The 'Moonlight Sonata' by van Beethoven was made famous by John Lennon, when he said that his song 'Because' was inspired by Yoko Ono playing this sonata backwards. While debunking this myth, I found that van Beethoven himself never referred to this composition as the 'Moonlight Sonata"; for him, it was a 'quasi-fantasie'. After van Beethoven's death, a music critic wrote an article in a newspaper in which the critic said that the sonata reminded him of moonlight, shining on a lake. The label ha...
May 03, 2021•52 sec•Ep. 255
“Maxwell’s Silver Hammer” is a rock song with dark, eccentric lyrics about a person named Maxwell who commits murders with a hammer, although the lyrics are disguised by the upbeat, catchy, and rather “childlike” sound of the song. Paul McCartney has never played this song in concert. However.....McCartney read the lyrics as a poem, once. Enough for the BDJ engineers to construct this 'Avant-garde' version.
Mar 30, 2021•3 min•Ep. 254
We all know Come Together, it is one of the most popular tracks on Abbey Road. Due in no small part to the tremendous bass line, the riffs on the electronic piano....all McCartney contributions to a Lennon song. We know that Lennon started out with Come Together as a much faster song, inspired by a Chuck Berry Song: You Can't Catch Me. We have no recordings or demos of this Ur version of Come Together, but that didn't stop the BDJ engineers to produce such an Outfake. A very different Come Toget...
Mar 30, 2021•3 min•Ep. 254
It is the time of the year to remember those who escaped from this virus ridden Earth. We present a few of those departed who played a role in the Beatles history. Paul McCartney improvises on the piano on a theme by Samuel Barber, "Adagio for Strings'. Peter Green, guitarist of Fleetwood Mac and composer of 'Albatross' is remembered by Mac Fleetwood. Albatross was the inspiration for the Beatles song 'Sun King'. Simon Posthuma: co-founder of 'The Fool', the small group of artists who designed t...
Dec 29, 2020•7 min•Ep. 253
It was forty years ago today (more or less), so a good moment to commemorate Lennon's final single. Woman was chosen by Lennon to be the second single released from the Double Fantasy album. The lyrics are not among Lennon's best, but it is nicely Beatlesque that the last words are "I love you, yeah, yeah"..... The lyrics seem to be inspired by McCartney's song 'Woman', which was made a hit by Peter and Gordon. In particular, each sentence beginning with the word 'Woman' comes straight out of Mc...
Dec 18, 2020•3 min•Ep. 252
“Just Fun” is one of the very first songs written by Paul McCartney and John Lennon, in late 1957 or 1958. It remained rather obscure for decades. The Beatles played a rough version during the 'Get Back' sessions in January 1969. It only lasts for 20 or 30 seconds. As part of the John Lennon 80th birthday celebrations on 9 October, Paul McCartney has announced that he would play the unreleased Beatles song to mark the day. And he actually sang a single verse, strumming his guitar, as part of the...
Oct 11, 2020•3 min
'Her Majesty’ was first performed at the Get Back/Let It Be sessions in January 1969. McCartney brought the song to the band in Twickenham on 9 January. But it lasted until July 2nd before McCartney recorded the takes on Abbey Road that we all know and love. Or do we? Her Majesty is the least popular Beatles track on Spotify. In defence of Her Majesty, the statistics may lead us astray since Her Majesty is only 23 seconds long, not long enough to be consistently registered by the Spotify statist...
Oct 04, 2020•2 min
McCartney sang Yesterday accompanied by his Epiphone Texan guitar on the evening of 14th June. A score for string quartet — George Martin's first major arranging contribution to The Beatles - was over-dubbed three days later. A string quartet, in the pop world of those days, was quite a step to take. It was with ‘Yesterday’ that George Martin started breaking out of the phase of using just four instruments and went into something more experimental. Unfortunately, the recording was still very muc...
Mar 25, 2020
It doesn't happen every day that you get to hear a new Beatles song; but today is that day! We proudly present the premiere (as a complete song) of 'You Won't Get Me That Way', as recorded by the Beatles on 27 January 1969 in Apple Studios, Savile Row. You Won't Get Me That Way is a swinging blues, in classic McCartney rocker style. Soulful vocals by McCartney, in excellent voice that day. Some neat drum playing by Ringo, and bluesy guitars by George and John. With a bit more work, this could ha...
Mar 16, 2020•2 min
A three-minute sample from a tape auctioned in the '90s and purchased by the Beatles, featuring selections from various 1962 TV appearances has hit the Internet in December 2019. The samples consist of songs performed on October 17th, October 29th, and December 29th, 1962 — “Some Other Guy,” “Love Me Do,” A Taste of Honey,” and “Twist and Shout.” As this performance went out live on TV, it wasn't taped at all. As luck would have it, the audio of these Beatles' appearances on Granada TV's People ...
Jan 25, 2020•3 min
The Abbey Road box released in 2019 marks the first time that Beatles songs are released in ATMOS format (on the Blue-ray disc). Since the 'One' DVD, all subsequent releases featured Dolby 5.1 mixes, but these were mostly rather underwhelming. But the 5.1 and Atmos mixes of Abbey Road mark a turning point; I can imagine that these mixes will become the preferred way to listen to Abbey Road, relegating the stereo mix to older audiophiles.... What is Atmos? It is a surround system like 5.1, but wi...
Dec 07, 2019•25 sec
The vocals shine in this remix. Does Paul sing on Come Together? Sure he does, harmonizes with John during the first half of the song. In the latter half, John harmonizes with John. The vocals in the outro can be heard clearly, perhaps it was a good thing they were no so clear in 1969?
Dec 07, 2019•4 min
This remix just begged to be produced. The vocals from the centre channel, as pure as you can get (no reverb), supported by the (stereo) orchestra from CD3.
Dec 07, 2019•3 min
We scan through the channels to highlight piano, guitars, and - yes- the Moog synthesizer.
Dec 07, 2019•1 min
Paul playing his characteristic Piano style. The Oooh aah chorus stands out well.
Dec 07, 2019•39 sec
George's solo guitar is right in your face, and then John joins in with his telltale "Julia riffing".
Dec 07, 2019•31 sec
Great guitar amplifier sound, funky and bluesy shines clearly now. The Hammond Organ -- played by Billy Preston -- is super clear now! His previously buried-in-the-mix solo is fantastic. Lennon's voice rasps supercool when he comes in with "Yeeaaaaaaaah" (without the distortion that spoiled the 2009 remasters version).
Dec 07, 2019•8 min
We can now fully appreciate George's singing. The Moog Synthesizer comes in with a bang, and the acoustic guitar sounds lifelike.
Dec 07, 2019•1 min
We scan through the channels and hear some beautiful vocals, and the Moog Synth. Still, the feeling lingers that Giles Martin could have done more with this track, e.g. separate the vocals more?
Dec 07, 2019•1 min
Listen to Paul's vocals up close. Double tracked. Then some honkytonk piano by George Martin. The rhythm guitar could be John,. the solo guitar probably George? Some nice aaaahh's and oooh's, followed by the countdown 1234567.
Dec 07, 2019•2 min
Guitars on the brink of distortion, round bass, and heavenly voices. Of course, this track was popular on Love remixes as well. In the ATMOS mix, the Spanish lyrics suddenly become intelligible!
Dec 07, 2019
A lot of effort has been put in this short track; instruments and vocals are distributed over all channels.
Dec 07, 2019•1 min
The back up harmonies are super impactful. Ringo's drumming sounds uberloud. At the very end, you can hear (Paul) speaking,apparently, Giles Martin couldn't fix this speech leakage.
Dec 07, 2019•21 sec
"Listen to that Mal"......Doubletracked vocals by Paul.
Dec 07, 2019•49 sec
This features great strings and horns. The backing vocals come out well, Ringo's drums pound away.
Dec 07, 2019•1 min
Ringo's drums sound bigger than ever before. The "Love You" chants at the end sound clearly from the rear surrounds.
Dec 07, 2019•31 sec
We have all now bought the 50th Anniversary Abbey Road box, and explored the 3 CD's. CD's 2 and 3 contain the outtakes, and these are interesting. With a little critical look, the outtakes would have fitted on a singe CD, which makes the harvest of new outtakes for Abbey Road rather meagre. Therefore, we decided to produce more outtakes, by cleverly remixing the outtakes in the Abbey Road box. Here, we present the extra outtakes for CD3. By interlacing the Fourier transforms through our propriet...
Sep 28, 2019•1 hr 6 min
We have all now bought the 50th Anniversary Abbey Road box, and explored the 3 CD's. CD1 is Giles Martin's remix of the album; I suppose it is intended for the younger generation, and I'm perfectly happy with the 1969 mix...... CD's 2 and 3 contain the outtakes, and these are interesting, although quite a number of them were already available in good quality as bootlegs. Furthermore, the demo's for Goodbye and Come and Get It seem out of place, since these songs never appeared on any Beatles alb...
Sep 27, 2019•55 min
Having to fulfil a three-picture deal that John, Paul, George and Ringo had with United Artists, Brian Epstein had been looking for one last project to make the third film (after A Hard Day’s Night and Help!). The group had no interest in making another movie, however. They weren’t fans of films after making Help! Plus, they had started work on the White Album, which was taking up a lot of their attention. So, Epstein went to Al Brodax, a producer who had been involved with the animated TV adven...
Sep 08, 2019•3 min
On Thursday, 30 May 1968, George Martin and The Beatles started to work on their next album, following Sgt Pepper. As the session got underway on 30 May, Lennon debuted a new song that would come to be known as “Revolution 1”, a standout composition from the Esher demos. With Martin and a whole array of people up in the booth, The Beatles perfected a rhythm track in eighteen takes, including Lennon’s lead vocal, McCartney’s piano, Harrison’s acoustic guitar, and Starr’s drums. As the longest per...
Aug 12, 2019•4 min
