MY RED AND BLUE

Properly "The Beatles 1962-1966" and "The Beatles 1967-1970" respectively, the two sets were compiled in a great hurry in 1973 to combat a pirate greatest hits set. Blame it on the discord of Apple that they have not replaced by something better in all these years. By now, of course they are themselves part of history, and many fans who've become fans since 1973 have got their start with these sets, and look back fondly on them.

The problem may be that I knew the Beatles' records before 1973. The way the sets present the Beatles' career seems wrong. If you started with the red and blue, it probably takes a while to get past it the way it arranges the story. Does dividing the Beatles' musical history in two seem obvious? If you learned the Beatles off the red and blue, do you simply take for granted that that's the way it really was? To me, the the Beatles' career had seemed to fall naturally into a tripart scheme. It is interesting to see that the Beatles' own view in the "Anthology" uses three parts, and so does the recent critical book, Ian MacDonald's "Revolution in the Head". Those parts are namely a rock and roll band period, a middle period of experimentation and then psychedelia, and a final period of return to roots. While the division points will vary in different analyses, few would gladly separate "Revolver" and "Sgt Pepper" as the red and blue sets do, or give "Revolver" so little attention.

So if I ran Apple... I'd trash the red and blue, and make my own 3-CD set stuffed with the most familiar and worthy songs, using of course my own judgement. I'm sure your judgement differs. You don't have to tell me. I'm sure the Beatles' judgement differs, and even I did run Apple, I'd never get this the way I want it. Forget that. Don't confuse me with reality. I'm running Apple, and the Beatles bow to my whims.

I'd even spend some bucks to remix the songs for this set. Now hold on there-- at the same time, I'd like to see the original mono and stereo mixes preserved on CDs of the original albums. The mixes are part of the history. But for this special set, we can try to make them sound as good as we can.

I think we can't get the first few EMI singles redone, and so I would stay mono from "Love me do" straight through "She loves you", rather than cut between mono and twintrack, but for historical reasons we should offer up a little of that twintrack stereo, via the next 3 songs. I'd like to do the "Rubber Soul" era stereo following the stereo mix image of the previous albums rather than the experimental "hole in center" mix. Where there are variations, I'd like to follow what was done on the mono mix when it's better-- let's get the phasing right on "Lucy in the sky" and the speed right on "She's leaving home" to take two examples. And I want the "Get Back" songs as on the "Get Back" album. ...As long as I'm living in a dream world.

I made up some rules to insure evenhandedness:

• All original A-sides get included.
• Only original songs written by Beatles get included.
• Songs very familiar from US singles, radio play, and covers by other artists get special consideration.
• Selections from albums should be balanced: consider including a "fan favorite" to represent a style used in several songs.
• No more than half of an (original) album may be included.

There. Sure, that's objective. But, really, it means I'm not just making a tape of my favorite obscurities. I'm trying to summarize the popular music. So here are 3 pretty long CDs. Imagine these being someone's intro the Beatles, or their only Beatles CDs.

Postscript: The release of the 1 CD made me think about this again. I decided we had to have "Rain" and "She's a woman" and dropped songs accordingly (do you miss them?), and dropped "Do you want to know a secret" on the (lack of) merits.

1. 1961-1965.

2. 1966-1968.

3. 1968-1969.

Joseph Brennan, February 1996. revised November 2000.