‘Love’, The Beatles

For some people the idea of remixing the Beatles may sound as sacrilege. The purists may also chose to think that anything that is not the original, or is a variation of the classic songs, cannot be anything but inferior. However, the main principles behind ‘Love’ the remixed alburm released in 2006 have elements that can make any fan turn an ear.

All the remixing in the album was done based on 130 (allegedly even more) tracks from the original Beatles recording sessions and the force behind this remix was ‘fifth Beatle’ George Martin (along with his son Giles Martin). The resulting 80 minutes of music can only be viewed as a separate piece of art, (as totally as possible) removed from the original known recordings that produce a rather unique and different aural result. I must say that it is incredibly challenging to the ear and consciousness to drop the familiar intro of Yesterday, for the magestically merged intro of Blackbird, or to have Ringo Starr sing Octopus’s Garden with the backdrop of the string session from Goodnight, or even a simple acoustic version of Still My Guitar Gently Weeps.

‘Love’ is supposed to be the soundtrack to a Cirque de Soleil show, but its certainly an album that has to be listened to and analyzed veryu closely (incidentally George Martin has also mentioned that there is a code that has to be cracked in the album).

In a sense there is some affinity in ‘Editing the Waste Land’ and remixing the Beatles in the ‘Love’ album (with ‘The Beatles Anthology playing the role of the published original unedited manuscipts of The Waste Land). As with ‘Love’ it is the original Waste Land voices that are (or will be) used and my plan is to also use parts of the original ‘recoding sessions’ of the Waste Land before they were touched by Pound. Under this perspective George Martin was for the Beatles what Pound was for the Waste Land.

I like to think that this undergoing project of Editing the Waste Land does not have to do with the Waste Land per se, but it works like a removed from it ‘piece of art’, the same way as ‘Love’ acts on the original Beatles recordings.