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REVIEW: The Beatles remastered 1967-70
Part 2 of our expert guide to the box sets
Joe Bosso, Tue 8 Sep 2009, 1:10 pm UTC
The spruced-up stereo remaster improves an album that has always been a troubling listen but one that does have its charms: the endearing Everly Brothers tribute Two Of Us, the irresistible shuffle Get Back and the joint-jumpin' One After 909. All sound dynamic, clear as a bell and most definitely 'live.'
Harrison's massively cranked solo on the title cut (differing from the single release) betters the church organ of Billy Preston, so that's a plus. Still, the album as a whole is bittersweet - and at times, funereal. The band is trying to make a go of it - McCartney especially - but you know the outcome.
In truth, I've always been surprised that McCartney, who always championed ornate arrangements, would be so averse to Phil Spector's treatment of The Long And Winding Road. Choir, harp, strings - they fit. The de-Spectorized version heard on 2003's reissue, Let It Be…Naked, struck me as unfinished - and Billy Preston's keyboards were downright corny
But not all of Spector's hunches were spot-on: the producer dropped Don't Let Me Down, one of John Lennon's most powerful love pleas, from the finished album. How many ways can you say, 'Fail'?
"Lennon's vocals on his otherwise gorgeous Across The Universe sound more flanged than usual. And despite the song's Fantasia-esque title, it doesn't work."
Nitpicks? Only one major one: Lennon's vocals on his otherwise gorgeous Across The Universe, a remix from the 1968 four-track original, sound more flanged than usual. It's as if he's singing from another planet. And despite the song's Fantasia-esque title, it doesn't work.
Past Masters - by real masters!
Originally released on 7 March 1988, Past Masters Vol I and 2, essentially a greatest hits collection that most groups would kill for, is made all the more impressive when you consider that the majority of these tracks were non-album singles, some of them dashed off hastily to meet contractual agreements. Even during lunch breaks, The Beatles got busy.
Now we have Mono Masters and Past Masters (the stereo set), and by a wide margin, these songs are all but re-animated in stereo.
As only mono mixes were ever made of Love Me Do, She Loves You, I'll Get You and the amusing oddity known as You Know My Name (Look Up The Number), that's what we have on both sets, and they're nothing but fine, fine, fine - you'd have to drape a wet washcloth over the speakers to mute the breakneck exuberance of She Loves You.
Although a later version of Love Me Do was pressed on the album Please Please Me featuring session drummer Andy White with poor Ringo hitting a tambourine and questioning whether the band were 'pulling a Pete Best' on him, the Masters sets feature the original with Starr behind his kit.
