Beatles Unlimited Magazine, The Netherlands, No. 135, September 1997

Hot news from Why Not Stereo? (3)
by Johnny te Lintelo

In 1999 we are all gonna look back to the musical legacy of the 20th century and see what's gonna represent this age. if the present 1987/88 Beatles CD collection will be their representative, it's time for crying! The same goes for Lennon's 'Imagine' album. In the video of Lennon's life we hear him in the studio singing in an unbelievable quality on hifi video. Yoko please use the original working masters and let the album newly be remixed and remastered. It's nowhere near the quality of the video!

In BU Magazine #134 you could read on page 56 about 'ORIGINAL STEREO RECORDING + 10 bonus tracks', a double CD set containing the first four Beatles albums in stereo. The comment was: " I wonder how long Apple can ignore the call for a new remix in stereo for their 1987 CD releases. After hearing this I can't imagine that Mr. Martin did his ultimate best in transferring them into compact disc. Perhaps someone should send him this CD for a starter!"

This was published in July 1997. Well the fact is that George Martin never put his hand on the first four CDs, but just advised EMI at that moment for the mono versions. The stereo versions had to have extra care. Ever since then unreleased mono and/or stereo versions was popular among collectors even more then in the vinyl days.

In BU #128 page 61 I wrote "Why Not Stereo" about Bengt Wärmlind from Sweden who commented about the song 'I Saw Her Standing There' on the 'Free As The Bird' single in stereo, with so many tracks on 'Anthology 1' in boring mono.

After BU published this small item we started to write to each other about the stereo / mono subject. Bengt wrote what he intended to do and asked me for suggestions after each new development. Bengt owned the double CD bootleg 'ORIGINAL MASTER RECORDINGS' on the BEAT Records label. SUPERB STEREO, compared to the compressed mono 1987 EMI CDs!

Bengt wanted help from sponsors to make 3 digital copies in his local recordshop and send these discs to George Martin, Geoff Emerick and Neil Aspinall. I suggested Bengt to write, but not send expensive discs (due to my experiences in the past). But Bengt succeded with sponsors to make it possible!

Bengt on his Internet page: "Me and my sponsors sent 3 expensive double CD-Rs of 'Original Masters Recordings' to George Martin, Geoff Emerick and Neil Aspinall in December 1996..........etc.

Meanwhile I had written an article in BU #132, "Why Not Stereo? (2) & 30th Aniversary of Sgt. Pepper's" published late March 1997. EMI London also receives this magazine and are part of the article about all background information concerning mono versus stereo from 1987 until now. Also new ideas how to release 'Sgt Pepper'. For months 'Pepper' was scheduled to be rereleased on it's 30th anniversary 1 June 1997. Suddenly early May these plans were postponed.

This stereo material is nothing but fantastic, but technology available at this moment makes it possible to remaster the tapes to a quality much better than even the mastertape. All the big names of the past have newly remastered CDs, but this band deserves a quality of remastering and repacking that will be the standard for years to come, no matter what the costs of remastering are!!!!

Excerpt from Q Magazine July 1992 called "Perfect Sound": "On a CD, there's no need to compress the music, so this second level of compression can be bypassed, but the first compression done by the artist remain on the original master tape. With early rock recordings, the Buddy Holly era say, where recordings were virtually live in the studio, this doesn't matter too much, concedes Chris Buchanan (post-production nanager at Abbey Road Studios), but by the middle 60's, when people starting using multi-tracking methods, the effects of compression were compounded. The Beatles, especially in their later albums, would record several tracks which might each have background hiss and some compression in them. Then they would mix those tracks down to a single track for the final master tape. As a result the hiss is increased and various compressions are buried in the mix."

In theory, if permission could be obtained to find all of the original tracks before compression, they could have the hiss removed and then be mixed back together again, resulting in a sound even cleaner than on today's Beatles CD reissues. "What you would, in fact, be creating," points out Buchanan, "is arguable not what The Beatles intended. When the cleaning up and remixing gets to those sorts of levels, you're opening up a whole new can of worms."

Well this this is what happened to many of the 'Anthology' recordings. What I hope for the new CD releases is the following. Listen to your 'Anthology 2' CD track 9 'Being For The Benefit Of Mr. Kite'. Towards the end some of the original master tape sounds have been edited inside this take. Hear the incredible quality!

Gordon Reid, General Manager of CEDAR systems specialised in cleaning up old recordings: "The quality of any CD is only as good as the quality of the source material. Even with a perfect master tape, it still depends on the dedication and expertise of the engineer who supervises the transfer."

Unfortunately there are many bootlegs since the Great Dane 'The Complete BBC Sessions' bootleg box that are preferable sounding compared with the official 'Live At The BBC', I must admit.

Be patient, when the time is right, and the world is ready for "new" Beatles product after 'Anthology', then EMI/Apple will again conquer the charts with The Beatles.

Back to First Four In Stereo!