Revolver (Premium)

Every once in a while, two of my interests overlap, or collide. Such was the case with the recent remixing of The Beatle’s classic album Revolver, the perfect synthesis of technology and music.

It’s not controversial to state that The Beatles are the most popular and beloved musical act in history, and the most influential. But I’m going to make the argument that The Beatles are, if anything, underappreciated, that their influence and expertise extend well beyond music to include songwriting, general writing, collaboration, experimentation, and the proper use of new technologies to advance our understanding of what’s possible. In short, what The Beatles accomplished in just a few short years was literally genius, and in many more ways than most understand.

You can see this genius on display---along with their human fragility---in Peter Jackson’s incredible Get Back documentary. Released about a year ago, Get Back resets the narrative on the waning days of this band, correcting the story told by the original Let It Be documentary that was taken from the same video recordings and released in 1970. That film focused on infighting as a way to explain why The Beatles broke up. But Jackson’s more expansive and nuanced documentary tells another story, that the band was, at that time, still a collaborative force, and that its members weren’t just friends, but that they loved each other quite a bit. As a Beatles fan, this was a revelation and a godsend.

There are only two reactions to Get Back: you either thought it was too long, or you wish that it could just keep going and going. I fall into the latter camp, and while I’ve always been fascinated by how music is made, I’m particularly interested in how these unique people did so. All four went on to some level of success as individuals, of course. But there’s never been anything quite like the four of them together. Before or since.

And the scope of The Beatles's discography, there are of course the albums that really stand out. Here, we can quibble over which of them is “best,” but my two favorites---I go back and forth---are Rubber Soul and Revolver. That said, the 2022 remix of Revolver has, for now, put that one over the top. (Surely, a similar remix of Rubber Soul, and of all of the band’s other albums---is coming.)

I’m not really writing about this to discuss the music per se, though I have listened and relistened to this remixed Revolver again and again. No, this is about the technology that Giles Martin, son of renowned Beatles producer (and “fifth Beattle”) George Martin, used to make it happen. Giles Martin has been involved with recent era Beatles album remixes for the past 20-ish years, I think, with the first peek at what was to come arriving in the form of Love, an album created to accompany the Las Vegas show of the same name. (Both are also incredible.)

But a recent technological breakthrough has rendered the 2000s-era Beatles remix...