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Beatles' Revolver: 'It's time travel' says Giles Martin

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      11 hours ago

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  The Beatles in 1966 Image source, Getty Images
  By Mark Savage
  BBC Music Correspondent

  Last month, in Abbey Road's legendary Studio 3, Giles Martin performed
  a magic trick.

  He was there to unveil something that should have been technically
  impossible - a remixed, reinvigorated version of The Beatles' seventh
  album, Revolver.

  The band's first record after announcing their retirement from live
  performance, it saw them explore new sonic territories and styles of
  composition, from the chamber pop of Eleanor Rigby to the kaleidoscopic
  eruptions of Tomorrow Never Knows.

  It took 300 hours to record (almost three times as long as the Beatles'
  previous album, Rubber Soul) as they experimented with tape loops,
  back-masking and LSD.

  Fans have long been clamouring for an expanded edition of the record -
  but there was a problem.

  Unlike their later albums, the Beatles recorded Revolver's basic tracks
  direct to tape, standing in a circle, playing as a band. That made it
  almost impossible for future generations to separate and isolate the
  instruments and vocals.

  Until now.

  Back in Abbey Road, Martin cues up Taxman, Revolver's tense and brittle
  opening track.

  "What would it sound like without George Harrison's guitar?" he asks,
  pulling down a fader that eliminates him from the mix. Next, he drops
  out Paul McCartney's bass, so the only thing you hear is Ringo Starr's
  drum kit.

  It's a revelation. The kick drum pedal squeaks on every beat, and the
  snare reverberates off the studio walls. No-one, not even Ringo, would
  have heard those details at the time.

  Martin compares it to being given a cake and having the ability to
  break it down to its constituent ingredients. And it's only possible
  because of the technology that Peter Jackson's audio team created for
  the Get Back documentary.

  "The dialogue editor [Emile de la Rey] was doing a really good job of
  removing the guitars from the dialogue, and I said to him: 'Let's have
  a look at Revolver. Can you separate the guitar, bass and drums?'" says
  Martin.

  "He did a rough pass and it was so much better than anything I've ever
  heard. I said: 'OK, we need to work on this', and it got to a stage
  where it became extraordinarily good."

  Martin isn't clear on how the de-mixing process works, but he knows it
  involves elements of AI and machine learning.

  "It has to learn what the sound of John Lennon's guitar is, for
  instance, and the more information you can give it, the better it
  becomes.

  "So we were going through the tapes just looking for bits where someone
  played a guitar with no-one else playing - and that's how the computer
  can can go: 'Okay, this is what I'll extract'.

  "But all that means is that, when people listen to the record, the band
  don't have to be on each other's lap."
  The Beatles in Abbey Road Image source, Apple Corps Ltd

  For his new version of Taxman, Martin discards the original's gimmicky
  stereo mix, which placed the instruments in the left speaker and the
  vocals in the right, Now, the band spreads out across the soundstage,
  putting the listener in the middle of a Beatles performance.

  It's a technique Martin applies to the whole album. Compared to the
  muddy CD mixes that emerged in the 1980s, the new Revolver is bristling
  with life, full of presence and attack.

  "People forget that it's just a young band playing in the studio," says
  Martin. "Everything is fairly aggressive. Everything is in your face.
  Everything the Beatles recorded is a little bit louder than you think
  it is."

  Eleanor Rigby is a perfect example. Instead of using the string section
  as a soft underscore, Paul asked them to play in sharp, staccato stings
  inspired by Bernard Herrmann's score for Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho.

  "Which is a funny influence if you think about it - you take the shower
  scene with a woman being stabbed and put it on Eleanor Rigby," reflects
  Martin.

  An expanded, deluxe edition of Revolver captures the strings being
  recorded at Abbey Road, with Giles's father George Martin arranging the
  musicians on the fly.

  "Do you want them to play the chords without vibrato?" he asks
  McCartney, who listens to several options before declaring he can't
  tell the difference.

  "All those years of learning," the musicians grumble good-naturedly,
  "and he says it sounds the same."

  McCartney eventually opts to lose the vibrato, giving the recording its
  razor-sharp immediacy.

  "What impresses me is the speed of thought," says Martin. "You have to
  remember that 10 minutes before that conversation, no-one would have
  ever heard the Eleanor Rigby strings before. It's an amazing session."
  The Beatles in Abbey Road Studios during filming of the Paperback
  Writer and Rain promotional films. Image source, Apple Corps Ltd

  It's one of many insights on the box set, from a rehearsal of And Your
  Bird Can Sing where the band can't stop laughing - "It reminds you that
  maybe there was some pot smoked during that time" - to a previously
  unheard demo of Yellow Submarine.

  While Beatles historians have always attributed the song to McCartney,
  the newly unearthed work tape is pure Lennon. He strums a sad acoustic
  guitar figure and sings: "In the town where I was born / No-one cared,
  no-one cared..."

  It's unrecognisable from the bumptious singalong it became - the words
  Yellow and Submarine are conspicuously absent - but Martin says the
  development of the song shows the Beatles at their most harmonious.

  "There's an acceptance of 'OK, I've got this very sensitive and sad
  song, and Paul's going to turn that into a hit for children'. That
  didn't happen later on Abbey Road or Let It Be, and I think that's the
  key to Revolver: They absolutely accepted each other's direction."

  The scale of their confidence was such that the first song they tackled
  in the studio was Lennon's nightmarish sound collage Tomorrow Never
  Knows, full of sitar drones, processed vocals and unholy seagull calls
  (actually a speeded-up recording of McCartney laughing).

  Derided at the time, it's now recognised as a landmark of psychedelia,
  and a pioneering example of sampling and manipulating tape loops.

  "And the thing about the Beatles is they never tried it again," says
  Martin. "I can't work out the mentality of it, in all honesty, what was
  going through people's minds.

  "Even my dad, you know? He was always pretty straight-laced, but he
  just accepted 'Okay, well this is what we're doing'!
  Original tape box for Taxman and And Your Bird Can Sing Image source,
  Calderstone Productions Ltd

  "I always think it's like surfing, in a way. There's been very rare
  times in my life where I've done creatively good things but most of the
  time, I'm treading water or trying to avoid getting hit by the waves.

  "But the Beatles spent their whole time on the crest of a wave."

  Which raises the question, why remix the album at all?

  There are Beatles fans who refuse to listen to Martin's remasters and
  remixes, accusing him of rewriting history.

  "I kind of embrace them because, in a way, they're absolutely right,"
  Martin says. "There's no reason why you should listen to these mixes.
  It's not like I've deleted anything."

  Instead, he likens the process to sandblasting the exterior of St
  Paul's Cathedral, and seeing it as Sir Christopher Wren would have done
  in 1697.

  The surviving Beatles supervised the mixes (McCartney told him off for
  being "too polite" with And Your Bird Can Sing) and the idea is to
  preserve their songs for a new generation who primarily listen on
  headphones, where the original hard-panned version of Taxman is awkward
  and disorientating.

  "I remember mixing Strawberry Fields and the young guy working at Abbey
  Road with me had never heard the song before," says Martin. "And
  there's no reason why he should. It's bloody old.

  "But there's also no reason why a 26-year-old Paul McCartney shouldn't
  sound like a 26-year-old does now.

  "So essentially, what we're doing is time travel. And I like that even
  now, 56 years on, we're trying to break new ground. Because that's what
  the Beatles did."

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