Sgt. Pepper and Abbey Road, back-to-back with NAO
Ask Beatles fans for their favourite album and you’ll likely get various answers. Some may prefer “Revolver” while others opt for “Magical Mystery Tour” or the “The White Album.”
For Peter Brennan, leader of the Jeans ’n Classics band, it’s both the iconic “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” and the Fabs’ final studio album, “Abbey Road.”
“If there was one album to own it would be ‘Pepper,’” said Brennan over the phone to The Spectator from his London home. “If there was one concert to give, it would be ‘Abbey Road.’”
This Friday night at the Hamilton Convention Centre, Brennan will have it both ways as he and his 10-piece Jeans ’n Classics band return to the Brott Music Festival to perform, for the first time on the same bill, the “Sgt. Pepper” and “Abbey Road” albums with the National Academy Orchestra under Boris Brott and apprentice conductor Jaelem Bhate.
“I love to perform the ‘Abbey Road’ album. There’s an energy to it that’s extraordinary,” said Brennan. “In terms of my listening to it, I prefer ‘Sgt. Pepper’ because I think they were never more creative or inventive.”
We know what you’re thinking: yet another Beatles tribute band. However, the JnC’s “Fab 4 Forever” show isn’t some kind of fab faux impersonation. No mop top wigs. No Nehru jackets. No Sgt. Pepper’s getups. So much for the visual.
As for the aural, we also know what you’re thinking: automatic double tracking, flanging, overdubs, drop-ins, tape machines running faster or slower than the standard 50 cycles per second, tapes of a calliope cut up and reassembled higgledy-piggledy, all manner of pre-recorded sound effects, and so much more, including a for-canines-only 15 kilohertz tone added at the disc cutting stage across the spiral of the run-out groove on side two of “Sgt. Pepper.” With all of the studio wizardry involved in the making of these two albums, there’s no way a 10-piece band and a 50-piece orchestra can give a note-for-note, sound-for-sound, live concert performance of them.
“I agree,” conceded Brennan. “And I couldn’t think of a good reason to do it note-for-note because why bother other than, I guess, it’s a bigger thing than somebody sitting in their living room or in their studio trying to figure out every conceivable lick.
“What we’re trying to do is bring it with an orchestral aspect to it. And to do it so that you’re actually making use of the full orchestra and featuring them — and featuring them in places that they didn’t exist before is the challenge. Regardless of what material we’re doing, it’s all about bringing the orchestra and the band into a cohesive presentation. And in this case, it’s just pretty special because it’s those two albums back to back.”
Expect to hear all sorts of orchestral landscapes in Brennan’s charts that weren’t there on the records. So, in Brennan’s chart for “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds,” listen for pizzicato strings and delicate woodwinds tracing McCartney’s bass line. For Harrison’s “Within You Without You,” Brennan overlays some of “Tomorrow Never Knows” à la Giles Martin in the “Love” album. In “The End” where McCartney, Harrison and Lennon trade two-bar guitar solos in a rotating sequence, Brennan has one guitarist trade solos with the orchestra.
As for that big, 24-bar orchestral buildup in “A Day in the Life,” Brennan simply copied into his score the directions producer George Martin gave to the 40 musicians on that Feb. 10, 1967, recording session quoted in Mark Lewisohn’s 2000 tome, “The Beatles: Recording Sessions.”
However, Brennan and company will drop “Her Majesty,” that 23-second tack-on at the end of “Abbey Road.”
“We used to do ‘Her Majesty,’ but it never went over,” said Brennan.
Instead, their encore will be the smash 1968 single, “Hey Jude.”
Now, if you caught Sir Paul on “Carpool Karaoke” last week, you’ll have heard that he came nowhere near to hitting that stratospheric high F in “Hey Jude.” Brennan, on behalf of his JnC vocalists, promises otherwise.
“David Blamires and Jean Meilleur nail all the ‘Hey Jude’ notes brilliantly,” wrote Brennan in a followup email.
Lastly, apart from a ticket, little else is needed for listening.
“Just close your eyes and two hours later open them,” chuckled Brennan.