The fountain of creativeness.
George Martin has produced the new Beatles remixes; Love, released today by Capitol. Sir George Martin. 80-year-old Sir George Martin.
Yeah, yeah, Beatles fans, the same George Martin who wasn’t a spring chicken when he produced all those Beatles albums from scratch back in the day.
Well in this era of sampling and digital mashing when Public Enemy builds tracks around James Brown’s horns and Everything But the Girl puts out an entire CD of remixes, this guy who has every right to be playing shuffleboard in Florida is doing the digital thing with tracks he himself produced some 30 or 40 years ago. Listen to four fab tracks below.
These new recordings are history making. And it’s not ancient history. I mean president setting, as in will-go-down-in-history history. Even if sales bomb.
Forget the way the songs are edited, remixed or melded together. The early reviews are mixed, and remixed, if you will,… the usual critics opposed to the concept of touching Beatle material before they even hear note one (now, they’re not closed minded). As for the historical significance here, I’m not talking about the sounds, I’m talking about the concepts.
The new Love tracks are, I believe, the first major effort where an artist’s new recordings (here I’m talking about The Beatles) are being made up of samples from their own recordings. (If someone knows of another example, please pass it along.) But the amazing part is that it isn’t some 23 year old digital recording pioneer who is leading the effort. It’s this guy who spent more time than anyone with the recordings back when they were fresh. It’s the same guy who is making them fresh again in the context of 21st century musical sensibilities. The person who should by all rights have the greatest attachment to how they were originally created. That makes this all the more remarkable.
I see so many people in business trapped by “how it’s always been done.” Some people who have been on the job or in the industry, what? five years? Well, here‘s the guy who more than anyone else from the golden age of pop music invented “the way it’s done,” and he’s open minded enough to take a fresh look. Or is that listen?
Of course, this age thing is relative. Yesterday the 36-year-old rapper Jay-Z came out of retirement with a new hip hop record “Kingdom Come” aimed at “adults.” Says the hip hop icon about the new record, “Too many people, when they get like 30 years old, they still try and make records for like, 15-year-olds, and that makes the genre so small and narrow.” Freshness comes in many flavas.
Now to be fair, on the Beatles Love project George Martin is not alone. Guy Laliberte, the founder of Cirque du Soleil is the one who actually got the project rolling with the whole Love concept for a Cirque show. Of course, the living Beatles, Sir Paul and Ringo had to sign off, as did the survivors of John Lennon and George Harrison. And, Martin’s partner at the mix console? His son, Giles. (But then, ol’ George never did shy away from more youthful collaborators.)
We look for the fountain of youth in our exercise programs and in the concoctions we buy on health store shelves. I have to tell you, you already have full access to the fountain of youth. It’s flowing in your gray matter.
There’s an old yogic saying that “you are as young as your spine is flexible.” I’m going to say that true youth isn’t found in the bounce in your step. I believe that you are as young as your mind is flexible.
Clearly Sir George has not let father time make his mind rigid. Clearly, as an octogenarian, the fountain of creativeness continues to flow through the chemical pathways in this creative genius’ considerably fertile and curious brain.
Listen to some of the LOVE tracks
Strawberry Fields Forever
While My Guitar Gently Weeps
Lady Madonna
Octopus’s Garden
Or listen to all 26 tracks
I’m not a music critic but I will opine that some of the remixes and mashes work better than others, not that Octopus’s Garden was one of the better Beatles songs to start with. It’s impossible, however, not to compare the songs to the original versions, particularly the songs one might know by heart. But in some cases, i.e. with a different opening, different vocal take and all, on Strawberry Fields Forever, we are hearing much for the first time.
When I listen to Beatles recordings from yesterday I’m always aware of which of their many eras I’m listening to, in part by the burgeoning intricacy of the arrangements and recordings. George Martin is given much credit for bringing the depth and textures to the tracks. However, even though The Beatles, more than any other artist of their time, pushed the medium, i.e. number of tracks, musical and sound effects, instrumentation, song migration, etc. all to keep the listener increasingly engaged, even at their most evolved state, their material often sounds spare, dare I say, primitive, by today’s standards.
From Hendrix, to Prince, to Outcast, our ears have been trained and retrained to handle more; more instruments, more layers, more changes. (Of course, George Martin is the granddad of this movement in popular music.) When I listen to the Love tracks in many ways they give me the complexity that my 21st century ears have become to expect. For that, Beatles fans should be grateful. For the boys are still growing creatively these decades later. With the help of the youthful mind of Sir George and with the magic available in the studio today, to quote John Lennon, “Nothing is real. And nothing to get hung about.”
