Analysing 1 and 1+

Record store in Amsterdam

From Monday to Friday last week, I’ve been in Amsterdam in Holland. And that’s where I was when the new Beatles product was due to be released on Friday. So a Beatles friend of mine and I went to a record store to buy a few copies. Actually I was a bit surprised when I found out not only that there was a Beatles poster in the window advertising the new releases, but a bit of hoopla around the event was in the store. Everyone who bought a configuration of “Beatles 1” that day could enter a lottery, free of charge, and the ones who won got their pick of two large Beatles prints. An advertising poster for “Beatles 1” was hanging on the wall, with a black and white image of the lads from the “Revolution” video.

Sorry about the quality, I had no idea it was going to turn out so blurry.

There seems to have been a problem somewhere along the line, regarding the Limited Edition “Beatles 1+” in it’s Blu-ray configuration. As I had already ordered this package from Amazon in the UK, I was alerted by mail that there was a problem and that the content of what I had ordered had changed. I had make note of the fact that the Amazon page for the Blu-ray edition “Beatles 1+” was a bit mixed up, some times referring to the video discs as DVDs, and sometimes as Blu-ray discs. Now everything had been reverted back to DVDs and I had to cancel my order and order it again, this time from a page which advertised the edition as Blu-ray discs consistently.

Now that I was in an actual record store, and not a virtual one, I witnessed that they had every edition for sale, except the Limited Blu-ray edition of “Beatles 1+”. The same thing has been reported from other countries in Europe, plus Amazon UK has yet to confirm shipment of my new order, so it looks like this edition has been delayed here in Europe. Back in the record store in Amsterdam, my friend bought the DVD version of the Limited Edition “Beatles 1+”, and since I was expecting to get the Blu-ray edition of that same package in the mail when I got home, I went for the yellow 1CD + 1DVD of “Beatles 1”. Since I’m still waiting for my “Beatles 1+” edition, I’ll leave it to others (below) to review the full package.

The version I purchased in Amsterdam: 1CD / 1DVD.

It also sounds like, from reports by Beatles fans unsuccessfully trying to get hold of the new release, that it was understocked in most of the record stores. A lot of people who arrived late in the day to purchase the release have had to visit quite a few record stores to find copies.

Blu-ray.com has provided us with the following details regarding video quality:

The contents of the two Blu-ray discs are listed below, along with the resolution of each track (resolutions seem to be independent of the original source formats, e.g., some supposed 16mm or 35mm sources are presented interlaced while some that look to have been sourced from broadcast video are progressive).

Beatles 1

Love Me Do (1080i, 29.970 fps)

From Me to You (1080i, 29.970 fps)

She Loves You (1080i, 29.970 fps)

I Want to Hold Your Hand (1080i, 29.970 fps)

Can’t Buy Me Love (1080i, 29.970 fps)

A Hard Day’s Night (1080i, 29.970 fps)

I Feel Fine (1080p, 23.976 fps)

Eight Days a Week (1080p, 23.976 fps)

Ticket to Ride (1080p, 23.976 fps)

Help! (1080p, 23.976 fps)

Yesterday (1080i, 29.970 fps)

Day Tripper (1080i, 29.970 fps)

We Can Work It Out (1080p, 23.976 fps)

Paperback Writer (1080i, 29.970 fps)

Yellow Submarine (1080p, 23.976 fps)

Eleanor Rigby (1080p, 23.976 fps)

Penny Lane (1080p, 23.976 fps)

All You Need Is Love (1080i, 29.970 fps)

Hello, Goodbye (1080i, 29.970 fps)

Lady Madonna (1080p, 23.976 fps)

Hey Jude (1080i, 29.970 fps)

Get Back (1080p, 23.976 fps)

The Ballad of John and Yoko (1080i, 29.970 fps)

Something (1080p, 23.976 fps)

Come Together (1080i, 29.970 fps)

Let It Be (1080p, 23.976 fps)

The Long and Winding Road (1080p, 23.976 fps)

Beatles 1+

Twist and Shout (1080i, 29.970 fps)

Baby It’s You (1080i, 29.970 fps)

Words of Love (1080i, 29.970 fps)

Please, Please Me (1080i)

I Feel Fine (1080p, 23.976 fps)

Day Tripper (1080i, 29.970 fps)

Day Tripper (3rd version) (1080p, 23.976 fps)

We Can Work It Out (1080p, 23.976 fps)

Paperback Writer (1080i, 29.970 fps)

Rain (1080i, 29.970 fps)

Rain (alternate) (1080i, 29.970 fps)

Strawberry Fields Forever (1080p, 23.976 fps)

Within You Without You/Tomorrow Never Knows (1080i, 29.970 fps)

A Day in the Life (1080p, 23.976 fps)

Hello, Goodbye (1080i, 29.970 fps)

Hello, Goodbye (alternate) (1080i, 23.976 fps)

Hey Bulldog (1080i, 29.970 fps)

Hey Jude (1080i, 29.970 fps)

Revolution (1080i, 29.970 fps)

Get Back (1080i, 29.970 fps)

Don’t Let Me Down (1080i, 29.970 fps)

Free as a Bird (1080i, 29.970 fps)

Real Love (1080i, 29.970 fps)

The Beatles 1+ Deluxe is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Apple and Capitol Music with AVC encoded transfers in both 1080i and 1080p (see above for a list of the various resolution presentations), and in a variety of aspect ratios, most of which hover around the 1.33:1 size (some are a bit narrower, a few get to wider aspect ratios like 1.66:1). As should probably be expected from a compilation like this one, video quality is quite variable, with some of the broadcast videos having baked in issues like ghosting, tracers and combing artifacts. The more professionally produced items, especially those on 35mm and 16mm, look significantly better, with very good (if perhaps not exceptional) levels of detail, and some great color (especially during the psychedelic Sgt. Pepper era). The 16mm films show requisite (heavy) grain, and the finer grain field of the 35mm elements is also generally organic looking. Whatever restorative efforts which were undertaken have resulted in elements which are largely problem free, at least in terms of damage that can be ameliorated with digital tools.

Steve Shorten has gone through all of the videos on the ‘Beatles 1+’ set with a fine-toothed comb, and has this to report. Here’s what we get. Aside from the TV show clips, the videos for:

– Ticket to Ride

– Help!

– I Feel Fine (both versions)

– Day Tripper (two versions)

– We Can Work it Out (two versions)

– Paperback Writer (Ed Sullivan version)

– Strawberry Fields Forever

– All You Need Is Love (colorized version)

– Hello Goodbye (all three versions)

– A Day in the Life

– Lady Madonna

– Get Back (1969 version)*

– The Ballad of John and Yoko

– Something

– Within You Without You/Tomorrow Never Knows

– Don’t Let Me Down (from LIB Naked)

– Come Together

– Free As a Bird

– Real Love (version 2)

– Hey Jude (version 1)*

are all the original untouched restored edits (plus Eleanor Rigby and The Long and Winding Road which are ripped from their respective feature films).

*Get Back has an asterisk because the common copy of it is a slightly different edit at one point, but I believe it’s because missing footage from that print was replaced with a section duplicated from later in the film, so that shouldn’t count.

Original promo films that have had slight reediting done (insertions of small frames or shots that don’t affect the overall experience of the original films) are:

– Paperback Writer (Chiswick)

– Rain (Chiswick)

– Penny Lane

– Hey Bulldog (two shots have been swapped to correct an error in assembly back in 1999)

– Revolution

– Let it Be

The ‘Let It Be’ promo has been recreated from the same footage from the film, but fails to crossfade between the opening four closeups of John, Paul, George & Ringo. Instead, the clips are connected with straight edits. Either someone wasn’t paying attention or some of the material needed to reconstruct this accurately was lost when the original opticals were composited back in 1970.

Completely new creations for these discs are:

– Love Me Do

– Eight Days a Week

– Yellow Submarine

– Rain (b/w)

– Get Back (Naked) (this is a composite of the two versions released in 2003)

– Baby It’s You

– Hey Jude (second version)*

*Hey Jude: the version on disc 1 is a complete original take which formed the majority of the version that aired on the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour (that version substituted an ending from an otherwise unused take). This unedited original take was distributed by Apple as a music video in the wake of The Beatles’ Anthology. The version on disc 2 is a new edit which interpolates shots from the unused take into the basic take which aired in the UK on Frost on Sunday. While the 1+ disc has inserted footage from take 3 into take 2, they are video insertions only. The audio remains take 2 throughout.

The Beatles posted this version of the 1 poster, full of positive reviews from small and big sources.

Thanks to Steve Shorten for clearing that up. The ‘Please Please Me’ video is from the Ed Sullivan Show but the sound has been piched up. They pitched The Beatles up because as we all know, the Beatles tuned down for the 1st Ed Sullivan show, and Martin and Okell have put some elements of the record in the background. In ‘A Hard Day’s Night’, the studio guitar solo (and piano) has been flown in to the Paris footage. There was no call for that, the live solo was fine! As for the Intertel 1965 videos, it looks as though they’ve deinterlaced all the videos and slowed them down to 24fps, hardly an improvement!

The rest of the videos are great, though. Those sourced from 16mm film will be grainy, because that’s inherent in the film. Why they haven’t removed the ‘hair’ from the ‘Long and Winding Road’ film is a mystery. The Shea Stadium clips used to accompany ‘Eight Days A Week’ look as great as ever, and they have managed to edit this video so well that newbies will believe that The Beatles are actually performing this song in concert. Each clip on disc 1 is preceded by an animated title screen, which looks quite quaint, and a bit on the cutesy side. As bonus material, Paul McCartney doesn’t have much to add in his audio commentary, except that he tells the story of a man named Bill in the ‘Hey Jude’ video, a story which we only heard last year from Lizzie Bravo, but is otherwise not a story most people know about.

“Homeless Bill”, performing with the band.

Ringo takes a look at some of the videos, but doesn’t provide much insight either. They both agreed that Ringo’s horse had a habit of running away with him during ‘Penny Lane’. Talking about ‘Penny Lane’, isn’t it funny that all the Beatles were riding on white horses, except for one, and that was of course that Dark Horse himself, George Harrison!

So much for video. Blu-ray.com has this to say about the new audio, as it is on the video discs: The changes here may rankle some purists, but when taken on pure fidelity terms, there’s very little to complain about here. Some of the actual live performances suffer a bit from clarity issues, but generally speaking, this is a precise sounding release that offers excellent clarity and at times some relatively extreme stereo imaging in the 2.0 versions. The surround iterations are interesting, with an attempt to thrust the listener “inside” the music, though several of the tunes seemed to be awfully “wet” (i.e., lots of reverb) sounding. Due to that fact, some of the surround mixes sound slightly diffused at time, and those wanting a more focused “archival” sound will probably want to opt for the stereo versions.

Free As A Bird/Real Love – new audio mixes/versions:

McCartney’s vocals are way more up front, almost singing in unison with Lennon on especially ‘Free As A Bird’, but apart from that, the biggest differences are in regards to Harrison’s performance. His guitar lines in the first half of ‘Real Love’ are alternative takes and ‘Free As A Bird’ even has a different vocal take by him. Also, the intro to ‘Real Love’ is completely overhauled, Lennon’s home demo doesn’t come in until after the intro, the backing doesn’t come in fully until the second (half of the) verse. On ‘Free As A Bird’, you now hear John say ‘Turned out nice again’. On the original release that phrase was played backwards, which made it sound like John was saying his own name. So these are new creations, made to make these songs sound better.

The CD

Whereas the video disc is a mixed bag of audio with bits coming from the TV and concert performances, the CD sticks to the studio versions. As for the sound of the remixed CD, in general most of the vocals and instruments sound clearer and with better fidelity, this is due to them coming from the original studio session tapes and not from the downmixed masters, which of course are all at least one generation further down the tape duplication line, some more. Furthermore, instruments, vocals and sound effects have been placed differently than what we are used to from older stereo mixes. The 1999 stereo mixes from ‘Yellow Submarine Songtrack’ showed us what to expect, but these are all mixed anew again. ‘Eleanor Rigby’ sounds mainly like the YSS stereo mix, but has been redone to synch up McCartney’s vocals better with the backing. ‘Paperback Writer’ finally has the bass more prominent in the mix, mimicking the mono single mix. Too bad though, that they have mixed the “Frére Jacques’ backing vocals so low that they are almost inaudible. The tambourine in “Ticket To Ride” now occupies it’s own little space and you can sit and just listen to that element all through the song. ‘Can’t Buy Me Love’ now has crystal clear vocals in the opening, while the version we know always was a bit muffled. The backing track is in the middle, the vocals and guitar solo are spread across the stereo field. An extra guitar is on the right during each chorus. On ‘A Hard Day’s Night’, George’s lead guitar is so clear you can hear him pluck each string. This is a mixed blessing, as I think the famous intro chord loses a bit of it’s original impact. It will take some getting used to. The bongos have also been mixed lower. ‘All You Need Is Love’ now has a longer fadeout, but still not as long as in the mono mix. ‘Greensleeves’ has been mixed out, as per the copyright problem with that song. Whereas ‘The Long and Winding Road’ has the audio from the released version without Spectorization on the promo, Spector’s version has been used on the CD.

On the “Beatles 1” download album on iTunes, the 2009 remastered versions were replaced by the 2015 remixes at the stroke of midnight, Nov 6. There is nothing on the store page that acknowledges this, except a new @2015 Calderstone Productions copyright.

The accompanying book with the Limited Edition ‘Beatles 1+’ is not available to take out and read on it’s own, as it is glued together with the plastic cases that hold the discs, which is a bit annoying.