Monday, April 13, 2009 | 9:31 p.m.
To surprise a staunch Beatles fan with fresh Beatles news is no small achievement. Beatles fans are as interconnected as any sub-culture on the planet. Even a whisper of a new bootleg find -- like John Lennon playing a version of “Don’t Let Me Down” on pocket comb and tissue paper -- sends Beatlemaniacs scrambling, asking, “Where can I find an mp3 of John and the comb?” But Dennis Mitchell, who remains Las Vegas’ foremost Beatles authority, owes that news of The Beatles’ plans to reissue all of their original music as digitally remastered CDs “came as a bombshell.” The boomlet: Last week, The Beatles’ company, Apple Corps, announced that it would distribute the upgraded versions of all of its original albums, plus post-breakup issues of “Past Masters” and “Rarities” to coincide with The Beatles edition of the Rock Band video game.
The release date is Sept. 9 of this year, or 09/09/09, and I’ll note here that 9 was Lennon’s favorite number.
The music will be distributed in stereo and mono formats, in two box sets. Downloadable versions of Beatles albums and songs are still in limbo, though, as Apple Corps is reportedly in a tug-of-war with the computer company Apple over how much to charge for the downloads. Fight it out, I say. Just give me a price for these new CD box sets, where to find them and 18 hours of uninterrupted listening time. I’m good with that.
To the blooming frustration of Beatles fans across the globe, and even across town to Mitchell’s home studio, the release of sonically muscled-up versions of The Beatles original work is long overdue. The new sets mark the first comprehensive remastering of the band’s music since its full catalog was unleashed on the public in 1987. To refresh, 1987 when you could still, theoretically, purchase albums at record stores (these were actual, physical businesses that sold music on vinyl discs for a posted, non-negotiable fee). The year 1987 was also when Terence Trent D’Arby was scooting up the charts with his album of the moment, which I think was titled, “In 22 Years, They’ll Still Be Talking About Terence Trent D’Arby.” In the time since, D’Arby has changed his name to Sanada Maitreya (Swahili for “Groping for Relevance”), and The Beatles CDs have come to sound tinny, lifeless and thin … sort of like D’Arby himself.
Mitchell has been patient, but not silent, in his wait for better Beatles music. To borrow and tweak a line from Tommy Lasorda, Mitchell is a man who bleeds “For You Blue.” For nearly two decades, he was an on-air force at KKLZ 96.3-FM and is the host of the 18-year-old syndicated show “Breakfast With the Beatles.” So he knows better than anyone that The Beatles’ music has been in dire need for an upgrade to give the band’s outstanding studio work its best audio forum. Over the past few years, the best examples of such remastered work have been the “Love” soundtrack and the two Capitol Records boxed sets of early Beatles album releases (if you ever want to spirit away 45 minutes, ask Mitchell about the sound quality of Capitol’s remastered, mono version of “Rubber Soul”).
Not content to wait for an official release of digitally remastered material -- which would have been the sensible thing to do -- Mitchell actually began work on digitally transferring “The Beatles Collection,” a 1978 box set of the albums the band recorded for release in the U.K. A total of 3,000 of these 13-album sets were delivered to American record stores, and the set has become a rare find for any Beatles fan who is not Dennis Mitchell. “I had my lab coat on, going through these albums and doing a clinical vinyl transfer to CD,” Mitchell says. That’s when he heard Apple Corps and EMI had already done the work for him. Bummer of a coincidence, Dennis.
Mitchell is hardly upset, though, what with all the spruced-up Beatles music in the offing. “I like the idea of a mono and stereo version of ‘Sgt. Pepper,’ a mono and stereo version of ‘The White Album,’ ” he said. “If you listen to the 1987 (sound) levels, they’re waaaaaaay down there. I’m really looking forward to listening to them, definitely.”
The Beatles’ might give CD sales one last boost before the format dies completely. “The format is all but dead now,” says Mitchell, who has joined former KKLZ DJ Dan Lea for the Web site 963classicrock.com, which hearkens to the late, great days of KKLZ, a time when the station really rocked. “Sales are in the toilet. But I think the Beatles can give it a boost for six glorious or eight weeks, then it’ll be the last gasp, the last straw, however you want to put it.”
Put it on my Visa card. That’s how I want to put it.
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