“Sgt. “Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” (1967/2017)
Unlike Bob Dylan, for example, the Beatles hardly have any unreleased songs or versions of well-known titles that deviate greatly from the original. The band worked extremely effectively. She had this from the time of excessive touring, when there were often only a few days left to write and record new songs, even with “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band“retained. The highlight of the additions is the creation of Lennon’s non-album single “Strawberry Fields Forever” from the first, still very rudimentary and rather folky take to the splendor of the 2015 stereo mix as well as the two takes of “A Day In The Life”, in which After the second verse, Beatles roadie Mal Evans can be heard counting the 24 bars later played by the orchestra, before McCartney’s (here still instrumental) intermediate part begins.
The track that everyone had been waiting for as part of this release: the collective improvisation “Carnival Of Light”, which the Beatles made for the happening “Million Volt Light And Sound Rave” in London’s Roundhouse and which didn’t make it onto the “Anthology” in 1996 “, which was made possible because Harrison, Starr and Ono vetoed it, is unfortunately missing. Martin claimed at the time that he had not been able to edit the sound in time “due to time constraints”. Maybe then on the 60th anniversary of “Sgt. Pepper’s.”
“The Beatles” (1968/2018)
There was no trace of the discipline with which they had previously recorded albums on the “White Album”. They worked on this double album for more than four months. Bad for the staff at EMI Studios on Abbey Road, who often had to sit through the sessions late into the night and probably drink gallons of coffee.
Good for us, because the bonus part is the absolute highlight of the Beatles reissue so far. In addition to the demos of the songs that Lennon, McCartney and Harrison recorded at Harrison’s house in Esher before going into the studio, what’s particularly great is the ten-minute-plus take 18 of “Revolution” with an experimental coda that also features Yoko Ono and which sounds more like Soft Machine than the Beatles.
“Abbey Road” (1969/2019)
When McCartney contacted George Martin to ask him to produce the next Beatles album, the 43-year-old perfectionist agreed on only one condition: that he could actually be the producer and not just the recipient of his constant orders arguing egocentric twenty-somethings like their last collaboration for the “White Album”. Martin also thought with horror of the unfocused “Get Back” sessions in which Martin was disinvited and replaced by Glyn Johns. It ultimately helped that Lennon, who was often listless at the time, missed the first few weeks of recording due to a car accident in the Scottish Highlands.
The Threatles’ focused work yielded few outtakes, and so it’s no surprise that the highlights of the bonus section only have a passing connection to the production of “Abbey Road”: McCartney’s demos for “Goodbye” and “Come And Get It.” “, which he recorded on the side for Mary Hopkin and Badfinger (the latter actually sounds like a Wings outtake), an excerpt from Lennon and McCartney’s duo session for “The Ballad Of John And Yoko” from April 14, 1969 and one early run through of Lennon’s “I Want You (She’s So Heavy)”, which the Beatles recorded late with Billy Preston at Trident Studios in posh Soho in February 1969.
“Let It Be” (1970/2021)
The story that led to this final Beatles album, which the band largely released before “Abbey Road“, became perhaps the best-told Beatles story of all in the course of Peter Jackson’s three-part documentary “Get Back” in recent months. Considering that the band played around 400 different songs during the sessions, you go home with quite a small yield when you buy this box.
But there are some fabulous moments: Billy Preston jamming with Lennon and Starr, McCartney and Lennon’s call-and-response singing on “Oh! Darling”, in which the latter incorporates the good news of Yoko Ono’s finally finalized divorce, and especially Harrison, as he rehearses “All Things Must Pass” with his colleagues, which, as he says, is “very Band-y” (according to The band) should sound like and in the end it does.