After the super deluxe edition of Revolver was released this time last year, many Beatlemaniacs believed that the next big holiday release would be a similar set devoted to Rubber Soul. Surprise! Instead we're getting new editions of the two essential Beatles compilations, 1962-1966 and 1967-1970, both of which are celebrating their fiftieth anniversary this year. An odd choice, you may think, but this release is mainly serving one very specific purpose, a job that it wouldn't make sense for a deluxe edition of Rubber Soul to do.
You see, back in the mid-nineties, when Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr were mining rough John Lennon demos for material to spruce up and overdub for release on the Anthology compilations, they began work on a third track in addition to "Free As a Bird" and "Real Love". Then George apparently soured on "Now and Then" and didn't want to complete it. As the story goes, the Quiet One dismissed it as "rubbish." While that assessment may have been a tad harsh, the song didn't exactly scream to be heard. Like the two tracks that were completed and released, "Now and Then" is a down-tempo, down-mood song. It's more melodic than the dreary "Free As a Bird" but less appealing than the pretty and genuinely moving "Real Love". Had John written it during the days when he was coming up with ingenious stuff like "Rain", "Strawberry Fields Forever", and "Happiness Is a Warm Gun", "Now and Then" would never have found a home on a Beatles record... but it might have been worthy of a Double Fantasy or at least a Milk and Honey.
Some three decades later, Paul decided to pick up work on "Now and Then" and coaxed Ringo along to add a new drum track for what the guys promise will be the final song "The Beatles" ever release. It's definitely a technologically impressive achievement, with John's voice sounding infinitely more natural and up front than nineties tech was able to make it sound on "Free As a Bird" and "Real Love". Giles Martin's production and Paul and Ringo's newly recorded backing are modest in keeping with a very modest composition.
So, "Now and Then" is now seeing release as a single, but it also needs a long-playing home, which is why we're getting updates of 1962-1966 and 1967-1970. Since the new song has no relationship to Rubber Soul or any other proper Beatles album, the compilations are relatively sensible vessels for its release (although a fourth Anthology, with still-unreleased things like the band version of George's "All Things Must Pass", "Mad Man", and "Watching Rainbows", would have been the dandiest). And for this occasion, the so-called "Red" and "Blue" albums are being issued in versions quite different from the 1973 ones.
Most notable for re-mix aficionados is that none of the included tracks appear in their original mixes from the sixties. Thirty-five of the mixes are all-new. The process involved the MAL (Machine Assisted Learning) software Giles Martin used to separate instruments clumped together on a single track when he remixed Revolver. This means that for the first time ever, the original recordings of "Love Me Do" and "She Loves You" are being released in stereo, although "She Loves You" is muddier than the original mono and hearing a "Love Me Do" in which Paul's bass occupies the left speaker nearly alone for most of the song while the guitar and drums are panned pretty hard to the right is more interesting on a technological level than a listening one. Mixing 101: You gotta center the rhythm section or risk losing all your power.
Fortunately most of the new mixes on 1962-1966 pass that particular test, and though The Beatles' arrangements tended to be pretty simple during this era, there are interesting things to discover among the remixes. "I Feel Fine", "Ticket to Ride", and "Drive My Car" feature drums both centered and spotlighted in channels, which is an unusually wide spectrum for Ringo's contribution. "A Hard Day's Night" now emphasizes some interestingly staccato rhythm guitar in the left channel. A big cymbal crash kicks "Eight Days a Week" into gear. The strings of "Yesterday" are divided between channels while Paul's voice and guitar are centered. This particular remix is superb, and really, most of the the newly remixed tracks on 1962-1966 have never sounded better in stereo. All of the 1966 tracks had already been remixed for last year's special edition of Revolver, which was a mixed bag of successful and not-so-successful remixes, though most of what's included here is well done.
1967-1970 relies much more heavily on previously released remixes, since we've already gotten deluxe editions of all the proper albums The Beatles released from 1967 to 1970. A half dozen other numbers had been remixed way back in 2015 for the 1+ compilation and are making their vinyl debuts here. The only newly remixed tracks hail from Magical Mystery Tour, Yellow Submarine, and a couple of B-sides.
Of these, the most audaciously different is "I Am the Walrus", which really slathers on the noises that consume the end of the track. Although this remix is already stirring controversy among fans, I'm much more open to radically different remixes on a compilation like this than on a proper album, so I enjoy the novelty of it even as I continue to question the decision to nudge the rhythm section off to the left channel instead of centering it. It makes even less sense to fully shove it off to the side for something as ass-kicking as "Revolution". Lennon dismissed the original stereo mix as "ice cream" because of its wide, weakening separation, and this remix is only slightly less hard-panned. "Magical Mystery Tour", however, rocks harder with a lot of emphasis on George's previously buried Chuck Berry-esque guitar and heavier drums, though Ringo still isn't centered for some reason. Bass and drums are centered on "Hey Bulldog", which they hadn't been on the acclaimed 1999 remix on the Yellow Submarine Songtrack, so this is a nice improvement. I also dig the novelty of having "A Day in the Life" and "Dear Prudence" with clean intros for the first time on vinyl. The placement of instruments in "Old Brown Shoe" sounds similar to those of the original mix, though errors are introduced when George's slide guitar is clipped off a couple of times in the second verse. Whoops!
As you may have already sussed from some of the songs I've referenced above, the other big deal with these new versions of 1962-1966 and 1967-1970 is that the original track line ups have been expanded with additional songs. The originals actually did a good job of compiling the most popular Beatles originals (no covers were included), but there were some notable omissions. Even when I bought those records at the extremely unripe age of 13, I was surprised by the absence of certain songs with which I was very familiar from the radio. Where were "Do You Want to Know a Secret" (a number-two hit in the U.S.), "P.S. I Love You" (a top-ten hit here), "I Should Have Known Better", "She's a Woman" (top-five), "I'm a Loser", "No Reply", "I'll Follow the Sun", and "Rain" (top-25)? At least some of these could have been included since 1962-1966 was so notoriously skimpy, with just fourteen or fifteen minutes of music on each of its first three sides. The decision to place seven tracks on sides One and Three but only six on sides Two and Four always seemed like a blatant waste of valuable space. Aside from the absence of "When I'm 64", 1967-1970 didn't really have any glaring omissions, and its sides were pretty jam-packed anyway.
So, when rumors that 1962-1966 and 1967-1970 would each be expanded to 3-LP sets hit the Internet, speculation went wild. I doubt anyone correctly predicted the extra tracks we ended up with. With the exception of "You Really Got a Hold on Me", the dozen songs added to 1962-1966 are fairly logical selections. "Twist and Shout", "I Saw Her Standing There", "Taxman", "Here, There, and Everywhere", "Get to Get You Into My Life", and "Tomorrow Never Knows" are widely considered to be classics, and the abundance of Revolver additions makes up for the short shrift The Beatles' best album received on the original 62-66. John's "I'm Only Sleeping" is a less well-known track from that record but important for its pioneering use of backward guitar and a necessary reminder that Revolver wasn't mainly Paul's show. "This Boy" has long been admired as a grand showcase for the guys' harmonies. "You Can't Do That" made Billboard's Top-50 on the flip-side of "Can't Buy Me Love". "Roll Over Beethoven" was a radio-staple in the U.S. and a smash single in several markets (it even went to number one in Australia), and it gives George Harrison a bit more representation on a compilation that once completely lacked his lead vocals. His singing and writing also get a bit more attention with the addition of "If I Needed Someone", though Rubber Soul was the one album that was really overrepresented on the original. However, none of the songs I'd mentioned in the previous paragraph were added. The compilers also doubled down on the original record's skimpiness by placing only six songs per side on this set's bonus LP. Huh.
If 62-66 seems like a bit of a missed opportunity in terms of bonus tracks, then 67-70 is downright baffling. On this set, only half of the selections make some sort of sense. "Blackbird" and "Oh! Darling" are two of The Beatles' most streamed cuts, so their presence on the new 67-70 makes commercial sense. The exclusive tracks on Yellow Submarine were not represented at all on the original compilation, so the inclusion of fan-fave "Hey Bulldog" feels right. As for better representing the formerly underrepresented "White Album", "Dear Prudence" seems like a natural choice, but the only reason I can come up with for why the obscure "Glass Onion" was chosen is that a popular movie shares its title, which would be a dumb reason to select it for a greatest hits-type album in lieu of more celebrated tracks like "Helter Skelter" or "Happiness Is a Warm Gun".
The decision to include other oddities like "Within You, Without You", "I Want You (She's So Heavy)", and "I Me Mine" only makes sense if we assume that the Lennon and Harrison estates were deeply involved in the track selection and really like these particular numbers. I can't feature any other explanation for why they were included since they lack the familiarity and immediacy of the hits or the obvious rewards of milestones like "Tomorrow Never Knows" or "A Day in the Life". If "Revolution 9" had been added, I wouldn't be that much more mystified.
I completely understand that there was a desire to include more Harrisongs, since George was underrepresented on the original records, but there were certainly more sensible choices. To capture his sitar phase, "The Inner Light" would have been the ideal choice: it's a lovely, sprightly, concise track that, unlike "Within You, Without You", Giles has yet to remix. "For You Blue" was technically a number-one hit in the U.S. since the "Long and Winding Road" single was released right after Billboard discontinued its policy of issuing discrete chart positions for B-sides. It's certainly zingier than the dour "I Me Mine". And because "I Want You" and "Within You" are so very, very long, there are only a scant eight oldies on the bonus LP of 1967-1970, although that record is still short enough that a couple of other songs could have been included without any reduction in audio quality.
For the CD iterations of these new compilations, the extra tracks are chronologically incorporated into the original running order. For the vinyl versions, they appear on bonus LPs appended to each set. This makes the oddity of the song choices stand out more, although getting a little creative with the order in which you play each side improves the flow a lot. (I recommend playing the first side of the bonus LP of 62-66 after side One of the original album and ending the set with the second side of the bonus. As for 67-70, play the first side of the bonus after side Two—skipping "Now and Then", which you may not need to hear more than once anyway, and "Within You, Without You", which really doesn't belong on a hits compilation— and play the second side of the bonus after side Three of the original album. Do as you please with "I Want You" and "I Me Mine".)
