Given my deep and abiding love for all things Beatles, a number of folks have asked me in the last week or two about my thoughts on the “new” Beatles stuff, the Cirque du Soleil show and accompanying album Love. To be honest, it really doesn’t interest me much. None of the songs improve on the original (with one possible exception). But beyond that, even the more modest goal of providing some illumination of the songs we know so well is rarely achieved.
Don’t get me wrong. This is not a complaint about market saturation. I would pay insane amounts of money just to get access to all the tapes in the vaults. Seriously, I’d pay 15 bucks for a CD with a couple songs and a bunch of time spent recording while George tunes his guitar. And once I finished with that, I’d pay 15 bucks for the next hour. And would keep going until I ran out of cash.
But that’s not what Love is. Instead, it is a completely different approach of layering the songs we know so well on top of each other to create countless mini-medleys, making them bigger, more bombastic. It’s not a bad project, but nor is it one I can get particularly excited about.
Part of the problem is that I’ve never been very into the increasingly ubiquitous phenomenon of remixes and mashups. Very occasionally, such efforts produce something better than the original but in almost every instance, they result in something I have very little interest in. Sure, studio trickery and experimentation with sound is part of what made The Beatles so amazing, but it was all done for a purpose–to create something imbued with meaning. These new songs fail to do anything but skim off the best soundbites, creating a nice fireworks show, but not providing much opportunity to delve in deeply.
And while that makes perfect sense for a Cirque du Soleil show (which I’m sure is glorious and entertaining as can be), it doesn’t really produce a record that is particularly interesting on its own.
The one song that is a clear exception to all of this is Strawberry Fields Forever, which does a marvelous job of producing something new and unique. Unlike most of the rest of the songs on Love, it is not simply the track we’ve always known with some additional bells and whistles. It is a true reimagination of the song. The possibility of this was hinted at on the Anthology, but it is only fully realized here. Moreover, because it has its own internal unity, the fragments of other songs layered on top of it feel organic. The elephant in the room of the original does not haunt this track. It explores its own territory and reminds us once again of what a pretty song “Strawberry Fields” really is.
That one re-imagination alone made this project worthwhile to me, and it’s not like I didn’t enjoy the rest. I’m glad that The Beatles are still being experienced and I’m glad new ways of making that happen are being found. It’s just that, for me, it would be even more exciting to simply get to here some of the unedited stuff deep in the vaults. For those who are slightly less obsessive fans, this might be a far better way for you to experience them. And if so, more power to you. Part of the magic of The Beatles is that they can be experienced in so many different ways by different people, and none of them would be wrong…just different.
And if you love The Beatles and haven’t checked it out, why not take a little while to read my list of Beatles songs from Worst to First to remind yourself of all those less famous ones that are just as good as the big hits?
I’ll close with a final question for Beatles fans. One way or another (in Heaven, with a time machine, perfect cloning, whatever) you have a chance to see The Beatles in their mid-twenties play live. You only get to hear one song. What would it be? It’s tough for me to say. The raw urgency of “Twist and Shout” or “I Want to Hold Your Hand,” the simple beauty of “In My Life,” the glorious extended coda of “Hey Jude?” For all that, I think I’d have to go with “All You Need is Love.” It just so perfectly encapsulates an entire era, the joyfulness of their music, and the hope was a constant undercurrent. You can hear all the songs on a record – “All You Need is Love” feels the most to me like a shared moment. Thoughts?