Album Reviews

When George Harrison, the youngest Beatle, passed away November 30th, 2001 at age 58, Allan Kozinn’s front page New York Times obituary referred to him as “the quiet Beatle”, which during the group’s touring years, is what the self-effacing youngest member of group was often called.

True, he didn’t say much at press conferences, but after a series of early unusual and not particularly distinguished originals like “Don’t Bother Me” (“So go away, leave me alone, don’t bother me”) that sharply contrasted with Lennon-McCartney’s cheery love fests, and “You Like Me Too Much” a catchy “like song” on the Help! soundtrack with a few creepy sentiments (“I will follow you and bring you back where you belong”) he bloomed as a songwriter (Lennon is said to have helped Harrison with the very personal “I Need You” also on Help).

Harrison returned to negativity with the memorable distorted fuzz guitar accented “Think For Yourself”, which he once said might have been inspired by “the government’. Harrison was the Beatle who more directly complained politically in song about England’s oppressive tax structure (“Taxman”) and the country’s rigid class system (“Piggies”) well before Lennon got on his political high horse. On Revolver Harrison expressed in song his writing frustrations (“I Want to Tell You”). He brought his deeply personal religious convictions to many of his sitar-drenched songs and on “Love You Too” merged the spiritual and the carnal. “I Me Mine”, which finally made it onto Let It Be explores similar territory.

Often overlooked because the album is sort of an “outlier” are “It’s All Too Much” and “It’s Only a Northern Song,” two gems from The Yellow Submarine Soundtrack. The same is true of “Blue Jay Way”, one of Harrison’s most atmospheric and memorable tunes, originally found in the U.K. on the 2 7” E.P. Magical Mystery Tour.

Good as these were, Harrison’s best on Beatles albums songs were yet to appear: “While My Guitar Gently Weeps”, “Something” and “Here Comes the Sun”.

After consuming the sprawling eight LP box set containing the remixes of the original three LP set and five LPs of demos it’s easy to imagine that Harrison might have written “Here Comes the Sun” in anticipation of liberation from The Beatles and the beginning of his solo album career, though Harrison wrote it after “playing hooky” from an Apple business meeting and hanging out at Eric Clapton’s house.

Page three of the full-sized perfect bound book contained within the slipcase along with the three and five LP boxes begins with a George quote: “Even before I started, I knew I was gonna make a good album because I had so much energy. For me to do my own album after all that—(italics, mine) it was joyous. Dream of dreams.”

After all of what? After competing with and being overshadowed by the Lennon/McCartney songwriting team? We’re left to surmise the meaning of after all that but clues are sprinkled throughout the book’s spare annotation. The choice made here was to mostly let the music speak for itself rather than include detailed notes like on the Lennon reissues. Quiet. Very George-like. The track by track notes are short but useful for those who have not read George’s autobiography or are not familiar with the history and drama.

Ringo played on All Things Must Pass, John got a birthday message. Paul McCartney is not mentioned here. That can’t be an accidental omission, can it? Even when Harrison managed to get his songs included on Beatles albums, he was given less time to produce them than did the ones penned by Lennon/McCartney. Bob Dylan probably helped George with his songwriting more than did his Beatles partners.

We learn from quotes in the book that “My Sweet Lord” was not inspired by (or a rip-off of) The Chiffon’s “He’s So Fine” but rather was inspired by The Edwin Hawkins Singers’ version of “Oh Happy Day” (written in 1755 by Philip Doddridge). More galling to Harrison was that the Rolling Stone review of All Things Must Pass claimed that “Isn’t it a Pity” sounds borrowed from both “I am the Walrus” and “Hey Jude”, when in fact it was written in 1966 before either of those songs and had been “floating around” since the Revolver sessions but rejected.

Right or wrong you could interpret the album title All Things Must Pass to be about The Beatles. At the time and even now it seems a kind of morbid title for an album and the cover photo doesn’t help! Yet on two LPs Harrison delivers some of his finest songs, many of which are as uplifting as “Here Comes the Sun”, but some like “Isn’t it a Pity” and “Art of Dying” clearly are not. Side 1 is genius programming giving you a tender intro with “I’d Have You Anytime”, co-written by “Bobbie” Dylan, “My Sweet Lord”, the liberating “Wah-Wah” and back down to earth with “Isn’t It a Pity”. It covers all of Harrison’s bases. The album’s emotional highs include “What is Life”, which has an early 60’s Motown-ish or Brill Building joyful energy, complete with horns and strings.

No sense in a full play-by-play of a 50 year old album so I won’t, other to say over time it becomes better and more consistently great though the “bonus” 3rd record’s jams remain pretty monotonous. It’s almost as if Harrison was saying “OK, The Beatles did a double? I’ll one up them with a 3 LP set”.

The Remixed Set Presentation

I got the 8 LP set containing the original 3 LPs in its own box that duplicates the original plus a second box containing the 5 LPs of demos presented in chronological order, plus the really well presented book all of which fits into a large slip-case. There are 70 tracks in total including 47 bonus demos, outtakes and jams, 42 of which are previously unreleased.

The paper stock, the cover art—everything about the physical presentation gives The Electric Recording Company a run for its authentic packaging money. It’s physically impressive in every way as was the pressing quality. Eight LPs and not a single pop, click or other defect. A few of the records were slightly “dished” but summertime shipping makes it impossible to lay blame and it was easy to flatten them with a reflex clamp and/or vacuum hold down. I also was sent the equally well-presented Blu-ray box set that allowed me to compare the high resolution mixes at 192/24 bit resolution with the CDs and the CDs with the LPs. I also gave the 5.1 mix a listen.

Before getting to the sound, the 5 LPs of “umastered” (but recorded at Abbey Road so they intrinsically sound good) demos presented in chronological order are a real treat for any George fan who loves this album. You learn so much listening to the raw takes and for those alone, the set is worth picking up if you’re inclined to dig.

The Remixed Sound

Consistency between formats was impressive assuming you like what Paul Hicks did here. The original U.K. Apple pressing begins with a warm, though deep bass shy take of “I’d Have You Anytime”. The better my system got over the decades the better George’s voice sounded and the more it pleasingly revealed itself from within the “deep” mix. The “My Sweet Lord” original is also bass shy but has a pleasing sparkle on top and then all hell breaks loose on “Wah-Wah”. What a joyful “get even” with the Beatles bind he’d been in mess. What a cast of characters! Ringo, Billy Preston, Clapton, Badfinger and Bobby Keyes. It was the first track recorded for the album. It’s bright, it’s underwater, it’s undisciplined and it’s a big break loose party ostensibly celebrating a guitar pedal, but really about much more, that Spector mixed for its global effect. Resolving detail was not on his mind. 50 years of playing it always produces a smile, emotional release and sometimes laughter. George wasn’t happy with the mix.

I pored through the book before listening to any of this and it made clear that Hicks and George’s son Dhani decided to bring clarification to the re-mix. In going through all of the individual stems they found buried instruments, or that what they thought was one instrument was actually something else or even a synthesizer, though few listening to the original mix heard many if any synth parts. At one point Hicks says something like “Once you hear (that), it’s hard to unhear it.”

The goal on Hicks’ masterful Plastic Ono Band Remix was to bring forward and make more natural John Lennon’s voice, which had been pushed to the back because Lennon didn’t much like the sound of his own voice. The mix was successful.

Here the goal was to clarify and expose Spector-buried musical threads and to produce greater overall coherence as well as to restore the original mix’s clearly attenuated bottom end. When I removed the first LP from the sleeve I noted the GZ stamper information but no mastering credit. I thought that meant GZ cut lacquers, which is what I first reported especially since there are no lacquer cutting credits in the box set's credits. Whoever did cut lacquers also chose to not identify him or herself in the lead out groove area, so I mistakenly assumed GZ did the cut. There's a comment near the end from GZ correcting my mistake so I'm correcting it here. GZ did not cut lacquers. We do not know who did. However the vinyl sounds very similar to the other formats. I apologize to GZ Media for my mistake.

I was happy to have the CD/Blu-ray set too so I could be sure of what I was hearing when I played the LP set. The various formats sound remarkably close to one another timbrally and dynamically so clearly the producers were on top of the vinyl mastering choices.

After the first play on vinyl my first thought was “Uh oh, many buyers with warm-ish sounding systems are not going to like this” and sure enough a few emails arrived shortly after the set was released complaining of “bass overload”. One arrived today complaining that the set sounds like a “4 Men With Beards” mastering and that’s about as nasty a comparison as can be made.

I’m listening downstairs on a pair of costly speakers being reviewed that have been measured in-room and while I can’t be shown the measurements. I was told something that hardly surprised me: they measured pretty much “flat” and are full-range. These speakers do not have mid-bass bloat nor are they particularly warm sounding. The top end is fully extended thanks to Accuton diamond tweeters not known for their high frequency reticence. Just when you think these speakers are bass-shy if you play something that goes really deep (try Terje Isungset’s Winter Songs), you get body slammed.

If you are well-familiar with the original All Things Must Pass mix, listening to this new mix you will hear familiar tunes as never before. Hicks has restored the bottom end and skillfully stitched together and exposed heretofore congealed and/or buried musical threads to produce a superior musical balance. Harrison’s voice sounds rich.

As an archeological dig the remix gets at “11”. You’ll hear the album as if listening to a sonic microscope but there’s a tremendous price paid for the neat and orderly presentation. The top end is incredibly dull. There’s no sparkle or air. Horns are dull, transients are dull, there is mid-bass bloat that casts a thick warmth over everything. You have to crank it way up to restore any life whatsoever to the proceedings. And the level of compression is absurd. It’s DOA.

The CDs sound the same. The Blu-ray played upstairs on my home theater system sounds the same. The records played downstairs sound the same. The once joyous “Wah-Wah” turns into mudville.

When I read some of the hysterical praise for this remix I just have to wonder who these people are and what they are listening on. A Salon writer says it’s a “feast for the ears”, claiming “…the original album shimmers into life with the wider sonic palette made possible by technologies that would have been unimaginable five decades earlier.” That’s just unimaginable bullshit. Nothing in this remix “shimmers”. In fact, you could argue that the goal was to remove all “shimmer” to cut the reflections and allow you to see further into the goings on. If so, mission accomplished.

He adds “Hardcore audiophiles and Beatles historians will surely revel in the profundity of outtakes and production notes”. I’m not sure what that even means if anything.

To paraphrase an old metaphor, while I’ve been a consistent fan of Hicks’s remixes, here he zeroes in on the trees, but completely loses the forest. I really don’t understand it.

Soft, overly-compressed, dull and completely lacking in top end sparkle, this remix is anything but a “feast for the ears” unless you really crank it up and then it becomes listenable as an archeological dig, especially if getting “inside” is your goal, but it’s drained of all emotional content that’s in abundance on the demos, so get this for the superb packaging (gets an "11" packaging, annotation and overall presentation) and listen to those 5 LPs and you'll appreciate George Harrison's brilliance and better understand his end of Beatles predicament as never before.

(Bobby Whitlock removed his video critique, which had been embedded here. Not sure why, though it was pretty tough: