
(Apple 1996)
RECOMMENDED
When I was a kid, the Beatles' psychedelic period was it for me -- the wildest and most irreverent music I'd heard at that time. The sonic experimentation and seemingly limitless imagination expanded my conception of what sort of expression and spirited fun was possible through recorded music. But things change, and as an adult I'd much rather hear the same band serenading each other on unadorned acoustic guitars, or bashing out a rock & roll classic from their club days. That transition is more out of enthusiasm for the Beatles' early work, and for basic rock & roll overall, than for any deficiency in Revolver, Sgt. Pepper and Magical Mystery Tour. Still, as much pleasure as that work can give, it's almost undeniable that thin material like "Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite!" and "Hello Goodbye" became triumphant through brilliant production and engineering, and that what has helped it endure is some dusty recollection that it was all part of a revolution of sorts, truly original popular music free of boundaries.
Today, that reads as fiction; it isn't the correct way to bang the drum for the Beatles' legacy. The problem is that they had numerous contemporaries in the rock field who got the urge to do something different and newly ambitious at the same time the Fabs did, and although I'd never accuse them of ripping anybody off, the truth is that taking their canon in with awareness of concurrent material by the Kinks, the Byrds, the Beach Boys, Love, the Zombies, the Velvets, even the Who and a horde of others, the Beatles' "psychedelic"-leaning work comes off as surprisingly weak. Looking over what was happening in jazz and soul at the same time, the band's achievements seem even more trivial, and this band absolutely was not trivial when they became internationally beloved superstars. When they played direct rock & roll, for energy, virtuosity, warmth, and intelligence, the Beatles topped almost anyone easily. Apart from James Brown, no successful performer in pop was as inventive in the '60s. Their mass appeal didn't dethrone their subversion, it made them more subversive. At their peak, their work wasn't just exciting and liberating; it was life-affirming.
Having said that, nobody can go out on the road as often as the Beatles did and play the same simple songs as frequently as they did, and endure horrendous conditions and crass star treament as much as they did, without gaining resentment for life, work, material. Rebellion is, in many ways, a defense mechanism, and no one can survive those conditions without rebelling. It's a fact of life, and if much of the Beatles' work from Revolver on is reactionary (and overexposed), it's also brilliant. It just doesn't operate in the same manner, and indeed by the end of the '60s John Lennon was ready to forego studio experimentation forever and return to the golden years of rock & roll, R&B and skiffle.
The irony, then, is in the restlessness, the way the Beatles in 1965 quite simply no longer were in control of their destiny, even while remaining by far the most popular musical attraction in the galaxy. And the question that's begged is: were they ever in control? Like so many artists, particularly their peers in the midst of unrelenting '60s transitions, the Beatles suffered with contradiction, with the act of slaving through sets of music that once was their most beloved, then sliding into a studio and laying down so many overdubs onto their work it could never be remotely duplicated in a live setting, clearly an option that never even crossed their minds on the Reeperbahn. The entity of the Beatles, quite simply, was cracking.
Never before was this as evident as it is on Anthology 2, the second double set in the series of studio outtakes, demos, live work, and various unreleased materials spanning the Beatles' career. This volume covers the sessions behind the band's second film, the hilarious but underrated Help!, through the very beginning of 1968 around the time of the "Lady Madonna" single. Between these two landmarks is the Beatles' "anything-goes" phase, the time in which their chief instrument was the studio. Although they were still a band, they no longer performed; they recorded.
Somewhere in the midst of all this is their finest and most unified effort as a band, Rubber Soul, but that record prompts only two alternate takes. One is a drastically different rendition of "I'm Looking Through You," which sounds slick enough to be close to a master, recorded with the intimacy of a fireside chat, a totally different arrangement and rhythm, and an even stronger folk-rock texture. It's lovely but sorely misses that electric guitar. The second is a droning early version of "Norwegian Wood." The record otherwise passes by without further examination -- pretty incredible, right? This is Rubber Soul! The first disc is just as erratic for its entire duration.
To begin with, it breaks chronology with a middling outtake of "I'm Down," which Paul insisted on moving closer to the beginning of the package for unknown reasons; it makes him sound like a douche ("let's hope this one turns out pretty darn good, huh?" he chides at the opening; after the performance is finished, he keeps saying the words "plastic soul" seemingly hoping someone will pay attention to him). The disc also presents an inordinate amount of live material from what must clearly be the band's nadir in terms of concert performances. From an August 1965 set they dig up a warm "Yesterday" that is somewhat looser than the familiar version despite canned strings (and helped, not hurt, by both George's self-aware introduction and John's gut-wrenchingly funny remark at the end, which I won't spoil here), but otherwise there's nothing of interest except the between-song banter, and although the Carl Perkins standard "Everybody's Trying to Be My Baby" is historically significant, having been recorded at the famous Shea Stadium concert, it also is hardly casual listening material. You just can't get past those screams or, even as an early-period Beatlemaniac, the fact that there's no reason for the band to be playing the song at this point. They have painted themselves into a corner.
It only gets worse. Closing out the disc just after a crop of Revolver sessions are a couple of songs from a nightmarish 1966 tour of Asia, their last apart from an equally disastrous American jaunt; this is more than anachronism, it's inhumane. You can hear and feel how miserable the band is plowing through "Rock & Roll Music" and "She's a Woman," wondering how soon it'll be over. The performances are terrible, but you can't blame them; they couldn't hear a thing. These recordings are difficult to listen to and only serve as a reminder of just how bad it was getting and how necessary it was to end the tours.
Not surprisingly, the Beatles sound more creatively fulfilled, if not exactly satisfied, at EMI. Revolver is the album which has Paul McCartney at his finest, with gorgeous, flawless classics like "Here, There and Everywhere," "For No One," "Good Day Sunshine," and "Got to Get You into My Life." Anthology 2 only makes time for that last one, in a strained attempt to cast it as a Stax-like soul record. Rather, 1966 is mostly represented by its headier, more experimental side. There is a wonderfully dreamy instrumental rehearsal from an "I'm Only Sleeping" session and a nifty, unnerving variation on "Tomorrow Never Knows" that shows considerably more debt to Eastern music, and expounds on the irony of the album's most shocking, innovative cut being its first undertaken. Otherwise, you get an "And Your Bird Can Sing" that is stunning for its obvious Byrds debt but is otherwise unremarkable aside from the fact that the band can't stop laughing the entire time; a listless-sounding acoustic "I'm Only Sleeping"; a barely-different mix of "Taxman" with dreadful vocals repeating "anybody got a bit of money?" on the verse that later referenced Harold Wilson and Edward Heath; and the orchestral backing track from "Eleanor Rigby," nice enough, but not the Beatles.
Corny violins or not, it's just inevitable that the Beatles are less than impassioned over making rock music at this point, and the presence of the horrid live songs is a favor since it gives good reason for that. But skip just a year in the past to the beginning of the disc. Even the songs they threw away from the Help! sessions -- the amusingly uncertain Ringo-led "If You've Got Trouble," Paul's lovely if audibly half-finished love song "That Means a Lot" -- are decent, infectious fun. And hearing Paul do preliminary work on "Yesterday" or John toying with the chords on "You've Got to Hide Your Love Away" and his unfairly lambasted "It's Only Love," that's magic. Sure, there's probably no one who will want to hear the instrumental "12-Bar Original" more than once (especially as edited out of any sense of spontaneity here); all it does is prove that they weren't the Ventures, but it is fun, and showcases a band that felt looser in the staid atmosphere of EMI than they did at the shows in which they held the top bill -- hence their retirement from touring in the summer of '66.
In theory the second disc of Anthology 2 is an improvement, but it often has the same aimlessness and feeling of rush. The opening is promising enough, with three different variations showcasing the development of "Strawberry Fields Forever," including a heartbreaking solo Lennon demo. You could listen to a whole disc of this (and bootleggers have since stepped up); it's a triumphant bit of gratitude to one of the finest songs in the catalog. Take 1 is a gorgeous, slow, surreal Mellotron-rendered dream that was entirely scrapped and remade (and is here missing a few key elements that have since surfaced) as take 7, the first minute of which is familiar from the master; oddly, the story ends there, with no sign of the fabled take 26 that would be slowed down and stitched to take 7 to form the completed record. Quite a pity, as take 26 was one of the best recordings in the band's vault until it finally saw official release in 2017.
Although the remainder is not without its moments (a demo and early take of "The Fool on the Hill" show off how incredibly grim that song is at its core, the Harrison-directed instrumental track of "Within You, Without You" is of course beautiful if again not exactly Beatles, and there is a lovely mix of "Penny Lane" with alternate brass and a strange "suitable ending") and adds at least one classic (an early, undoctored and supremely lovely "Across the Universe," one of the three or four best recordings to surface in the whole Anthology), the Beatles' recording methods during this time -- a basic track followed by in-house embellishments -- prevent many radical departures from the eventual masters, which causes Martin et al. to resort to remixes or to playing us the masters without overdubs, which isn't without interest but is a much more "niche" methodology than we heard previously in the series, which is frustrating because up to now the studio odyssey was constantly interrupted by the live sets that have now thankfully ended. Sometimes, said mixes seem pointless even to those who have the masters memorized; aside from a little extra saxophone and dreadful stereo panning, "Lady Madonna" seems to be here strictly so that song would have some sort of representation on the record.
Conversely, the outtakes (where applicable) and mixes on discs two end up revealing the wafer-thin durability of some of the songs the Beatles released in this time. The result is akin to watching a magic show in which you know how all the tricks are done. Without the sense of wonder and awe, there's no substance, and unfortunately there's little of worth to be found in "Only a Northern Song," "Mr. Kite!" (this one does have some evidence of John's continued difficulty with and embarrassment about singing in the studio, continuing an odyssey from "I'll Be Back" and "Mr. Moonlight" on Anthology 1), the "Sgt. Pepper" reprise, "Your Mother Should Know," or even the beloved "Lucy in the Sky" and my beloved "Good Morning Good Morning," once you crack that Beatle veneer. As soon as they're not on a pedestal, they simply don't exist.
Of couse Sgt. Pepper and their other contemporary work wasn't devoid of humor or fun or winking subtext. It didn't have the personal immediacy, though, that had once been the foremost appeal of the Beatles in the age of pretty girls singing the words of producers and Brill Building suits. (I'd point out that I believe the 1964 Beatles would balk and cringe at the idea of ever putting out something as overwrought, maudlin, and manipulative as the hideous "She's Leaving Home.") When you're faced with a situation in which the Beatles' entire essence was the final product, rather than the band's entity within the process itself, a disc of session material can tell us very little, because there is no way to capture what they did in real-time rather than by mutations and permutations of tape. (I recall seeing TV ads for this disc and being enticed at the teased opportunity to hear a different version of "I Am the Walrus," the song around which the campaign centered, and then being deeply disappointed when all I got was a rawer version of the released track. But that isn't really the compilers' fault, that's all that really could be offered!)
A problem throughout the Anthology sets and particularly with this 1967 material is the fact that a number of the outtakes are, for lack of a better word, "outfakes." To achieve listenability or low volume or god knows what, take 3 of a song might be crossfaded into take 9. For "A Day in the Life," for example, what we really get is a montage of the song in different stages of progress rather than any complete performance, boasting Mal Evans' ghostly count-off in place of the first orchestra overdub and ending with a clever if annoying joke (denying us the closing piano chords in favor of Paul talking about how cool the Beatles are at a party). Or, in the incomprehensible case of "Yes It Is," a lovely bare-bones take with a guide vocal is faded into a remixed master. What the surviving Beatles, George Martin, Apple and other involved parties didn't seem to realize was that this defeated the entire purpose of the project -- no, not to thwart bootleggers (because that will never, ever happen), but to give fans, particularly those not savvy enough to have bootleg-dealer connections, a cinema-verité window into the Beatles at work throughout their history. In that respect all three sets are deeply flawed, and it was only two decades later that the Beates began to issue material in that spirit.
There is one point on which Anthology 2 is a massive improvement over its predecessor: the "new Beatles song," "Real Love," is a much livelier and prettier recording than "Free as a Bird," but it also was fairly complete well before the survivors got their hands on it and, indeed, had already been released in John's name on the Imagine soundtrack. It's a gorgeous song, but Jeff Lynne's production, once again, is stupefyingly bad. How anyone allowed this hamhanded jester to come behind the mixing table for the fucking Beatles reunion is a mystery to me. As for the fact that neither disc is filled to capacity... well... let's just say we can tell a lot of stuff was vetoed, another chink in the armor of this as a historical chronicle of the Beatles' recorded output. But I don't want to deny that this is a listenable, often revelatory package of unissued material at its best, and highly listenable in the provided sequence (though I doubt many listeners make it to the end of the '66 Budokan live cuts); even if its highlights are fewer in number than on the other two volumes, at their best ("I'm Looking Through You," "Tomorrow Never Knows," "Strawberry Fields Forever," "That Means a Lot") they are worthy and essential additions to the Beatles' discography.
***
[Expanded from a review first posted in 2003.]