I was reluctant to shell out for the latest Beatles remastered boxes, which were released Sept. 9 and have a price point of around $200, or four tanks of gas in California. Was the hefty price tag worth it? And is this worth getting or asking for on the holidays?
I already have the albums on vinyl, on 180-gram vinyl, on Dolby cassette, on CD, on CD imported from Japan, on 45s. OK. No eight track.
But what could they have done, I wondered, to make me buy songs that haven’t been remixed and that I’ve heard thousands of times each? I was very skeptical. And then, I got the box.
Wow. I’m really awed by what I’m hearing on the 217 songs (20 of which weren’t really touched and a dozen of which were remixed as well as remastered). Some of them took me back to what I first heard in the sixties on pristine vinyl. Others unveiled sounds I’d never heard: the clear tambourine on “Mean Mr. Mustard” the slide guitar that George Harrison had woven though so many songs, like “Come Together,” but were buried by the vocals and general wall of sound. Plus, the band and producer George Martin buried suprises, sound effects, backwards vocals, speaking, for devoted listeners to uncover, like the puns that kept Shakespeare alive for scholars hundreds of years after he wrote them.
Later works “Abbey Road” and the “White Album” stand out on these remasters because the original recordings were sophisticated and often quite subtle, but much of it was lost on previous CD versions, recorded before the technology had evolved. Basically, the remasters don’t change the layouts of the instruments or vocals, but they do change the volume, or equalization of some of them. (The best explanation I’ve read is here, by engineer  Allan Rouse, who spent four years on the project.)
I hear more reverb, the echo off a voice, than I did in the originals. Paul McCartney’s bass stands out, boosted the way modern instruments are. It was muddy in earlier CDs and on most vinyl not played on a professional system. Now it’s crisp, and you can hear he played a snakelike bass, more like Phil Lesh or Les Claypool, than the boom boom boom thud of rock basses at the time.
There are two sets: stereo and mono, because the albums, other than “Abbey Road” the new “Yellow Submarine” and “Let it Be,” were recorded originally in mono. On the early works stereo simply consisted of Martin shifting the vocals to one speaker and the music in the other, something that was awkward then and remains so. I’ve always liked stereo though, simply because I like hearing different things in different parts of the room. Purists claim the mono mixes are better.
The box has reignited my love for this seminal band. It reminded me of what I loved when I first heard them: the layers of sounds they worked so hard to construct on primitive recording equipment, a sound that basically inspired everything that came after. I’ve played through all 217 songs several times now, moved them to my iPod and iTunes. Not that I ever underestimated this bands’ talent, but I realize after hearing these new masters, that I was only hearing about three fourths of what they intended.
So, this being a consumer site, the question is simple: is this another attempt to trick us out of money through a new form, or is it worth the bucks?
Answer: this is no old brown shoe. It’s a magical mystery tour that will be enjoyed by Beatlemaniacs and a new generation.
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I agree with everything you say about the Beatles and their greatness. But there was no remixing of any cuts for the remasters. The mixes are as they always were. Some songs were remixed for Yellow Submarine Songtrack, but none here. Next time they will be remixed versions…whenever that is.