The Beatles on iTunes

And in the end...
We'd been promised it for three years, the entire Beatles catalogue digitally remastered.

Then, out of the blue, MOJO was invited to Abbey Road for a playback of 10 newly restored White Album tracks!

Mat Snow listened in.


SAT AT THE VERY SPOT WHERE, 40 years before, George Martin watched the greatest band in the world record Revolution, MOJO feels privileged to be among the first, outside the inner circle, to sample what Fabs fans have been waiting on for a very long time: The Beatles, as The Beatles intended.
As a taster for the eagerly awaited digital remastering project -which has been underway for three years and long predates The Beatles' iTunes deal announced in March -we're in Abbey Road's Studio 3 listening to 10 remastered White Album songs.


And how do they sound? Better even than we'd hoped. You can hear every thread in the musical fabric -the nuances of Macca's tour de force vocal on Helter Skelter, his tolling bass on Dear Prudence and, eeriest of all, John Lennon singing Happiness Is A Warm Gun as if he's sitting right next you, right now, rather than his whole lifespan ago. The Continuing Story Of Bungalow Bill, While My Guitar Gently Weeps, Martha My Dear, Don't Pass Me By, I Will and Everybody's Got Something To Hide Except Me And My Monkey all pass the audition too, with an immediacy, intimacy and freshness that, until now has lain half-hidden beneath the patina of old-school digital remastering and even older school master-disc cutting. For today's playback, stereo remastering engineer Guy Massey has synchronised the remasters with the original 1987 CD masters, allowing us to flip between the two. It's like we've been hearing them under glass all these years.


The remastering project has gone back to every UK studio album release plus Past Masters, the Yellow Submarine Soundtrack and the US Magical Mystery Tour (but not, alas, Live At The Hollywood Bowl), and applied state-of-the-art digital technology to the most scrupulous principles of musical restoration. Compared to the 5.1 remix of the earlier Yellow Submarine Songtrack and Love projects, EMI's special project co-ordinator Allan Rouse cautions us to expect "subtlety". But it is the subtle details that make all the difference. Since the original CD remasters were issued two decades ago, audiophiles have complained that they lacked warmth and definition compared to the vinyl. The CDs sold extremely well, but EMI, Apple, Paul, Ringo, Yoko Ono and Olivia Harrison have come to share the view that Beatles' fans deserve better. CD remastering of canonical catalogues like Dylan, the Stones, Hendrix and Led Zeppelin showed the way. Honouring the band's original creative decisions, this isn't The Beatles remixed in 5.1; it's The Beatles in their original stereo mix -with a twist.



In 1987, George Martin remixed the stereo Help! and Rubber Soul for CD to mitigate the primitive voices-to-the-left, instruments-to-the-right sound first used. The new versions of those albums keep Martin's 1987 rebalancing. But Beatlists will want those original left-and-right mixes spruced up too so (subject to EMI's confirmation) they'll be released separately, as well as every mono mix. Remastering is a process of numerous micro-decisions, and remastering The Beatles,
Rouse says, is as complex an application of technology, historical knowledge and human sympathy to a sacred object as restoring a Rembrandt. Even the task of digitising the original tapes required locating precisely compatible tape machines that have been obsolete for years. Rouse managed a small team of remastering engineers working in pairs so that each decision concerning EQ levels and removing clicks and pops could be properly debated. The biggest issue the team faced was bass. EMI's 1960s technical team was highly trained but extremely cautious; their cutting engineers feared too much bass would jolt the stylus out of its groove. The new remasters restore the intended, recorded bottom end. Massey has never heard any response from Paul, Ringo, Yoko and Olivia other than a unanimous thumbs-up.


So when can we all judge for ourselves? Off the record, 2009. Apple/EMI aren't going to bodge the packaging for the sake of a bumper Christmas. As to whether the new CD releases will coincide with their appearance as digital downloads on iTunes, no-one is yet saying. Guy Massey reflects on his three year labour: "It's testament to how good the songs are that I'm still not bored with them, not even when they come on the radio at home," he chuckles. "It's been an honour."