Break Away II

Beatles Stereo CD Box Set

“And I Love Her” has long been one of my favorite tunes by the Fab Four. I’m writing today to share a closer look at this song for Beatles fans who enjoy the song as much as me.

The song was included on side one of The Beatles album A Hard Day’s Night. This brilliant album is{, of course,} the soundtrack to the 1964 Beatles movie with the same title. Most Beatles lovers consider it to be a great breakthrough and easily the best of the band’s first 4 albums. It’s also the only album to include only Lennon/McCartney originals (mostly because their later LPs contain songs by George Harrison too.)

In some ways “And I Love Her” is a very repetitive simple song and one could make a strong argument that its lyrics are cliche. But the melody is beautiful enough and there are enough subtle musical ideas that this song is still a great one despite these apparent weaknesses.

Something that’s nice about this tune is how it goes into four different keysduring the song. This is because it sways back and forth between major and its relative minor through most of the song and then during the restrained guitar solo it takes a half-step up and finishes a half step up when Paul McCartney’s vocals come back in.

On the Anthology 1 CDs we hear an earlier version of this song that employs a full rock band sound and does not have the tasty guitar riff that helps make the final version memorable. The difference between this early version and the official final version shows how a better arrangement and some cool riffs can help make a song work.

As a surprising final touch the song ends on a major version of the relative minor tonic chord. In other words instead of the telegraphed D minor at the end it ends on a D major. The Beatles were brilliant at adding these little touches to their songs and that helped to set them apart from most other popular music. 

Buy The Beatles Stereo Box Set to hear “And I Love Her” in remastered stereo. It sounds delicious.

Beatles in Stereo Box Set

After the years of lawsuits between Apple Computer and Apple Corps. were settled once and for all in 2007, it seemed like only a matter of time before The Beatles music was finally available on iTunes and on Tuesday, November 16, 2010 that time did indeed come. The Beatles music is in iTunes!

Before I tell you about exactly what Beatles stuff is available in the iTunes store, I think I should tell you a bit more about the back story of why it has taken a decade for The Beatles to join this most popular online music store.

Way back in 1968 The Beatles started up a new company called Apple Corps{ (pronounced “Apple Core”)} which is still a going concern today. Apple Corps began as a rather grand idea but today it exists almost entirely for The Beatles music.  In 1976 a computer company called Apple Computer started and in 1978 Apple Corps sued Apple Computer over the Apple trademark. There were two further lawsuits before the dispute was finally settled for good in 2007.

So what Beatles material is available to buy at the iTunes music store? Their entire remastered stereo catalog! It can be purchased all at once (like The Beatles in Stereo Box Set) or album by album or song by song (this is the first time that every Beatles track has been available to purchase by itself.)

But what is not not available to download at the iTunes shop? The remastered mono mixes. The mono mixes are still only available to be purchased as a part of The Beatles Remastered Mono Box Set. I think the thinking is that most casual fans will prefer the stereo mixes so it is better not to confuse them by having the mono versions available as well.

As a bonus iTunes is also letting people stream The Beatles first US concert (February 11, 1964 in DC){ in its entirety}. Even as a huge fan of the band I had never seen this before, and what’s really cool is that it is completely free.

Beatles Stereo CD Box Set

Plastic Ono Band, John Lennon’s debut solo album, is also his best one. This great album features Lennon’s most emotionally intense songs. This is not to say that he didn’t record more great stuff after this album, but I would argue that the rest of his career is a bit of a let down when compared to this incredible debut.

The album opens up with “Mother.” You can really hear Lennon working through the issues of his childhood in this song. For anyone who does not know his life story that specifically means singing about his mother and father leaving him to grow up with his aunt. When he was 17 his mom was killed by a drunk off duty cop. The depressing closer, “My Mummy’s Dead,” is also about the pain of losing his mother.

“Hold On” is a very simple song that could be seen as “filler” especially with the ridiculous “cookie!” heard at around 1 minute into it (which I love.) But I definitely don’t see it that way, it’s a great link between the much more intense “Mother” and “I Found Out.”

Plastic Ono Band contains some of his most heavy solo tracks including “I Found Out” which has an awesomely raunchy guitar tone and some fantastic lyrics and “Well Well Well” where you can hear an example of the “primal scream” technique Lennon had been using in his therapy at the time.

The guitar part of “Look at Me” sounds a lot like The White Album’s “Julia” but that has never kept me from loving it just the same. It’s such a pretty song that I can’t resist it. I think what really makes the album work so well is the fantastic contrast between the sweet tunes like “Love,” “Look at Me,” and “Hold On” and the heavy songs like “Working Class Hero,” “I Found Out,” and “Well Well Well.” And then there’s “God” which isn’t that great musically but which has some of Lennon’s best lyrics. 

Plastic Ono Band is one of 8 John Lennon solo albums contained in the new John Lennon Remastered CD Box Set. This solo box is following in the footsteps of the extremely successful Remastered Beatles Stereo Box Set and Beatles in Mono Box Set released in September of ’09.

The Beatles Remastered Stereo Box Set

The Beatles final five albums were Magical Mystery Tour, The White Album, Yellow Submarine, Abbey Road, and Let It Be. Below you will find short overviews of each of them.

All of these albums are contained in the Remastered Beatles in Stereo CD Box Set but just Magical Mystery Tour and The White Album are contained in the Remastered Beatles Mono Box Set.

Magical Mystery Tour (1967) – I think this is an underrated album and that’s probably because it’s not really a true album so some people have a hard time giving it respect for the excellent songs on it. Magical Mystery Tour is The Beatles at their most purposefully psychedelic before they began to pull back the experimentation a bit and as someone who loves psychedelia, that makes it right up my alley.

The White Album (1968) – I’ve probably listened to this album more times than any other in my life. It does not flow as well as Sgt. Pepper or Abbey Road and one could argue that it’s not as consistently outstanding as Rubber Soul or Revolver are but I love listening to it for the great variety of styles that it lets me hear. This 30 track album is a true masterpiece.

Yellow Submarine (1969) – This “album” is not really a Beatles album because it includes only four Beatles trackss that were not already released on a previous album. Yet “It’s All Too Much” and “Hey Bulldog” alone make it worth buying.

Abbey Road (1969) – The favorite album of lots of Beatles fans and for some very good reasons. The most obvious is the fantastic “suite” of side two put together by Paul McCartney and George Martin. Along with the suite there are the classic stand alone tracks like “Something,” “Come Together,” and “Oh! Darling.” This album also features the “smoothest” and most “modern” production of their career.

Let It Be (1970) – This was the last album released but Abbey Road was actually the final Beatles album to be recorded. It’s a bit sloppy and uneven by Fab Four standard yet it still contains several absolutely classic songs like “Let It Be” and “Across The Universe.”

The Beatles Remastered Stereo Box Set

The Beatles are not a “just the hits” type of band. You cannot order just the “best of” album and be done with the most popular band of all time. In actuality, think many of their best tracks were not their top hits but were instead their more adventurous songs like “Strawberry Fields Forever.”

To really understand The Beatles amazing music you must hear their LPs as a whole rather than just hearing their biggest hit songs. I believe that the Fab Four recorded quite a few of the top rock albums ever and even their lesser albums (such as With The Beatles) have some great recordings.

That’s why I believe it’s such a marvelous idea to Order The Remastered Beatles in Stereo Box Set. The set contains every album (and every single song with the Past Masters double CD set) that they recorded and released during the 60s.

It contains{ pretty much} all of their CDs except for The Anthologies and the Live at the BBC set. I think this makes sense because those releases are not really a part of “the official catalog” of The Beatles. They are more like the “extra features” on a DVD rather than the main movie.

Actually, there are some more of their CDs that are not included in the box set, for example there’s 1999 release of a CD called Yellow Submarine Songtrack that’s completely different from the original Yellow Submarine LP. It is actually much better in my opinion and worth a listen for it’s different mixes (it’s not just remastered, it’s remixed.) Love and Let It Be… Naked are also not included.

With The Remastered Beatles In Stereo Box Set, I also recommend that you Buy The Beatles Remastered Mono Box Set which contains the mono mixes that The Beatles usually considered to be the “real” versions of their albums back in the ’60s. It’s hard to understand today, but when John, Paul, George, & Ringo were putting their music to tape they considered the mono mixes to be of much more importance than the stereo mixes up until up until around ’68. Let It Be & Abbey Road were recorded and mixed just in stereo.

The Beatles Stereo Box Set

People have been waiting forever for The Beatles catalog to be available as mp3s to download so that their albums could be easily put onto an mp3 player. As of January 2010, The Beatles are still not available for download at AmazonMP3 or the iTunes Store but instead there is a cool little gadget known as The Beatles USB Flash Drive which holds all of the 2009 Beatles stereo remasters in the mp3 format.

This USB flash drive contains everything that is in The Beatles in Stereo Box Set except in a much more portable form! With this tiny memory stick you can carry The Beatles entire stereo catalog around with you in your in your back pocket.

When I tell you that the USB memory stick includes everything in the stereo box set, I really do mean everything. Yes, it even includes the previously unreleased photographs and the new liner notes. It also contains the short documentaries on the making of each album that are on the DVD.

But there’s more, this flash drive also includes 24bit FLAC versions of their stereo albums which are actually higher quality sound files than those on CDs! CDs are only 16bit, these FLAC files are 24bit. This truly makes The Beatles USB a “must buy” for any audiophile who needs to have these legendary albums in the highest quality available at this time.

One negative aspect is that this memory stick does not include the original mono versions that are in The Beatles Remastered Mono Box Set. If you want to listen to these legendary mono mixes then you’ll have to get the CD box set (at least at the moment.)

I purchased both box sets and the memory stick because I am a a real Beatles completest, of course not everyone has that kind of money available to spend on buying music (even when the music as awesome as this is.) If you are on a budget then you will have to think about how you most frequently listen to music. Do you play CDs or do just play mp3s on your Mac and your iPod? If it is the latter then the USB device is probably what you really need.

The Beatles Stereo Box Set

It is the oldest Beatles argument: “Lennon or McCartney” Which one was most important to The Beatles music? It’s my belief as a huge Beatles fanatic that the true answer is “both!” It may sound like a cop-out but I really think it’s the best answer.

While I’m not one of those people that likes to talk about how awful Lennon & McCartney were during their solo careers (because I don’t think that’s true at all) I do think it’s obvious that they never reached the same amazing level by themselves as they did together as The Beatles I think that’s pretty good proof that there was something special about their partnership that allowed the songs they wrote together to be more than the sum of the parts.

Many of The Beatles best tunes were those that John and Paul wrote together. Many of The Beatles early #1 songs such as “She Loves You” and “Love Me Do” were written together and some of their most timeless songs such as “We Can Work It Out” consisted of different song segments that Paul & John wrote which were stuck together to form a whole song.

And even when a song was solely written by one or the other such as in the cases of “Hey Jude” and “Dear Prudence” there was still some important input by the other one.

For example with McCartney’s songs like “Hey Jude” and “Getting Better” John would give Paul very good advice on his lyrics. John told Paul to keep a lyric in the song “Hey Jude” that Paul felt wasn’t clear enough. Lennon added the “it couldn’t get much worse” line to “Getting Better” which helped to offset the relentless positivity of the rest of the lyrics.

McCartney added some incredible bass guitar parts to John’s songs such as “Dear Prudence,” “Rain,” & “Come Together.” Without the great bass parts on these songs, they’d be nowhere near as great!

The big point being that both John & Paul were essential to making The Beatles LPs so great.