Beatles

How to describe the notorious music industry figure Allen Klein, the one-time manager of both the Beatles and Rolling Stones? One lawyer working with Klein called him “the devil incarnate.” Paul McCartney called him a “trained New York crook,” and that acutely cool figure, Mick Jagger, once had to be restrained from attacking Klein at a business meeting.

As expected, The Beatles' post-break up Let It Be album gets a Giles Martin re-mix and will be available worldwide October 15th 2021 in multiple editions. For the new release Martin and engineer Sam Okell produced stereo, 5.1 surround DTS and Dolby Atmos mixes. The new stereo mix sourced directly from the original session and rooftop performance 8 track tapes were "guided by the original "reproduced for disc" Phil Spector version.

Before I get further into this follow-up review, a short disclaimer: other than the US Apple/Capitol singles of “We Can Work It Out”/“Day Tripper” and “Hey Jude”/“Revolution” (which, as expected, sound lousy), I don’t have any Beatles 7” singles other than this new The Singles Collection box. All my Beatles listening is on LP (the 2014 mono series, the Giles Martin remix LPs, and a few mono and stereo UK and European pressings) and the occasional lossless digital format, therefore from these recordings I’m used to great sound quality. My expectations for The Singles Collection (generously gifted to me by AnalogPlanet editor Michael Fremer) were likely different from most others’: sure, I expected the all-analog lacquer cuts to sound good, but sound quality on 7” singles isn’t the first thing I think about. With the 7” format, it’s primarily about the musical content, collectibility, packaging (when applicable), and finally, sound quality.

I have been assured by co-producer Guy Hayden that this 45rpm box was cut directly from TAPE and that whatever transfers were done (hence the credit) was done as they were for the AAA mono album box, to use as a reference before actual cutting in order to preserve the tapes.

2012 wasn’t all that long ago and culturally not that much has changed, yet from that year to the September 27th release this year of the 50th anniversary edition of Abbey Road is how long The Beatles made records.

Here's a video in which AnalogPlanet editor Michael Fremer "unboxes" the 4 LP and and Deluxe 6 CD+Blu-ray boxes containing Giles Martin's The Beatles remixes, the Esher Demos and in the case of the Deluxe set, a great deal more!