Album Reviews

It all started as a misheard request for a condiment, Paul McCartney recollects in one of the introductions to the box's sumptuously produced book. During a flight back from America, the band's roadie Mal Evans asked Paul to "pass the salt and pepper", which he misheard as "Sergeant Pepper".

The deluxe box set arrived yesterday containing among other things, a gatefold LP jacket in which are four CDs as well as a DVD and a Blu-ray disc. The box represents packaging and musical completeness worthy of an epic album like Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. The vinyl is sold separately and is on its way.

It will take time to go through all of the previously unreleased outtakes and instrumentals on CDs two and three and the original mono mix plus bonus tracks on CD four, as well as the Blu-ray disc containing 5.1 channel remixes in DTS HD Master audio and Dolby Tru HD 5.1 plus 5.1 remixed bonus tracks “Strawberry Fields Forever” and “Penny Lane” (which George Martin said not including on Sgt. Pepper’s… was perhaps the greatest mistake of his Beatles producing career), as well as the 1080i video content— the 1992 documentary “The Making of Sgt. Pepper” and three promotional videos—as well as the hard-covered book. All of this, while interesting, pales in importance compared to the main event, which is the re-mix.

So let’s cover that now because getting to the rest will take some time. Please read the previous post about Giles Martin’s re-mix strategy. Last night I sat down to first listen to the re-mix on CD and then to an original UK stereo pressing (lacquer 1, mother 1, stampers 4 (side 1) and 13 (side 2).

Obviously CD isn’t my favorite format. I would have preferred hearing the 96/24 high-resolution file, but I have no idea how I’m supposed to get it off of the Blu-ray disc and onto my computer. I don’t have a Blu-ray audio disc (or DVD-audio disc) player. This is a real shame because for many it limits access to the files. The solution is probably to buy a Blu-ray drive and ripping software.

I was twenty years old the first time I heard this album—I bought it at E.J. Korvette’s in Douglaston, NY the day it was released (I remember it as if it was just the other day) so when The Beatles sang “it was twenty years ago today”, that seemed like the distant past, but not as long in that direction as hitting sixty four would be in the future for McCartney who wrote it when he was sixteen or for any teenager or twenty-something listening in 1967. Now that I’m past that age, well……I am digging a garden as I’ve been doing for decades and “mending some fuses” as an audio writer but hardly as McCartney pictured the sixty four year olds in the song—no doubt McCartney feels likewise as an almost seventy five year old still going strong on the concert stage.

What I thought I heard at the McIntosh Town House event is what I heard at home. The more times you’ve heard this album, especially in stereo, the more you will probably enjoy this re-mix.

I am not going to go track by track and describe the stereo/mono differences between the originals because the superbly produced book does that track-by-track. Martin had to decide whether to produce a new stereo mix that mirrored the original mono or keep the original stereo elements such as McCartney’s “missing” wails at the end of the “Sgt. Pepper’s…” reprise that can only be heard as an echo track. That of course was an example of a mixing a mistake not an esthetic choice. Many of the crossfades in stereo were not exactly elegant compared to the smoother monos. The stereo machines sounded different than the mono ones, different compressors were used for the stereo and mono mixes. All of this (and more) contributed to the easily heard differences between the two mixes. From the two “passes” I’ve so far made, it’s pretty clear that Martin’s goal was to produce a stereo mix that more closely mirrors the original mono including purposeful speed changes and vocal effects requested by The Beatles that are on the original mono but not the original stereo.

While stereo by 1967 had been around for almost a decade, for most young listeners the novelty was still fresh of hearing different “things” in the left and right channels as well as in the “phantom center channel”. However, the passing of time as in fifty year’s worth, makes clear that the original stereo mix was a disjointed, messy affair, in which “globs” of pre-mixes intended to be folded down to mono were almost haphazardly placed hard-left, hard-right and center because the mixers’ choices were so limited.

The vocal pans across the soundstage, while novel and “fun” in 1967 (especially listening for the first time stoned through Koss Pro 4A headphones) was not what The Beatles themselves had ordered or probably wanted—not that back then they paid attention to the stereo mix.

This new mix is not a “re-imagined” Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. Rather it’s a clarified and far more orderly and coherent mix, with a more natural stereo spread that’s not as wide and disjointed as was the original. Vocals are centered where they would have been had it been possible back then to put them there. The holes have been plugged. The “clusters” have been more effectively woven into a seamless whole. The bottom end is somewhat more powerful and McCartney’s bass lines made more prominent but thankfully not to the point of distraction as they were on the 2009 CD (and FLAC 24 bit Flash Drive) and 2012 vinyl box sets. In fact, the bottom end, at least here, is ideal.

One thing Martin did not do is sledgehammer dynamics. I put the tracks up on Audacity and there were no “flat tops” but that was just to confirm the audibly wide dynamics.

As I described the other day, Martin was able to go back and use the original multi-track pre-mixdown elements rather than just mixing from the final four track pre-mix, thus saving at least one and possible more generations. So take for example, “When I’m Sixty Four”. First, this is a track that McCartney requested be sped up a half-tone to make him sound younger and the track more “chipper”. The stereo mixers probably were unaware because they didn’t do it on the original. Martin did it on the remix.

I promise you’ve never heard the clarinet trio on this track sound this tonally or texturally correct nor the tubular bells sound so properly metallic and “chimey” whether in mono or stereo. The more times you’ve played this record over the years the more you’ll be impressed by how things sound fundamentally the same, yet when they do sound different it’s almost always for the better.

The mono mix on vinyl has always sounded somewhat brighter and harder than the stereo mix and that’s also true here. Did Martin purposely EQ it that way? I don’t know. After listening to the CD re-mix, the original stereo record sounds softer—almost too soft— though at the same time more “relaxed” and spacious, especially in terms of stage width and depth. The re-mix’s upper midrange can be hard at times and the “She’s Leaving Home” strings on the original stereo vinyl kill the CD re-mix strings, which are somewhat harsh-sounding and lacking in bottom end weight but overall and by a wide margin I preferred the new digital stereo mix just because it’s a much better mix that still manages to remain true to the original’s spirit and to the intentions of the album’s creators.

Hope to have vinyl and 96/24 review posted ASAP as well as more in-depth coverage of the other discs and the book and box as a whole. The book includes a track-by-track recording history. Perhaps this line from the “With a Little Help From My Friends” page helps explain why the mono mix has always sounded more seamless and better constructed: “The next day, fifteen versions of a mono mix were made until all were happy with the final one. The amount of ADT (automatic double tracking—an Abbey Road developed technique to produce vocal doubling) added to Ringo’s vocal for the mono version was reduced when the stereo mix was completed after three attempts on 7 April.”