Anyone else just got this? It’s a bit good, I must say – I’m either being sonically tricked in some evil new way that we’ll come to disparage in future (brick/loudness wars etc), but the music is really jumping out of the speakers and grabbing me in rather a good way. It sounds immediate, fresh, more natural (the more central drum position, with a wide spread of harmonies in particular) and just bloody good from the get-go. Well done Giles Martin!
On First Looking Into…Sgt Pepper and his remixed LHCB
by 229 Comments
I should add that it’s the double CD version I went for, not the whole kit and caboodle, which just seemed a bit silly.
I’m staggered by how good it is.
Glad it’s not just me. I think I’m going to have to dust off the studio cans and indulge in a spot of chin-stroking for a second listen, it’s that good…
I’ve ordered the box of silliness but I stayed up/awake last night to stream the new thing. I’d mentioned yesterday my fear that it’d be like going to the opticians and the way they flick a lens and ask you if it’s better now, or *now*. And I can never ever ever tell.
But the remix – just the positioning of the instruments is better, and there certainly seemed – even with my shitty aul headphones – to be a clarity there. It could be a whole heap of emperor’s new clothes but even if it is, I love the sound of the ruddy Penny Lane Instrumental take!
I’d love to hear what you think of the whole thing and whether the extra ‘takes’ adds much to the sum of parts. Some of the clips I heard sounded more like the lp take, minus vocals or an instrument or two.
I’d say the additional (gasp) 4* discs will add the thick end of bog all to proceedings. I’m a big child. I’ll pay a hundred quid for this and i’ll knock more fun out of the book, the box and the posters than the ruddy music.
*2 additional music, 1 DVD and1 BRDVD
Ha! I must say, I’m half way through disc 2 and already know this is likely to be the only time I bother with most of it.
That instrumental version of Penny Lane should have been on Pet Sounds, surely.
Yep, it’s more alive. Saving Disc 2 (same running order, different versions) for bathtime tonight 😀
Btw, plenty of moaning already on the SHF about dynamic range nos.
Why does that not surprise me. Still, I might dip in and read all about what I can’t hear and didn’t notice!
Those SHF guys drive me nuts with their wave form pictures that prove that records don’t sound good. They never seem to listen with their ears…
Quite. It’s like they’re taking their lead from some up-his-arse, know-it-all engineer or something…
What is SHF?
The Steve Hoffman forums http://forums.stevehoffman.tv/forums/music-corner.2/
from twitter
“Steve Hoffman Forums thread title of the day: “Beatles Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band Inner Groove loop on cassette tapes question”
The Pepper shipping thread is going nuts today!
My fave ever Fabs-related SHF thread title: “Eleanor Rigby Darker In Stereo”.
I keep hoping that one day someone will form a band called Shipping Dates and cause a Moebius strip of chaos on the Hoffman Forum…
Love it. Could they release an album called “Single by Single”?
The cousin of my ex called his band Private Funktion and when they were booked to play their first gig in a local pub nobody came to watch them. It seems that even the clever use of the letter K to denote their style of music wasn’t enough to stop people from presuming there was a private party going on and moving on to a different pub.
Private Funktion, let me guess – waistcoats and a bass guitar hoisted to two inches below the chin?
Are there 5 strings on that bass? I’m seeing hairspray, white socks and at least one Hawaiian shirt.
They should have called themselves Free Beer.
I was in a band called Free Beer. We’d always have a huge audience, although not at the same time – they’d come in, shrug, pay for a pint, tolerate us for the time it took to drink it, then leave. Cue the next victim…
I was in a band called Free Sex. Same bassist as Private Funktion^
Got the 2-cd version at Sainsbury’s at 8 a.m. Reasonably priced at £15.
It still hadn’t been put on the shelf, and yet … (Cornish accent), “You’re the third one this morning.”
Only heard the “alternate” disc so far and thoroughly enjoyed it.
Bizarre to think there is now a finished “Smile” and an unfinished “Pepper” freely available.
I wasn’t going to buy in to this one – I have plenty of copies of Sgt Pepper in the house – but I streamed it from Spotify to the stereo this afternoon and I’m impressed. I’ve always preferred the mono mix, but this new one has the power of the mono with the clarity of the stereo.
So I guess it’s the vinyl edition for me after all.
I’m livid. While I was at work, my teenage son failed to answer the door to the delivery man. I now have to wait until tomorrow.
Oh that is a shame. It’ll have gone off by tomorrow ;-P
a solicitor writes, you’re more than entitled to cut him out of your will for that.
Mind you, he’ll pick your nursing home, so if you *do* cut him out, don’t tell him.
That’s a good idea. Certainly better than my plan not to feed him, leaving him to roam the streets, feral, surviving on scraps dumped outside chip shops.
Oddly enough that’s what he had planned for you by way of a nursing home.
oooooh – anybody with a CD able to confirm?
http://www.rollingstone.com/music/albumreviews/review-the-beatles-sgt-peppers-anniversary-editions-w484397
“Several other credits have shifted as well: the title track, along with “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds,” “When I’m 64,” “Good Morning Good Morning,” “With a Little Help from My Friends,” “Getting Better” and “Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite!” appear as McCartney-Lennon creations, rather than the more familiar Lennon-McCartney attribution. “A Day in the Life” shows as Lennon composition, while “Lovely Rita,” “Fixing a Hole” and “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (Reprise)” appear under the original Lennon-McCartney “
Nonsense I believe.
Expect a ring from Yoko’s lawyers for posting that.
Can we have a definitive answer as to who sings the “aaahhhhs” on A Day in the Life?
I think it’s Bob Holness.
Donovan?
It is Gerry Rafferty
More like DONOVAN.
I have never thought it was anyone other than John.
The timbre sounds like him. But what do I know?
Me too
I can’t help but think that “Sgt. Pepper’s” would have been a whole lot funkier without George Martin’s classical underlay (or should that be overlay?).
There’s a “Revolver” in there desperate to get out!
The fabulous instrumental of “Penny Lane” on CD2 sounds just like the momentous soundtrack at the end of “The Prisoner” when McGoohan, Leo McKern and Alexis Kanner break out of the village and head for London.
Spoilers, Mutha*****!!!!!
This one?
Rag March, a Chappell’s library piece
Pedantically speaking, when McGoohan et al break out, it starts with a reprise of Dry Bones while they are fooling about on the highway, then fades into September Ballad (another Chappell’s piece) when they arrive in London…
(Start at 40:46)
Streaming it on Spotify as I write…wow!
Where are Burt or HP? Either of them need to stop watching the Mekong flow and get right here, right now!
A naysayer writes:
I listened to it in not the best of circumstances: via the speakers plugged into the Echo Dot in the kitchen early this morning, streamed from Amazon.
It didn’t sound right. I’ve listened to that album almost exclusively via my mother’s stereo vinyl copy all my life. That is Sgt. Pepper. The new version may have a warmer soundstage and reduced this and enhanced that, but I don’t think I care. Oh I will buy it, especially for the extra tracks, but I think the Radio 2 documentary might even fulfill my needs in that direction.
At my birth, the midwife tried to console my distressed young mother as her waters were broken. She settled on their singing Yellow Submarine together. I only found this out a few years ago.
The Fab Four were there from my birth, and I was even named after Macca. I love the Beatles.
I can’t believe I’m saying this but: I don’t need this re-release. The sound of a barrel being scraped so hard there is no bottom left is what I hear.
And still no Carnival of Light.
For me it’s the proper stereo mix for those of who listen with headphones a lot…no hard panning and everything sits nicely in the mix. It’s not meant to replace the original mix if you prefer that. Is an echo dot one of those Bluetooth speaker things? in which case…aren’t they Mono?
As for Carnival of Light, would seem odd to knock that out as a bonus track on Pepper when it wasn’t part of the album sessions although according to Giles Martin it was considered. Maybe Macca will put it out when he’s 80 or something. Given the fact that most posters on this blog can’t get with Rev#9 (myself not included) I doubt they’d dig the Carnival.
The Echo Dot has a Mini Jack out so you can connect a pair of powered speakers or use headphones. The full size Echo doesn’t have this and is just a stand alone speaker.
I’d rather Jack (than Fleetwood Mac).
As someone who’s unfamiliar with Beatles lore, I keep wondering why people are so excited about Ride’s disappointing third album…
Hi real name is Bogl McCartney? Paging Mr Lewisohn!!
Couldn’t agree more @bogl. The sound of grown men wetting their pants over something they heard 40 years ago. What’s going to happen to all of those marbles that have been lost?
Been out all day at the cricket in Taunton, so came home to a lovely big box! I can’t believe how wonderful this sounds – I’ve been listening to the thing for 50 years and I’m hearing new things in there – as I write Within You, Without You is weaving a fab soundscape – and the whole record sounds fresh and new. Fuck me Martin, you’ve pulled it off!
Just got home and here it is, pushed through letterbox though it’s only the 2 cd set. @tiggerlion – have a word with your postie.
I am excited.
Disc 1 sounds marvellous. Disc 2 is mostly pretty crap apart from the Indian instruments take of Within You, Without You and the takes and remixes of Strawberry Fields Forever and Penny Lane at the end. Never noticed the utter weirdness of the progression in Penny Lane before.
Listened to it – just the album, not the trimmings – fuckoff loud on headphones this evening. A number of things occur:
1. As others have remarked, the drums! which are now at least as fat as they are on Abbey Road. The snare on Little Help now sounds like John Bonham. There’s more drums on Fixing a Hole than I’ve heard before (which, incidentally, has an endearingly shambolic ending). While I’m here, isn’t this the first album where there is a distinctly different drums sound for every blimming track?
2. On the other hand the absolutely brutal Good Morning Good Morning, now the most savage thing in the Fabs catalogue, is dominated by the hammering percussion of the low end of Macca’s bass. The guy’s tickling away down there like… well, like a guy tickling down there. Similar effect too. Ain’t that right, lady?
3. I haven’t played the good Sergeant all the way through for a few years and was interested to find myself turning the volume up for Within You Without You. Ian McD said it’s the conscience of the album and he’s right. One of the points where I welled up a bit was when I thought about what it must have felt like in the Summer of Love to hear the Beatles – that’s The Beatles -saying, “With Our Love We Could Save The World”. Maybe I can just feel what’s been lost since, especially after this last week. Were the Beatles humanity’s last hope? Discuss.
4. It’s a bigger, “rounder” version (hur). At some points I felt it was turning my crappy old JVC amp into a 5.1 surround system. The vocals seem more intimate. This is not the album I’ve grown up with but it’s splendid in a different way. Like the infamous 1997 CD of Raw Power (which I love BTW… bite me)… or the instrumental Paul’s Boutique.
5. Am I hearing more than I could have heard on the other versions? Or is there a tendency just to listen to these reissue jobs closer and louder and with more attention and we therefore just hear things that were always there… and when I put my 2009 CD on on Thursday will I hear the same, or less… or more?
…sugar plum fairy….sugar plum fairy…
I think you just *can* hear more. The (now) conventional drum and vocal placement that Martin has achieved allows your ears to actually pick out other parts far more easily. That said, the drums and bass do sound sharper and louder, making it feel fresher and rock-er.
It’s a bloody revelation, that’s what it is.
After the bloody excellent job he did with LOVE I shall deffo be listening again.
Any excuse.
Update! I’m listening to the 09 version…. probably for the last time. The new one is MILES better.
Thumbs aloft for the Gilesmeister.
There’s an instrumental of Paul’s Boutique?!!
*taps nose*
You ain’t seen me, right?
I’ve had to make do with my Kraftwerk boxed sets (very expensive day and I can’t really afford it, so won’t be spending much in June!), although very pleased with what I have listened to on the Kraftwerk blu rays so far. My Sgt Pepper box is making it’s way from Italy, as it was £81 delivered from Amazon Italy, as opposed to £110 from Amazon UK. When I asked Amazon UK why this was, the other day, they said it was mainly a tax thing. Yet the UK site had it at £91 pre-tax, so that reason doesn’t wash. Anyway, it will give me something to look forward to next week, whilst I start counting how many weeks it is to the next payday.
It was on offer from Amazon Germany on Saturday for £70 so I went for the big box. It arrived yesterday from the local Amazon warehouse in Dunfermline! Taxman indeed!
Gadzooks! It’s all enveloping.😎
A quick question. How was he able to do much remixing, because this was famously recorded on four track with multiple bounce downs of different tracks. Do all the original sub-mixes exist somewhere? Otherwise he’s only able to fiddle with those 4 faders, and raising the piano would also raise Ringo snoring or whatevs.
Btw, will be listening tonight via spotIfy.
Paging Fenton Steve.
Are you sitting comfortably? Then I’ll begin.
In essence, each bounce-down from 4 tracks to 1 loses some of the low bass*, some of the high treble, adds some tapes hiss (so loses some quiet details) and adds a tiny bit of pitch instability**.
Even if it had been a recreation of the original stereo mix from the original session tapes, I’d expect more detail and louder bass & drums. As it is, with higher-resolution playback than available in the 60s, and not having to master onto tape, it should be even better. I was away all weekend and only played it once, but it sounds great to my ears.
(*) Each analogue tape record/playback loses, typically, 1dB at 20Hz and 20kHz on a professional-grade recorder. So six bounces would lose 6dB. In other words, the lowest frequencies of the kick drum and highest frequencies from the cymbals would be half as loud as they should.
(**) Queen’s Bo Rap had so many bounces to make way for Brian May’s multiple guitar parts that the tape was almost transparent. Nobody has been easily able to recreate the drum sound – a combination of bandwidth limiting, tape saturation distortion, pitch wobble and noise.
As ever, like Ariston, I could go on. And on. And on…
I was thinking that. I guess it’s possible the original tracks exist though usually they are bounced to another track on the same tape, overwriting whats already there. They will have used the tracks they have multiple times though, using eq and filters to highlight particular parts, e.g. for a mono drum track you could filter out the upper frequencies and make one copy the kick drum track, and another copy the snare filtering out the lows and highs and leaving the mids, another for the cymbals etc. Also have two copies in “stereo” and process the sides differently to the centre. Studio trickery, basically.
Apparently he went back to the original, pre bounce down, 4 tracks and essentially built the whole thing up from scratch, using the mono master as a reference. I guess this explains the amazing sound.
I would really like him to redo the earlier albums now!
Remarkable that they kept them. Good for those who love them!
Really interesting. Turns out Abbey Road had 4 four tracks so they did 4 tracks on one, sub mixed them to one on a different machine and kept going, and they had saved the originals, hence it’s able to be properly remixed. I’m interested to hear it though I am not especially bothered about it as an album at the end of the day. Still curious though.
More here…
https://www.analogplanet.com/content/giles-martins-sgt-peppers-50th-anniversary-remix-strategy
I’m with you, Twang. I don’t care for it as an album – and I don’t care much for the whole Summer of Love claptrap and gloopy music of that ilk in general – but I’m mildly curious to hear it after all the talk.
Gloopy? I can do my fiddles and folk but that too gets tedious. Tedious beards and ‘authenticity’.
No, you misunderstand – I certainly wasn’t making any reference to folk music. Why did you think I was? I can’t bear to listen to most folk music. I was rather suggesting that, for me, vast swathes of 1967 British pop music are gloopy and sugary and annoying – compared to 1966 or 1968 British pop music, lots of which I like. All that UFO club/Carnaby Street/Toytown psych stuff is abominable, to my ears. I’ve no doubt it was all fun and new and exciting at the time but, like candyfloss, it seems insubstantial and sickly in retrospect. In my opinion.
Incidentally, my fave Beatles song of 1967 is one that was inexplicably left off this reissue: ‘Only A Northern Song’.
Here’s some folk musicians giving it a go (very well):
Read the above re ‘tedious’ as I was applying it to the endless yawning of much folk, not the 60s innovators, and as for insubstantial and sickly, it’s a wavelength disagreement,
I see completely otherwise re the best, as in other forms and so/ but the Mahavishnu Orchestra are unimpeachable. OM.
John McL was doing his bit for the Lennon-McCartney cause in 1967 – trying to get these little-known composers heard. Here he is with ‘Norwegian Wood’, with the Gordon Beck Quartet, recorded in December 67:
I really like that. Thanks for posting. Re the folk/psych hybrid fusion thing, this little gem is a beauty, which of course you’ll know, but I thought I’d share this for anyone who doesn’t/might be interested. It’s also a wonderfully woozy Sunday morning vibe:
Lovely, and as you say, perfect for a Summery Sunday. I love the point where folk meets psych too. The hypnotic/drony quality reminded me of this:
Good interview with Giles Martin about this on All Songs Considered.
http://www.npr.org/sections/allsongs/2017/05/23/528678711/why-remix-sgt-peppers-giles-martin-the-man-behind-the-project-explains
Very nice Bartleby. Perfect for a dark muggy bank holiday morning, in a good way.
I’m not so sure now. I’ve listened to both whilst ignoring them as I’ve gone about my house business and I believe I enjoy the original more.
I have to say, as enjoyable as the second CD is, if I was a 15 year old and all the stuff surrounding this release had piqued my interest, I’d pop over to Record & Tape Exchange and secure a 1987 “Pepper” CD for £3.
No you wouldn’t, you’d stream it 😀
More fool them – get it for £3 and you’ll still have it in 2027.
F***ING AMAZING!
OM NAMAH SHIVAYA
It’s All Too Much – recorded this week in 1967
Hey Rob. Glad you could make it.
*smiles heavy-liddedly through effects of 4am Donner und Blitzen wakeup call from Thoth or someone similar*
My sympathies. Bad night on the Planes? Heavy shit there too, but hope. The gap is closing. The Moon Weasels are in dirt mode motel. I have bribed the maid.
It’s a real mixed bag, in my opinion…..
– The drums and bass are much beefier and sitting out in the mix. Always a good thing with Ringo and Macca.
– Amazing how “bare” some of the basic tracks are (I mean the early takes on CD2). They really, REALLY couldn’t have done without George Martin sprinkling his arrangements over the top, could they? On this level, Brian Wilson was head and shoulders ahead of them.
– I think he should have gone further with some of the remixes. She’s Leaving Home being a case in point. Love the song of course, but there was always that gloopy echo all over the string arrangement. CD2 reveals a basic instrumental track of fabulous brightness and starkness – but for the main track on CD1 he’s gone back to the gloopy echo sound! I would have loved to hear Paul’s vocal over the dry strings.
And the Anthology revealed there was a quality, multi-channel (ie “surround sound”) take of the Day In The Life orchestra swells – so why go back to a practically mono, compressed version?? He missed the chance to have the orchestra envelope the listener.
– The instrumental With A Little Help From My Friends is a revelation.
– The twin versions of Strawberry Fields Forever are testament to John’s “feel” for making something sound right – he KNEW that the song would only work by splicing the two together. Hearing them separately, he was so right.
– A lot of criticism of the old stereo mix is the bizarre hard left/right panning. But that’s one of the things I loved about it! The single thing which utterly ruins this remix for me is that when Paul comes in in A Day In The Life he’s no longer singing directly into your right ear! Seriously – the original mix was a head spinning moment, after the swelling orchestra, to suddenly get “Woke up, fell out of bed…” directly into one ear, completely dry… it was like the curtain had lifted, before drifting back into the psychedelic revery. Now, it sounds much more balanced and central, but the woozy, wrenching effect is completely gone.
OOAA!
I’m not sure about it sounding particularly “bare” but I love CD2.
Once all this fuss has died down, and SPLHCB resumes its rather lonely existence on my shelf, it will definitely be CD2 that will get the annual run out.
This whole release has made me think of George Martin quite a bit, and I’ve come to the conclusion that whenever there is heavy GM involvement (“Yesterday,” “In My Life,” “A Day In The Life,” “Goodnight”), that’s when I go a little lukewarm on the group.
I don’t want the RSO, I want Lennon wandering drunk around Hamburg with a toilet seat on his head.
I’m also wildly out of sync with the perceived “best songs” on the album … greatly favouring “Getting Better,” “Within You, Without You,” “When I’m 64” (fantastic on CD2), “Lovely Rita,” “Good Morning, Good Morning” and “Reprise,” over the received wisdom of Lucy/Kite/Life/GM’s orchestration.
I know what you mean about the ‘best’ tracks – these suddenly leap out of the album as highlights whereas before they were almost fillers. Within You Without You is now simply astonishing (the sessions for this in the de luxe box are great too, where George is coaching the Indian musicians on how he wants them to sound and play) – I haven’ played the blu-ray suround mix yet, but I gather this is a real highlight track there too.
Beatle engineer Norman Smith (until Rubber Soul) claimed there were two producers working with them, Martin and McCartney. The steps from early takes to final version required Martin’s input, but McCartney (and Lennon) would have a pretty good idea as to how they wanted the final record to sound.
I’ve listened to the 2CD set and it’s all very enjoyable: good work. I read Giles Martin’s comments, but have some doubts. Are we now supposed to be such mono-mix snobs that every original stereo mix is going to be deemed illegitimate because the studio didn’t spend weeks doing it? Are they now going to remix The White Album and make us buy it all over again?
Yes. Yes, they are.
Have you not seen that well-known documentary, The Men In Black, @Pessoa?
Ha! Yeah, I had thought of Tommy Lee Jones.
I hear you, Pessoa, I really do, and I was quite suspicious at first, BUT – the beauty is that basically you get the vastly superior mono mix refashioned in a stereo form with added magic. Drinks all round, eh? Pure sonic alchemy.
I only bought the single cd. More than enough for me as I’m not that into Beatles outtakes, interesting as I’m sure they are. The thing with The Beatles is that it all went into the finished product. This remix has had endless loud plays in the yurt over the past few days. Each time is still a thrill, and will continue to be each listen from now on. There’s no going back. Glad I have the mono remaster, but this is definitive. The 2009 remaster is off to the PDSA. That’s how good it is. Let’s hope that Giles gets his hands on Revolver and Magical Mystery Tour (Capitol album version).
Sir, you are absolutely right on all counts. A splendid time really is guaranteed for all. I got the box set and am wondering if there is still a free tab of acid in the good Sgt’s moustache?
Loved the new stereo mix and now diving into CD2. The big box package is a lovely thing and I’m delighted with it.
My first listen was with a 19 year old house guest who’d never heard the album! He seemed to enjoy the whole thing and has just announced that they all went banana crazy at the end of Strawberry Fields! Seems fair enough
Can someone enlighten me what cover “artist” Peter Blake actually DID? As the big book in this set shows, the basic idea for the front cover was McCartney’s, and his sketches are pretty detailed and true to the end result. An article in last month’s MOJO about the photo shoot shows that the set design and arrangement of props (even the selection of photos for the “crowd”) was all done by the photographer’s team. The inner sleeve was painted by members of The Fool. So what is it about “staged by Peter Blake”?
I read once that Peter Blake only produced three LP designs in the 60s. Pentangle’s ‘Sweet Child’ (1968) was the second – a pentagram mosaic tile plus, on the back, a terrific selection of existing images/art to represent each song. I never discovered what the third was. Any ideas?
Roger McGough – Summer With Monika
Is it fair to say that the artists/photographers were the weak link in the swingin’ 60s?
Maximum exposure for minimum talent, compared to Dylan, John, Paul, Jimi et al?
Apparently a Chelsea supporter too. No call for that.
David Bailey, Mary Quant & Vidal Sassoon all came from ordinary backgrounds and were in their twenties during the sixties. Their photographs were tremendous.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/arts/multimedia/sixties/
Only Bailey fits my criteria of artist/photographer, and I’ve always wondered exactly how hard it was to take a good photo of a Beatle (a “Beatle” in ’65!) compared to actually being a Beatle and having the more stringent task of writing “Penny Lane” or “Across The Universe.”
Infinitely more pressure/expectation at the time, infinitely more hurdles retrospectively.
I see. We are comparing one kind of art with another. I love a good picture, in any kind of medium. A great photo can give me lifelong pleasure, much as Sgt Pepper has.
OK, but how can you not take a great photograph of Jimi Hendrix in 1967? It’s surely not possible.
I am sure it was very possible to take a naff photo of Jimi or many of the other 60s icons. But we just don’t get to see them in 2017. A lot of stuff has been has been filtered out of the picture.
Just like we don’t get to hear about all those films, novels, poets, bands etc which were quite popular at the time but didn’t go on to have long careers. The Underground scene was crawling with interesting oddities.
I’ve read Peter Blake mention his minimal fee for the venture several times over the last week, but as (a) Paul detailed it to the nth degree, as stated above, (b) his then wife, the co-artist, has been completely written out of the story, and (c) he didn’t take the actual photograph (knowing the photographer’s name would get you the jackpot on “Pointless” – see also the guy who invented the Stones’ tongue logo) …. maybe he only merited £200!
Perhaps if GCU Grey Area had a spare minute he could throw together a guess at how the Sgt Pepper sleeve might have looked if EMI had had their in-house graphics department do it.
(should only take five minutes, you just press a few buttons etc etc)
You mean like Linda McCartney?
Since getting the 2-disc set, SPLHCB seems to have replaced Revolver in my affections as the toppermost Fabs elpee. I’m not sure whether it’s due to the remix, the outtakes, or just that I’ve been paying closer attention, but it makes me wonder what would happen if this sort of treatment was given to some of their other albums. Apart from empty wallets a-go-go, that is.
It’s amazing, isn’t it. It is so much more a coherent whole. I always liked Within You, Without You but it and When I’m 64 really sparkle.
Personally, I’d love Giles to have another crack at Get Back.
Aha, the backsliding starts here.
Well, good.
The idea of Revolver being superior was always, I think, a 90s music press-driven phenomenon. Of course, this meant denigrating Sgt Pepper as inauthentic and woolly but actually it’s always been the highest expression of what a pop album can realistically hope to achieve. 50 years and counting. Maybe you did have to be there.
So these remix/remaster sessions have a point after all, if only to remind people what a major major step the LP was, even if wasn’t populated by their absolutely best songs ever.
As the man might have said: It’s Beatles’ Sgt Pepper. Shut up.
😉
Excuse me! I’m still loving Revolver, though. It’s mini whose head is turned.
This refresh does show that Sgt Pepper was a true collective band effort regardless of who wrote the songs.
I have only listened a couple of times on Spotify but, boy, am I glad I wasn’t even tempted to actually buy the damn thing. To these (cloth) ears CD1 is nowhere near different/better than the original release to justify purchase and CD2 is a complete waste of money.
Thank goodness for that. i was beginning to think you’d lost your touch. 😉
Just, ahem, testing your resolve there Tig. Light joshing. We all know only too well your adoration of Revolver. Not for turning then, at least you’re admitting it’s quite good.
😉
PS Actually now that I think of it, wasn’t it Abbey Road you gave a ferocious mauling to, saying it’s three-and-a-half good songs? Or something? It was a while back. Do remind us, Tig.
AND A bonus point for refresh as a noun
‘Twas Abbey Road.
You’ve clearly been listening to it all wrong, er… Wrong. I recommend the proper CD (in a nice new CD player), and listening from the tub with a g&t and a packet of cheese and onion crisps. Heaven!
You mean it’s better if you listen to it naked?
Yes, all of their albums do. It all started with Let It Be Naked, which I took as an instruction, but it works!
I’ll put the CD on now.
Wahey!
Put the CD on what?
My head. I need some protection.
You’re using it as a reflector in order to pretend to be a doctor in a kitsch 1950s cigarette advert. Don’t worry mate, we’ve all done it.
I can talk. During the 1998 solar eclipse I blutacked two early Suede CD singles to my sunglasses so that I could watch it without damaging my eyes. Worked a treat!
I would never do anything that would damage my eyes, as you know.
Urgh! Cheese and onion… You’re only a Marmite away from ex-communication.
They help with listening to the Rutles as well.
And why not:
Kind of you to mansplain my joke back to me 😉
Ouch! I was just taking the opportunity to post the video @minibreakfast , honest.
I did do a winky face, just in case! Sorry @Lando-Cakes xxx
Mar-mite, got the ex-communication
Mar-mite, got the ex-communication
Ooh, I say! That’s one of your better ones…
To mini in her bath (cold shower for me): if Burt or HP was around I’m sure he would be saying it much better than me – in 1967 and for quite a few years after we all played Sgt Pepper so many times we knew every note, every lyric. Like Burt I haven’t
heard it all the way through since, ooh, 1975. No need, it’s in my soul. I had hoped there would be something in all these obscenely-priced packages to rekindle the flame. There is not.
One listen to the remixed CD. Sounded great. Probably haven’t listened to the album in about 3 or 4 years (since mono vinyl came out), so it was pretty fresh to me. I still think songwriting is better on other albums and Lennon is not quite at his best (apart from closing track), WYWY does indeed sound brilliant (as does Mr Kite), but it is primarily a McCartney album. As Mark Lewisohn tweeted “Brilliant at every level, inspired in every element, 24-year-old Paul McCartney gives fullest of his superlative talents.”
Can’t argue with that.
I made the non-music-snob GLW listen to the out-takes CDs in the car at the weekend. Her observation: “They sound really natural”. By which, she means, they sound like a band playing together.
It might arguably have been the first really ‘studio creation’ album but, by modern standards, it’s live with some overdubs. It’s hardly a true multi-channel/multi-take Frankenstein creation like (to take a random example) Def Leppard’s Hysteria.
I’m still a bit peeved that I could have saved 40 quid by buying it from Germany, but I’ll get over that.
£31.07 after postage, if it helps Steve?
That’s helping nicely.
Go on, talk numbers to me. Do you have anything really small?
Best I can do I’m afraid. I’m holding off on ordering an Andrei Tarkovsky blu-ray box set, knowing it’ll drop by £30 as soon as I place my order.
Service was outstanding – ordered on Saturday afternoon from the German site, delivered to my door in Belfast on Bank Holiday Monday afternoon in pristine condition via Dunfermline. Was expecting it at best, end of this week. German Amazon has a button which translates into English as well, taking any hassle out of it.
Is it a button that says Mach Schau?
Had to look that one up!
I would say Revolver was their first “studio creation”, if was are talking about other artists then Pet Sounds too.
Phil Spector’s typically ungracious griping about the acclaim awarded to Good Vibrations was that it was a product of studio trickery rather than a recording of people playing in the studio (compared to River Deep for example). And presumably there weren’t enough loaded weapons involved.
I’m very much looking forward to the documentary on BBC2 this weekend. Musicologist Howard Goodhall* presents, and he’s brilliant at pulling music apart and telling us why we like stuff.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b08tb97f
*originally changed by autocorrect to Goofball
Author of the immortal lines
Black – his gloves are finest vole
Black – his codpiece made of metal
His hat is blacker than a mole
His pot is blacker than his kettle
Sneak preview here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p054jbtt
Anybody watch this?
Wasn’t it… how can I put this… fucking brilliant?
I spent most of it on the edge of tears. Best rock docco I’ve seen since The Last Five Years.
Yes, really enjoyed it. A few wankers on my Twitter timeline criticising it. Some people can never be pleased.
It was, as you rightly say, fucking brilliant.
The musical theory breakdown had the potential to be really dry and fly right over my head.
Howard Goodall explained all this clearly and articulately, with no small measure of passion.
(even Mrs D, a civilian of the higher orders, was dragged in with a couple of “oh, I get it” statements).
All of his shows are like that. He’s like the AJP Taylor of music (ropey analogy alert). I’d like him to do the same for Pet Sounds, Spirit of Eden, Fulham Fallout…
Amazing. Particularly enjoyed his deconstruction of Within You Without You. Another clever bastard.
Some people clearly wanted the old stories/talking heads yet again. John has to be taken on the roof, Ringo learns to play chess, Paul and George like Pet Sounds, cardboard cutout of Hitler, blah blah… if you want It Was 20 Years Ago Today or the 1992 South Bank Show or the Anthology it’s all on YouTube.
I suspect that I may have rather annoyed Mrs. Paws whilst watching this. Unfortunately I was putting in the facts before Mr. Goofball got around to imparting the information. Sometimes I have to ask myself if spouting ‘facts’ about music really is an aphrodisiac.
Great TV, though.
Spouting musical facts is like catnip.
There is nothing a refined lady likes more than after she finishes a sentence you than say the name of the song, artist and year relating to a particular word or phrase in that sentence
“…a kaleidoscope of sound, the likes of which had never been heard before”
Dude, I know I brought it up, but Fulham Fallout is for another thread…
Blimey – had to look that one up. Sounds more like an eyepatch than a kaleidoscope.
It’s the album Sgt Pepper could have been.
If only Julian had come home with a painting
entitled “Then I Kicked Her”
“But they’re not pressed in red
So they buy The Lurkers instead”
Total knowledge of them, right there.
They were punks? Whaddya mean coulda?
@moose-the-mooche
Just caught up – this is a keeper on the old Sky box. Fabtastic stuff! It’s like Brian Cox – I’m fascinated that someone can be this fucking clever and entertaining at the same time….I don’t really understand it all in truth, but also totally makes sense.
Just an observation. It doesn’t appear on the iPlayer home page, you have to go to the BBC2 page to find it. Undoubtably a landmark but possibly not with the mass appeal you might think.
The music theory didn’t really do it for me. OOAA.
My only complaints are that I didn’t think it was either nerdy*, or long, enough.
Perhaps yer man could have started with “Right civilians, you can all eff off for the next three hours – this is going to get proper hardcore.”
(*) I understood some of it, so it can’t have been
Amen brother! I was waiting for him to get his teeth into the guitar solo on GMGM, or the rhythm section on Getting Better.
Perhaps there’ll be a deluxe SDE-type edition for us saddoes….
Been picking and choosing my Pepper progs v. carefully.
Martin Freeman’s two-parter (still to listen to part 2), yep.
Paul Merton’s 1974 (WTF?) job, that’ll be ever-so-slightly the “NO.”
Goodall’s TV hour, absolutely fabulous, and, like others, I kept thinking, “put this out as a 3 hour dvd and I’m in.”
Welcome tips, thanks Deram. Definitely need to hear the last 7 minutes of Merton. Mash up of Kite and Heavy. From Love?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b08rfqk3
But where’s the Freeman available?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b08qqgks/episodes/player
Cheers, Steve. Done by a certain Kevin Howlett Media, loads of George Martin at the faders and comments by Lennon, so old sources. Worth hearing.
Freeman has 2 postits of input.
Perhaps we could have a whip-round and DaveBP can record it on his Betamax camera.
I am separated from HG by 2 or 3 degrees via the Cambridge mafia. I once nearly ran over Stephen Fry* when cycling home from work. Once he’d recomposed himself, he bellowed “Well, hello, how are you?”. I’d briefly met him at the cricket about a month previously. That’s some memory.
(*) All that brain power, and he was walking in the cycle lane
The Cambridge mafia… mess with them and you wake up with a decapitated sherry bottle in your bed.
Buggery bollocks. So the BBC is still geoblocked, but that sent me off down the youtube rabbit hole for the last hour or two and I found this….
Howard Goodall on the HJHMs back in 2013. Also fascinating, and not something I’d seen down here in Oz, and we’ve had some of HG’s material before.
Wow, that was brilliant! How did I manage to miss it?
I think this is from the series he did on the evolution of music in the 20th century. Lots of jazz and post-modern classical types, but the last two episodes were devoted to The Beatles and Stevie Wonder IIRC
Ooh, Stevie! Ta, SRobot.
Had a look at his website, and past series include Howard Goodall’s Great Dates, Howard Goodall’s Organ Works, and Howard Goodall’s Big Bangs.
I nearly just fnarfed myself unconscious.
He’s clearly missed a trick with this latest project. It could have been Howard Goodall’s Pepper Grinder (wherein he explores Within You Without You, and reveals the secrets of the steam organ)
It’s the most collaborative Lennon-McCartney album. Johnny Rhythm might not have originated the majority, but his mark is all over the McCartney songs, transforming them into the magical material tour-de-force (heh) that it is. The studio sessions sound like a good laugh too.
The best album ever is now listenable on modern equipment.
Honestly I have no idea why anyone even bothered trying after this was released, it’s taken years for music to scale down its ambitions such that normal people can do it.
The “hummed last chord” of Day In The Life – thank the lawd they ditched that. Puts me in mind of the theme from Channel 4’s Absolutely.
Good Morning Good Morning Take 1 – ha ha! It’s the White Stripes!
….doirect injection!
I intend to get this as an early birthday present for myself. Local sources suggest the deluxe edition is completely sold out in HMV so I may have to ask the postman to deliver it. I am particularly looking forward to hearing the original trip-hop version of Lovely Rita.
The kids are at their gran’s for half term, and the missus was out on a works jolly, so I played the (stereo) BluRay audio last night at neighbour-bothering levels.
I swear I heard things I’ve not heard before. Was that really a very quiet ukulele I could hear on WI64? And with 96kHz sampling, the tone at the end of ADITL was ultrasonic (i.e. I couldn’t hear it, but the daughter’s hamster could). And that bass. And that kick drum.
Cor!
outtakes on a major album do nothing for me, so I saved some dosh and purchased the plain single disc version.
what REALLY gets my goat is current CD packaging….you simply cannot get the shiny bleeders out the case without fingermarking em.
I’ve played my album a couple of times in the past few days and already the disc is marked….I have CDs from the late 80s which are yet to pick up a mark.
bring back plastic jewel cases…..please.
Top Pepper tips –
1. Take the clear plastic wrapping off the Mojo CDs no one ever listens to.
2. Take one of those paper CD/DVD sleeves that you get in packs of 50.
3. Place Pepper CD in CD/DVD sleeve.
4. Place Pepper CD, now in its CD/DVD sleeve, in between Pepper packaging and Mojo wrapping.
Job done!
Hate jewel cases and any marks don’t affect play, right?
I’m with you on this, Dai.
Uncut have seen the light and gone for cardboard sleeves for their cover discs. Mojo have done the odd cardboard one but keep reverting to plastic.
All the sensible artists are going all-cardboard (best) or Digipaks.
Jewel cases take up more space on my severely overcrowded shelves and on cover discs they are often cracked by the time the postman delivers them. They get scratched and they attract dirt so that you can’t see the cover art properly.
Jewel cases are so 20th century…
Slightly off-topic question: it’s been put to me that if I do a bit of crowd-funding round the family I might get the Silly Edition for my birthday.
Early signs are that it’s going to be a slog getting it in Oz, so I might have to look elsewhere. Does anybody know if the DVD/Blu-Ray are region-specific? I don’t want to have to buy a new player as well – or indeed fiddle about with the whole HandBrake shenanigans.
99% sure DVD and Blu-ray are region free as is pretty much always the case for music related releases
I just cleaned my iPhones Otter box.
Night and day I tells ya! Night. And. Day.😜
I got that Beatles box set of all the albums about 10 years ago. Still never listened to Sgt Pepper’s.
Woo hoo, take that !
I was thinking about that Howard Goodall documentary.
Why couldn’t the music teacher at my school have been like that?
In Goodall’s documentary, I learned more about music in 60 minutes than I did in two whole years at school.
Funny thing is, if our teacher had only asked us what we wanted, we (the 75% who weren’t listening) would have told him.
Hanif Kureishi tells the tale of how his music teacher at a grammar school in London in 1968 played them She’s Leaving Home and then calmly told them that the Beatles songs were all written by George Martin and Brian Epstein – the implication being that oiks like Lennon and McCartney could not possibly write something this good, so it must have been the posh blokes that did it.
That’s incredible!
My music teacher worked on the principle that if it wasn’t completely impenetrable and exclusive it couldn’t possibly be viable.
Our hipper English teacher recognised the value in analysing a subject (pop music) that his class might be interested in, in order to get his class to think about language in Shakespeare, John Donne, Chaucer etc. It worked.
I would have thought it was the obvious route.
Prithee squire, agadoo doo doo
Push yonder pineapple and mayhap shake the tree
Arfissimo
(*Exits, pursued by A Flock Of Seagulls*)
Played the new mix again last night… my god it’s incredible.
If GM were to do a job like this on The White Album I would totally lose my shit.
I was thinking about this the other day – the White Album stereo version is fine, or at least nowhere near as poor as the original Pepper stereo, so I’m not sure where GM would go with a remix.
I dunno… more cowbell?
The downstairs CD player came back from the mender’s on Saturday, so tonight has been set aside for the first listen of the new Pepper ON HEADPHONES. Ooh!
… so about now you’ll be getting something in your downstairs that will be bringing tears to your eyes.
I managed to get a hold of the deluxe edition on Wednesday last week. So far I have listened to both outakes discs, but have yet to to listen to the full albums. I thought I’d try and listen to everything in roughly chronological order, so am saving the 2017 remix until last.
The new “Pepper” has been retired … still on the “pending/could yet be played quite soon” shelf, but retired nonetheless.
Post-new “Pepper” release I’ve played many of the psych gems of the era … Rainbow Ffolly, July, the debuts by Caravan and Soft Machine … but I hadn’t played “Piper At The Gates Of Dawn” for yonks, and so, 1997 mono CD in hand, that’s what has been playing for 2 days.
Is there anyone on here who doesn’t think that “Piper” walks all over “Pepper?”
I always pay polite lip-service to SPLHCB, but “Piper” … it’s incredible, beats “Pepper” all ends up, doesn’t it?
I believe The Fabs were just next door when Piper was being recorded. I think they would have been on to something like Baby You’re a Rich Man or the MMT tracks by then. There wasn’t much of a break, to be fair. All you Need Is Love was on TV only about three weeks after Pepper popped.
The groups met, but didn’t get on. Shame. Not long after, the Zombies went in there and recorded Odessey and Oracle. Wowser.
Hmm. For me, Piper runs out of steam a bit on side two and teeters over the brink into twee. Having said that, it is Heath Ledger’s Joker compared to Jack Nicholson’s ‘Badass’ Buddusky.
It has to be the mono version of Piper, Tigger. Far superior.
At least this year’s Father’s Day present is easy peasy.
Apparently SPLHCB was no. 1 last week.
This surely has to be the longest gap for a specific album, as opposed to artist, to reach no. 1 on two separate occasions.
Just bought this – I’m more interested in the studio innovations than in the Beatles as songwriters, and the Goodall doco properly piqued my interest.
Anyway, I’ve got it spinning away on the turntable right now. It does sound absolutely superb – so transparent and beautifully mixed. Muscular too – Lucy in particular surprised me with its power. Like others have said, I’m hearing lots of stuff I’d never heard before. Really enjoying it.
Hearing the album anew, and of course watching the Goodall doc, led me this week to spend 50p on an old LP of fairground organ music, just so’s I can piss about with it on Audacity.
*rubs thighs*
Haha! Excellent.
Messing about with huge steam organs… no, I can’t make anything of that.
Nice one Bob. Lucy is a particular surprise. I had the remastered Pepper playing yesterday afternoon. It was absolutely wonderful, sitting outside in the sun under the cloudless blue. Perfect.
Yeah – plus another surprise: I’ve always disliked WYWY, but it was a revelation just now. Hari Koopa, etc. 😉
I’ve always loved that song, although I completely understand why many people don’t. The new mix is perfect. The stereo one was too harsh in the balance between orchestra and the Indian musicians. Also, a lot of people thought that the laughter at the end was sort of condescending. Ironically it was actually added on my George as deliberate attempt to lighten these things up at the end as so as not to appear too po faced.
Completely agree – it’s perfectly balanced now. The cello in particular sounds lovely, and the whole thing is just so crystal clear, like running water. Bloody marvellous job Giles Martin’s done.
I was initially sceptical. Has he remixed Jeremy Corbyn on the sly as well?
Ha!
I don’t really understand your issue over the songwriting. One of Goodall’s major points was that the hybrid innovation in the songwriting led to the sonic adventures. If George sang like an Indian singer, the juxtaposition of Eastern and Western music wouldn’t have happened. The desire to stitch two different songs together for A Day In The Life, resulted in the introduction of a musically dramatic bridge and finale. And so on, right through the whole album. Without the creativity in the songwriting, Sgt Pepper would not have such magical sonics.
On a slight digression, but a related one, I watched a Pet Sounds documentary on BBC4 the other night. I prefer Pepper, always have (not the generally received view) precisely because, God Only Knows aside, for me the wonderful music is let done by tweeness of the lyrics. Some say that’s part of its charm. Doesn’t really work for me, and didn’t as a younger listener either.
I don’t have an issue. I’m just more interested in one than the other.
The laughter comes from the Beyond the Fringe LP – an earlier George M production. I always thought that was cool in itself.
“…for Billy Shears is an hairy man”
I didn’t know that. Very cool.
Hari Belafonte 🙂
This Sunday marks the 50th Anniversary of this country’s contribution to the “Our World” satellite extravaganza, namely “All You Need Is Love,” the single of which would introduce the world to yet another new song, “Baby, You’re A Rich Man.”
In a parallel period of time (slightly longer, as the L.P. came out on 1st June), that means, that since this blog was started, the “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” L.P. was already The Beatles’ last project.
Apart from a phenomenal work-rate on their part, it also shows what a trick Apple missed not to celebrate all these anniversaries.