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Further Impressions

Some brief impressions as I continue to rediscover the Beatles. I know I’m a bit slow in all of this, but I’m doing what I can. Today, I’ll talk about With The Beatles and A Hard Day’s Night.

With The Beatles was always, to me, the worst-sounding Beatles album of the lot. The quality of the recordings was probably the worst of the lot. Instruments bleeding into one another, cracking vocals, and a certain degree of noise that made the recordings really hard to listen to. And yet some of my favourite Beatles songs are on this album, so I was really glad to find that they had somehow managed to rescue With The Beatles.

It’s not obvious right off the bat. At least, it wasn’t to me. Something seemed different, but it wasn’t a night-and-day difference for sure. It was less noisy and more well-balanced, for one thing. The differences were clearer a bit more into the album. The clarity of the guitar in Till There Was You, for instance, was a joy to behold. The drums sounded more full-bodied in Please Mister Postman, and were accompanied with a much cleaner bassline. Most of all, it didn’t sound like I was trying to imagine things out of a 50-year old bootleg. I could actually hear things clearly.

I think the most slap-in-the-face obvious thing for me was on Money, where there were guitar notes in it that up to that point I didn’t know existed. (And I still can’t find it on the mono remaster.)

A Hard Day’s Night works out pretty much the same way, with everything sounding just that bit cleaner. If I Fell, for instance, starts out with more than John’s voice. I hadn’t realised that, but it’s very obvious in the stereo remaster. It doesn’t always work for the best, though. Much has been said about the warmth of the mono versions and it’s true, and of the three albums I’ve written about so far, this is the one that I most prefer the mono version of. Nothing to worry about, though. Both versions are astounding bits of remastering, and in the end, I think it’s simply a matter of preference. Both versions are still excellent, though more different than I thought they’d be.

In all, it’s been a joy reliving all of this music. Some days, I want the excitingly creative Beatles, the risk-taking Beatles, the whimsical Beatles, the Beatles driven by the need to invent. And some days, I want the simpler, sweeter ballads, so bright, so positive and so breathtakingly youthful. So it’s no exaggeration when I say that I’m mightily pleased that the remasters turned out this good. Particularly With The Beatles, the rescue of which seems almost miraculous to me.

And as the song goes, I’ll be back.

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© 2009 a modest odyssey.