 |
| The front cover |
The
Summary
This is a comprehensive
review of 1+, Apple's latest release
of Beatles music and videos. Is this new product worth the attention of either
the discriminating fan, or the casual consumer?
And if so, in which particular iteration? There are five to choose from! Read
on for a detailed consideration of those key questions.
The
Concept
1+
— as
the title suggests — is a sequel to
the Beatles' album 1, but a sequel
with a significant amount of additional material. It is, first of all, a
re-mastering and re-mixing of the music on that previous album release. But 1+ is much more than that; the improved audio was done primarily to
complement the release (November, 2015) of 50 Beatles music videos. The original
album 1 (released on November 13,
2000) was a compilation of 27 Beatles
singles that reached #1 in either the UK or US between 1962 and 1970 — as documented
by the Record Retailer Top 50 chart
in the UK and the Billboard Hot 100
chart in the U.S. The 1+ package offers a music CD and two discs of video in a DVD or Blu-ray format.
The original 27-track compilation
(from 2000) was supervised by George Martin, Paul McCartney, George Harrison,
and Ringo Starr. Sales of the album exceeded all expectations — all of the
material on it, after all, had been released and re-released multiple times, in
many different formats. Perhaps it was the convenience of having much of their
most popular work available on a single disc that made it attractive —
especially to a younger audience, who may not have collected already all the
previous singles, EPs and albums.
The music featured on 1 was first mastered for CDs back in
1987 and 1988. It was re-mastered in 1993 for the two double-album compilations
— the red (1962-1966) and blue (1967-1970) albums. The re-mastering of the
tracks for the 1 compilation was done
by Peter Mew at the Abbey Road studios. His work has been criticised by many
people for its poor sound quality — especially for his use of the NoNoise process
(which is designed to remove tape-hiss; but, in the process, also happens to
remove high-frequency details from the music). The album was re-mastered again
in 2011. And for this new release of 1+
the work has been re-mastered and — more importantly, as I'll discuss later —
re-mixed.
The original release of the
2000 compilation was a huge commercial success. In its first year of release,
it sold 13.8 million copies, and topped the album charts in 35 countries. Sales
currently exceed 31 million.
This new release (November
6, 2015) is being billed as a "deluxe version" of the original 2000
compilation. But I consider it a sequel. What's important, here, is not the
re-mixed, improved audio quality, it's the two-disc collection of 50 videos available
for purchase, along with the audio CD.
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| Deluxe Edition: 1 audio CD and 2 Blu-ray (or DVD) discs |
The
Product(s)
1+
is
available in five distinct versions. One might think of them as a series of different
iterations that move from the simplest (and cheapest) version towards the most
comprehensive and the highest-quality version (and, of course, the most
expensive!)
Here are the five available options:
1) the music CD only, with
the original 27 tracks released back in 2000 (but re-mastered and re-mixed);
2) the CD and one DVD (containing
videos to match the 27 singles featured on the audio-only disc);
3) the CD and two DVDs (in
addition to the videos for the 27 tracks, there is a second DVD, which features
another 23 videos);
4) the CD and one Blu-ray
disc (featuring the first set of 27 videos in high-definition);
5) the CD and two Blu-ray
discs (which contain all 50 videos in high-definition).
The particular version you
might decide to buy (if any) would depend on several things, not the least
being how much you are willing to fork out for what is, in most cases, incredibly
familiar material. Well, I went for option #5 — the version with the two
Blu-ray discs (the Full Monty!).
I have been listening to the
CD and watching the Blu-ray discs for the past month. I have listened to it all
on high-quality headphones — in order to detect differences in the mastering
and mixing. Here's a comprehensive account of what I've seen and heard.
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| Back Cover listing the 50 music video tracks |
The
Audio
The significance of this new
Beatles package, of course, is the set of 50 videos; but the improved sound is
also worthy of consideration. All of the music on 1+ has been re-mastered; most of it has been re-mixed. In addition
to the new mono and stereo mixes (done for those listening with a
straightforward playback system), there are also new 5.1 surround-sound mixes —
for those who have a four-speaker, "home theatre" set-up around their
TV.
The re-mastering of the 27
tracks on the audio CD is a further refinement of the work done for the 2011
mastering. The audio on the 50 DVD/Blu-ray tracks, however, contains
re-masterings from several sources: most of it consists of the re-mastered
tracks heard on the accompanying CD; some of it contains re-mastered tracks
from the 2009 stereo album releases; some of it features re-mastered versions
of BBC Radio recordings; and some of it features the re-masterings of live
performances done for film or television.
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| Giles Martin, son of George Martin, supervised the audio mix |
The new audio "restoration"
has been produced by Giles Martin (son of Beatles' producer George Martin). The
new mixes were done by Giles Martin and Sam Okell at the Abbey Road Studios;
and the mastering was handled by Miles Showell and Tim Young. Jeff Lynne
(former member of The Move, ELO, and the Traveling Wilburys) and Steve Jay
helped re-mix "Free as a Bird" and "Real Love".
Giles Martin and Sam Okell have
explained that they used previous releases of the music as the reference points
for their re-mixing work. They did not want to change the placement of
instruments in the mix, unless there was a technical reason at issue, or if
they felt it gave the individual instrument more presence, or improved the
overall sound of the track. Their main aim was to improve the presentation of
the vocal tracks and to give the music a richer, fuller sound. Many of the
previous stereo mixes had the lead vocals (often double-tracked) placed
completely in the right or left channel. Their belief was that the delivery of
the song's lyrics would be done more effectively by putting the lead vocals in
the centre of the mix.
The first changes I noticed
were with the vocals on "Can't Buy Me Love", "I Feel Fine",
"Day Tripper", and "We Can Work It Out". The two-tracked
lead vocals are separated slightly: one is dead centre, the other is marginally
to the left or right. It sounds better. In "Yellow Submarine", and
"Eleanor Rigby", previous mixes had the lead vocals all in one
channel. The new mix shifts the lead vocals to the centre.
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| A frame from "Penny Lane" promo film showing the image restoration |
The 1+ mixes sometimes shift individual instruments — such as the drums
and guitar in "Paperback Writer" — from all-left, or all-right, into
the centre. In other tracks, a vocal or instrumental backing that was
previously placed narrowly in the middle of the mix has now been spread across
the spectrum: to the left, in the centre, and to the right of the mix. A good
example of this effect is heard in the string quartet backing for "Eleanor
Rigby". Noticeable flubs in previous mixes have also been fixed: near the
beginning of "All You Need is Love", for example, there used to be
complete silence for about 8 seconds in the right channel; and at the beginning
of the first verse of "Eleanor Rigby", Paul's lead vocal used to be heard
momentarily in both channels, before shifting over completely to the right
channel after a second or two. These sorts of minor discrepancies have been
diligently repaired.
Some of the more interesting
audio changes can be heard in the mixes on the second video disc.
"Strawberry Fields Forever", for example, has undergone several
subtle changes in instrumental positioning. And it sounds even better!
"Free As a Bird" and "Real Love" (created originally for
the Anthology series from Lennon's
poor-quality home-recordings) have been further improved.
The one new mix that I
disapprove of is "A Day In the Life". Previous mixes emphasized the
druggy-ambience ("I'd love to turn you on") by playing with the
positioning of the lead vocals. On the first two verses, Lennon's vocal begins
completely to the right, but then slowly drifts to the left. In the last verse,
the opposite occurs. Likewise, Paul's lead vocal ("Woke up, got out of bed
...") stays completely in the right channel. In the new mix; those lead
vocals are fixed resolutely in the centre. And Lennon's trippy, multi-tracked
and extended "Ahhhhh" (which comes at the end of Paul's section —
"... somebody spoke and I went into a dream") used to drift from
right, to left, and back again. Now it is also stuck rigidly in the centre of
the mix. I think the original idea was better — a more effective realization of
the lyrics' meaning. Well, you can't get them all right!
Overall, though, the music
on these three discs sounds great: warm, vibrant and direct. It's probably not
enough by itself to justify the re-purchasing of the music CD. But the remixes
do enhance the quality of the accompanying videos.
The
Video
The Beatles' career was long
over before the arrival of the MTV age. During the 1960s, pop singles got known
primarily through radio airplay; but they were also promoted by radio and
television appearances. The Beatles made about 125 TV appearances (of one sort
or another) in the UK, and participated in about 130 radio programs. Their
busiest period was the Beatlemania years of 1963 and 1964.
By 1965, The Beatles were
known and loved all over the World; but it was no longer possible for them to
satisfy this international market by doing local TV appearances to promote the
release of each single. Beginning in 1965, therefore, they began exploring ways
of providing TV material for this growing world-wide audience.
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| One of Joe McGrath's five promos filmed at Twickenham Studios |
The first results of this
effort were a series of five songs filmed at Twickenham Film Studios on
November 23, 1965 by TV director Joe McGrath. All of these videos — "I
Feel Fine", "Ticket To Ride", "Help!", "Day
Tripper", and "We Can Work It out" — are included on the first video
disc in this package. There are also four alternate takes featured on Disc 2.
Some of the songs are done conventionally, with the band on stage miming to the
record. On some of the songs, however, McGrath experiments with more creative
ideas — the group miming to the music, but using props, and constructed sets.
This sort of miming — in which it is patently obvious that they are not
pretending to be actually playing the song (Ringo is riding a stationary
bicycle during one song, for example, instead of playing the drums) — can be
seen as the "great leap forward" in the "language" of pop-music
video. These nine videos are in black-and-white, but the image quality is very
good.
But the first truly
excellent videos the Beatles prepared for TV were "Paperback Writer"
and "Rain" — the A and B sides of a single released in June, 1966. These
were filmed on May 20, 1966 using 35 mm colour at Chiswick House, in London, by
Michael Lindsay-Hogg. He would do more film-work for the band in '68 and '69.
"Paperback Writer" is on Disc 1; "Rain" appears on Disc 2.
Excellent picture quality.
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| "Paperback Writer" promo filmed at Chiswick House by Michael Lindsay-Hogg |
"All You Need Is
Love" was a performance filmed and broadcast live by BBC-TV for the first
ever multi-country satellite TV link-up, bringing together 25 TV networks from
around the world, and viewed by an audience estimated at 400 million on June
25, 1967. The vocals and orchestral playing was live, but the band pre-recorded
the basic music track. TV broadcasting in colour began in a limited way in
Britain (BBC 2) in July, 1967. Full colour service (including BBC 1 and ITV)
began in November. So "All You Need Is Love" was filmed and broadcast
originally in black-and-white. This video was colourized for the Anthology TV documentary in 1995, and
this is the version seen here.
The next videos of real
quality — "Penny Lane" and "Strawberry Fields Forever" — were
created by the Swedish TV director Peter Goldmann. He had been recommended to
the band by their Hamburg-based friend (and bass player) Klaus Voorman.
Goldmann filmed these two promos in 35 mm colour in early February, 1967.
The film he created for
"Strawberry Fields Forever" is particularly brilliant. It matches the
psychedelic feel of the music perfectly, full of random, surreal touches: slow-motion,
backwards, and jumpy footage; extreme close-ups; vibrant, often garrish colour;
and a mix of footage shot during both the day and at night. There is no miming
or pseudo-miming here; the song is the soundtrack for a strange and apparently
meaningless sequence of images — it's a perfect piece of psychedelia — and a
precursor of what music videos would be like in the not-too-distant future.
Again, the videos for the two sides of this single are divided between the two 1+ video discs.
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| A frame from Peter Goldmann's excellent promo for "Strawberry Fields Forever" |
Following the death of Brian
Epstein, Paul became de facto leader
of the band — it was he who would push them back into the studio, or come up
with new ideas for projects they hadn't tried before. The first major example
of this was the TV film Magical Mystery
Tour, which they produced for Christmas 1967. Credited to the entire band,
the filming and post-production work (it took 11 weeks to edit the ten hours of
footage down to 52 minutes) was led primarily by Paul.
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| "Hello Goodbye" promo directed by McCartney |
And at the end of that long
process, it was Paul who decided to direct the video for their next single, Hello Goodbye. It was filmed on the
stage of the Saville Theatre, London in November, 1967. It's probably the
least-interesting video — to accompany, perhaps, their least-interesting
single. The footage of them miming to the song alternates long, high shots of
the band from the back of the theatre, with close-ups done mostly from
stage-right (so that Paul is always in the foreground!). The "hey-la,
hey-lo-ah" reprise at the end features the incongruous sight of the Fab
Four in their Sgt. Pepper outfits surrounded by a dozen, or so, gyrating
hula-girls. The one nice touch, however, comes at the end — they are seen posing,
without instruments, in their old collarless suits. Trim suits from 1963; long
hair from 1967. Three different videos were created from this footage; the two
alternate takes are found on Disc 2.
The next effort was much
better - created by someone who knew what he was doing. Commissioned by Apple
Films, TV cameraman Mike Molloy was invited into the studio to film The Beatles
in the process of recording "Lady Madonna". But when he arrived the
band were busy, instead, recording "Hey Bulldog" — a song that would
be used in the animated film Yellow Submarine. Molloy filmed extensively,
anyway, and he was able to match the footage he shot with the "Lady
Madonna" audio track. The vocals weren't synched, but the cutting of the
visuals managed to combine well with the momentum of the music track. This
promo was first aired on BBC's Top of the
Pops on March 14th., 1968.
During 1968 and 1969, The
Beatles came to rely on Michael Lindsay-Hogg to direct their videos. First came
"Hey Jude". It was filmed "live" at Twickenham Studios on
September 4th., 1968. They filmed a "live" performance because the
Musicians' Union in June, 1966 had secured a ban on pop singers and groups
miming to pre-recorded tracks on television. The Beatles managed to cheat their
way around this ban several times by pretending to do completely live
performances. But on "All You Need Is Love", back in 1967, and on
"Hey Jude", only the lead vocals are actually filmed live. The rest
of the band is miming to a pre-recorded backing track. "Hey Jude" was
first broadcast on TV on David Frost's latest television program, Frost On Sunday, on September 8th. — only
four days after it was filmed.
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| "Revolution" promo filmed live by Michael Lindsay-Hogg |
The B-side of the "Hey
Jude" single was "Revolution". Lindsay-Hogg filmed a live
performance of this at Twickenham Film Studios on the same day as they did
"Hey Jude". "Revolution" is included on the second DVD and
Blu-ray disc, along with alternate takes of David Frost's introduction and
"Hey Jude".
The promo for "Get
Back" was a careful edit of three separate performances on the roof of the
band's Apple headquarters at Savile Row in London. Lindsay-Hogg had been
filming a documentary of the band at Twickenham Studios in January, 1969 (it
would later be released as Let It Be
in late-May, 1970). The whole environment at Twickenham had been awful. To
complete the project on a higher note, the band invited Billy Preston to join
them on keyboards whilst they did some recording at the Apple building on
Savile Row. On January 30th., they played live for about 45 minutes on the roof
(about half of the footage was included in the final edit of the film). And
then they filmed some live performances in their newly-built recording studio
in the basement. The familiar promos for "Get Back", "Let It
Be" and "The Long and Winding Road" were created from the
footage filmed on these two days. The version of "Let It Be" seen in 1+ is actually reconstructed from the original
footage used in the documentary film. The version of "The Long and Winding
Road" seen on the first DVD or Blu-ray disc is the simple band arrangement
of the song, without the overblown "wall-of-sound" orchestration that
Phil Spector added later to the original track, when he was producing the Let It Be album.
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| "Get Back" filmed by Lindsay-Hogg on the roof of the Savile Row building |
In addition to the work of
Michael Lindsay-Hogg in 1968-1969, Apple Corps also commissioned — through its
own entity Apple Films — film-makers to put together promos for "The
Ballad of John and Yoko" and "Something". "The Ballad
..." includes out-takes from the Let It Be film and private footage shot
of John and Yoko in Amsterdam, London, Vienna, and Paris (dating from
January-April, 1969). The footage for "Something" featured all four
Beatles filmed separately with their wives: John and Yoko at their Tittenhurst
Park mansion in Ascot; Paul and Linda at their farm on the Mull of Kintyre;
George and Patti (she was the subject of George's love-song) at their
"Kinfauns" bungalow in Esher, Surrey; and Ringo and Maureen at their
"Brookfield" house in Elstead, Surrey. This promo was only shown once
on British TV — in early November, 1969 on Top
of the Pops.
So much for the contemporaneous
music videos ("promos"), which were released to TV stations around
the world during the band's career. Now it's time to consider the wealth of
other video and film material included in the "music videos" found on
these two discs. Of course, it's this other stuff that would probably be of
particular interest to avid Beatles' fans, rather than the overly-familiar
material I've been discussing so far (well, most of it, at least).
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| An early TV appearance for Granada TV in Manchester |
Both discs include complete "performances"
from early television broadcasts. Some of these, however, show the band miming
to the single: "Twist and Shout" at Granada TV in Manchester in
August 1963 (with John in an unfamiliar stance, on the left side of the stage),
"I Want to Hold Your Hand" filmed again at the Granada TV Centre in
Manchester, in late-November, 1963 (showing both George and John "playing"
acoustic Gibson guitars on a track that obviously features electric guitars!);
"Can't Buy Me Love" on ITV's Around
The Beatles in April 1964 (George and John shown with their Rickenbacker electric
guitars this time, but the cameraman focuses mostly on John, even though it's a
double-tracked lead vocal by Paul on this single — who would have noticed, or
cared about, such details back then!); and alternate takes of "Paperback
Writer" and "Rain" filmed by Michael Lindsay-Hogg in May, 1966
at Studio 1, Abbey Road studio especially for the "Ed Sullivan Show" (these
TV show-quality videos are far inferior to the 35 mm films Lindsay-Hogg shot the
next day at Chiswick House).
Much more interesting, of
course, are the real live performances: "From Me To You" performed at
the Royal Variety Performance (November, 1963); "She Loves You" on
SVT's Drop In program in Sweden (also
November, 1963); "Please Please Me" from the band's first appearance
on the Ed Sullivan Show (February,
1964); "A Hard Day's Night" on stage in Paris for RDTF's Les Beatles TV show (June, 1965); and
"Yesterday" on the Ed Sullivan
Show in August, 1965), with Paul singing live to a pre-recorded backing
track of three violins.
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| Rehearsing for the Royal Command Performance in November 1963 |
And then there are "new"
music videos, which use the original recordings and match them to
contemporaneous film footage. There is some precious material included in these
kinds of videos. "Love Me Do" shows Brian Epstein at work in the
Record Department of his family's NEMS store in Liverpool and some candid
footage of the Beatles on the Mersey Ferry. "Baby It's You" includes footage
of The Beatles recording for BBC Radio, and then emerging from the BBC's Paris
Theatre (it's the theatre front pictured on the cover of Live at the BBC). This brief 8 mm footage in front of the Paris Theatre
(on Lower Regent Street in London) was filmed on April, 1963 by Kevin Neill,
the guitarist of the Karl Denver Trio, who were performing on the same bill.
This footage is shown in the original black-and-white and, then, in a colourized
version. At the end of it we see The Beatles driven off in their
"road-van". "Words of Love" includes various candid film
clips of the band on their travels throughout 1963. Surreal, doodle-like
animated effects have been added to the black-and-white footage. "Eight
Days A Week" features a new video montage of material filmed around the
historic Shea Stadium concert on August 15, 1965, in front of 55,000 screaming
fans.
There is more. "Yellow
Submarine" and "Eleanor Rigby" — featured on Disc 1 — were
released together originally as a double A-sided single in August 1966. The
videos here consist of material from the Yellow
Submarine animated film, which was directed by George Dunning and released
in 1968. The "Yellow Submarine" video is a new edit of material from
the film; "Eleanor Rigby" uses an original sequence.
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| "Within You Without You/Tomorrow Never Knows" mash-up for Love |
The audio track for "Within
You Without You/Tomorrow Never Knows" is an interesting mash-up of tracks
from two different albums: the former is from Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band; the latter from Revolver. They were re-edited together
by George and Giles Martin as a piece for the Cirque du Soleil show Love. The animated film was directed by
Simon Hilton, using material from the Apple archives: specifically, he uses
footage from "Rain", "Strawberry Fields Forever", "Penny
Lane", "Blue Jay Way", "Fool on the Hill", "Hello
Goodbye", "I Am the Walrus", and "All You Need is
Love". Some very appropriate titles, there, for this very psychedelic
track, found on Disc 2.
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| Frames from the "Hey Bulldog"/"Lady Madonna" promos (filmed by Mike Molloy) |
"Hey Bulldog" was
a track The Beatles recorded for inclusion in the Yellow Submarine film. As I mentioned earlier, the band was working
on that song in the studio in mid-February, 1968 when Mike Molloy came in to
film footage for a "Lady Madonna" promo. Wrong song! But Molloy was
able to match the footage he shot with the "Lady Madonna" track. When
Yellow Submarine was restored in 1999 for global distribution, an animated
sequence for "Hey Bulldog" (left out of the original American release
of the film) was included. At the same time, Molloy's original footage was put
back together and re-edited. This great R&B-inflected rocker is the best
song from the film — even though it was done as a bit of a throw-away. And this
video is significant because it was one of the few times they allowed
themselves to be extensively filmed whilst recording a finished track. It also
shows John and Paul having a whale of a time in the recording studio — just
before the rot started to set in. This video is on Disc 2.
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| "Do you know any more ...", ad-libbing at the coda of "Hey Bulldog" (filmed live) |
The video created to accompany
"A Day in the Life" was directed by The Beatles and produced by Subafilms.
The footage was shot in Studio One at Abbey Road on February 10, 1967 — the day
that 40 orchestral musicians were brought in to record the two frenetic
climaxes that occur in the middle and end of this amazing piece. This video is
quite an achievement in itself, capturing the heady, disturbing quality of the
song. "A Day in the Life" was banned by the BBC (because of its drug
references) so this innovative and creative little film — a unique document of
a ground-breaking track — never saw the light of day in that amazing year. You
can find it now, however, on Disc 2. Better late than never!
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| Orchestra members for the recording of "A Day in the Life" climax |
The video clip for "Come
Together" on Disc 2 was created in 2000 for the launch of The Beatles official
website thebeatles.com and the first release of the 1 album. It was created by Melon Dezign. High quality video wasn't
available on the internet yet, because of the limitations of the 56k
connection-speed. This is the first time the video can be seen in all its
glory.
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| "Come Together" animated video from 2000 by Melon Dezign |
Disc 2 concludes with the
two special videos created for the Anthology
CD sets. Both songs were John Lennon home-recordings, with very low-fidelity sound.
Yoko Ono gave the tracks to Paul, George and Ringo, so that they could improve
the sound and overdub parts — creating two new Beatles recordings. "Free
As a Bird" was recorded by John in about 1977. The re-edit was done in
February and March of 1994 for Anthology
1. The incredible video was directed by Joe Pytka. It aims to create a
birds-eye view of Beatles locations (especially Liverpool), making visual
reference to two or three dozen Beatles songs. It won a Grammy Award for Best
Short Form Music Video in 1997. "Real Love" was recorded by Lennon some
time in 1979. It was re-edited for Anthology
2 in February 1995. The accompanying video was directed by Kevin Godley and
Geoff Wonfor. It combines footage of the three remaining Beatles overdubbing
their parts onto Lennon's home-recording with archive footage of the group, and
footage Wonfor filmed in 1995. Jeff Lynne produced these final two tracks.
All of the video and film
footage in this package has been painstakingly restored to their original,
pristine condition — under the supervision of Mark Bonnici and Graham Jones. Faded
colour has been restored. Dirt, blemishes and spots have been removed. Long scratches,
cracks, and breaks in the film have been repaired. Some of this visual material
looks better now than it ever has — thanks to being transferred to a
high-definition format. Not surprisingly, the restored 35 mm colour film is
tremendous! You may have seen a lot of this stuff before, but in its restored,
high-definition, Blu-ray format, it cannot fail to impress.
1st of 5 promos for 1+ available on YouTube
The
Bottom-Line
Well, here we have another
major Beatles release. Is it worth adding to your collection? As always, of
course, that depends: it depends on how much of this material you already have;
it depends on your level of commitment to the band; and it depends on how much
disposable income you have.
If you've got the music
already — in one recorded format or another — the single audio CD is not worth
the added investment. Yes, the re-mixing and re-mastering makes the music sound
marginally better than ever. But that's no reason to buy it all over again.
It's the videos that make
this product attractive to the ardent Beatles' fan. Of course, some of those
videos are overly-familiar and not that interesting — they've probably worn out
their welcome: "Penny Lane", "All You Need Is Love",
"Hello Goodbye", "Hey Jude", "Let It Be". But
there are others that are tremendous — any serious fan would want to have these
high-quality versions of them: "Paperback Writer", "Rain",
Strawberry Fields Forever", "A Day in the Life", "Hey
Bulldog", "Get Back", "Don't Let Me Down".
And there is a lot of candid
footage shot in the early years (1963 seems to be particularly well-represented)
that will thrill the older fan. We get glimpses of Beatlemania in both the UK
and The USA, and a sense of the incredibly chaotic daily life the Fab Four had
to endure at the peak of the madness (1963-1965).
Is the single DVD or Blu-ray
disc enough? The one which has the videos that accompany the songs on the
original 1 album? Not for me. Several
of the very best videos are on the second disc. What's the point, I ask you, if
you don't have the restored video for "Strawberry Fields Forever" or
"A Day in the Life" or "Hey Bulldog"?
By the time The Beatles were
engaged in some of their most creative and innovative recordings and videos,
they had left live performing behind. Some may wonder how good they really were
as a live band. This collection may go a long way in answering that question. Of
the 50 tracks on the double-disc collection, there are 13 live performances —
on stage or recorded for broadcast on TV or the "wireless" (radio).
The evidence shows they were incredibly tight. Why not? They had been
performing nearly every day of the week for four years.
Is the product worth the
money? Well, the audio and video is of the highest quality. And Apple Corp has
always been an honest and reliable purveyor of Beatles' material. They don't
flood the market with pointless re-issues and shoddy product. Everything they
produce is done with care and attention to detail.
Take this particular release
as an example. The double Blu-ray version comes with a 124-page full-colour booklet.
Each of the 50 tracks on the two discs gets a double-page spread — including a photograph,
a brief essay about the music and the film (or video) footage, details about
the recordings and filming (dates, locations, releases, directors, companies,
stations, etc.). Everything the discriminating fan or historian might want. And for a few videos on each disc there are brief introductions by Ringo
and commentaries throughout by Paul.
So, there you have it. Are
you ready now to make that decision?! Buy or not to buy? And in which
particular iteration? I think I made the right decision myself. This is the
definitive "music video" collection of Beatles' music. Enjoy.
