I am 42 years old. I have loved the Beatles (& been an Anglophile) since I saw Yellow Submarine as a four year old in 1972. One of my earliest memories is being on some man's shoulders, Joel? John?, walking past the stadium that the Sooners still play at, on my way to the University/Union theater to see Yellow Submarine. Was it my first time? I do not know. That film changed my life in ways I cannot express in words to folks today. I became obsessed w/ the Beatles (& the song Yellow Submarine, in particular) that, I figure, I drove my single mother & "family" crazy.
Another of my earliest memories is being in a grocery/drug store in Norman, OK & desiring (& getting) a crap 4 song ep of hack artists doing Yellow Submarine & other nautical/children's themed songs. I treasured that record, long gone (& prob worth a mint on EBay today.)
You know, Donna, my Mum, prob remembers better than I, but I believe I got my first record Xmas of 1972, which I believe would've been played on someone else's stereo b/c I dint get my first (Winnie the Pooh) record player for another couple of years. That record was Yellow Submarine, which listening to now, is arguably the Beatles worst record. (Help!, as a whole gives Yellow Sub a run for its' money, as far as I'm concerned these days.)
But for a four year old, Yellow Submarine is pretty cool. Even the George Martin soundtrack side, bringing up memories of the film, which to this day I still treasure & nod my head sagely to when I hear it (which is extremely rarely.)
My point is, it was over. I've loved the Beatles ever since. & I've loved them in differing ways over the years. In my youth it was the psychedelic period that spoke most to me. The best psychedelic rock is English: The Pink Floyd, John's Children, The Incredible String Band, early Traffic, The Eyes, etc, ... the stuff that got to the heart of early childhood, the stuff of memories, the stuff that recalls the type of crystal clear memories that I've been speaking of today. SF psychedelia & Hendrix have always been so drenched & heavy & uncompromising that they wear me out. They hurt my soul, press down on my subconscious like a ton of bricks & give me The Fear.
But, naturally, that changed as I grew older. The first crucial Beatles record I bought on my own was the brilliant Beatles Rock n Roll Music Double LP. This is a comp, with covers & original tracks all in chronological order (for the most part.) Still, as enamored as I was with this record, including an early love for I'm Down & The Night Before, I still stood by my righteous belief that the Beatles were at their best in 1967, full stop.
I had listened to the White Album on headphones & my parents had told me all about the "Paul is dead" stuff before I started buying records on my own. The White Album (released 1968, the year I was born!) scared the living shit outta me! That was a place as a child that I did not want to go to. & let's be honest, the Beatles first choice of name for the White Album (which is actually simply called The Beatles) was A Doll's House.
It finally began to dawn on me that the Beatles best work was early in their career. Two things suggested this to me. One, repeated listenings to Beatles Rock n Roll music at a very loud volume & a "scientific" study I did on my own. To wit, I rated all Beatles songs on a scale from one to three stars (not unlike iTunes, eh? & this was in 1983!) & averaged them all out per record & I did it for all my records. To my chagrin I found out that most of the highest scoring records were early UK Beatles records. (By 1983 I was already hip to the differences between the Beatles early UK/US LP differences.) I was shocked. I refused to believe it. I dint care that the (awesome) Beatles Illustrated Record by Carr & Tyler said the UKs Hard Day's Night was better than Sergeant Pepper. Even if my own stats confirmed the same result, I refused to believe it.
I did not Come to Jesus, as it were, until after I had dropped out of college, & listened to The Beatles Past Masters Volume 1 on CD, high on X (we called it X back then, not E,) & pot. Long Tall Sally was the real revelation, & I knew then that that track was recorded live in the studio in one take. The final nail in the coffin was reading Greil Marcus' excellent essay on the group (still the best critical writing on the Beatles ever, though Ian McDonald's book, Revolution in the Head is fairly damn excellent, as well,) in Rolling Stone's Illustrated History of Rock And Roll (an amazing book, that sorely needs an update.)
It took until the nineties, basically, for me to realize that the Beatles actually got worse, not better. Going on two decades now, that is still my belief.
Considering that the Beatles released their (first) remastered CDs at the dawn of digital portable audio, it never occurred to me that I was missing out on anything. I treasured those CDs. The first CDs I bought were Sergeant Pepper & Skylarking by XTC (produced by Todd Rundgren, a fab record, but very Beatl-y) at Waterloo records (back when it was still in south Austin) in 1987. &, as mentioned before, it was the Past Masters Vol 1 CD that brought me to Jesus.
But, as the Anthology CDs came out, & the BBC CDs, and the aforementioned McDonald book, most Beatle die-hards started to feel we'd been, not cheated, but that we were not getting the whole story, you know? For instance, when the fuck is Carnival of Light gonna finally see the light of day?
When it was announced (on my 41st birthday!) that the remasters were going to happen, including the untouched, unfixed mono pressings of every Beatles recording that had originally been mixed to mono, well, Daddy, here, had a "wet dream" as John Winston Lennon so eloquently put it.
You know, back in the day, in Austin, I bought a beat-up, used copy of Sergeant Pepper in mono. All I cared about & could notice was the different sound effects & talk just before the Sergeant Pepper (Reprise) track. That was in the 80s. Mono sucks. That was my attitude then (& prob not just mine.)
The Beatles white box, Mono Box Set, is the Holy Grail Beatles fans like myself have been waiting for for decades now. I am 42 years old. I severely doubt they're going to get any closer to the essence of those 60s recordings than they have now. & considering that all Beatles recordings were mixed for mono first, up until Let It Be, this is truly how the Beatles remembered & wanted these albums & singles to be heard & enjoyed. The other great thing about the Mono Box Set is that the tracks weren't eq'd, or messed with regarding noise reduction. The original masters were cleaned up, & mastered for CD, & that's it. No noise reduction, no mp3 volume adjusting, nothing.
Moreover, the care that went in to the CD sleeve reproductions, literal mini replications of the LPs themselves, down to the inside sleeves, is so breathtaking as to make, I'm sure, many folks in their 50s & 60s now swoon with delight.
And yet, and yet, ... What about the music?
Daddy will tackle that tomorrow.
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