The Beatles (The White Album)[6 CD/Blu-ray]

I used to refer to "Abbey Road" as my favorite Beatles album, but this remastered release of "The Beatles" has changed my mind. This is The Beatles at their finest. The White Album covers the gamut of music, from the delicate and beautiful acoustic gems "Blackbird" and "Julia" to the proto-heavy metal of "Helter Skelter", the blues on, you guessed it, "Yer Blues", ragtime on "Honey Pie," avant-garde on "Revolution 9", and plenty of good ol' rock n roll. There are plenty of hits here (not in the singles sense, as none were released), and maybe a few misses. At 30 tracks and 94 minutes (more than twice as long as Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band), it feels a little bloated and some tracks (for example, "The Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill," "Rocky Raccoon," "Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da") aren't quite as worthy as the rest. And I now understand what the "Yer" in "Yer Blues" means. It's a substitute for "the". For example, if you were to consider genres of music, you'd have to consider "the blues,". Or, you have your rock n roll, you have your opera, you have "yer blues." Get it? With six CDs and one Blu-ray, housed in a very white book (individually numbered; mine is # 0055720) featuring a few essays and an in-depth look at the recordings, the super deluxe set set provides 107 tracks in all, many of which have never been released before. In fact, some were not known to exist until work began on this 50th anniversary release. That 107 becomes 137 if you count the mono version of the tracks on the Bluray...and 167 if you count the 5.1 tracks on the same disc. It's a lot of music (five and a half hours, to be precise). Somehow it never occurred to me that the starkly plain "artwork" of the album stands in (obvious) contrast to the garish, very '67 cover for Sgt. Pepper's. This contrast goes beyond artwork and serves as a good framework to view the music. Whereas Pepper employed a lot of studio experimentation and, one might say, extravagance (garish music, one might say), The Beatles is much more straightforward. Certainly it has some extravagance, even self-indulgence (the avant-garde "Revolution 9" is Exhibit A, but George doing 102 takes on his "Not Guilty", not even included on the album, is also...guilty). Still, on the whole, "The Beatles" is a much more no-nonsense, straight ahead album (double album, even). The name of the album also seems to say more than might first be thought: this is The Beatles, making music together, for the most part, and doing it very well. And as the essays in the book make plain, this is not the sound of a band starting to break up. All of the demos and session outtakes make it pretty clear this is a group of guys still very much interested in supporting each other's songs. Above all, the 50th anniversary set SOUNDS exceptional, and that's the whole idea, isn't it? Music that sounds great? In his remastering, Giles Martin (yes, son of Sir George) has done a tremendous job adding more life and space to these very familiar tracks. For whatever reason, I didn't even have "Back In the U.S.S.R." in iTunes from the import of the original album. With this set, I've awarded it four stars (and the sound of the jet engine at the end of the song no longer sounds like it's coming out of an ancient transistor radio). The opening chords of "Dear Prudence" are no longer stuck in the right channel, but are delightfully spread across the sound stage, adding depth and much clarity, which is also very noticeable during the first chorus. "Julia" gets a similar, very beneficial treatment. On "Birthday," Martin divided up the guitar sound, balanced centrally, to the right (I think John) and left (George), which really brings the song alive. Likewise, the brass on "Savoy Truffle" crackles with a clarity you don't hear on the original. After hearing the remastered album, one comes away feeling as if one had been there in the studio. The clarity and life in these tracks is astonishing. Paul's bass and Ringo's skins especially come off a lot better with the remastering. It's like the visual idea of "HDR" applied to music.

Another great clean up job by Giles Martin, similar to his work on Sergeant Pepper's, which was amazing, The White Album shines for the first time. Throughout the set, starting with the newly remixed 2 original discs, I'm hearing background sounds that were previously buried. Vocals are more pronounced, more in the center channel. McCartney's bass is deeper with greater punch. Dear Prudence has the opening guitar shimmering. Lennon's vocal in this song has greater presence and is centered in the room. The higher end of Ringo's cymbals and drums are now audible. Lots of haze has been removed from Glass Onion. Ringo has greater punch. Ob La Di features a much sharper piano, with the chorus of the song spread clear across the soundstage. It's a Party Going On !! The chorus of Bungalo Bill, which was a nasty mess before, is vastly cleaner. While My Guitar Gently Weeps--Listen to the crispness of Ringo's hi hat, snare and cymbals. Very smooth recording now. I swear that Clapton's solo at the end of the guitar rose out of the speakers to grab at your heart. All vocals are hanging much tighter in center channel. And I doubt you've ever heard Harrison's moaning at the end of the song like you now hear it on this remixed disc. The entire original 2 discs are so vastly improved sonically. I won't carry you through each song, but it was all very pleasing and VASTLY improved. Esher (disc #3 in this box set)--We'll leave it to the historians to tell you the significance of this disc. Short version: an early bunch of recordings, mostly acoustic, of the Beatles doing significant songs from the White Album before they went deep into the studio to finalize them. I've heard many boots of these recordings over the past few decades, and they totally lacked clarity, muddy, cruddy sounding versions of these. Man, did Giles clean up this. Yes, there's a little hiss, but largely eliminated. It mostly sounds like you're in the studio with the Beatles. On many, they're giddy, having a great old time. While they lack some of the polish of the final published versions, these sound terrific, better than any Esher bootlegs I've ever heard. Very intimate. Beatles unplugged, with some overdubbing. Disc #3, Esher demos, is not one you'll listen to once and forget. You'll want to play it again. The sessions discs (3 of them) have pro's and con's. The Pro's: Giles Martin had access to all the recorded sessions from the White Album tapes--and he's a hell of a curator--and these are the ones he's picked. They're all interesting alternative takes on these famous songs, and a few that didn't quite make it. He has hand selected the best of months of recording sessions. They sound great. The Con's: if you're deep into Beatles bootlegs or the multiple sets of outtakes what have been commercially released, you may not need these. I've found the session discs fascinating and real good sound quality. But if you're not a completist, yes, you could merely buy the 3 disc Beatle set, with the original 2 disc recording, plus the Esher demos. But as people would point out, the nearly 2" thick book that you get in this set, plus 6 amazing discs, makes this the true collector item. I opted for the 6 disc set and I'm extremely pleased. Giles Martin did cut through the clutter of all the bootleg and commercially released session stuff, and I found these three discs easier to listen to than what's been on the market before. Yeah, they sound better than all previous. If you're into sound quality, have good or great gear, value the Beatles recordings and want to hear them without the murky previous sound, are a completist AND will love to see this massive book (that holds the CD's) sitting on your shelf, want disc #7 (which is even higher fidelity recordings). Go for it. Makes a great gift item for people you love.

Surprisingly, the surround mix of the White Album makes considerably more obvious use of the rear channels than the Sgt. Pepper surround mix did. Experience tells me that the dts surround mix would be guaranteed free of added compression (to make the music sound LOUDER), so that’s where I went to first. The surround mix is glorious and my review is based on it. Almost no one focuses on it but, far and away the one most important reason why the new mixes sound so much better is that the sound is culled from the first-generation multitrack tapes and mixed in the digital domain with no analogue tape-to-tape transferring and therefore no generation loss in the mixing process. It’s kinda weird really; but the same state-of-the-art analogue tape recorders that did (and still do) such a breathtaking job of recording sound from a microphone do a really quite poor job of transferring sound from one machine to another. This fact was not lost on George Martin. Reading “All You Need Is Ears” makes plain how greatly aware and concerned he was with this generation loss. Eliminating that generation loss is the key reason why these new remixes can so greatly improve upon the original mixes. When they get round to it, Revolver, with all its tape-to-tape bounce downs, will benefit immensely from such a remix (can't wait!). Many staunchly insist that the original LPs (especially in mono) cannot be improved upon and sound “better” than these remixes. But I think what they mean is that those original mono discs from England sound more authentic because that's how the Beatles intended it and that's what the Beatles were able to achieve in their own time. And so, to some, these digital remixes (especially in surround sound) are like fantasy presentations of Beatle music. I can understand that. But me, I'm coming from the point of view of an audiophile who's been dreaming of this for decades. Here’s what George Martin had to say about it. “When we first got four-track, it was an enormous relief not to have the worries about how many generations of sound quality had been lost which we had suffered in twin-track. But even four tracks are very few. . . . The only way we could get round it was to dub from one four-track to a second four-track – and that, of course, meant losing sound quality.” These dubs are called “bounce downs.” To get the musical complexity they achieved meant filling one four-track tape, mixing that down to mono and dubbing it onto one track of another four-track tape leaving 3 tracks in which to add more sounds. For Sgt. Pepper, “What I did was to dub from one four-track machine on to another, sometimes not once but twice. Harkening back to what I wrote earlier, that would mean, of course, losing up to nine generations of sound quality.” Because they lost even more when mixing the four-track master down to either the two-track stereo master or the mono master. Sir George did not like losing all that sound quality. And so, in another sense, these remixes are more authentic sounding in that they are the sound as George Martin would have wanted it if only it had then been technically achievable and because it’s more like what you would have heard if you’d actually been there in the studio. Like many of us, I've heard all this music countless times. Some never ever want to hear it any other way than the way they’ve always heard it, and that's fine. But me, I'm just absolutely thrilled, fifty years on, to be gifted with hearing this magical music in a NEW, improved and revelatory way. Drawing from the first-generation tapes and remixing from scratch without generation loss and without accumulated tape hiss and without accumulated frequency response distortion (and with modern stereo sensibilities) and uncompressed high-res digital is like hearing this music with a dozen veils lifted off it. It means hearing much deeper into the inner detailing of the mix and hearing things we’ve never heard before. In lifting various analogue-to-analogue mixing distortions Beatle music is presented with a more gorgeous musicality in the sound. It's glorious! In interviews Giles reveals how he agonized over all the myriad aesthetic and technical decisions he had to make. There were countless ways in which, in lesser hands, it could have been screwed up. With help from Sam Okell, I'm very grateful that these remixes are being done by someone who deeply cares, someone as intelligent and tasteful as Giles Martin. The decisions Giles made won’t please everyone; there’s always room to nitpick. But I think these remixes are brilliant—works of art in themselves. I also get considerable gratification knowing how this gorgeous new sound makes Beatle music even more impervious to aging. This wonderful new sound can only render Beatle music even more timeless. I mean, how great is that?!!

Apple is getting better with each new album set, especially those with the heavy demos from days of recording sessions, which include this album, Abbey Road, and Let It Be. To date, I believe there are 5 albums remixed and released, these 3 with Sgt Pepper and Revolver. I have 4 of these boxes. This is on par with the Abbey Road sessions, this contains 2 records with sessions, along with the original release 2 records of the original White Album. This box is the same size as Abbey Road, and has a few extras that give the price, and worthwhile to any Beatles collector. While the box itself is nothing special, it is not cheap, well made, stand up to time sitting on your record shelf, opening and closing, if you plan on playing the records. Nice booklet enclosed, all paper material, no hard covers, but nice linear notes and pictures. There are 4 portrait cards suitable for framing and hanging, and the pull out poster, will make a nice addition to any Beatles decorated office or room. Disappointed it has to be folded, but such to insert into a record cover. This is a nice set, as compared to the first release, Sgt Pepper, which left very little other than remastered sound. At least a little effort was put into this to reproduce the poster and leave a little extra on the side. Never been a huge fan of the White Album, I'm more Revolver, but this is worth the find, especially if you are a Beatles fan or collector.

I have decidedly mixed feelings about the 50th Anniversary (Super Deluxe Edition) release of The White Album. The White Album has never been one of my favorites. The presence of Revolution No. 9 ensures that I seldom play the whole album. In the past I have been inclined to believe that maybe The Beatles and George Martin should have done more editing and just released one disc. But once I get past Revolution No. 9, and perhaps Sexy Sadie and Bungalow Bill, I am not sure what else I would cut. I am not a huge fan of remastering. I have good quality audio equipment but I am no audiophile and I never hear much of a difference in remastered releases. Listening to this version of The White Album is an absolute revelation. Maybe because, I have not sat down and listened to the entire album in many years, it sounds absolutely brilliant. To me, it feels like the musicians are present in the room. Some of the individual elements in the song stand out much more clearly, but not so much that they overpower the overall sonic impact of the songs. There are the songs themselves: So much brilliant music: Back in the USSR, Birthday, I Will, Julia, Mother Nature’s Son, Ob-la-di, Ob-la-da, Glass Onion, Everybody’s Got Something to Hide Except for Me and My Monkey, Martha My Dear, Good Night, While My Guitar Gently Weeps, Dear Prudence. Then there is the disc of Esher demos. These have been widely circulated previously as bootlegs. Supposedly they have been cleaned up and the audio quality is better here. I will leave that up to the audiophiles to debate that. These are well worth listening to for anyone who has not heard them previously, and worth listening to again if you have heard them before. This is the most exciting element of the 50th Anniversary release. The three discs of sessions tracks are interesting. There are a couple that are real revelations – very different sounding versions of Helter Skelter and Hey Jude in particular. This is all something diehard fans will want to hear, but I am not sure I will ever want to give any of these tracks a second listen. The book is a proper book. It is visually appealing as is the overall packaging for the deluxe version. There is also a blu-ray disc. Not having blu-ray, I can’t comment on that. Overall, I am excited about and pleased with this release but at $152.99 at Amazon it seems hugely overpriced. I can very highly recommend the three disc version with the remastered original album, and the disc of Esher demos. At $22.97 on Amazon there is a extremely generous amount of material, It includes all of the material most of us will ever want to hear more than once. It makes the pricing of the Super Deluxe Edition seem all the more bloated.

As many others I'm sure, I dished out the money for the super deluxe set. Starting with the remix of the album, it was truly like hearing the album for the first time. The new mixes are a delight. The thing that jumps out the most is the clarity and warmth of these new mixes. The moment you hear the guitar intro to Dear Prudence you can really tell but then the vocals come in and it's just breathtaking. In my opinion and as a huge Lennon fan, the White Album is his finest hour. Glass Onion, Sexy Sadie, Happiness is a warm gun, Yer blues etc.... The Esher demos are the first of the bonus discs. I love that they are sequenced the same as the actual album. It's amazing to hear the songs in raw, acoustic form. Then towards the end there are some additional demos for songs that didn't make the album. The studio out takes make up for a ton of the content here and it features a ton of revelations and interesting listens for Beatles fans. I assume only true Beatles fans would spend the money for this set in the first place so I can't imagine anyone being let down by what you're given. Some stand outs for me are an early, radically different version of Cry baby cry, an early version of Goodnight which has the other 3 Beatles backing Ringo on vocals, an early rocking instrumental version of "Everybody's got something to hide.." as well as rocking electric instrumental of Revolution. The other disc is really for those with a great surround system as it is a Blu ray and it sounds amazing on surround. You feel as if you are surrounded by the music and it's really great. Not to mention you can listen to the whole album without having to change discs. My one and only complaint would be about the packaging. While it looks amazing and I love what is included. The clear plastic covering over the book which has the Beatle's faces on it arrived with a tear on the upper left corner. It bugged me but not enough to go through the trouble of sending it all back. That clear case covering appears very easy to damage so be aware of that. The thin cardboard sleeves that the discs come in that are inside the book also seem flimsy and cheap. You easily tear them trying to get the CDs out so be careful there as well. It seems those 2 things could have used a little more quality but that's fairly light criticism of an amazing package. Finally the book is a legit book. Comprehensive is the word I would use. Including beautiful photos, original promo art, pictures of the actual session notes, handwritten lyrics and a lot more. For a lover of the White album this has been so much fun to dig into.

So much can be said about The Beatles’ 1968 album and 50 years later, so much can be said about its beautiful re-master and remix that was carefully done by Producer Giles Martin. Fans new and old that have followed and listened to every recording of the band from their first album and song from 1963 “Please, Please, Me” up to the critically acclaimed 1967 “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Heart's Club Band" and the original or recent 2009 re-master of this album, they are in for a tremendous treat. The 50th anniversary edition is a step up in sight and sound. The collection is a seven-disc set that includes two discs of the initial album's 30 songs, four discs of demos "Esher Demos”, and blu-ray disc of the entire album in high definition, Dolby True, and mono and stereo sounds. And to top that off and where the explanations of the history of the album come in, an enormous liner notes that comes in the form of a coffee size hard bound book that not only stores each individual disc and sleeve that is a mini version of the album cover, but within its over 200 pages a combination of short commentary and biography of the album and each of the songs and demos; from Paul McCartney, Giles Martin, Kevin Howlett, John Harris, to Andrew Wilson, everything that one may already known about the record will be amplified much more musically as well as artistically and everything in between. And when one thinks this is it, in an inner sleeve at the end of the book contains a reproduction of the poster size collage of photographs and individual photos of John, Paul, George, and Ringo. How is that for a surprise? Aside from the format of the album and extras, so not to explain all 30 tracks, one will hear and listen why this album was ahead of its times in terms of a melody and style and the band itself as raw and real. The songs are riveting and rocking “Back In the U.S.S.R.", "Helter Skelter,” "Yer Blues," "While My Guitar Gently Weeps," "Revolution 1," “Glass Onion,” “Dear Prudence," rollicking and playful “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da,” "The Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill," "Rocky Raccoon,” “Why Don't We Do it in the Road?” and subtle and novel “Blackbird,” “Honey Pie, “I Will, touching “Julia,” elegant "Good Night." There is more to say, but the music speaks for itself. Two major things that stand out by far, listeners will hear with immense clarity each of the studio recordings from the instrumentation Paul's thumping bass, back to the loud and raunchy guitar solos and rhythms, the drums -- was that Paul or Ringo or John?, and to the band's vocals -- solo and group harmonies continue in the most unique and creative way and other sounds such as the hand claps that are clear as day. And lastly, not that one should set aside what one already knows about the band at the time the album was recorded, this was the beginning of the end of the band, regardless, the band once again out did itself. Creative and innovative as they were 50 years ago and better than ever today and fans will be oohed and ahhed all over again.

My first introduction to the White Album was at the ripe old age of 10, courtesy of a local radio station that played a few tracks from Side 2 a couple weeks or so before the album's release in November '68. I begged my mother for the LP for Christmas. She said no, that it was too expensive. Fortunately, I've now broken the habit, but back then it was my wont to look around in closets, drawers and under beds during Christmastime to see what I was getting (I always was a bit of a scoundrel, you see). Hope in finding the Beatles' masterwork was almost lost, until I noticed our cedar chest in the living room was locked. So naturally I hunted around for the key. The key was eventually found, the chest was opened, and hidden beneath some photo albums and blankets I found my treasure. I'll spare you the long story why, but it was out of the shrink. Mint condition, but opened. I couldn't believe my good luck. Whenever my parents left the house, I'd grab the LP and run downstairs and listen to it on my circa 1965 record player. It was the perfect crime. The only thing left to do was to act totally surprised when the gift was opened. I've only had time to listen to the outtakes once, as well as the first three sides of the 5.1 mixes. As far as the 5.1, it's outstanding. They don't call it surround-sound for nothing. And it still sounds quite excellent cranked. Little surprises are in nearly every song. A previously unheard harmony towards the end of "Ob-La-Di" comes immediately to mind, or some piano in "Rocky Raccoon" that had always been buried before. The rear speakers get quite the workout. The first thing I checked to see was if Martin happened to leave in the tuba on "Happiness is a Warm Gun." Not surprisingly, he didn't. It remains mixed out. At least I can't hear it. For those interested, it can be heard on The White Album Chronicles boot. Once upon a time it was on YouTube, until the Apple police removed it. There's some true gems in the outtakes. "Across the Universe" and "Long, Long, Long" are just about worth the price of admission alone. "Let it Be" is guaranteed to surprise. And what I believe to be a rare missed opportunity - and without a doubt one of Lennon's prettier melodies - it's a shame that Take 22 of "Good Night" wasn't used to close out the officially released album. Take 15 of "Mother Nature's Son" and Take 27 of "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" are also wonderful to hear. Whoever thought we'd get to listen to a different take with Clapton? That's it. Oh. The slipcase for the book and discs is also a very nice touch, although it looks to be easy to crack or break if you're not careful. So, is it worth it? Absolutely. It's a lot of dough, sure, but it's a must-have. Give plasma, beg, steal, whatever's necessary. You need to buy this.