Anthology 2
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British music journalists and Beatles experts Kevin Holwett and Mark Ellen discuss the classic Anthology releases, shining a light on the fascinating stories behind these albums which tell the story of the development of The Beatles career.
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Kevin Howlett
Mark Ellen
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Kevin Howlett
00:00
Hello, I'm Kevin Howlett and I'm with Mark Ellen, and we have the wonderful task of talking about the delights that you can hear on the
Anthology 2 collection
. And this covers the Beatles
output from early 1965 through to February 1968.Share
00:17
It's an era, I think, when they become the ultimate record makers. They really started to discover the studio and it's so fascinating to hear what they're doing in the studio; the experiments they're doing. This is the era that covers
"Help",
"Rubber Soul"
, "Revolver"
, "Sgt. Pepper's"
.Share
Mark Ellen
00:36
It's the sort of pop emperors then very gradually merging to being the psychedelic voyages, isn't it? So experimental.
Share
Kevin Howlett
00:44
And this is the time when they start to do remakes, they have the time to record a track, get somebody to do a rough mono mix of it, have it cut to an acetate disc, take it home, listen to it and then a few days later come back and think, "Do you know what? I think we could probably do that differently."
Share
01:01
So, on this collection you get some alternative takes of songs and a few that I really like. For example, when they were recording
"Rubber Soul"
, they did a version of "I'm Looking Through You"
and to all intents and purposes that could be a master take.Share
Mark Ellen
01:17
It's amazing. They worked on it for 11 hours in the studio I think, and there's a 12 bar instrumental solo in this very early version
Share
Kevin Howlett
01:23
And its very soul-influenced, because I think in this era they loved soul music; Stax Records. I know that
George
was particularly into soul, and in fact there's an attempt at a "Booker T. & the M. G's" type instrumental in this collection
as well. Just called "12 Bar Original", where they're trying to be "Booker T. & the M. G's".Share
01:41
But when they do
"I'm Looking Through You"
, it sounds finished. But, the thing is, Paul
then comes up with another section for the song, "Why, tell me why, did you not treat me right?" So, they have to re-record it.Share
Mark Ellen
01:53
But the speed at which they do things, they recorded, I think, 11 tracks in six days for
"Help"
and one of those was "Yes It Is". Which is just brilliant, it's that wonderful waltz, it's got the three-part harmony that became a trademark for later on for "Because" and for things like "This Boy", John
is just making this song up really.Share
02:08
It's under construction as he sings, isn't it? He's making up the words, and at one point just dissolves into laughter and goons-type humour. But I love the little details and it's such a collaborative effort. Everything is done as a group.
Share
02:20
They're all looking for the other ones input into how to arrange and perform a song. There's a lovely bit where
Paul
starts playing "Yesterday",
and you imagine that "Yesterday"
was always going to be a solo song, not true. There he is, you can hear him teaching the chords to George
.Share
Kevin Howlett
02:32
Yes, because he's tuned down his acoustic guitar by a tones so he said, "You know, it's in G for me, but it will be an F for you".
Share
Mark Ellen
02:37
That's right!
Share
Kevin Howlett
02:38
And so it seemed, yes, they were going to do a band version. But again, I love this about their approach to recording. What serves the song best? Well, okay, we'll just have
Paul
play acoustic guitar and sing.Share
02:50
And then we'll have this beautiful string quartet. Not sugary, sentimental strings but a kind of chamber music, baroque kind of string quartet.
Share
Mark Ellen
02:58
Yeah, brilliant decision.
Share
Kevin Howlett
02:59
And also, they did another brilliant string arranged performance for
"Eleanor Rigby
", and I love the fact that on this collection
you can hear George Martin's
score being played by this double string quartet without any of the vocals on the top.Share
Mark Ellen
03:14
You hear all the details, it is absolutely exquisite. You're not distracted by the singing. You get to the point listening to these things when you're so familiar with the finished version, and when you hear a version without all those details on them in your head, you start filling them in.
Share
03:27
There's a version a bit later on of
"I Am The Walrus",
and I found myself listening to that and still going, "Are you sir, sit you down, father, rest you". Those things are just completely built into your memory.Share
Kevin Howlett
03:37
And that's so fascinating because having heard the basic version, you've then got to think up all these embellishments that now just become absolutely inextricably linked to the song. It's that quantum leap that they make, the imagination that comes into finishing a song, you have the feeling that other groups would have maybe done a few more layers but not got to the ultimate level. That's what they do.
Share
Mark Ellen
04:03
Best example of works in progress I think is
"Strawberry Fields",
because I think there's three versions of it, which is just wonderful, so you can see it's evolution, you can see the whole gestation of the song.Share
04:13
It starts off as a little tiny finger picked, almost like a folk song, and then you get the kind of in the studio slightly more multi-layered, kind of partially constructed masterpiece. And then you get a third version which is almost exactly as it appears on the record.
Share
Kevin Howlett
04:28
But
"Strawberry Fields Forever
" and "Penny Lane
", what a double A-side! And the evolution of "Penny Lane"
is just as interesting as "Strawberry Fields"
.Share
04:36
The way that
Paul
lay out all these keyboard parts at the beginning. This is the start of when they're not necessarily all playing together at the beginning of a take, so it's just maybe drums and a piano, and then they layer, and layer, and layer. I remember George
saying about Sgt. Pepper's
, it got a bit bitty, and that's their approach to that.Share
04:58
Later, they would reverse that approach, but in this period was the end of this period, that
Anthology 2
is covering, it's very much layering and layering different bits, bringing in outside instrumentalists.Share
05:09
So all those interesting textures on
"Penny Lane"
, the woodwind, the cor anglais, all those things are added and it is an absolute masterpiece, and "Penny Lane"
and "Strawberry Fields Forever
", when you hear these early versions on Anthology 2
, it just really improves your enjoyment of the master, I think, just to know how it got there.Share
Mark Ellen
05:30
Absolutely. You see the whole process. One song that really is extraordinary to hear I think is "
Tomorrow Never Knows
", which is an extraordinary song anyway. But to hear this original take a very early version of it, you know, The Beatles are already leaping into the future. Although the version of it here is: it still needs a lot of work. It's nothing like the one that they eventually released.Share
Kevin Howlett
05:50
Because the final one with all the tape loops, backwards guitar and all the effects they put on it is an absolute masterpiece, but you can just see the germ of the idea of the drone, it's just on one chord, basically.
Share
Mark Ellen
06:01
The bass just plays one note, basically.
Share
Kevin Howlett
06:03
And so, it's so fascinating to see how they got from mark one, as they called it, to "
Tomorrow Never Knows
". Really interesting to hear how they experimented in the studio, and one of my favourite songs on here is a version of "And Your Bird Can Sing",
the track that John
and Paul
are overdubbing vocals on, is very birds-like. You know, if you know the music of the birds and you can hear that jangly sort of guitar.Share
06:28
They remake the whole thing completely for
"Revolver"
later on, and they have a lovely guitar riff that's played by John
and George,
but you can hear in the background this early version of "And Your Bird Can Sing
", but John
and Paul
are just giggling their way through.Share
Mark Ellen
06:41
Falling about, when he says "When your bike is broken, will it bring you down?" Which is just great.
Share
06:46
Another one that's worth hearing just for the atmosphere is
"Hey, You've Got To Hide Your Love Away",
where Paul
breaks a glass. And I can now never listen to that song without thinking that Paul
has broken a glass.Share
Kevin Howlett
06:56
John
sings, doesn't he? "Paul's
broken glass, broken glass."Share
Mark Ellen
07:00
"A glass, a glass he broke today." Again, I can't listen to that song without hearing that in my head.
Share
Kevin Howlett
07:05
And that's the first time we hear
John
call Paul
"Macca
" on record.Share
Mark Ellen
07:09
That's right, "Are you ready,
Macca
?" And I find it impossible to hear "A Day In The Life
" without John's
voice, "sugar plum fairy, sugar plum fairy", when he counts you in.Share
Kevin Howlett
07:18
Well,
"A Day In The Life"
is a great example of how they built a track, and it's a great song to begin with or two songs in effect, because you have Paul's
song in the middle, which just happens to fit with John
song, but they worked on the lyrics of the rest of "A Day In The Life"
together.Share
07:35
But they obviously knew that they needed to do something, but they didn't quite know what to do at that point, so they have Mal Evans, their roadie counting out 24 bars in the middle and at the end.
Share
07:46
And then of course, what they decide to do is put an orchestra doing something completely random, every instrument going from the lowest to the highest note, and it's organized noise really.
Share
Mark Ellen
07:57
It is, you can listen to this and fill in the gaps in your head.
Share
Kevin Howlett
08:00
And on the
Anthology collection
, you can hear that orchestral recording in isolation. They've stripped away all the rest of the track and you can just hear what the orchestra is doing, and it's an amazing noise that they're making.Share
Mark Ellen
08:11
Astonishing, absolutely astonishing.
Share
Kevin Howlett
08:13
And it was so avant-garde to do that at the time. That's really out there, avant-garde classical music they're doing, and they put it into this mainstream pop album.
Share
Mark Ellen
08:24
But there's another extraordinary thing, I think the instrumental version of "Within You Without You", and it just remind me of how much impact that song had at the time. In the middle of a great big western pop record, was this extraordinary eastern music, and when you hear it — this is just the instrumental without
George's
vocal — when you hear it, you realize that it was George's
vocal, and his lyric, and the sound of his voice that gave it that western pop sensibility. That managed to make eastern music fit in the Beatles
record.Share
Kevin Howlett
08:52
Yehudi Menuhin had just done a collaboration with Ravi Shankar, so you had that west meets east flavour and that's what you get with
George Martin's
scores while you get those strings slurping and sliding with the Indian instruments, so you get western and east altogether on "Within You Without You". And again, hearing it without the vocals, you can hear it so clearly.Share
Mark Ellen
09:10
And it's extraordinary to heat that detail if you concentrate on the individual instruments. I mean, the drumming,
Ringo's
drumming on "Good Morning" is absolutely astonishing. The input they provided for each other's songs.Share
09:20
You know, the sense that they were always a collaborative unit is so obvious from listening to these records, and we really ought to play which song was sensibly abandoned. Which one should have been released? Because, I think sensibly abandoned There's a there's a song called "
If You've Got Trouble
", which is really just The Beatles writing to formula.Share
09:38
And there's one called
"That Means A Lot"
, which I think is a Paul McCartney
song which contains the lyric, "Love can be deep inside, love can be suicide". So, I don't think we've been a terrifically commercial manoeuvre on that.Share
09:49
So they sensibly didn't release those under The Beatles name. The great track that should have been released earlier, it was eventually released, was
"
Across The Universe
",
because there is a version of "Across The Universe"
here, well worth hearing.Share
Kevin Howlett
10:01
There are lots of different versions of
"Across The Universe
" now in the Beatles catalogue. It first came out on a charity album for the World Wildlife Fund, that's a version with effects and some girls singing on it who just happened to be outside the studio and were invited in.Share
10:18
And then of course, it was overdubbed by Phil Specter with a lavish orchestra and choir for the
"Let It Be"
album, but this early take of "Across The Universe"
is very simple, extremely moving and I am just astounded that it wasn't considered for the "White Album"
.Share
10:32
It was recorded just before they went to India. And then when they came back from India, they started work on the
"White Album"
. But they didn't even think of a track that they had recorded in February of 1968 as being a contender for the "White Album"
. Astonishing.Share
Mark Ellen
10:46
And it's interesting that that's still in that period of really complicated, multi-layered, multi-track recording.
Share
Kevin Howlett
10:53
So, this
Anthology 2 collection
is really when they're being ultimate record makers, pushing the envelope in the studio and it's their psychedelic period, especially the material they're made in 1966–67. When everybody else started to do psychedelic recordings, The Beatles, as usual, moved on.Share
Mark Ellen
11:12
Absolutely.
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Kevin Howlett
Mark Ellen