to have been able to spot a pointless song when they heard one. It’s only 53 seconds long I suppose, so even though it’s appalling it’s over relatively quickly, but even so – it really is appalling. Apparently the song was going to be left off the album, but Patti Boyd really liked it so they kept it on. Patti Boyd was not a musician by trade, and she certainly wasn’t an established rock and roll superstar who had been correctly judging what songs should and should not go on albums for the past 6 years. My basic point here is that they really should have listened to their instincts, told Patti to stick to being pretty, and kept this one for the vaults.

4. What Goes On
There are three things that count against this song. Well, there are 4 really, but the fourth is just the outcome of the equation formed by the other three. The three things are this. Firstly, The Beatles were at their absolute best when they loved what they were doing, and played/sang with enthusiasm. Examples of this include Long Tall Sally, I Saw Her Standing There and She Loves You from the early days, and Helter Skelter, I’ve Got a Feeling, and Come Together from the later days. They’re bad examples, because they’re all great songs – but even songs like I’m Happy Just To Dance With You, Little Child, Dig A Pony, and Octopus’ Garden are made considerably better than they actually are by a bit of enthusiasm and energy. This song is not only worse than all of those listed, but it sounds like the band were completely and utterly bored during the recording of the song. It’s telling that they also recorded “12 Bar Original” during this session, on November 4th, 1965 – and if I was allowing Anthology songs onto this list, that would also definitely be on there. It’s sluggish, tired, and completely without imagination or creativity. Secondly, Ringo sings it. I don’t mind Ringo’s singing, he does a good job on Boys and I Wanna Be Your Man, but this song requires just a little bit more than he has in his locker. Thirdly, the rest of the album is brilliant – and contains so much of what made the Beatles great. The songs are quirky, original, progressive, creative, bright and sparky – and all of that is missing from this wet flannel that dampens the middle and sucks all the momentum out of what should be one of the best albums ever made. The 4th thing then, is that this is just a terrible song. Lennon wrote the song way back in the Quarrymen days, and that is exactly where it should have stayed.

3. Yellow Submarine
Now, this one is relatively contentious, in so far as it’s quite a self-aware bad song. McCartney knew what he was doing with this one, and he achieved it to a T, and so I feel somewhat bad picking it out as one of the worst things the band did. However, it is dreadful, let’s be honest, and while it’s catchy and kids love it (McCartney’s goal) and it does conjure up a whimsical kind of childish fantasy world, it’s also a cartoon song of idiocy on Revolver, which was the band’s most mature and forward thinking album to date. You have to look at the songs they left off in order to make room for Yellow Submarine, and if you think that the album could have had Paperback Writer and Rain on instead, there really is no excuse for keeping it on the album – especially when it would be re-released on the soundtrack to the movie just two years later, although I suppose there’s no way they could have know that would happen. It’s worth noting though that the song is in much more comfortable surroundings on that album and doesn’t sound quite so horribly out of place. But placed inbetween Here, There and Everywhere (arguably McCartney’s most beautiful song thus far) and She Said, She Said, Lennon’s first real introspective acid trip, featuring the most beautiful interplay between Lennon and Harrison’s guitars...well, it just feels wrong. And it’s a terrible song, when all else is said and done. Maybe it could have worked for a lesser band on a lesser album...but not this band, and not this album.

2. Run For Your Life
Ah, John Lennon – how did we love thee? Let us count the ways. Well, people refer to him as a great rock star, a poet, a peace-inspiring, policitian-worrying freedom fighter, and in the years since his death (often telling referred to as an assassination), a saint. But people very rarely focus on the working-class, misogynistic, wife-beating side of him, and I can see why – it doesn’t make for good press and it does somewhat sully his public image as a loveable mop-top turned proper artist type person. But hold on there a second Paul, I hear you cry, isn’t there a song that Lennon wrote at the height of the band’s popularity which not only comes at the end of one of their most melodically, harmonically and musically beautiful albums but also reveals quite explicitly just how unpleasant Lennon could be when he set his mind to it? Yes, I reply, there is. And this is it. Now, Lennon isn’t the only Beatle to write a fairly self-satisfied song about basically being a misogynist – McCartney’s “Another Girl” on the Help album doesn’t sit comfortably and hasn’t aged at all well, but at least has some musical interest and decent moments. This one doesn’t. Now, in Lennon’s defence, he said plenty of times that this was the song he most regretted writing, and that it was his least favourite Beatles song – and the opening line was actually lifted from an Elvis song, but that doesn’t excuse its inclusion here, in my opinion. Let’s just have a look at a few of the lyrics...

Well I'd rather see you dead, little girl
Than to be with another man
You better keep your head, little girl
Or you won't know where I am

You better run for your life if you can, little girl
Hide your head in the sand little girl
Catch you with another man
That's the end, little girl

Well you know that I'm a wicked guy
And I was born with a jealous mind
And I can't spend my whole life
Trying just to make you toe the line

Let this be a sermon
I mean everything I've said
Baby, I'm determined
And I'd rather see you dead

People will say “yeah, but it was a different time...” and it was, but that doesn’t make it ok. They used to lynch people too, but I don’t think any of us would feel comfortable listening to songs about how much fun they thought it was. So, not only a pretty rubbish song, but actually offensive too? Definitely should have been left off. Incidentally, that’s two songs from Rubber Soul on this list. Although the Beatles didn’t put their singles on the albums, (at least not in 1965) I can’t help but feel that the inclusion of We Can Work It Out and Day Tripper instead of the two songs here would have improved this album considerably, and also reduced the number of songs about murdering cheating girlfriends in the Beatles catalogue to a more pleasing 0.

1. All Together Now.
The only good thing about this song happens in the first second. The song is in F, but McCartney slides into the opening chord from E, and it sounds quite good. And it gets worse from there. As with Yellow Submarine, it’s effectively nothing more than a children’s song, but that still begs the questions, why write it and why record it? They weren’t a comedy Disney band, this isn’t the title track to Pre-School Musical, so what’s it doing? It’s not even a proper song, it took 5 hours to record and Lennon played the banjo on it. Now, to re-iterate, I’m not against the Beatles ever having had a bit of fun, or writing and recording something for a laugh – but they had so much more in their locker than this. Good Morning Good Morning is pretty stupid, but at least it has interesting time-signatures. Hey Jude is simplicity itself but at least has some good lyrics at the start to offset the irritation of the stadium sing-a-long at the end. If they wanted to have a lark in the old days, they would record a cover of a childhood favourite, and it usually turned out pretty well, with the odd exception. So why come up with this garbage just to fill album space? They recorded their entire first album in just 12 hours, and every song on it is better than this. Now it was recorded in May 1967, so the band were presumably a) tired from recording Sgt Pepper, (which is immense) and b) off their faces. But neither of these things forgive the song a) being released or b) even existing in the first place. My feelings about why this song is so bad can be summed up by this part of its Wikipedia entry. “The song ends with an old fashioned hand-pumped car horn.” What is this, Carry on Beatling?

I could have written equally scathing things about the other songs on that shortlist, none of which are really anything special, though several of which are saved by at least one or two redeeming qualities – but if you ask me, these 5 could just drop off the face of the earth and nobody would be any worse off for it.

God bless the Beatles though, still the best band of all time.

Paulo.