First, I'll loosely describe it for someone un- or less familiar with it than I am. Then I'll look at the Super Deluxe version that I, of course, bought, and talk about the new mixes and the sessions material. Finally, I'll trace its history with my ears as it went from a kind of nursery singalong record to a trove of undercurrents, some quite dark, that suggest the substance beneath the polish.
The Album.
Come Together slinks to life as a moody bass riff with an ominous drum pattern. Low key rhythm guitar pulses under Lennon's sharp vocals that sing of a character adorned in a blend of nonsense phrases and ugliness. The chorus breaks out of this with a shout of the title which could be sexual or a call to other action, political, perhaps (it had started as a campaign jingle for Timothy Leary), the guitar breaking out in loud bar chords before surrendering back to the swampy bass. A solo emerges from a bed of electric piano and wails clean and distant above. It returns after another verse and chorus as the refrain is repeated with falsetto extensions to the fade. This song has always creeped me out. The line, "hold you in his armchair you can feel his disease," made me wince as some horrible images came forth. But it is a great groove with a piercing vocal and guitars so subdued they can be indistinguishable from the piano and a rhythm section performance that's both sexy and disturbing.
After a big run on the tom toms Something settles into the lushest ballad the band ever did as George Harrison celebrates the love of his life in a descending progression through the major with a B section in the minor rounded off in a gorgeous guitar figure ending in an affirming major chord, supported by a string section and organ. The middle eight soars with McCartney providing some light-bearing harmony. Harrison's vocal is delicate until the bridge but this effectively prevents the richness of the arrangement from spilling into cloying overstatement. The solo on a clean Les Paul is smooth and tasteful, completing the air of worship in the track.
Maxwell's Silver Hammer is one of the McCartney gateway drugs for young listeners to get into the Beatles. Its thumping progress and wry vocal (he even breaks into laughter at one point) belie that it is a tale of serial murder. The jaunty verses give way to a big yelling chorus that anyone can sing. I never feel like enjoying this song and wince a little as it starts straight into the verse but I'll leave it on as the arrangement does have riches like the between verse bass figure, splendid harmonies and momentum. It marks the first appearance on a Fabs album of the Moog synthesizer that George had bought the year before and the passages that feature it here are properly orchestral and even novel (like the wailing whistling tone towards the end) so that it sounds like a n instrument, not a gimmick.
Oh Darling begins with a tense electric augmented chord before launching into a big torchy love song from Paul with sublime backing harmonies and a fiery vocal (including a deliciously screamed bridge). A big doowop figure on the bass, hot but clean Gibson playing (especially in the bridge) and some expert drumming make it a welcome one each time.
Octopus's Garden is not just the Ringo song but, as with the previous album, one he wrote himself. After George's sprightly guitar intro a knockabout whimsy proceeds as Ringo dreams of living under the sea. An instrumental section features a bright solo from George, studio effects of bubbling water and a Four Seasons style falsetto backing vocal. I shouldn't like this but it's just so amiable that I get caught up in it.
I Want You (She's So Heavy) starts with a ringing electric guitar arpeggio in the minor but spiky and difficult with sevenths, sixths and an augmented. Harrison descants on the Les Paul, taking to the top of the fretboard for that difficult last chord. And then it's like a different song, a dark blues groove with fluid bass, muted electric guitars and some emotive organ work from Billy Preston as Lennon sings the plain phrases: "I want you, I want you so bad, I want you so bad it's drivin' me mad, it's drivin' me mad." In the chorus he speaks of the third character thus:"She's so heavy" as the dark opening arpeggio figure returns. Same again and then an instrumental verse which feels looser and bluesier than we're used to from this band, a third verse (same as the first) and then a coda section made of the arpeggio figure and an increasingly heavy bass figure playing almost as long as the rest of the song. This just keeps going and seems destined for a slow fade as the synthesised wind noise rises and starts to overwhelm everything. And then it just stops. It's sudden, not a slow wind down like The Ventures, an abrupt whiplash crashing halt that makes the silence at the end of the old side one deafening.
Flip the record and the sweetness of Here Comes the Sun tinkles into being with acoustic guitar, capo-ed high on the fretboard, a bright but light George vocal, some gleaming organ and swirly synthesizer. The sun's out and it's a lovely day. A mid section with Beach Boys style harmonies and some cleverly rising synth from beneath feels like the first gulp of a cold drink on a hot day. The Buddy Holly like melody yields to some very Beatley surprise chords that extend the harmonic motion. It ends on a gentle acoustic arpeggio and we just want to hear it again or jump in a pool. And hear it again.
An electric harpsichord plays an arpeggio of a strange progression that goes from standard minor to out of key major chords and seventh chords. There is no resolution as the shifting harmony will not allow a conclusion. This is joined by an electric guitar playing more or less in unison. And then after a wordless harmony descent that sends shivers the song Because sets in with a series of phrases of a plainness that, in this eerie luminous setting sound strange. Complex three part harmony drive this for two more times. A synth with a melancholy ringing tone plays the central melody under lush vocals that, still wordless, lead us to the final chord which feels like it's been abandoned in the middle of things. A beautiful but spooky song.
Which brings us to the element of the album that gets the most attention: the medley. For my purposes here I'm going to count everything from here to the end of the record as the medley, even though there is a gap between Bathroom Window and Golden Slumbers. This is because everything between that song and the last chord are linked and there is a reprise of the opening song of the medley during Carry That Weight.
After a gentle minor key piano intro Paul sings You Never Give Me Your Money as elements of the rest of the band come in around him. A bass flourish here and a guitar line there and the second of his double tracked vocals broaden the image of his voice during the lament section. The boogie version rolls with tack piano, a phone-thin vocal, undtil a beautiful circular arpeggio and harmony section until the final stage with the climbing 7ths and augmented chords and rocking vocals, more arpeggio guitar, some lovely distorted guitar soloing and a falsetto chant of 1,2,3,4,5,6,7, all goo children go to heaven that fades into a nocturnal setting complete with whistling cicadas. From this comes a sleepy guitar duo of Leslied chords and low string phrases through amp tremolo. Lush harmonies announce the Sun King as organ, guitar wash let us float on a bright, warm day to the smooth harmonised croon of nonsense Spanish. Then Mean Mr Mustard barges in with fuzz bass and a snotty rude vocal from Lennon about a ghastly little man. This is all but interrupted by the high speed splash of Polythene Pam with its shattering acoustic chords, Beach Boy harmonies and nasal Scouse vocal. Because it can go nowhere good it develops into a clean and high guitar solo on a minor theme before a momentum brings it to (Oh, look out!) Paul starting something new: She Came in Through the Bathroom Window, a sub-nonsense pop poem with minor key chorus and more of the surf guitar from the transition.
After a clean break Paul's piano gently vamps a minor chord. The strings come in with his vocal, a lullaby about going home which gives way to a big torchy chorus. This gives way to the whole band singing Carry That Weight which transforms back into an orchestral version of You Never Give Me Your Money which, itself, returns to Carry That Weight. The arpeggio from the end of Money is interrupted by the rocking intro to The End with McCartney screaming a single line before a brief drum workout on the tom toms built with a tough guitar chord rhythm. Then the three guitar playing members trade licks, Paul's scratchy I-really-can-rock line is taken up by George's but-I-can-play-this-thing-better melodic line into which John's heavily distorted chords come in punching. Twice.
Suddenly over a gentle piano chord vamp, Paul comes in with his cosmic line: "and in the end the love you take is equal to the love you make" as the orchestra swells to the same rising chord progression as in Something with George winding a beautiful concluding guitar vine around it.
Silence. Over. But-
Bam! Paul sings a silly little tune about Her Majesty which ends on a dorp, thumb picked acoustic note. That's the end.
This was one of the first rock records I sat down and listened to from beginning to end, probably when I was about twelve. Until that time my first musical fandom was classical. I was a record buying fan of Bach and Mozart and dug into book bound sets of great composers and some old 78 rpm shellacs of Beethoven and Elgar. My sisters were always trying to draw me out to listen to rock music and the two points that got me were Anita's embrace of medieval-based folk or Pentangle's jazzy revival of it, and a great cast recording of Jesus Christ Superstar, a work that, unlike Hair, behaved like a real opera. Marina was more search and destroy in her approach but forewent the Zappa or Sabbath and instead sat me in front of Abbey Road.
Because she happened to put side two on first I for years considered that the first side. The rich prettiness of Here Comes the Sun still makes me think of the flowers in the nursery dripping from the sprinkler. Because still looks like an endless blue North Queensland sky. The medley didn't faze me at all because the melodic riches, reprises and rapid changes in character, style and tone sounded natural to anyone who considered classical music natural. I was impressed with the orchestration, not just the orchestra but the way the arrangements added such a wide-ranging pallet to the sound. Because there are moments of harder rock I finally heard how it could be used. Notice that: I wasn't thinking oh it's rock but there are real strings, but that's what happens when you compose a song cycle with a rock band.
The other point about accepting the cultural dominance of rock music was getting to high school and steadily understanding that that was crucial to social survival. I still had a lot to learn. When I tried to impress a girl called Caroline with my new fandom of The Beatles she scoffed, saying that they were "as old as the hills". Who did she like, then? The Bay City Rollers. Several Countdowns and afternoons of seeking out The Bay City Rollers later I worked out how to tell her why The Beatles were better. That lasted.
The other side was made easier by hearing side two first. Come Together sounded like a hex, Something was beautiful, Maxwell was fun, Oh Darling was both goofy and intense, Octopus's Garden was a kids' song and the epic doom-blues I Want You seemed to live in a hellish wasteland where desires could never be fulfilled. That was the side that showed me that it could just be song after song. What happened with me seemed to have happened to the rest of the listening world: a new pop music record would need to sound like this one. Rock music loosened its stylistic belt in the decade to come with scenes like metal, glam and prog creating a massive pile of possibility, self-congratulation and bigger and bigger crowds until punk slapped the snowy cap off it. But when all that crawled back and found its own way into what pop became, the expectation of compositional prowess and variety had gone, swept under whatever sound a band affected. Just think of a band from the early '80s onward and see for yourself how little they changed. There are always exceptions but the ones who got to the top in time to secure their positions post-napster like U2, REM, Madonna, Michael Jackson, you name it, all chose to deliver more of the same. That means that when anyone like Sufian Stevens or Polyphonic Spree comes along there's a big appreciative swell. And still, when expressing the virtues of harnessing disparity for a stronger wholeness, The Beatles in the late '60s are invoked. And Abbey Road is the apotheosis.
Super Deluxe
The new stereo mix applies a sophistication that was not available to the team of George Martin and the Fabs in 1969 with an eight track console. Giles Martin and Sam Okell had access to the various stages of tracking and didn't have to bounce anything down. Once it was reassembled they recreated the original mix with the enhanced clarity and made decisions from there. The result is different. If it were only about clarity then this would be the least relevant of any attempt at rejuvenation as the 2009 stereo remaster stands as a great audio work.
Most of the changes have to do with equalisation and panning that work to create a little more air around the tracks and allow a deeper audio image. Some of the wide panning typical of the era of the original mix is retained but better balanced. Overall balance is improved with the more contemporary centring of vocals, bass and kick drum which will appeal to the younger ear as more "natural" sounding.
The other effect of this extra clarity is the enhancement of another aspect of the album that can tip the balance of opinion away from other perceived peaks like Pepper or Revolver. That is that the standard of performance is elevated beyond anything the band recorded previously. Harrison's lead playing is fluid and freer, McCartney's bass is utterly stellar throughout whether it's keeping to the slinky groove of Come Together or adding dramatic virtuosity to I Want You, Ringo's drumming manages to be both conventional and highly individualistic and tricksy without drawing undue attention to itself. Everyone is in good voice and the vocal harmonies are perennially breathtaking throughout. It simply sounds like the best the band would ever sing and play. That's a problem for anyone who likes the rough edges to the slickness audible on the White Album and Revolver but a blessing to any who laud the sophistication of it for becoming the standard in record production.
The Sessions discs are more of a mixed bag. As with the Anthology albums in the '90s there are tracks you'll happily revisit and others you probably will never bother listening to again. The extended I Want You with the dialogue about a noise complaint and the enlightening answer to it. The take has a lot of Billy Preston organ jamming in it and suggests what it potentially might have sounded like live. Paul sings Goodbye to an acoustic and it's pretty. The demo of Something is so close to the arrangement of the final version it just sounds like a lesser version. The Ballad of John and Yoko with just John and Paul (acoustic guitar and drums respectively) sounds gleaming and new and provides a very listenable early stage. Lennon singing the closing guitar licks shows him planning his electric part. Old Brown Shoe is the same kind of case as Something. An early take of Oh Darling shows McCartney trying a more restrained approach to the vocal than the original. It's fine once. An early stage of Octopus's Garden just barrels around before the bits you want to hear are there. That applies to Maxwell's Silver Hammer and the medley tracks. Standouts from the remainder of the discs are the Come and Get It demo (same one on Anthology 3 but with beefier mastering) the medley with Her Majesty restored between Mean Mr Mustard and Polythene Pam. It's fun for fans of the album to go through this and there are plenty of hints as to how the band worked and, to some degree, thought, as this masterwork was being constructed.
Me, I put it at the end of The Beatles' catalogue both chronologically and stylistically, as it should be. If anything the slickness can tip me against a replay in favour of something rougher around the edge. That said, I'd sooner listen to Please Please Me with its tight cardigan of British showbiz than the forced rawness of Let it Be. The White Album consistently wins for its variety, great songs and range of quality from slickness to plainness. There is nothing plain on Abbey Road. Even Lennon's screaming on I Want You feels perfect. So, why go ahead and shell out for the big super deluxe? The book and the Blu-Ray audio with its 5.1 mix.
The 5.1 mix is stellar. If the individual parts are already clearer and airier in the 2019 stereo than the original mix here they have added intimacy. The throb and grunt of Come Together punches out. George Harrison's delicate vibrato vocal is suspended in the air before you in Something. The harmonies on the second side in Because or Sun King (but really all through) lift and breathe around you like visible summer breezes. The guitar trio stings and fires across the front of the image in The End and the final orchestral chords, garnished with a sneaky reprise of Harrison's guitar closer on Something spread like the warmth of a hot tea on a cold morning. In short, the experience is magnificent.
The Super Deluxe set is a book in a slipcase that reproduces the original artwork but with an extended track listing on the back. The book is a hardcover of roughly LP 12 x 12 inches. Opening it reveals the CD with the original album and the Blu-Ray in pockets with miniature original album covers. The two Sessions CDs are housed the same way inside the back cover and have alternative photos from the same shoot. A quick flip through reveals a lot of articles and photography of the band in the studio, shooting the iconic cover image of them walking across the zebra crossing on the titular road. There are articles about the lead up to the album in the band's timeline, a track by tack account of the genesis of each song followed by a detail of its recording including who played what, articles on the cover, the release and reception and the album's legacy involving personal memoirs and a more historical approach. What you get is context and the context is an extension of the celebration of a great record that feels like its own celebration whenever its played: a celebration of sunshine, nature, a busy and productive life, silliness and gravity, the plain wonder of a blue sky and the journey to the equation: in the end the love you take is equal to the love you make.
No comments:
Post a Comment