The magical remastering tour

The remastering of the Beatles back catalogue might seem like yet another cash in, but the engineers responsible tell Tony Clayton-Leathat it is more about the music than the money

IN 1964, WHEN Beatles For Salewas released just in time for the Christmas market, the album sleeve notes – written by their press agent, Derek Taylor – included the following words: "The kids of AD 2000 will understand what it was all about and draw from the music much the same sense of wellbeing and warmth as we do today. For the magic of The Beatles is timeless and ageless."

By the start of 1965, The Beatles had had eight top-five UK hit singles and four UK number-one albums – it was a very good track record up to that point, but as this was an era when pop acts had a limited shelf life, it is arguable that Taylor's enthusiasm was fuelled in part by his PR sensibilities as well as by his love of the music. It is salutary to note, however, that by Christmas 2000, The Beatles 1album, a compilation of their chart topping songs, was a hit all over the world, with initial sales of 25 million. With a percipience that subsequently marked him out as more astute soothsayer than ordinary PR lackey, Derek Taylor has been proven correct.

Magic. Timeless. Ageless. As we approach the entrance to Abbey Road studios on a warm sunny day in June, it is difficult to suppress a tingle of excitement. We know there are those who think of The Beatles as overvalued, relentlessly trumpeted as the pioneers of everything that is good about pop; we know also that there are those who regard them as architects of the kind of noise that directed the kids of (specifically) the 1960s away from BBC Home Counties attributes.

Yet, despite these occasional detractors (who most assuredly retreat from view whenever a Beatles anniversary or event crops up), the virtually universal argument is that the achievements of the band are blindingly obvious: they made (and acted upon) decisions that took pop music out of its initial, relatively straitjacketed parameters and redirected its course to the point that what followed meant anything could happen. It’s a large claim, perhaps, but as we snake our way into an Abbey Road studio to hear advance earfuls of the next chapter of The Beatles, it doesn’t seem too fanciful a notion.

The next chapter (for those who have not yet retreated from view) is the digital re-mastering of The Beatles’ back catalogue. We are in the company of Allan Rouse and Paul Hicks, two Abbey Road sound engineers who have been bestowed with the onerous task of sonically cleaning what is surely not just pop music but cultural heritage, and if what we hear over the next hour or so is anything to go by, then even casual Fab Four fans will be impressed.

INCREDIBLY, THIS IS the first time the band's original masters have been digitally treated (although 10 years ago, the album Yellow Submarine Songtrack, contained a few songs in remixed, re-mastered format), which suggests perhaps the most obvious question of them all: The Beatles back catalogue is the Holy Grail of pop music – you certainly took your time, didn't you?

Blame Apple is the implied response. If Rouse and Hicks are the keepers of the flame, then Apple is the administrative company that, at a whim (or a "no" from either Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr or Yoko Ono) can blow the flame out or reignite it. Apparently, the re-masters have been in the can, so to speak, for more than four years, so it's all rather mystifying as to why Apple has waited until now to release them (although, presumably, the concurrent release of the music game, The Beatles: Rock Band, gives the enterprise extra commercial clout). Similarly, the wait before putting The Beatles back catalogue on to iTunes. Rouse and Hicks are Abbey Road employees, not Apple underlings, so, again, the underlying plea-bargain is: not our fault, mate, we just work here.

They’re good blokes, however – humorous, talkative, and not at all predisposed to peppering their conversation with words or phrases such as “bitonal”, “popping”, “damping”, “ritardando”, “direct injecting” or “supertonic”. The fact that they are so closely involved in such an important cultural project seems to have passed them by. Yet they are, they stress, protective of the legacy.

“We all are, actually,” says Rouse, “but Apple are in their own way, too. I mean, there is a little bit of history here, isn’t there? That’s why there are up to six people involved in this project – it means that no one person has made a decision about how things should be treated. It was always something we should discuss, we have thought, and it also has the benefit that if something goes wrong, then we can blame other people and spread the load.”

Says Hicks on committee-oriented projects, “You could drive yourself mental trying to please this or that person, so you’ve just got to get your head down and do it.”

By “this or that person”, can we take it to mean either one of the remaining former Beatles – McCartney and Starr? According to Rouse, they heard nothing from either person until the close of the project.

“At the end of any project we do concerning The Beatles, we make a CD of it and send it to Apple, and they distribute it to the relevant board members. Then we sit and wait for either approval or flak! How it works is that if nobody says anything, then they’re approved.”

What was it like trying to balance out the technical elements – the removal of any sonic glitches that would not normally be heard by the casual listener – with the more pragmatic aspects of just being a fan of the music?

“We were doing it technically, obviously, and hopefully as a listener as well,” comments Rouse. “The team of people who have been working on this project – myself and Paul and others – have been working on Beatles material for about 13 years. Each time we have done a job – although for the most part all the previous jobs were remixing – everybody begins to learn a little bit more. And every time we do another job, we actually like The Beatles music a little bit more. So, yes, of course, we were looking at it as a professional job, but we all love music, so we’re there as listeners, too.”

The biggest tasks, sonically, were undertaken on the albums, Rouse admits, that one might expect: "White Album, Revolver, Let It Be,perhaps. Each one had its own little challenges. The point is, when you remix something you might think that perhaps the voice isn't loud enough by today's standards. There is a temptation to try and do something to compensate for that in the re-mastering process, but you have to realise you can't."

He describes the process as a series of “subtle, incremental steps over a period of time, different locations and different ears”.

“We weren’t trying to make the sound modern,” says Hicks. “We just wanted to get as much clarity as possible in there. And we were always very conscious of not trying to overhype the sound. On the stereo set we have done some limiting to raise the level. [Limiting is a process by which the peaks of a signal are flattened, thereby producing a more compacted sound].

“The monos? We figured that was more a collector/audiophile thing, and we didn’t put any limiting there, so the sound is purer.”

“The only things we removed,” reveals Rouse, “were those sonic items which, technically speaking, shouldn’t have been there in the first place, and which by today’s recording standards wouldn’t have been there. Conversely, we wouldn’t take out anything that we considered to be part of the performance – a cough, or Ringo’s bass drum pedal, for example. But if there was a click, bad sibilance, a microphone ‘pop’, then, of course, we’d improve on those.”

WHICH IS ALL very well and good, but is this not yet another instance of a major record company releasing effectively the same product, albeit a slightly cleaner sounding one? Yes and no. No one is arguing that anybody listening to any of the re-mastered songs on a kitchen radio will be able to tell the difference, and not many are denying how important The Beatles were/are to popular culture. EMI and Apple Corps Ltd might be sitting back and looking forward to their end-of-year profit margins, but for the likes of Allan Rouse and Paul Hicks, it isn’t about the money.

“To be perfectly honest, I don’t think that’s ever been the case with The Beatles. Look at other bands whose names I won’t mention – some have been re-mastered up to three times by now. And repackaged. In terms of The Beatles 1960s masters – they were never re-mastered, simple as that. What you got in the 1960s was what you got in the 1980s, and to bring them up a little bit, sonically, we re-mastered them. So it’s not a money issue at all. Having said that, it’s not really for me to say because we just do the job – we’re told to do it. But my personal opinion is that it isn’t about the money. Absolutely not.”

So everyone is happy, then? Including the board members of Apple Corps Ltd?

“The basic argument,” concludes Rouse with something approaching a definitive statement, “is that if it’s good enough for The Beatles, then it’s good enough for everyone else.”

WHAT IS RELEASED ON SEPTEMBER 9th

The original Beatles catalogue, which has been digitally re-mastered for the first time, is released worldwide on CD on Wednesday, September 9th. Each of the CDs is packaged with replicated original UK album art, including expanded booklets containing original and newly written liner notes and rare photos.

For a limited period, each CD will also be embedded with a brief documentary film about the album. The documentaries contain archival footage, rare photographs and never-before-heard studio chat from the Beatles.

Also released on September 9th are two new Beatles boxed CD collections – a stereo set and a collector's mono set. The same date also sees the release of The Beatles: Rock Bandvideo game. Regarding the arrival of the Beatles back catalogue on a digital platform such as iTunes, an official statement from Apple Corps Ltd and EMI Music states that "discussions regarding the digital distribution of the catalogue will continue".