The recording technology of 1966, compared to today, was rather primitive. Even though EMI’s studios at Abbey Road were then considered “state-of-the-art,” the Beatles were limited to recording with four tracks. Basic tracks [rhythm guitar, bass, drums] were recorded at the same time and mixed down to a single track. This allowed for the remaining three tracks to have vocals and overdubs. That works fine for mono recordings, which were fine for listening to music on devices that had only one speaker. Up until and including the White Album in 1968, the Beatles and their producer George Martin focused their energy on mono recordings. Stereo mixes were an afterthought. George Harrison had this to say about stereo – “When they invented stereo, I remember thinking ‘what do you want two speakers for?’ because it ruined the sound from our point of view…” When stereo mixes were created from the mono recordings, you would hear all the instruments in one stereo channel and the vocals in the other. This set-up becomes very frustrating if one of your stereo speakers blows out and you’re left with half a recording to listen to.
In 2009 the Beatles remastered their entire catalog. I thought these were the best these songs would sound and couldn’t be improved upon. The songs had a new shine to them. But in 2017 we started seeing 50th anniversary remix releases beginning with Sgt. Pepper and culminating with Let It Be. Giles Martin explained the difference between remastering and remixing – “The best analogy I can give is like when you have a car and if you want it to look nice, you might polish it, you might have to do some body work – that’s remastering. If you’re remixing, you tear the car completely to pieces again, and you rebuild it, and then you polish it.” Giles Martin took all of the multitracks for those albums, tore apart the songs and then reassembled them. Instead of the vocals being isolated on one side or another, they are front and center. One can hear the bass and the drums together as they should be. All of the sounds have been rebalanced to give the listener a feeling of being immersed in the music.
Revolver was recorded using four tracks. EMI Studios then had two four-track machines that allowed them to mix down groups of instruments into a single track and then “bounce” that single track onto another tape, giving the Beatles more tracks to work with. Giles Martin had loads of multitrack recordings to work with between Sgt. Pepper and Let It Be but taking the Revolver recordings apart and reassembling them would require a different method. It wasn’t until Peter Jackson reimagined the Beatles film Let It Be as The Beatles Get Back that it was possible to isolate different sounds on a single track. Jackson’s challenge to improve upon the sounds of the Get Back tapes, much of it being spoken words being drowned out by instruments. A team of audio engineers led by a guy named Emile de la Rey developed a machine-learning tool that would learn what each of the Beatles’ voices sound like and be able to separate those voices from other sounds on a given piece of tape. Giles Martin took that step further by having this tool learn what each of the instruments sounds like. This is how he could disassemble all of the album tracks, give the instruments and the voices their own space, and then reassembled them to rebalance all of the sounds when put back together.
Disc 1 – The complete album remixed in stereo
Disc 2 – The complete album in mono
Disc 3 – An extended play of the single recorded during the Revolver sessions, Paperback Writer [A-Side] and Rain [B-side], presented here in remixed stereo and in the original mono mix
Discs 4 and 5 – Session material and demos
If you don’t want the two-disc version you can get a single CD that is just the 2022 stereo remixes.
The vocals are front and center in all the mixes. You no longer have to tolerate them being heard in only one ear. All of the instruments are crisper, sharper, and clearer. The drums get the most benefit from the remixing. They no longer sound like they were recorded inside a cardboard box. The sounds are louder and fuller, but they aren’t louder in the “loudness war” sense. There is still plenty of dynamism in the sounds that don’t overwhelm the listener.
Taxman – George Harrison’s rhythm guitar tone is nasty, befitting the subject matter. Paul McCartney has said that he felt his guitar solo from Taxman sounded too “polite.” Giles Martin fixed that.
Eleanor Rigby – String instruments had never been closed-mic’d as they were on this song, which gave the strings more “bite.” Not only that, you can hear the violins and violas on one channel, while you can hear the cellos in the other.
Love You Too – George’s first mini raga was said to have just a sitar and electric guitar, but also an acoustic guitar. I could not hear the acoustic guitar until now [it’s in the right stereo channel]. The sitar is shimmering. The tabla used to be buried in the mix, but no longer.
Here, There and Everywhere – Still not one of my favorites, but those of whom love this song will be thrilled at how the harmonies sound.
She Said She Said – This one is the first bum note of the stereo remix. The drums are almost too loud on the remix. The original stereo mix sounded better to these ears precisely because the instruments were blended together. While the vocals are placed perfectly on the remix, there are some empty spaces on the left stereo channel where instruments should be. The mono remaster, however, is the gem here.
And Your Bird Can Sing - Despite all the hooky pop songs that came before, this is a rock band at work with the sound to match [finally].
I Want To Tell You – George’s guitar starts in the right channel and slowly pans all the way to the left. At the end of the song as the riff is played for the third and final time, the guitar slowly pans right, all the way back to where it started.
Got To Get You Into My Life – The horn section is “beefier” – it has more punch.
Tomorrow Never Knows – John Lennon’s acid test. When I got the box set, this was the first song I listened to. This is the song that I felt would be the benchmark of whether the rest of the album would be a good remix because I figured it would be the hardest song to remix. I didn’t think it possible, but the new mix makes John’s meditation on the Tibetan Book of the Dead sound even more trippy. When it was recorded, all the various tape loops that made the sound effects were all rolling at the same time, with the Beatles themselves playing the mixing desk as if it were its own instrument, bringing up the sounds and lowering them in the mix as the tapes were rolling. It was, in effect, a performance which can never be duplicated. Given that all the sounds from the tapes loops were captured on the same track, I had no idea how Giles Martin would be able to separate them so they could be given their own individual spaces, but he did it. This is magical.
Rain – This song has always been best when heard in mono – until now. This mix is immaculate.
Paperback Writer – What I said about Taxman also applies here. This mix smokes!
Sessions previously released – Tomorrow Never Knows [Take 1], Got To Get You Into My Life (First Version) - Take 5, And Your Bird Can Sing (First Version - Take 2), Taxman (Take 11). I'm Only Sleeping (Rehearsal Fragment). These appeared on Anthology 2 [1996]. Yellow Submarine (Highlighted Sound Effects) appeared on the CD single for the song Real Love [1996].
Yellow Submarine (Songwriting Work Tape - Part 1)– Until now I thought Yellow Submarine was a ditty written by Paul McCartney for Ringo to sing. To my surprise, there is a home demo of John Lennon singing about the town where he was born that no one cared about. The melody for the finished song came from John. Paul added the Yellow Submarine chorus. This is just as much a Lennon-McCartney creation as A Day in the Life.
Rain – When the Beatles recorded Rain it was played very fast. This version is presented here, which sounds like they were amped on caffeine. They made the right choice is slowing down the recording so that it sounds a bit “murky.”
Eleanor Rigby – Take 2 is presented here. This is the session where the string players make their first attempt at recording George Martin’s score for Paul McCartney’s song. That music had not been heard until this take, at which point the score was still “dots on a page.” There’s a two-minute discussion between George Martin and the musicians about how the score should be played.
Love You To (Unnumbered Rehearsal) – George Harrison alone with his sitar. For a novice, he was pretty good. The working title was Granny Smith.
I Want To Tell You (Speech And Take 4) – The working title of this was Laxton’s Superb. Apparently George liked apples.
Got To Get You Into My Life (Second Version) - Take 8 – Where the finished song had a horn section and a little guitar at the end, this take has both horns and guitars throughout. I like it - the guitars work – I don’t know why they were cut.
I like this deluxe edition of Revolver. I finally got the mono mixes, and they were every bit as good as other Beatlemaniacs had made them out to be. Rubber Soul could also use the stereo remix treatment given to Revolver. Should that happen, I’ll gladly part with more money, sucker that I am.
