Beatles "Live at the Hollywood Bowl" out on CD 9/9/16, Vinyl on 11/18/16 *

What is demixing? Never heard of that.

 

According to George Martin:
We recorded it on three-track tape, which was standard US format then. You would record the band in stereo on two tracks and keep the voice separated on the third, so that you could bring it up or down in the mix. But at the Hollywood Bowl they didn't use three-track in quite the right way. I didn't have too much say in things because I was a foreigner, but they did some very bizarre mixing. In 1977, when I was asked to make an album from the tapes, I found guitars and voices mixed on the same track. And the recording seemed to concentrate more on the wild screaming of 18,700 kids than on the Beatles on stage.
George Martin
The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions, Mark Lewisohn

 

This is what I am hoping for.

 

I imagine Twist And Shout was the performance chosen for The Beatles' Story precisely because it sounded reasonably OK as it was. It tells us nothing about the quality of the recordings or performances of the other songs.

 

My point is that, in the least, demixing makes this is a digitally sourced album. At worst, it is a synthetic album.

Take a look at a demixing demo on you tube. Isolating a vocal or an instrument on a track is an iterative, imperfect process that doesnt merely EQ sound, but mathematically generates it. Im sure it will be amazing to hear, for instance, john and paul on separate channels when they've been locked together on one track since 1965. But what is it that we're actually listening to? It really isnt source material anymore.

 

Not at all. I remember it clearly. Apple announced that a "long lost" audio track was "found". A real "Lennon rocker". Hard-core fans and collectors were floored with the news.
The YS Songtrack, Hey Bulldog's re-insertion into the film and the new video had not yet been linked to this announcement. Turned out to be a marketing sham by some at Apple(Geoff Baker) who were clueless as to serious fans/collectors knowledge. Funny how a song on a worldwide, gazillion-selling album had become "long lost".

Here's a contemporary article on the debacle: (emphasis mine)

By Rip Rense, FOR THE INQUIRER
POSTED: May 23, 1999
Is there or is there not a newly discovered, never-released Beatles song coming? Contrary to official statements by Beatles spokesman Geoff Baker, the answer appears to be . . . no.

Earlier this month, Reuters news service reported that a "long-lost" song had been "unearthed" from a 1968 Fab Four recording session, and would be released as a single in September to promote the theatrical reissue of the group's 1968 animated film Yellow Submarine. A digitally restored version of the movie is scheduled to open in the fall. Baker was the source for the story.

"It's a real rocker," teased Baker, who wouldn't reveal the song's title. "John [Lennon] is singing on it. It's not a 'Free as a Bird' job. It's something that's already there. It's good stuff."

The news, picked up instantly by media around the world, sent die-hard fans scrambling for their Beatles reference books, trying to determine what the track might be. Every song the group ever recorded in a studio has been documented in The Complete Beatles Chronicle by Mark Lewisohn, and most "long-lost" songs surfaced on the six-CD Beatles Anthology series, released in 1995-96. Thus, revelation of a supposed lost song was puzzling.

And no wonder. Sources close to the former Beatles report that there is no "new" song. Yes, a Beatles single will be released Sept. 15, but the song is old. It's the Lennon/Paul McCartney tune "Hey Bulldog," which has been available on the Yellow Submarine soundtrack album since its release in January 1969.

Fans are upset by what is either a bungle or a publicity ploy, said Bill King, editor of Beatlefan magazine.

"It was unnecessary, and beneath the Beatles," said King, considered a leading expert on the group. "It's definitely 'Hey Bulldog.' What's the point of getting people excited, and then not delivering on the promise?"

Baker, spokesman for the group's Apple Corps company, was coy when asked May 14 whether an "undiscovered song" was due.

"It depends on how you look at it," he said by phone from his London office. "Some people - very few - will be familiar with the song. Only die-hard Beatles fans will know it."

By "very few," Baker would appear to be referring to the millions of fans who have heard "Hey Bulldog" on the certified platinum (million-selling) Yellow Submarine soundtrack available in stores for 30 years.

 

Do you know any more?

 

Sounds like some folks are going to be very disappointed......

 

Ya, I understand. I was very skeptical about this type of stuff when it first came into being 5-10 years ago, but some of the stuff that has been accomplished lately is just astounding to me, in that if you didn't know it wasn't originally stereo, you would never guess that it came from a mono source. (At least to me, but I'll admit, I don't have perfect hearing.)

It could be terrible, or it could be a nice listen.

 

Hey, don't look at me man, I only have ten children.

 

I have become rather skeptical of many quotes from George Martin, and I detect a hint of friction and ego clash with Capitol in that statement.

It is unclear which tapes he was discussing here. Was he listening to the first generation three track tapes, or direct copies, or something else? Why is it that tapes received from Capitol by Giles Martin are considered "an improvement over the tapes we've kept in the London archive".

George also had access to a stereo mix made from three track. Is this what he remembers as "bizarre mixing" with "guitars and voices mixed on the same track"? I'm listening to a stereo mix right now that has drums/bass on the left, guitars on the right, and vocals in the center. Clearly the guitars and vocals are separate.

And which recording seemed to "concentrate more on the wild screaming"? Is it the same one he apparently added more screaming to?

 

Well, for all the reasons you record these things seperately now. Drums and bass in particular are treated very differently when mixing down. Then there's EQ, volume levels, etc.

If the mix above is correct, then what George Martin must have been talking about is that crowd noise is bleeding in in one or more of those tracks and cant be isolated.

Perhaps Giles is not so much focused on instrument isolation, but getting the screaming lower.

 

Quiet, boy, quiet!

 

This is indeed the correct track config. Since Johns rhythm guitar was often very loud on stage it leaked a great deal into the vocal mics. Which is why at some points it sits more in the middle than on the right on the original mix. So i imagine it's mostly to move the drums more towards the centre, since the guitars were pretty wide sounding (because of the leakage) despite being recorded only on one track.

 

I think George Martin simplified this for the common man to understand, and was really talking about the guitars being so loud onstage that they bled into the vocal mics.

 

Maybe the missing Hollywood Bowl songs will show up on the films actual soundtrack album.

 

So wish Plangent had been aware of this, or involved.

 

I agree with the sense of friction and ego clash between George Martin and Capitol. He had been peeved at them from the get go when they refused to issue From Me To You and She Loves You and he had to shop them to other labels.

Then he is apparently in attendance with Voyle Gilmore and the Capitol engineers at the Bowl at the time of the recording, but he has nothing complimentary to say about any of it, despite decent-sounding mixes having been made from the those tapes since the 60s and goes out of his way to complain about it, to the point of adding more screams to the show despite complaining about the screams on the tape.

In that respect, George Martin is remarkably similar to John Lennon---both enjoy a reputation for honesty and integrity, but the reality is quite a bit more complicated and neither were quite as honest as we wanted to believe.

 

There isn't one. This is it.

 

DVD to follow?

 

There are other similarities too:

Both films are made by White Horse Pictures (with Nigel Sinclair as a producer on both), both cover the 'touring' period up to 1966, both have 'companion' albums that are not strictly a soundtrack of the film... just different big-name directors (who's names are on the albums). Seems to me that Apple got their ideas from somewhere

 

I always loved that. All the "the last album before...." or "a song from Beatles for Sale Langspieler.... Yesterday". I always found it charming that they couldn't remember these things.

 

Yes, when it comes to the UK original albums - whether released in Britain, Germany or anywhere else - it's a case of not remembering. But when it comes to the Capitol albums, I get the impression they never even bothered to find out in the first place...

 

And probably why it unfortunately wasn't even recorded on the guitar track for some songs (Long Tall Sally comes to mind)

 

Yes, onstage, Paul introduces Boys as being "on our first Capitol album" throughout 1964! He assumed it was, obviously never checked to find out. They couldn't even remember which song was on their 5 or 6 Parlophone albums (or which order their singles were released in, sometimes) so when it came to other territories, with their weirdo compilations- forget about it!