I was a toddler when the Beatles were in their heyday. My mother acquired two 45 rpm records for her collection, the first being Paul’s rocking “Lady Madonna” backed with George’s India-influenced “The Inner Light”. The second, a year or so later, was John’s Chuck Berry-influenced “Come Together” backed with George’s romantic masterpiece, “Something”. All four sides got continuous play on our console stereo system over the next decade or so.
I was a recent college graduate when the Beatles, a long holdout of the new musical format, finally first released their catalogue on compact disc. We all thought they sounded great at the time. Although as a big fan I dutifully bought all fourteen albums (in their now-official UK versions) plus the two Past Masters collections of non-album tracks, I was always partial to the later ones, starting with Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, then The Beatles (White Album), and especially the last album they recorded together, Abbey Road, the cover of which has the iconic photo of the four walking a crosswalk outside their studio on London’s Abbey Road.
I’m sure the Beatles and their music were contributing factors in my later love of all things British, and two guided walks of historic Beatle-related landmarks in London were highlights of my visits there, the last such landmark visited being that Abbey Road studio and crosswalk. I have this on camcorder and need to post it some day.
There is no dispute that the Beatles were the greatest rock band of all time, deservedly the most popular and successful. Anybody who says otherwise doesn’t know what they’re talking about. Many times you catch such people humming or quoting a new song they don’t realize is a cover of a Beatles composition, or who is a big fan of a band directly influenced or inspired by the Beatles. Thousands of musical artists fit this category. It doesn’t take much investigation or analysis to realize that our musical landscape of our lives would be vastly different had the Beatles never existed. Just from my own personal group of favourites, Billy Joel and Sting may not have created music at all had it not been for the Beatles. They said so themselves! And thus so the people those two inspired, and so on and so on…
Very late to the party but smartly building upon anticipation, today the Beatles have finally released deluxe remastered versions of their entire catalogue on CD. I bought them all, but do not recommend them all. They do sound better than the original releases -- but are faithfully remastered, maybe too faithfully, to sound as they were originally intended to sound. When the Beatles started out in the early 1960s, mono (one channel, i.e. one speaker) sound was the norm and default for all new musical releases, and new-fangled stereo recordings were an afterthought, sloppily thrown together for the few buyers who were interested. So the first six or eight Beatles albums’ stereo (two channel, two speaker) versions have the weird sound mix wherein the musical instruments come out of one speaker while the singing comes out of the other.. sounding just plain weird and not very appealing to modern listeners.
By the time of the last few Beatles albums, especially Abbey Road, stereo had become the dominant format, so those albums sound great and hold up very well. Those are the ones I would recommend: Sgt. Pepper, The Beatles (White Album), and Abbey Road. I would also get Revolver and Rubber Soul, just because those are so great that they overcome the weirdly separated sound channels.
Someday, in addition to selling their songs online like most other bands, they will get around to not only remastering their albums, but remixing them as well, integrating music and singing together as we’re used to by now with more modern music. The songs on the Beatles 1 collection from 2000 are remixed, as are the songs on the Yellow Submarine Songtrack released in 1999. Additionally, if one had money to spare (I don’t), one could spring for the limited release box set of remastered mono version of their first several albums, probably the best way to listen to those earlier Beatles songs that first made them popular.
I was a recent college graduate when the Beatles, a long holdout of the new musical format, finally first released their catalogue on compact disc. We all thought they sounded great at the time. Although as a big fan I dutifully bought all fourteen albums (in their now-official UK versions) plus the two Past Masters collections of non-album tracks, I was always partial to the later ones, starting with Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, then The Beatles (White Album), and especially the last album they recorded together, Abbey Road, the cover of which has the iconic photo of the four walking a crosswalk outside their studio on London’s Abbey Road.
I’m sure the Beatles and their music were contributing factors in my later love of all things British, and two guided walks of historic Beatle-related landmarks in London were highlights of my visits there, the last such landmark visited being that Abbey Road studio and crosswalk. I have this on camcorder and need to post it some day.
There is no dispute that the Beatles were the greatest rock band of all time, deservedly the most popular and successful. Anybody who says otherwise doesn’t know what they’re talking about. Many times you catch such people humming or quoting a new song they don’t realize is a cover of a Beatles composition, or who is a big fan of a band directly influenced or inspired by the Beatles. Thousands of musical artists fit this category. It doesn’t take much investigation or analysis to realize that our musical landscape of our lives would be vastly different had the Beatles never existed. Just from my own personal group of favourites, Billy Joel and Sting may not have created music at all had it not been for the Beatles. They said so themselves! And thus so the people those two inspired, and so on and so on…
Very late to the party but smartly building upon anticipation, today the Beatles have finally released deluxe remastered versions of their entire catalogue on CD. I bought them all, but do not recommend them all. They do sound better than the original releases -- but are faithfully remastered, maybe too faithfully, to sound as they were originally intended to sound. When the Beatles started out in the early 1960s, mono (one channel, i.e. one speaker) sound was the norm and default for all new musical releases, and new-fangled stereo recordings were an afterthought, sloppily thrown together for the few buyers who were interested. So the first six or eight Beatles albums’ stereo (two channel, two speaker) versions have the weird sound mix wherein the musical instruments come out of one speaker while the singing comes out of the other.. sounding just plain weird and not very appealing to modern listeners.
By the time of the last few Beatles albums, especially Abbey Road, stereo had become the dominant format, so those albums sound great and hold up very well. Those are the ones I would recommend: Sgt. Pepper, The Beatles (White Album), and Abbey Road. I would also get Revolver and Rubber Soul, just because those are so great that they overcome the weirdly separated sound channels.
Someday, in addition to selling their songs online like most other bands, they will get around to not only remastering their albums, but remixing them as well, integrating music and singing together as we’re used to by now with more modern music. The songs on the Beatles 1 collection from 2000 are remixed, as are the songs on the Yellow Submarine Songtrack released in 1999. Additionally, if one had money to spare (I don’t), one could spring for the limited release box set of remastered mono version of their first several albums, probably the best way to listen to those earlier Beatles songs that first made them popular.
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