The Beatles: Help! They just can't let it be..

14/09/2009

Veteran music journalist Gavin Martin on the money grab industry around the Fab Four

"The Beatles were the biggest bastards on earth," so said John Lennon in his famously soul-baring, truth-telling, post-Primal Therapy interview with Rolling Stone Editor Jann Wenner in 1970. The greatest pop group of the '60s had just split up and it was, for Lennon, time to slay the myth.

But almost 40 years later, Lennon's caustic tongue long since silenced, The Beatles reputation as biggest bastards and bankers (I said bankers!) in pop is greater than ever. Consider the current reissues, released in tandem with the baby boomer snaring computer game. In the time that it has taken to get the technology tweaked to give their crown jewels a sonic makeover the Beatles Industry has been rampant.

There's been the Anthology released on CD, Video and DVD. There's been the Yellow Submarine Songtrack, the money spinning Las Vegas Cirque de Soleil musical Love - with its risible spin-off remix CD. There's been Let It Be... Naked where Paul McCartney tried, in vain, to show that without Phil Spector's input, his de facto career summary 'The Long And Winding Road' would have been better. But this is a guy who, although richer than God, still frets because "his" songs are credited to Lennon/McCartney not McCartney/Lennon.

Of course like anyone with half a brain and a reasonably functioning set of lugs I love The Beatles, always have and always will. But for me the audiophile attractions of The Beatles Remasters are a red herring, or a Glass Onion.

Growing up in the 60s, hearing the songs on the radio or the family Dansette did not in anyway diminish, maybe  even enhanced, their  liberating, transcendent, even revolutionary import. Apparently the re-masters are best heard in original mono mixes. And they are only available in a boxset - cost £240. Bastards? You said it Johnny!

Martin hosts an evening of fab tunes, readings, questions, answers, lovers and dancers on Tuesday (September 15) in London.
Co-hosted by John Robb, the event at Boogaloo, Archway Road, it features Neil Spencer talking about George Harrison in India, Pete Doggett discussing the money, Roy Carr on their movies, plus Zoe Street Howe and a musical tribute to Ian MacDonald’s Revolution in the Head. The event starts at 8pm.
 
For more details click here