FILTER REISSUES

The most eagerly awaited Beatles Super Deluxe edition: 5-CDs/4-LPs with extra EP: new mix, mono version and 31 extras from sessions. A major high.

By Jon Savage.

“Take 5 of Rain encapsulates The Beatles at their peak: never would they be harder, faster, or exuberantly higher.”

The Beatles ★★★★★

Revolver

PARLOPHONE/UMC. CD/DL/LP

RELEASED M ERE weeks before The Beatles quit the stage, Revolver captures the group at terminal velocity: moving faster than everyone else, they had remained at the top for over three years, but the world (and human fatigue) was catching up. This album was the summary of that moment: the perfect end to their period as pop idols, live performers, kings of the scene. They had begun to conceive of life outside The Beatles – the four-headed monster on an insane schedule – and, going forward, they would reclaim their own time.

Like many startling records in the second half of 1966, Revolver was the product of fierce compression, as new technology, psychedelic drugs and an emerg-ing generational consciousness all pushed against the existing pop song template. The album is still subject to a severe pop discipline – there is nothing over three minutes in the stereo mix – but the individuated songs are steeped in Eastern sonorities, deep, philosophical lyrics, drug-inspired explorations and, on occasion, harsh, unsettling sounds.

This is the fifth Beatles album deep dive and, perhaps, the most eagerly awaited. All the Super Deluxe editions so far have had their attractions: the full band performances from the White Album sessions, the delicate assem-blies of Sgt. Pepper, the latest attempt to solve the Let It Be/Get Back rebus. Like Abbey Road, albeit with a very different spirit, Revolver presents an accomplished, almost impen-etrable sheen – which makes the archaeology provided by the outtakes and different mixes all the more involving.

The first disc is the Giles Martin de/remix, achieved by breaking down and reconstituting each individual recorded element. A quick comparison to the 1987 CD issue and the 2009 remaster reveals a much wider and fuller picture, with everything up and audible but in place: the violins in Eleanor Rigby stab; the cymbals in I’m Only Sleeping shimmer; the twinned guitars in Doctor Robert really crunch, the sitar in Love You To goes right through you – asuccessful and sym-pathetic reinvention for the 21st century.

The two discs of outtakes are in order of recording, beginning with Mark One in early April and ending with She Said, She Said in the third week of June. There are no extra songs, just some chat and some radically different versions. Several have already been released before on Anthology 2 – Mark One, the I’m Only Sleeping fragment, an early Got antly r.”

To Get You Into My Life, etc – but the cumulative effect of hearing all 31 deepens the impact of an often opaque and hermetic album.

The fact that The Beatles rehearsed in the studio allows for sequences that show each song’s development. An April arrangement of Got To Get You Into My Life features a fuzz guitar in place of the more familiar horns, while the stinging guitar riff that comes in near the end of the finished version is played throughout. Take 1 of Love You To, still called Granny Smith, features an intimate, acoustic performance by George Harrison that is breathtaking.

After two tough instrumental takes of Paperback Writer comes Take 5 of Rain, played at its original speed. If you think the group performance – Paul McCartney’s looping and swooping bass, Ringo Starr’s drum fills, the ringing guitars – on the finished single is remarkable, then this is quite astonishing. You can hear the pace of their lives and their ideas in this perfect encapsulation of The Beatles at their peak: never would they be harder, faster, or exuberantly higher.

There’s very little fat here. The Beatles’ commit-ment to leaving the listener wanting more is on display in an early take of Doctor Robert, which adds a superfluous, third middle eight that was cut in the finished master: the correct decision. Three takes of And Your Bird Can Sing follow: the early, Byrds-style version, followed by an edited version of the giggling take, then the heavier, slower remake recorded a few days later.

The next such sequence is dedicated to I’m Only Sleeping, which begins with the vibraphone rehearsal, passes through a breakdown on Take 2, a more up-tempo Take 5 – intended, like Rain, to be subsequently slowed down – and ends with the first mono backwards guitar mix, released prematurely on the American Yesterday And Today album. Then we’re into the Yellow Submarine sequence, possibly the most surprising in the whole set.