I have had it up to here waiting for the Beatles catalogue to be remastered

"Real Love" is a good enough song that it overcomes the production imo. I agree that the Lynne tics are an unnecessary gloss that get in the way.

I like "Real Love" a lot but agree it's basically an unnecessary coda to their discography

― Οὖτις, Friday, April 14, 2017 3:49 PM (eighteen minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

This is basically my stance on it - it didn't need to be done, but I'm glad it exists. I also think 'Real Love' happens to be a great song, which I rank as being up there with any post-'70 Lennon song. 'Free As a Bird' isn't anywhere near as good.

I hate the way the Esher demos sound on Anthology. All of the delicious double-tracked phasing on the vocals and guitar is gone. they sound empty

also a lot of the background chatter and laughing is gone - that's so essential to the vibe of those demos! i love listening to that bootleg because it's like spending a beautiful stoned spring afternoon w the Beatles.

is it? i thought all that stuff was kept in, just that they just a direct rip from George's 4-track masters.

at any rate, sign me up for remastering the Esher stuff. the Anthology 3 stuff sounded insanely good compared to the boots

yeah i just listened to Junk and Piggies, there's no phasing and none of the background chatter

Thank fuck.

aw, it's great though! i love hearing John come in early on one of his vocal takes on 'Dear Prudence' and then go "oops! hehe"

but yeah, I already have these versions. clean em up, go ahead. I really hope they don't pass over a White Album reissue - I think I'll write a letter to EMI this afternoon.

there's def actual songs/demos from that period that didn't make it onto Anthology (Heather, Sour Milk Sea, Child of Nature, The Inner Light, Circles, etc.)

Not Guilty

is on Anthology

you are right lol i had to double check the tracklist. its been years, maybe a decade, since i listened to Anth 3.

The Inner Light was an especially odd omission, given that it was actually released but rarely (if ever?) compiled

inner light is on past masters

Circles is really good... that's one I'd like cleaned up, the organ is a bit shrill.

Harrison did a version of 'Circles' on one of his solo albums.

There's also 'Cosmically Conscious', which McCartney claims to have written in '68 in India, but didn't get recorded until the Off The Ground sessions ... funny how not a single demo of that has ever surfaced or there's no record of The Beatles ever attempting it. Two theories: either it was just a half-written thing that not even McCartney himself considered worthy of recording, or he's full of crapola.

Well, its like George's "Dehra dun" which he mention when the three were sat in Georges garden, and Paul says 'oh, I remember that' and says nothing more. No demo, no document for thast either.

is there a leaked version of circles from that time? if so I've forgotten about it

oh i did forget about this. it's pretty slight

i've heard child of nature so much I forgot it wasn't on anthology. is it officially on something else? maybe I just remember it from Lost Lennon Tapes (which I taped much of when it was first broadcast)

yeah The Inner Light was pretty well known as it was on Rarities, the 70s comp that mopped everything up before Past Masters replaced it in 87.

Tbf it was also the b-side to a single that sold a million+ copies, topped the charts in several countries, etc. I could be wrong, but I feel like things like this only became obscure/rare with the passing of a bit of time, as the single fell off the charts and you had to actually root around with a checklist to collect all the songs. If you were an actual Beatles fan in 1968 you probably heard it, I think!

I was going to say that Rarities came out in 1980, not in the late '70s...but then I looked it up and learned there was in fact a UK Rarities (much different track listing from the US version).

xp

many xposts:

A demo of 'Dehradun' does exist!

I have had it up to here waiting for the Beatles catalogue to be remastered

2600 posts? Jesus wept. I grew up in the Beatles era. I wore out Meet the Beatles as a nine year old. Owned the 45 of She's A Woman/I Feel Fine. I was given Sgt. Peppers for Xmas the year it came out. I did homework to the White Album. I smoked weed and listened to Across the Universe. Their music was deeply woven into practically every day of my youth.

But, crap, I could happily wait until doomsday for their catalogue to be remastered. I can already hear their music in my head, from the needle drop on the first track to the pock-pock of the needle slipping over in the final groove. Complete with scratches. Their stuff was designed for AM radio in a car: loud, catchy and enjoyable. It isn't exactly Mozart on a Stradivarius.

(...disappears from the thread like a wraith...)

Yes. And remastering usually makes things worse anyway. Best way to hear the Beatles is on cassette from the 80s. Those were good.

im listening to Anthology 3 Esher Demos right now. they are pretty nice even though they are edited. it does sound like they transferred each of the 4 tracks separately and remixed them. the original was done on George's 4-track tape machine correct? it is funny to imagine the Beatles basically recording White Album/Abbey Road over a weekend on a 4-track at George's house. the Esher tapes now very nice on Anthology. i would love a full release of all the demos, essentially an entire lost DIY Beatles album, in perfect quality, with all the individual tracks included.

i think the editing on Anthology always annoyed Beatleg collectors. then again, now there is a new mix of the song at any rate, so add it to the pile. lol i once used to download a list of every take of every song (or fragment) the band had ever written. i believe it was a text file called ABBL(?). this was the early days of the internet. my first website ever in the mid-90s was a Beatles fan site called Mr. Kite Live! at Pablo Fanques Fair.

i remember a time when all the boots used this horrible noise reduction that made things sound terrible. then again i was usually listening to a nth generation cassette dub. it all sounds great. i grew up hearing them on vinyl, radio, and through VHS tapes of "Yellow Submarine" and "Magical Mystery Tour" movies that they broadcast on TV in the 80s.

definitely agree the lofi quality on boots for example Unsurpassed 4 fits perfectly w the feel of the sessions. it is a really nice alt White Album.

so uhm... what are the beatles bootlegs to get featuring these demo tracks?

http://www.jpgr.co.uk/ydcd008_a.jpg

this is what i used to have, Unsurpassed Demos. i was wrong about Unsurpassed Masters 4, that has White Album-era tracks but it's mostly the Peter Sellers tape of early alt mono mixes from the album sessions. these days you don't even need to look for a boot, there are several full demo compilations stream-able on youtube. what a time to be alive.

yeah YouTube has the full thwack if you just look for Esher Demos and Outtakes and such.

pretty damn popular they are too! this set alone has had more than half a milion plays in a few months

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=imTSPdKu07E

Anthology 3 disc 1 was an interesting re-listen. due to the format of the 3-piece 2xCD Anthology format they had to cram the Esher sessions (which include at least 15 songs not attempted for the White Album) plus multi-studio outtakes for a double album in just one disc. most of the mixes are quite tame, cutting chatter and added instrumentation. "Not Guilty" had its glorious psychedelic sheen sanded off and is presented with no phasing effects, but it is still a treasure to hear George shifting to waltz time on this harpsichord track. some of the performances are really great - "Rocky Raccoon" is botched yet has this great drunken barroom funtime atmosphere to it, the improvised lounge core of "Los Paranoias" is wonderful beatnik minimalism comedy jazz, a slow jam version of "Sexy Sadie". "Glass Onion" is always great to hear again, and it sounds great here in mono mix, with a weird found sound ending that they used before substituting for a droning chamber orchestra.

but some of the track choices on Anthology 3 make no sense given the limited space they had to work with and all the potential material. there is over 10 minutes of solo Paul acoustic and that is just his acoustic songs. personally i have only ever needed one take of "Hey Jude" and the one here is a bloated waste of valuable disc space. why no outtakes of "Happiness is a Warm Gun" or "Revolution" is insane. "Revolution" isn't on this at all. why is "What's the New Mary Jane?" that 11 minute outtake of "Revolution" is way cooler than any of the things on Anthology 3.

i want to hear an outtake of "Savoy Truffle"

Yeah, I wish they'd nixed all the talky-talky stuff, and a good bit of the live stuff, from volumes 1 and 2 just so they could shift everything back and make more room for the latter years of their career. Certainly "A Beginning" and jamming the ADITL chord onto "The End" should go, wtf.

Might make for goofy break points between discs, I dunno, but I agree with you that it's a frustrating set. I still stand by my proposal, years and years ago on this thread, that what they should have done with the remasters and rereleases was to delete Anthology and issue 1-2 bonus discs as part of "deluxe" versions of each and every album. If they weren't going to do a full-on Bootleg Series thing clearing the vaults of everything a fan could possibly want, I think that's a more sensible way of distributing out-takes and oddities than the not-quite-comprehensive-and-often-Frankensteined approach on Anthology. I guess you could still keep something akin to Anthology Highlights available, for the more casual fan who'll be bored by getting acoustic demos of every White Album track but might have their mind blown by "What's The New Mary Jane."

I wasn't too keen on "What's The New Mary Jane?" on first listen, but when I heard it the other day for the first time in years, I absolutely loved it. Supposedly, Lennon wanted it to be a single, which is as batshit as Paul thinking "Maxwell's Silver Hammer" would be a great single, but for vastly different reasons.

Totally loving that piscesx youtube link above, btw. I've never really done much digging for this stuff, having been content for a long time with precisely the Anthology set that I now find frustrating. Great stuff.

xpost now there's a double A-side for the ages

Yeah, for "The Plastic Ono Band", backed with "You know my name"

Originals of "Let it be" have the cat no scratched out on the b-side, so it got to an advanced stage of production.

Yeah, I wish they'd nixed all the talky-talky stuff, and a good bit of the live stuff, from volumes 1 and 2

The live material on 1 includes some of the best (recorded) performances of their career. "Roll Over Beethoven" is the first thing I would play to convince misguided Ringo haters of his brilliance, and the live "Money" has the nastiest guitar of any Beatles recording, live or otherwise.

I wish they'd nixed all the talky-talky stuff, and a good bit of the live stuff, from volumes 1 and 2

The live tracks on Anthology 1 are fantastic. They really trace key moments of their rise - the Palladium, the Swedish tour, the Royal Command Performance, Ed Sullivan.

xp!

Ahhh, maybe I'm wrong. Haven't revisited that stuff in a long time and am probably conflating it with stuff on 2 that seemed superfluous.

There's bound to be people that piss and moan about the Anthology CD's, but I thought it provided a neat summary of what the band got up to behind closed doors in the studio without being unlistenable and/or tedious. Trawling through entire Beatles reels is not something most people have the time or the patience for, and besides, nothing could possibly replace the final products which have all been on the market for 47-55 years now.

The Blackpool set on 2 is good. The Budokan tracks might be on there for more historical purposes.

Yeah, some of the live stuff on 2 is pretty meh, particularly from the Japan shows. They themselves thought their playing on those dates was shit; why include them?

(Also, "A Beginning" was only included because they never finished a third "new" song. And the instrumental "Within You, Without You" took the place of the vetoed-by-George "Carnival Of Light" excerpt.)

xxp

I often think that some Beatle fans won't be satisfied until every single reel of everything they ever recorded is released, which to me is the stupidest idea ever. The Anthology compilations got it right by providing the highlights. The final product is what's important, not every. single. second. of the creation of that product.

The live stuff seemed out-of-place, maybe a live anthology would have been better, going from the Quarrymen tapes through hamburg and cavern to the US and so on..

Of course, these days any review of Beatles live has to mean America only, it seems.

In a TS between listening to all zillion hours of Get Back/Let It Be or throwing on any post-Beatles McCartney record, it's a bit of a no-brainer for me.

In fact, I'd be open to a Paul McCartney outtakes compilation, provided they're songs that haven't been released before (of which there are loads) and not 20 million takes of 'My Love' or whatever.

Tonigjht Back in the USSR souds like the funkiest song ever recorded.

FWIW I do think there are other versions besides the Anthology and releasing every reel of every tape! TBF, to return to the earlier discussion of how much they've scraped the bottom of the barrel, you have to imagine that if the cash-hungry barrel-scrapers were really in charge, we'd have long since seen trumped-up, stand-alone prestige releases of The Rooftop Concert, of the Esher Demos, the two different Glyn Johns Get Back acetates.... I'm not asking for all of that, just a little more than what they could cram into Anthology, especially later on when they're spending so much time in the studio and there's genuinely different arrangements in play, or lots of tracks where it's fascinating to just hear the band playing the basic track without overdubs, etc., etc....

Anthology, at six discs, is a little much for most fans, but ultimately unsatisfying for the hardcore Beatle head who has a sense of what other goodies are in the vaults, or who's heard some of them through bootlegs. Even something one-third as ambitious as Dylan's Bootleg Series would be very well-received IMHO. (It was perfect for me as a teenage enthusiast getting them as Christmas presents, since I was ready to devour everything I could get my hands on.)

I often think that some Beatle fans won't be satisfied until every single reel of everything they ever recorded is released, which to me is the stupidest idea ever. The Anthology compilations got it right by providing the highlights. The final product is what's important, not every. single. second. of the creation of that product.

couldn't disagree w this more. final product is a myth and furthermore if you really like an artist, you like even their shit. people study cultural apocrypha, it's a thing, get over it.