“Another road where maybe I/Could see another kind of mind there”
APPLE CORPS LTD./CAPITOL/UME
SINCE it began in 2017, The Beatles’ lavish remix campaign has dealt with the downers. Paul McCartney might have relished making Sgt Pepper, but a tripping John Lennon was largely losing interest; much of ‘The White Album’ was made solo by an increasingly disjointed band; Let It Be captures the group’s fatal disintegration and the mess that followed; and Abbey Road’s majesty was largely possible only because it was a last hurrah. To the rest of us, these are stunning, sometimes world-altering listens, but they certainly make being a Fab seem like a chore; it was a time of deadlines, joyless business meetings and sizzling resentment, as old friends grew apart and others fought for recognition.
Where was that camaraderie, that warmth, that sense of wonder that we associate with The Beatles?
Certainly, Peter Jackson’s Get Back put a more positive spin on a dark time – but to find them truly united, excited and at their creative peak, we have to look to Revolver, the latest staging post on Giles Martin’s journey through the albums made by his old man and the Fabs.
Here’s the group expanding the possibilities of recorded music just as they were expanding their minds, released nine months earlier.
