Like many who straddle the line between Baby Boomers and Gen Xers, I have childhood memories of hearing The Beatles\u2019 music, but didn\u2019t buy my first album until after they had broken up. My first Beatles purchases\u2014and for many years, the only albums of theirs I owned, other than the mandatory Sgt. Pepper\u2019s<\/i>\u2014were the red and the blue albums: 1962-1966<\/i> and 1967-1970<\/i>.<\/p>\n
Greatest hits albums had of course become industry standard by the early \u201970s, but like the act they celebrated, this pair of collections broke the mold back in 1973. A double-LP greatest hits package was a novelty in itself\u2014but two<\/i> double LPs? That\u2019s crazy talk.<\/p>\n
Unless you were The Beatles, that is: a group that entered the scene in 1962 as the world\u2019s first popstar band and exited in 1970 as counter-culture art heroes, a quartet that set out to entertain the masses and ended up changing the world\u2014the musical one, at a minimum. <\/p>\n
In truth, four LPs was barely enough to skim the surface of what John Lennon, Paul McCartney. George Harrison and Ringo Starr achieved together, but damn if the compilers of the originals didn\u2019t do a pretty fine job of collecting the highest of the high points. Almost all of the truly monumental songs from the lads\u2019 eight years as a recording unit are present on the original 1962-1966<\/i> and 1967-1970<\/i> albums.<\/p>\n
Almost<\/i>.<\/p>\n
Which gets directly to one of the main points of this release, a 50th anniversary CD reissue of the 1962-1966<\/i> double album. There are three notable differences between the original 1993 CD release and this 2023 reissue:<\/p>\n
1. The Liner Notes<\/u>: John Harris\u2019 2023 liner notes essay is a masterclass in this sort of thing, summing up beautifully the trajectory and velocity of both the music and the group making it, while hitting all the right notes in terms of how The Beatles and the culture influenced one another during this impossibly significant and fertile period.<\/p>\n
2. The Recordings<\/u>: The original 1962-1966<\/i> LP featured a mish-mash of mono and stereo recordings. The subsequent 1993 CD issue featured mono versions of the first four tracks, with the remainder represented in stereo. Here, each and every recording appears in stereo, remixed and remastered by Giles Martin, son of the original producer Sir George Martin. The results\u2014distinct separation between elements and scrubbed-with-a-toothbrush sound\u2014deliver clarity so noticeable that at times these almost feel like different recordings\u2026 wonderful recordings, but noticeably different from what long-time listeners\u2019 ears anticipate.<\/p>\n
3. The Tracklist<\/u>: The original 1993 CD version mirrored the original LP release, with 26 songs. As we all know, though, CDs can hold substantially more music than vinyl LPs, and this reissue takes advantage of that reality by adding 12 more songs to 1962-1966<\/i>, six on each disc.<\/p>\n
The core tracklist is one chart-topping, ground-breaking, pulse-accelerating hit after another, from the easygoing blues-and-harmony of \u201cLove Me Do,\u201d through the headlong, thrilling \u201cShe Loves You\u201d and \u201cCan\u2019t Buy Me Love,\u201d to early experiments like the rousing \u201cA Hard Day\u2019s Night\u201d (opening with the most famous sustained chord in rock history) and \u201cI Feel Fine\u201d (opening with the first intentional use of feedback in popular music), and Paul\u2019s masterpiece-born-in-a-dream \u201cYesterday.\u201d<\/p>\n
Disc two is somehow even more impressive as John\u2019s songs get more personal (\u201cHelp,\u201d \u201cYou\u2019ve Got To Hide Your Love Away,\u201d \u201cNorwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown),\u201d \u201cNowhere Man,\u201d and the explicitly autobiographical \u201cIn My Life\u201d), while Paul reaches new heights (\u201cWe Can Work It Out,\u201d \u201cDrive My Car,\u201d \u201cPaperback Writer,\u201d Eleanor Rigby\u201d) and Ringo finally gets a decent original to sing (\u201cYellow Submarine\u201d).<\/p>\n
On disc one, the 2023 reissue adds three songs from the boys\u2019 early catalog of originals. The raucous \u201cI Saw Her Standing There\u201d (a #14 hit as the US B-side to \u201cI Want To Hold Your Hand\u201d) was a glaring omission from the original; gentle ballad \u201cThis Boy\u201d (the UK B-side to \u201cI Want To Hold Your Hand\u201d) features the guys doing their best Frankie Lymon & The Teenagers impression, with superb harmonies; and punchy, snappy \u201cYou Can\u2019t Do That\u201d is among their more notable early album tracks. <\/p>\n
Equally welcome are the addition of three covers from the group\u2019s early cover-heavy repertoire: their eager embrace of Smokey Robinson\u2019s r&b classic \u201cYou Really Got A Hold On Me\u201d; their pure-giddy-fun run at Chuck Berry\u2019s \u201cRoll Over Beethoven\u201d; and their iconic late-at-night-and-John\u2019s-voice-is-shredded take on the Isley Brothers hit \u201cTwist And Shout.\u201d<\/p>\n
On disc two, the 2023 reissue adds the jangly, sparkling \u201cIf I Needed Someone\u201d from Rubber Soul<\/i>, a nod to George, whose songs were completely absent from the original red album. The other five additions come at the end of disc two, where they tack on fully a third of Revolver<\/i> (as one should): George\u2019s \u201cTaxman,\u201d Paul\u2019s \u201cGot To Get You Into My Life\u201d and \u201cHere, There And Everywhere,\u201d and John\u2019s \u201cI\u2019m Only Sleeping\u201d and \u201cTomorrow Never Knows.\u201d (It remains a shame that \u201cTomorrow\u201d didn\u2019t make the original version of the album, given how its experimentalism went on to inspire entire genres of music.)<\/p>\n
It should not surprise anyone that a writer whose fantasy baseball team was proudly named the \u201cWhining Traditionalist Yahoos\u201d still has a sentimental attachment to the original LP version of this album, complete with its untouched mono versions. Those will always feel like the definitive <\/a>recordings of these Beatles classics, but this lovingly presented, vibrantly remixed, and appropriately augmented reissue should nonetheless please fans of all ages and musical persuasions.<\/p>\n *<\/p>\n