The walking dead
A new mix and revealing outtakes prove even a terminal Beatles had dimensions other bands could only dream of. By Danny Eccleston.
The Beatles ★★★★ Abbey Road 50th Anniversary Edition APPLE/UMC. CD/DL/LP
“I DON’T understand why anybody remixes any of the stuff from the past,” complained Glyn Johns in the previous issue of MOJO. “I think it’s an insult to the people who did it in the first place.” Johns – who produced or engineered significant portions of the last album The Beatles made – won’t be alone in his view (let’s call it rock’n’roll originalism) and Apple’s argument, that they’re boosting The Beatles’ competitiveness in an audio era that demands more clarity and heft, is unlikely to sway him. Besides, Abbey Road is not Sgt. Pepper – it never suffered from a notably inferior stereo mix. So if it wasn’t broke, why fix it?
Giles Martin hasn’t dug up Abbey Road; but his subtle improvements have smoothed out the odd bump. A/B testing of the side two Medley points to an increased depth and breadth; the luxurious qualities that bewitched the nascent Queen and ELO open out with the stereofied orchestral touches, and the detail and richness to be rediscovered in the seemingly simple Something – organ, synth, orchestra, Macca’s bass – offer new reasons to be awed. On I Want You (She’s So Heavy), you’re in the room with the Fab Four, Ringo’s ride cymbal, ranged left, gloriously present and Lennon’s “Yeaaaaaaaah!” fair taking the top off your head. And in The End, where Giles Martin has worked to put each of the guitar solos in subtly different spaces, the sense of three separate guitarists with three discrete personalities is even more palpable.
This was, we are reminded, the last bloom of the band’s productivity in the studio, and the music they made that didn’t make it onto Abbey Road indicated new directions for them all. This edition’s bonus material (spread over two CDs) has an acoustic demo of McCartney’s Goodbye – destined to be Mary Hopkin’s second single – that in its delicious purity could easily have graced The White Album, while a version of Come And Get It has all the sweet softness of the looming Macca solo style, a tendency Lennon had long begun to despise.
Lennon’s own soon-to-be solo default – instant autobiography – was prefigured in The Ballad Of John And Yoko, a pre-Abbey Road single in May ’69, and an outtake is included here (along with a version of its B-side, Harrison’s saturnine Old Brown Shoe). It’s a touchingly urgent version that underlines how thoroughly beleaguered the Lennons must have felt throughout 1969, while McCartney’s hurried fills provide no evidence to support the always-silly saw that Ringo wasn’t even the best drummer in The Beatles.
For this writer, the works-inprogress and Beatle banter on the bonus discs – offering new windows on their decision-making and creative rapport – appeal much more than the remix element of these recent packages, however skilfully and sensitively Giles Martin and colleagues have done their work (as for the Dolby Atmos mix – well, good luck to any readers with the facilities to enjoy it). The brilliant Billy Preston organ solo expunged from the end of I Want You…, and here restored, is great to have. It’s a) extremely exciting in its own right, and b) helps explain the sheer number of guitar riff repetitions in the version as released: in their heads, at least at first, this was just a vamp. But it also affirms just how odd The Beatles were prepared to be, exposing this doomy, skeletal mantra far beyond the threshold of listening comfort. It’s Lennon pushing The Beatles to confront and to challenge.
Yet if that feels enlightening, the bonus take of Come Together is more revealing still. Lennon’s vocal is more intense, more troubled than the one we’ve come to know – something you only realise when his concentration stumbles and a completely different ‘John voice’ intrudes, gasping “I’m losing my cool!” before the take crumbles entirely. It’s as if the power of Come Together’s ju-ju spell is best appreciated at the moment of its dissolution.
“I get very involved, you know,” offers Lennon, apologetically. As an encapsulation of what he brought to music, and culture, and beyond, you could hardly put it better.