Post by Day Tripper on Jan 17, 2024 2:22:58 GMT
Red and Blue
A Retrospective
At what point does a compilation go from being merely a collection of songs and become a proper album, a real release with a real weight to it, in its own right? Cultural impact seems to be the deciding factor most of the time. Looking through Rolling Stone’s updated Top 500 Albums list from 2020, I find it interesting which artists they opted to include compilations for and which got their actual official studio albums on the list. Chuck Berry’s third album from 1959, Chuck Berry Is on Top, was already essentially a compilation, comprising several singles that hadn’t yet been issued on an album. Yet Rolling Stone opts for The Great Twenty-Eight, a double LP from ‘82, as his sole inclusion. Which album has had a stronger cultural resonance, the one released during his prime or the one that looks back at his heyday (about) two decades after it was over?
Certainly the question of compilations will always come back down to a question of the album and its worth as a unit. What should be the most important thing in about an album, the individual songs or the way they’re packaged together? This question becomes compounded when I look at how one of my favorite artists, ABBA, is represented in the list. The group had released several iconic records by the time they split up, including the hit-filled Arrival, the ambitious The Album, and their moody final album The Visitors. So which one does Rolling Stone select? The Definitive Collection from 2001.
Okay, sure, I can see the logic here. Beyond their album releases, ABBA were at their prime when it came to their singles, especially when you look at the way they dominated the UK charts. But if this is what you want to single in on, there’s another compilation that actually made real waves nine years before The Definitive Collection compiled up their single releases. ABBA Gold is one of the best-selling albums in history, influential in spearheading the ABBA revival that led to music listeners rediscovering the band, and leading not just to the Mamma Mia! films but also to their eventual rebanding. When you go to your average retailer, it’s ABBA Gold that will be sitting on the CD rack, waiting for the next listener to fall in love with.
So why then does Rolling Stone choose The Definitive Collection? Well, there are two benefits that this album has over Gold. The first is chronology. Gold’s strategy is to make the songs flow together regardless of what year the songs came out, which is exemplified by the choice to open the compilation with the band’s most famous and beloved song, “Dancing Queen”. The Definitive Collection, by contrast, starts with the band’s first single (“People Need Love”) and moves forward year-by-year, album-by-album, with a handful of exceptions based on tricky single releases.
The other reason is probably the one Rolling Stone were looking at when they chose which album to use: The Definitive Collection simply has more material than Gold does. Gold was confined to a single disc; The Definitive Collection gets two. This means that it can include even more songs, filling in the cracks with slightly lesser-known hits and especially covering the band’s early career in more detail. But now we’re back at the conundrum from before - do we go for the album that actually made an impact or the one with more tracks? Is the album as an artform more important, or do the individual songs make all the difference?
Then there’s the case of artists who have both influential studio albums and compilations, but have none of the latter included. Take the Eagles, for instance. Rolling Stone includes their eponymous debut and Hotel California in its list, both very important in the history of the band and rock music in general. Yet when you look at the sales numbers, Their Greatest Hits (1971-1975) absolutely crushes the competition. Give or take Michael Jackson’s Thriller, it’s quite likely the best-selling album in US history. One would think it’s at least as important as Buddy Holly’s 20 Greatest Hits (which was a bigger hit in the UK than the States), but it’s nowhere to be seen.
The overall point I’m getting at is that as evidenced by Rolling Stone, we still have a complicated relationship with the compilation album. The average consumer often finds them useful; it saves time if you can just get all your favorite songs on one disc without having to purchase an artist’s whole discography, and they can also be the perfect introduction to a band you’re interested in getting into. But on a critical level, compilations are often just empty packagings of songs that are thrown together with little rhyme or reason, and overshadow the work an artist does more painstakingly. Imagine if Echoes: The Best of Pink Floyd had been chosen by Rolling Stone over such masterpieces as Wish You Were Here, The Wall, or especially The Dark Side of the Moon, one of the most influential records in music history. Sure, you get to have “Comfortably Numb”, “Money”, and “Wish You Were Here”, three of the band’s greatest tracks, all in one set, but the thoughts and intentions that went into the original album productions are all gone.
Finally, it should be mentioned that compilations in the form of an album are likely on their way out. In the age of streaming, it’s easier for you and I to create a playlist to share with other fans or to use by ourselves than it is to go out and buy a CD. Studio albums have risen in prominence with fewer barriers between the artist and the public, at the same time as the compilation has fallen. So to see a compilation still be able to make waves well into the 2020s is a bit of a wonder. But then, The Beatles have never been an ordinary band.
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1962-1966 and 1967-1970 - or, as everyone calls them, the Red and Blue Albums - were Allen Klein’s final hurrah before he was uncerimoniously removed from his position as The Beatles’s manager. The band as a collective had ceased to exist by 1973, and all were embarking on successful solo careers when they finally canned Klein. In a lot of ways, Klein is the person who broke up The Beatles. Of course to say that is to simplify history drastically when really he was the final nail in a coffin already being shuttled into the ground, but he’s certainly far more deserving of that title than Yoko Ono. The divide between Paul McCartney, who had essentially become the bandleader after there original manager Brian Epstein tragically died (while John retreated more into introspection), and the rest of the Fab Four finally split at the seam when John, George, and Ringo decided to sign with Klein over Paul’s father- and brother-in-law Lee and John Eastman. One more album was recorded, but the damage was done, and Abbey Road was still six days away from release when John Lennon told his bandmates that he was leaving the group.
1973 was the year when Klein’s shady business dealings finally caught up with him. Just before his termination, however, he began a project that would long outlive the rest of his legacy. Alpha Omega was a bootleg quadruple LP comprised of various Beatles songs (and some selections from the Fab Four’s solo careers) that was making the rounds and caught the attention of Apple’s management. Klein not only showed up to fight it off, but, recognizing a hungry market for new Beatles material, even decided to get in on the action. The Red and Blue Albums were released on the 2nd of April, and immediately found an audience. Three years after the band’s final album, Let It Be, they acted both as a summation and retrospective of the band’s career for older fans, and a perfect introductory package for new ones. Filled with several of the band’s best-known songs from across their career, they were packaged in beautiful gatefolds and came with lyrics to every song in the set. It should also be noted that they were released mere days after Klein’s removal, and thus severed any and all ties they may have had with each other’s legacies. The Red and Blue Albums were not Klein compilations; they were Beatles albums.
Despite the band themselves waving them off as they’d played no part in their release, the two double LPs have remained the most important compilations in the history of The Beatles. They’ve been repressed numerous times throughout their history, most notably in 1993 when they made the jump from vinyl to CD. There have been other important Beatles compilations, of course, most notably Past Masters and 1, but these have notably different goals than the Red and Blue Albums. Past Masters acts, in modern-day practice, as the band’s 14th official album, collecting non-album singles, alternate tracks, and other rarities originally released during The Beatles’s run. 1, meanwhile, is a compact gloss-over of the band’s #1 singles, no more, no less. It has its place in the band’s career without a doubt (it’s their best-selling album), but also omits many of the group’s important b-sides and album cuts.
This is where 1962-1966 and 1967-1970 really shine. Instead of just sticking to the surface, they constantly dive a little deeper into the band’s discography to put together a complete history of the band across eight vinyl sides. Every album - bar Yellow Submarine - is represented, and practically all of the band’s UK singles are included as well. This means that from the harmonica intro of “Love Me Do”, the band’s debut single, to the orchestral close of “The Long and Winding Road”, one of the last tracks on Let It Be, you’re basically experiencing an abridged but detailed history of The Beatles. Full stop. You don’t have to choose between “Strawberry Fields Forever” and “Penny Lane” (a double a-side, of which 1 only includes the latter), or “Get Back” and “Don’t Let Me Down” (the latter being a b-side and thus omitted on 1). You can have your cake and eat it too.
The Red and Blue Albums got their biggest moment since their original release last year, as they celebrated their 50th anniversary with a couple of updated editions masterminded by Giles Martin. Using new technology developed by Peter Jackson during the making of the Get Back documentary, Giles has been able to de-mix and re-mix a lot of the band’s material into shiny new editions, to varying effect. In conjunction with the release of “Now and Then”, the ‘final’ Beatles song, the Red and Blue Albums have been re-released with an expanded tracklist, aiming to fix aspects that were missing from the original two albums. For instance, cover songs have now been included to pay respect to the band’s influences, and George Harrison’s material has also been included in greater quantity. From the remastering to the extra songs, it’s certainly a tempting purchase.
But at the end of the day, the big question remains: does it work better than the original albums? And to answer that, I’ll need to go back and detail my own history with The Beatles, and how I fell in love with the Red and Blue Albums in the first place.
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My introduction to The Beatles came when I was about five or six years old, in the form of a copy of Past Masters, Volume Two my dad played in his car. It was one of my earliest experiences with music beyond my mom’s worship CDs and songs in children’s shows. I loved it, but didn’t fully get immersed by the band until the summer between third and fourth grade. Rediscovering that album changed my life, literally. It was the moment I became a Beatles fan, and I played it over and over again, even bringing it along when I went to friends’ houses. For Christmas that year I really wanted another Beatles album to help quench my thirst for more of their material. My parents let me pick out my album of choice. For some reason I was set on getting one with “Octopus’s Garden” on it (I may have heard that track thanks to the Muppets?), and while Abbey Road was tempting, I settled on that blue record with two CDs, “Octopus’s Garden”, and some tracks I already knew thanks to Past Masters.
So Christmas morning came and I was presented with that shiny blue digisleeve of 1967-1970. It was the first album I ever actually owned. Myself. It was mine. I gazed at their faces on the cover, beaming down with the same joy I felt holding the album in my hands. Then, opening it up, I saw an even more captivating image of the band standing amidst a crowd of people, almost hiding in quiet fashion. Both pictures bewitched me.
Alongside the album I was given a CD player with which to play it on. Of course I had to spin it right away. I took out the CD from the sleeve and dropped it in the player, shut it, and pressed play. The CD revved up to speed and track 1 was illunimated in the display. Then the subtle and alluring sound of “Strawberry Fields Forever” floated over the speakers and grabbed my attention, and the magic of hearing a new Beatles song gripped me. I was transported into a world of sound, one that held me in mysterious strings until the song faded away. And the band tricked me with that fake-out fade-out. As I heard an oddball cluster fade-in on the speakers I announced that “this must be ‘Penny Lane’”. And then my dad went, “I don’t think that’s ‘Penny Lane’...”
But “Penny Lane” did come moments later, and it was inviting in a different way than “Strawberry Fields” was. This was bubblier, this was a picturesque observation of life where the previous song was more introspective. It’s one of the best examples of the Lennon/McCartney dichotomy, and I was fully prepared to embrace these contrasts thanks to Past Masters already having material of all different styles and sounds. And there were so many other great songs to experience on this album. There was Billy Shears’s appearance on “With a Little Help From My Friends”; the building orchestral whirlwind on “A Day in the Life” that sent my senses reeling; old friends like “Hey Jude” and “Revolution” (with a guitar riff louder than Metallica), and new ones like “Back in the U.S.S.R.” and “Come Together”. And of course, I had also “Octopus’s Garden”. It was all The Beatles, and it was all so good.
So many memories were forged right then and there on that Christmas morning. I received some Great Illustrated Classic books that day as well, so it’s hard for me to listen to a song like “Strawberry Fields Forever” or “All You Need Is Love” and not think about A Tale of Two Cities, too. Aside from the songs, which were fantastic, one of the best things about the album was that it came with both lyrics to every song and extensive liner notes that gave me context for each of the tracks I was playing.
Of course it was through those notes that I discovered that the album had a counterpart, and I convinced my parents to buy me 1962-1966 when I found it in another store. This time the album was a bright red, and it matched the tone of the material on it. These songs were short, snappy, and filled with incredibly infectious hooks. The simplicity of “Love Me Do” made it easy to get sucked into. There were no deep meanings to think about, just “love, love me do”. And there were all these other great tracks, like the pumping “A Hard Day’s Night”, the furious “Help!” and the sparkling “Ticket to Ride”, the moody double-punch of “In My Life” and “Girl”, and even the friendly sing-along “Yellow Submarine”, a counterpart of “Octopus’s Garden”. The best part, though, was the fact that three of my Past Masters faves were on this album as well - “We Can Work It Out”, “Paperback Writer”, and especially “Day Tripper”, which was then, and still is today, my favorite Beatles song.
These were the albums that really got my musical journey underway. Every single song was good, there was not a filler in sight. That being said, my relationship with the Blue Album especially was not completely unmarred, as it featured the only two Beatles songs I was not allowed to play. My dad always skipped “The Ballad of John and Yoko” on Past Masters, as “Christ, you know it ain’t easy; [...] they’re gonna crucify me,” didn’t appeal to his Christian faith. So skipping from “Don’t Let Me Down” to “Old Brown Shoe” carried over to this album as well, although I kept the thrill of getting as close as possible to John’s singing before hitting the skip button so I could savor the acoustic intro at least.
The other song was “I Am the Walrus”, which my parents only found issues with when my best friend’s mom decided to be a narc over the term “pornographic priestess”. Both songs ended up becoming larger-than-life to me as forbidden fruit, and in spite of their well-laid intentions, they’ve become favorites of mine as the years have gone on. I’ve listened to far more blasphemous and egregious shit since those days, but none of it stills hits me in the way that those two songs do. Reverse psychology is a bitch, innit?
Of course all the Red and Blue Albums managed to do was intensify my craving for more Beatles content. For my birthday I received my first proper studio album, Abbey Road, which, nostalgia be damned, is still the best of their original thirteen albums in my view. I got all the rest as part of the Stereo Box Set I received the following Christmas. With those and the Anthology albums I would get later, I had pretty much supplanted the requirements that the Red and Blue Albums had already fulfilled for me.
Well, almost. There was still a different feeling you got listening to those albums versus the studio set. Beyond the memories and the flow of the tracklist, you also had a few instances where the compilations worked better than a proper album. Magical Mystery Tour, especially, doesn’t really work for me after “Hello, Goodbye” because the four single tracks attached onto the end don’t fit in chronologically. “Strawberry Fields Forever” and “Penny Lane” ushered in, with zero doubt left over, The Beatles as a studio outfit at the start of 1967. On MMT they feel tacked-on, almost as afterthoughts. Which they were, of course. The original UK Magical Mystery Tour was an EP, but when the group standardized their catalogue on CD, the American album version was chosen because it had more tracks on it, and, I suppose, that would keep Past Masters from being overly stuffed. It really all goes back to that question of art vs content, album vs songs, doesn’t it?
Well, here I am some thirteen(?) years after I first got into The Beatles, and my musical evolution has changed drastically over the years. The band paved the way for me to embrace classic rock radio and then cross-over into being a metal fan, all while coming to appreciate an eclectic variety of musicians beyond, and often outside, of that genre. For the longest time I guess I assumed that the band would end up being one of the most important foundational acts in my musical life, but that I would never really fall in love with them again like I did when I was younger. Well, I was wrong. Late last year, not too long after the release of “Now and Then”, I learned that that spark was still alive and well. Not only did I go back through all of their albums, but I also began diving deeper into their solo careers, even purchasing John Lennon’s Signature Box.
And of course I had to return to where it all began for me as a music consumer - the Red and Blue Albums. That didn’t just mean pulling out my beaten and battered CDs from all those years back, that meant going out and buying some beautiful new copies of the original albums on vinyl, and picking up the new 2023 expanded editions on CD. And having played all three (or six, I suppose) of these, it’s left me with some deeper appreciations of the original records, especially when compared to where the new versions both succeed in a way and yet ultimately fail.
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Aside from offering a chance for Giles Martin to take his new toys for a spin, and aside from being a tool to sell more products off the back of “Now and Then”, the new Red and Blue Albums are being marketed as fixing holes in the original compilations. It seems reasonable then to ask what flaws the original albums had. Certainly one of the most notable things is the pacing of the Red Album versus the Blue one. The Red Album speeds along with remarkable precision, jumping from Please Please Me to Help! and the surrounding singles with incredible speed before spending extended time on Rubber Soul. Comparitively, the Blue Album feels like it lingers with you longer, like you’re dwelling in the songs more.
The key reason for this is simply that the songs were shorter back in the early days, before the band began pushing themselves further artistically after Revolver. The longest song on 1962-1966 is the three minute, eleven second “Ticket to Ride”, while “Hey Jude” dwarfs the competition on 1967-1970 with four extra minutes than “Ticket”. But it’s not just the song lengths - the Red Album also has less songs than the Blue Album. If you’re looking at the CDs, the Red Album has 13 tracks per disc, while the Blue Album has 14 each. This is strange for a compact disc, certainly; indeed, upon its initial release on CD, there was some discourse over whether or not the Red Album should’ve just been a single disc since all of its material can fit on one. But even looking at the vinyls it’s odd, with the four sides on the Red Album holding about 15 minutes each, while the Blue Album’s get as close as possible to the 25-minute rule-of-thumb, and in the case of side 2 (thanks to “Hey Jude”), even overshoots it.
Of course that leads you to question what material was omitted from the Red Album that could’ve easily been fit on it. The most glaring issue here is that, while Rubber Soul gets a full six songs included - even “Girl”, which is a deeper cut than the others - Revolver gets, wait for it, two. Two. That’s it. Two songs from one of the most groundbreaking technological marvels in recording history. And which two songs are included? The ones that were also released as a double a-side the day their parent album dropped: Paul’s brooding “Eleanor Rigby”, and the Ringo kiddie song “Yellow Submarine”. Both great songs on their own right, but where is the studio magic that makes the album stand out like it does? Surely “Tomorrow Never Knows” was an obvious choice, right? Even the liner notes in my first copy make mention of it. You could also argue for “Rain”, the b-side to “Paperback Writer” and the track that really heralded in the group’s era of studio manipulation. Definitely some odd omissions there.
Then there’s the fact that the Red Album focused solely on Lennon/McCartney material. We can argue about whether or not George’s material was at the same standard as theirs, but it seems like an oversight not to include anything of his, “Taxman” especially. Also passed over are the cover songs that were prominent in their early career. Understandably, perhaps, but a lot of them have become synonymous with The Beatles, especially “Twist and Shout”. Perhaps a little attention would’ve been nice?
The Blue Album, utilizing all the space allowed on a vinyl record, is certainly easier to be happy with in its original form, but there are still some aspects that leave one yearning for more. For one, there’s George’s embrace of Indian culture and music, which began in 1965 but really came to a peak in 1967. On these albums the only sign of it is the sitar in “Norwegian Wood” and the tambura in “Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds”. Surely “Within You Without You” or even a rarity like “The Inner Light” would’ve been apt, eh?
There’s also the fact that the band’s biggest record, the White Album, gets just three songs, and completely overlooks John’s contributions to the record. Likewise, the Sgt. Pepper cuts obscure the fact that Paul was the driving force behind that album. Also omitted is anything from Yellow Submarine, summarily relegating it to the archival bin as, effectively, not a real Beatles album, as so many fans, and even the band, feel. It’s what it is, certainly, but it also definitely means you’re skipping what was, at the time, to the public, a new and very real Beatles release. In conjunction with their best film, too, go figure.
So, how do the 2023 editions update the originals? Well, there’s the obvious remix factor at play, but I don’t really need to dwell on it much. Some of the songs, like “I Saw Her Standing There”, “I Want to Hold Your Hand”, and “Dear Prudence” sound sleak and fresh as though they were recorded for the first time only yesterday, while “She Loves You” still sounds like it’s inside of a tin can, the ending to “I Am the Walrus” is completely botched, and “Old Brown Shoe” is absolutely ruined beyond belief. As far as that goes, it’s what it is. But what do they add to the sets in terms of the additional songs?
My thoughts here are… mixed, to say the least. The first disc of the new Red Album has the best balance, for my money. Adding “I Saw Her Standing There” and “Twist and Shout” is a great move and expands the field of early Beatles goodness. “This Boy” is a dark horse inclusion but I like the way it showcases how much good material the band had that often was just relegated to b-side status. “Roll Over Beethoven” and “You Really Got a Hold on Me” are good covers and the former is a nice introduction to George’s place in the group, before he blossomed into a songwriting talent on his own. I’m not fully sold on “You Can’t Do That”, appearing here as the b-side to “Can’t Buy Me Love”, as there are better songs on A Hard Day’s Night (“If I Fell”, “I Should Have Known Better”), but I don’t hate the move. Really, I find the biggest oversight on the disc to be leaving Beatles for Sale, despite being a contender for their worst album, with just “Eight Days a Week”. “No Reply” and “I’ll Follow the Sun” are both great, popular tracks that could’ve been useful in representing its place in the band’s history. It’s the one moment where the brevity of the original album comes back into play, and it feels like an oversight. (Honestly I’d have been happy to see the band’s Long Tall Sally EP get some recognition as well, but that’s more of a pipe dream I guess.)
The second disc is… odd, certainly. To represent George, they throw in “If I Needed Someone”, which is a great song, yes, but this means that Rubber Soul now has seven fucking songs on here when six was already pushing it. And to correct the missing material from Revolver, they throw in a whole five extra songs to make sure the record’s been corrected on how important that album really is. Don’t get me wrong, they’re all good songs, but it becomes a slog to listen through and has me wondering why I didn’t just play Revolver itself. I’d have been fine with just “Taxman” and “Tomorrow Never Knows”; “Here, There and Everywhere” is a good choice, too; but “I’m Only Sleeping” and “Got to Get You Into My Life” really push things far outside the lines of reason. And, notably, “Rain” is nowhere to be seen.
The first disc of the Blue Album is a bit boring, but understandably so. So much material from 1967 and the beginning of 1968 is already present on the original album that it’s a bit hard to decide what more to add. They opt for “Within You Without You” to represent George’s Indian influence and it’s a good choice. If they had wanted to really commit to the bit I would have thought that “When I’m Sixty-Four” and even the b-sides “Baby, You’re a Rich Man” and “The Inner Light” could’ve been fit in, but I can’t really fault them for staying conservative here.
But Jesus Christ, the second disc. Frankly, it’s a slog. Let’s start with the White Album. Like I mentioned, the obvious fix here would be to include a John song. I’d have gone with “Happiness Is a Warm Gun”, one of his most iconic and innovative tracks. Yet it’s passed over in favor of “Dear Prudence” and “Glass Onion”, which are good, but feel tacked-on here. Paul gets one more song too in “Blackbird”, which I understand (but, and I say this lovingly, it’s also overrated). This is the first moment where the disc begins to buckle under its own weight.
Yellow Submarine finally gets to make an appearance in the form of “Hey Bulldog”, one of the best additions to this release. It fits in narratively in the band’s history and I wish there’d been a spot for it on the original album.
Abbey Road is where Things Fall Apart. The original album already had four tracks from it, and that was, frankly, enough. If we had to have something extra, I’d have gone for a deep cut like “Because” or the ending trio of “Golden Slumbers”, “Carry That Weight”, and “The End”, which act as the album’s, and, effectively, the band’s, grand finale. Instead we get “Oh! Darling”, which is a great song but only because Paul goes crazy on the vocal, and “I Want You (She’s So Heavy)”, which is both great and important but also really, really long, and this is already a disc that’s going well over the hour mark. Some tidiness would’ve been nice, but that seems to be out of the question at this point.
All respect to George, but “I Me Mine” is literally superfluous. The band probably thought of it that way as well, given the way they scrambled to put it together in time for the film release while their collective was shattering from within and without. At this point I am just tired.
Luckily the final track on the new Blue Album is well worth the wait. “Now and Then” is easily the best of the ‘new’ Beatles songs (which also include “Free as a Bird” and “Real Love”), and a worthy finale to the most incredible career the world of music has ever seen. I think there are aspects of the production that could’ve been handled slightly better, but the song is beautiful and I love the fact that Paul and Ringo managed to live to find a day when they could really bring it to life. If it doesn’t have the same magic the songs released between 1962 and 1970 do, it makes up for it in tired, old yet invincible nostalgia. It’s a communication between John to Paul and Paul to John, both inside and outside this mortal coil. It’s a last hurrah from two bandmembers who have been blessed with the long lives that their best friends never got. It’s a touching memorial to those two friends they’ve already lost. And, most of all, it holds true to the band’s final, greatest philosophy, breathed to life at the close of their original career as a unit, that ‘in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make’. And it makes me cry. It’s such a good song, for all those reasons and more.
If they had just included “Hey Bulldog” and “Now and Then”, this would have already been a package worth getting. But the issue with these new editions is that the biggest impression they leave is not knowing where to stop. The originals knew where the cut-off point should be, even if that sometimes meant being a little too concise in areas. But these just go on for too long. Gone is the good introduction to The Beatles. At that point you might as well just buy the actual studio albums.
And it’s after listening to the 2023 editions of 1962-1966 and 1967-1970 that affirms for me something that I had doubted, just a little, but always knew in the back of my mind: that the original Red and Blue Albums are, in their own way, and in their own fashion, two of the most perfect records ever made.
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For all that can be said about their theoretical flaws, you can take each and every one of them and transform them into accolades. Yes, the Red Album is more concise than it has to be, and a lot of the group’s best songs are missing from the sets. But that just means that there’s more to explore beyond this collection, doesn’t it? What of Revolver’s lack of material? When you get your hands on that album, you will be all the more blown away in juxtaposition to the two songs included from it on the Red Album. Even the mere three tracks from the White Album make sense in this context, as that leaves you to swim that ocean of material on your own terms later on, with your fullest attention and intention.
Leaving off all covers and focusing only on their own material allows the group’s work to shine through in greater clarity. Sure, you may miss a “Twist and Shout”, but you gain an “All My Loving”. In a way it recalls their very first single, when they chose to release “Love Me Do”, a Lennon/McCartney original, over George Martin’s suggested “How Do You Do It?” Their talents were always right there, beaming, and there’s no need to dillute that with even the best of cover songs.
Even the lack of material from George until the second disc of the Blue Album makes sense in its own way. George’s place in the band’s history was constantly shifting during their tenure. I happen to like all the material he wrote for the group, even the songs that are easily overlooked as filler like “I Need You” or “I Want to Tell You”, not to mention “Don’t Bother Me”. But his growing confidence as a songwriter took time, and it was really only on Abbey Road where he far outshone the rest of the group with his offerings. Frankly, and I hate to word it like this but, George was the b-plot to the Lennon/McCartney a-plot. The history of The Beatles will always come down to John and Paul, and then John vs. Paul, right until the final act when George becomes such a contender that his first solo album goes on to be possibly the best anyone in the band ever does beyond The Beatles. Consider it the spin-off that ends up being on par with the original show.
And as much as this might attempt to relegate George’s work to the shadows, that’s not what ends up happening here in practice. In fact, one thing that strikes me listening through the original Red Album is just how much you can notice his touch on the tracks, from that sitar in “Norwegian Wood” to the “tit-tit-tit-tit” in “Girl” to his ever-present and infectious guitarwork. He’s not on the center stage yet, but he’s there, and he’s great.
There’s really no fat on the frames of these albums. The one track that might see the most criticism for its inclusion is, ironically enough, George’s. “Old Brown Shoe” was not much more than the b-side to “The Ballad of John and Yoko” until Klein decided it should be on the Blue Album. And you know what? That was a great choice. It’s an excellent song overshadowed by other, bigger tracks in the discography, often undeservedly.
The thing that makes these two records work beyond all else, and the thing that has given them the life they have had long after their less-than-ideal state of birth is gone from memory, is the way that they give context to the band’s wider discography. If you listen to Past Masters, it’s easy to either lock up those songs as one piece divorced from the rest of the band’s catalogue, or forget just how important they were upon release. “Hey Jude” is amazing, sure, but it’s not an album track. It would be easy to categorize it in hindsight as fodder the band slapped out as a single that just-so-happens to be great, when really its release was as important as the White Album itself. The Red and Blue Albums in this way become the great equalizer as they provide a narrative thread linking the singles with the albums that were released alongside them. It’s the best approach they could’ve taken to such a compilation, especially when you look at the way Alpha Omega, which spurred on these releases, is just a dump bin of content without any thought into how it should be structured. Outside the Red Album, “Day Tripper” and its raucous riff feels like a track that exists in a world beyond The Beatles. Within this album it feels like a natural continuation of where they left off with Help! And, of course, the 1967 material has been righted from the way that Magical Mystery Tour mishmashes it.
You also get to feel the band evolve from the early days of short and, as Paul would later coin, ‘silly’ love songs, to a state-of-the-art recording force to be reckoned with. You get to hear the ways they began to move from simple instrumentation to out-of-the-box recording styles. You get “Hey Jude” and “Revolution” right alongside “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” and “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da”. There are no favorites here. Everything is on the same level. For an instant, the album and the single have been relegated as equals, each with their own role to play, both exemplary formats by which to release music. It’s especially wondrous considering that few artists followed the path The Beatles chose. Singles are, most often, taken from albums, instead of being released in addition to them. In this way the band both gave the consumer their money’s worth while also challenging them to engage with all of their material.
And as you move from side to side, from record to record, and then from album to album, the entire world of The Beatles is shown like a moving picture. The inauspicious start of “Love Me Do” brings to life a tapestry of some of the best pop (and rock) music ever made. It’s astounding that such a short career could hold this many excellent songs, especially when you remember how many more aren’t even present on these albums. Truly a remarkable band.
In this context especially, the final three songs move me in ways they only dabble in as part of the Let It Be album. Paul’s “Let It Be” is a beautiful, stirring anthem that juxtaposes its powerful sense of hope against John’s world-weary yet happily resigned “Across the Universe”. What will be will be. The Beatles may be over, but the dreams are still alive. And “The Long and Winding Road” points towards the future, one of uncertainty surely, but not one that is unwelcome. Especially in light of John’s tragic death, this unintentional dialogue with Paul becomes more touching long after they were compiled as a money-selling device. It’s like you’re hearing John’s final message to the world through The Beatles, and Paul’s final message to John through that same outlet.
Even without “Now and Then”, this finale makes me cry.
† † †
Over fifty years after the release of Red and Blue, these albums, in their original formats, remain two of my most beloved records without a doubt. Of course there’s the old nostalgia come in to play, but there are many albums that I should have nostalgia for that I can’t say I’m drawn to nearly as much today (R.I.P. Led Zeppelin). As much as I love Abbey Road and think it’s the band firing on all cylinders, crafting the perfect rock record even as the curtain falls on their career, I’d have to say that if someone asks me what my favorite Beatles album is, the answer would be, without hesitation, 1962-1966 and 1967-1970.
Now, I would never advocate that Rolling Stone place this album above the band’s actual studio records in their next album list, but I do think that these sister releases deserve to be recognized as two of the best compilation albums ever made. When I think of what they meant to me when I was younger, and what they still mean to me now, and what they will mean to me in the future; it also makes me think of what they could mean to someone else, maybe another third grader like me who wants to hear more songs from his favorite band, who decides that the album has to have “Octopus’s Garden” on it, and is happy to find one that also includes “Revolution” as well. And in spite of my reservations, if the 2023 editions can do that, just as the originals did, then they’ve already proven their worth.
The biggest takeaway from these two albums is one that’s incredibly obvious if you know anything about the band: The Beatles are for everyone. Young or old, rich or poor, black or white. On face value they had catchy songs; beneath the surface there’s so much of interest to analyze, whether it’s the music theory or the lyrical content. That they could release adult-oriented mysteries like “Norwegian Wood” and “I Am the Walrus” right alongside the silly kid’s songs like “Yellow Submarine” and “Octopus’s Garden” says a lot for who they were aiming their music at and who they were as artists. They forewent barriers that often keep other groups from releasing what could have been great songs. Whether it was Paul’s “granny shit”, John’s personal reflections, George’s spiritualism, or Ringo’s friendly charm, The Beatles offered something for everyone. The Red and Blue Albums succeed in that exact same fashion. There’s something for everyone in them.
In a way, Allen Klein really did get the last laugh. But it’s The Beatles that brought me here, and kept me here, commanding both my own attention and the world’s. They took back their own narrative.