Shortly after their release a friend burned me the entire mono and stereo box set reissues of The Beatles’ catalog. It was an incredibly generous and thoughtful gesture, but I’m sorry to say I’ve yet to hunker down with them.
Part of the reason is because I’m leery about “cheating” on my vinyl albums that I’ve had since I was a boy. Part of the reason is because I’ve been so damn busy. Finally, as always, I’m simply leery about hearing what a modern-day remastering will do to the mix of records that are essential to my being. For instance, I’m sure some of you have heard my rant against the ’90s remaster of “Satisfaction,” the one that uncovered an acoustic guitar!
Last week I was hanging with Townsman andyr, and he’d bought a couple of the stereo remasters. He played me Rubber Soul, and a week later what most stands out for me is the tambourine on “Wait.” As is so often the case with modern-day remastering, the process gives space to and brings to light background instruments that were meant to be felt more than heard. It’s as if Ray Cooper is doing the remastering of these ’60s records.
The other things that stood out for me were the clarity around Ringo’s drum fills, which I found almost as distracting as the tambourine on “Wait” and which often pointed out Ringo’s technical deficiencies, and the clarity around the vocals, which highlighted just how strong The Beatles were at singing. Not all singers could stand up to that aural scrutiny!
Whether you own these Beatles reissues or not, if you’ve heard even a song or two from them, what stands out for you?
I just received the Mono box on Saturday, and so far I’ve listened to Please Please Me, With The Beatles, Hard Day’s Night, and the non-British album tracks comp. The only track that stood out as sounding worse was one I already don’t like – Do You Want To Know A Secret, was due to George’s weak vocals being even more noticable. What stands out more, is that Lennon never puts in a half-assed performance. When he has to voice gobbledegook, he SELLS that crap.
The kick drum and bass sound fantastic on the first two albums. The suprise from this weekend for me was Paul’s vocal on Til There Was You. It seems that Paul could actually sing those types of songs effectively if he could get out of his own way. No affectations and crooning, just clear, concise singing for a change. I was ready for the straight rendering in his own early things like And I Love Her, but that torch song stood out for not being melodramatic, I have to give Paul credit.
I think Ringo’s drumming is solid, and is not defeated at all by the cleanliness of these mixes.
Rubber Soul is a difficult one to use as a gauge because it was remixed for the 1st CD issue. I was very used to the US version of that album.
I also haven’t listened to them yet – well, not in a critical way (only in the background) but am looking forward to hearing the mono white album.
No shame in not yet having a chance for a “critical” spin, cherguevara. What I hope to compare in this thread is our collective gut check on the reissues.
You do raise a good point about Rubber Soul. Is that already the most varied Beatles release, in terms of mixes, sequencing, and the like?
i’ve been avoiding all of this stuff.
Rock Band, re-masters. I listen to my Beatles records on a turntable, and i watch a VHS copy of The Compleat Beatles.
That is all.
Bass. Turns out, Paul McCartney is one helluva bassist. The few (stereo) CDs I have picked up have really brought out Paul’s bass. I know they’re not remixed, but the presence is astonishing.
I never knew that the bass part to “The Word” was so cool. Paul is playing his ass of on the simplest of tunes. It’s a fun sounding bass part.
TB
I’ve had a chance to listen to everything over the last 45 days… here’s my take
Started with Pepper on 09-09-09 – Bass and Drums jump out, brass is brighter. “When I’m 64” the sped up vocal is more noticeable…also the CD volume is better on my car stereo, not compressed, just natural.
I too got a copy of Stereo and Mono box CD burns (although I have purchased all of the Stereo discs over the last month)
Stereo is a tough listen on the 1st 4 records. Mix is not very rock and roll with vocal on one side it’s more barbershop…harmonies are beautiful but don’t see playing these again.
I Should Have Known Better has mistakes in the mix that were left in (harmonica drops off in mid note) and the pre auto-double tracking shows it’s errors (John was not that good at singing along with himself..in mono it blends better, in Stereo you can hear him miss cues and cut notes short)
The MONO set on 1st 4 show that they were a ROCK band, drums and bass drive the songs…wow! (plus disc one of Past Masters..also best in MONO)
My VERY BASIC take on 1st 4 records
Mono = Ramones
Stereo = Alvin & The Chipmunks
Mono disc for Rubber Soul has the original 1960’s stereo mix as bonus tracks… again the hard pan thing annoys me…the mono sounds just like the 1987 stereo more or less to me
Help and Rubber Soul Stereo CDs use the 1987 stereo mixes, NOT the original hard-pan mixes. I am glad about this..hard pan mixes are annoying
I LIKE the drum fills, bass lines, brass, tambourine etc. jumping out like they do… at first if you are listening to try to hear them they will be too apparent…by 2-3 listens your ears can relax and enjoy the music (we are not supposed to be mixing engineers on this!)
White Album and Abbey Road sound bigger where they are supposed to (Helter Skelter, I Want You, Birthday, Come Together, Glass Onion) and the acoustics are crisp on the mellow tunes.
White Album MONO has some actual mix alterations, esp Don’t Pass Me By and Helter Skelter (and Pepper has other voices in the outro of the reprise and She’s Leaving home is slower on the Mono version)…nothing to write home about after a listen or two.
Overall I am pleased. Better than the Rolling Stones remasters, where there is TOO MUCH cleaning in many cases. By waiting for their contemporaries to try the remastering first, many of the pitfalls were avoided and the technology has improved considerably even since the Led Zeppelin remasters in the early 90’s. I think I read that lest than 2 minutes of tape were treated with noise reduction and that very little compression was added anywhere (and almost only to Stereo versions, the original mono mixes have some existing compression for radio play)
I only want to hear the mono versions of the material except for the last couple of albums, and I object to the fact that I have to buy the mono box to do that, so I’m boycotting the whole project.
I’m with BigSteve and am boycotting the whole thing. I’ll listen to them if someone plays them for me but I’m not buying this marketing sham/scam.
Mod-
You do raise a good point about Rubber Soul. Is that already the most varied Beatles release, in terms of mixes, sequencing, and the like?
I have been listening to a lot of Beatles lately. I don’t have the new discs yet either. Anyway, as much as I love Revolver (it might get my vote for your criteria above)…I had just been thinking about how some of the sequencing seems odd to me. I know it’s subjective but starting off with “Taxman” and then right into “Eleanor Rigby”. The flow seems wrong to me. It just doesn’t “feel” right to my head…
Having a good clean mono Pepper for a long time now, I’ve always preferred the mono mix of “She’s Leaving Home.” Because of the correct speed, the strings are so much richer.
TB
The bass track on “The Word” is a killer, and he plays my absolutely favorite bass lick of all time on that one. Listen closely, you’ll hear it. Too cool for school.
That is a tremendous bass line. Mr Mod -care to express again your feelings on this ditty?
Yo, cher — you mean the lick at 1:15, right? That *is* a ball-squeezer!
Man, I guess I need to listen to Rubber Soul next for that ba-room-booda-dudda-du part in The Word.
I’m sure the bass line in “The Word” is tremendous, but to better assess it I would have to listen to that song again, and that song absolutely BLOWS! For years I was stunned the rare times when someone would says, “I don’t like The Beatles that much.” Even when a reasonable, knowledgeable rock fan like 2000 Man would say something like this and obviously wasn’t showing ignorance I was stunned. Then, a few years ago, I thought to myself, “What if these people hear The Beatles and all the potentially annoying points in their music come to a head, all the points that – added together – make up ‘The Word’?” You know what I mean? Imagine all the grating parts of any Beatles song being combined and magnified. That’s “The Word.” Since that realization I’ve never flinched when confronted with the fact that not everyone on earth loves The Beatles.
Let this blow your mind, Mod: “The Word” is one of my all-time fave Beatles songs.
Hrrundivbakshi wrote:
With all due respect, HVB – and with more love than you’d likely be comfortable knowing about – that explains A LOT about your hippie-hating, trinity-loving point of view:)
To a casual Beatle fan like myself, the problems with The Word are not apparent. Only someone who was too much of a Beatle fan would invest so much of himself in disliking that song. Mr Mod is known as a man of strong and occasionally obscure opinions. I am reminded of the last scene in Othello where the hero says about himself:
…then must you speak
Of one that loved not wisely but too well;
Of one not easily jealous, but being wrought
Perplex’d in the extreme….
Someone passed along and MP3 disc of all of it, but I’ll probably pass on the reissues, even at used prices. I just don’t think I can squeeze that much more pleasure out of the catalog.
Beatles product that would tempt me: Beatles repressed vinyl box of the complete Beatles 45s. How did they miss my market segment?
I’m more curious to catch up of the Dylan remasters, they were more hurtin’ for the help. But truth is, with my record buying dollar, I have too much stuff I’ve never heard that I want to track down. I was pleased to buy a beautifully packaged CD from OOIOO, the Boredoms offshoot, this week…
The ideal format for The Compleat Beatles was always intended to be a VHS tape recorded off a local PBS station.
I’m not boycotting, just a combination of lazy and cheap, so I haven’t yet heard what I really want to hear: the mono versions of everything before Rubber Soul.
I’ve heard some of the stereo remasters and they sound great, but what I’ve heard people remark about them – things like “there’s this guitar on…” – are things I’ve picked up on before, which only proves that I’ve listened to these albums probably more than anybody should. Not that I’m going to stop or anything.
But yeah, I want to hear the early ones on mono, I need to get on that.
Mod – for “The Word”, are you at least able to admit that Lennon’s vocals on “in the beginning, I MIS-understood/but now I’ve got it, THE WORD is good” are unassailably great?
Yes, alexmagic, that is probably one of three things I like about that song, the others being the stuttered guitar line that accompanies that break with the vocal line you cite and the organ sound.
Mr. Mod, the reason I don’t like The Beatles that much is because they seem to include a few really stupid novelty songs on too many of their albums. I just listened to Queen’s A Night at the Opera because I wondered why I bought it, and I can’t figure out why. It’s got stupid stuff that sounds just like the Beatles dumb stuff all over it. It’s just a terrible album.
Anyway, I don’t mind most Beatles songs, but I can’t see any reason to own much of their catalog because I hear it all more than enough through osmosis. I’m not going to get the remasters unless they come out on vinyl and I’ll only get Rubber Soul and Revolver anyway. I really like the Stones ABKCO remasters for the most part, and I liked Virgin’s remasters, too. But I’m skipping the latest go round of remasters, except for Exile and maybe Ya Ya’s. I’ve got that stuff so many times over already, and I’d imagine a lot of Beatles fans will feel the same way. Didn’t they already do a special mono release of most of their albums?
There’s only so much clean up I think is necessary in rock music. I don’t want it to all start sounding like today’s music sounds. Hearing the acoustic guitar in Satisfaction really wasn’t all that odd because it was always there and some vinyl releases seemed to have it a little more prominent, but if I were a Beatles fan I’d probably bum out at hearing more suck from Bungalow Bill than I was used to.
Excellent response, 2K! See, I knew your casual regard for The Beatles came down to some good reasoning.