The Beatles: "The Blue Album" 1967-1970

 

As I said in my review for the 1962-1966 release, this was the first Beatles product I actually parted with my money for, back in May of 1974. I really got into it then, as I preferred the more "rock" side of The Beatles. This was full of that sort of material - strong on rock, light on throwaway whimsy. It was always right up my alley.

Unlike the "Red Album", I feel this was much better in its choice of material, in terms of summing up its period in the group's career. Thankfully, it steered well away from When I'm 64 and Rocky Raccoon and the songs had The Beatles actually sounding like a proper rock band, something that wasn't always the case as far as I was concerned.

As regards the new remastering, I had most of the material from here in their post-2017 remastered/remixed formats from their album releases. Therefore, this was not as much of a revelatory remaster to me as the Red Album had been. Put all together, though, the sonic effect is still seismic. This material dates from the late sixties, remember - and just how good does it sound now? Bloody wonderful. There's your answer.

The previously non-remixed stuff from the extended UK Magical Mystery Tour album and the non-album singles sound great in their new clothes. Get a load of Walrus for starters. 

The elephant in the room with any Beatles compilation is, of course, what to do about the Abbey Road medley. It is clearly one of their most notable pieces of work, but you can't cherry pick from it. So, rather like Bob Dylan's lengthy narrative songs, it gets left out completely from any collection and virtually ignored in any retrospective career-covering assessment like this. Personally, I would have had it standing alone on a third disc. It should have been there.

Overall, the addition of more tracks on this collection has not had the beneficial effect that the equivalent did on the Red Album. It was actually quite concisely acceptable as it was. As I said earlier, the remasters are not quite as mind-blowing as those on the Red Album, probably because these tracks from a later era had a better sound to start with.

For my detailed Beatles album reviews, click here

All songs written by John Lennon and Paul McCartney except where indicated.

Following on from the freaky, psychedelic feel of Tomorrow Never Knows, which closed 1966's Revolver album, we got John Lennon's equally psychedelic masterpiece, Strawberry Fields Forever, which managed to successfully combine a winsome nostalgia for a place recalled from Lennon's youth with spaced-out drugged-up trippiness. In so many ways it was a classic song for 1967. Half hippy half engagingly lucid, it paved the way perfectly for Sgt. Pepper and almost in one stroke it killed off The Beatles as we knew them. It has to be one of Lennon's finest creations. Sonically, however, it has always suffered from an extremely clumsy stereo sound, similar to that on Revolver's Taxman. This latest remaster delivers a fine, deeper sound than originally, but, for me, it is still found wanting, sound-wise. Let that not detract from its atmosphere, though, which is indisputable.

With Penny Lane, in total contrast to Lennon's druggy Strawberry Fields, McCartney also delved into his nostalgia bank, thinking back to the blue suburban skies of his optimistic post-war upbringing. Like Lennon's song, it is positively overflowing with imagery from the past, characters and objects that stick in your head forever - the barber, the "clean machine", the pretty nurse. Like with Paperback Writer, McCartney is deviating from doleful love songs once more and gave us a kaleidoscope of multi-coloured images. The thing that has always grabbed my attention in Penny Lane is its vibrant colour. It is a song that lives. Even its brass section is just so beautifully vivacious. A truly great song.

The iconic album's introductory number, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band is totally memorable. From the "fade in" background noise, we get The Beatles' purest two minutes of “rock” thus far in their career. Proper guitar riff, great drum sound, excellent rasping vocals. An iconic introductory track to its album. 

Then, just as Pepper does, we segue here into With A Little Help From My Friends via Billy Shears - and yes, Joe Cocker’s 1968 version took the song to new heights, but there is just something so comforting about Ringo Starr’s homely, touching vocal. Just a thoroughly appealing song. Great instrumentation too. Perfect. Oh and I forgot the beautiful, throbbing bassline and Ringo's deep drum fills. 

Pepper's glorious opening triptych continues. That wonderful bass is also present here on Lennon's wonderful, atmospheric drugged-up fantasia. Was it written while on something? Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds? Was it about LSD? (yawwn). Who really cares - I don't. It sounds dreamy, trippy and from another world. Of course he was on something. 

In typical Sgt. Pepper style-changing from song to song, now we are treated to the tabla-drenched glory that was Within You Without You. I love this. George Harrison's bold effort in introducing "world" music to the pop music market. Anyone other than The Beatles would have been condemned in intolerant 1960s Britain for recording such "foreign rubbish". Harrison got away with it, though and interest in music from further afield than Britain and the USA started to develop, largely because of the inclusion of tracks like this on Beatles albums. In many ways, it is musically the most interesting cut on the Pepper album, and probably on this one too.

On Pepper, Lennon saved the best until last with A Day In The Life, a track that simply belies analysis, yet has garnered probably millions of words written in trying to do just that. What was it about? Who knows? I certainly don't. Lennon probably didn't either. Alienation? Disillusion? Yeah yeah yeah. It was John Lennon's finest moment. It was as if a detached, semi-interested Lennon had roused himself and arrived after the party had finished and McCartney had done with his whimsy fun, wanting to show them what he could do. The song sits brilliantly incongruously with the rest of its album. 

Ah - the ultimate hippy anthem, but also strangely melancholic All You Need Is Love. On this one Lennon seemed to be almost mocking the group's past as he sang brief snatches of Yesterday and She Loves You in the fade out. Why the intro to the French national anthem was used I have never quite understood. It is a simple, hippily-chanted song with a simple but beautiful message, perfectly suiting the "summer of love". 

It was 1967. Lennon was in his druggy element. It must be time for some more classic Lennon and it duly arrives in the yellow matter custard eggman magnificence of I Am The Walrus. I remember my mother, who although in her forties at the time, loved and knew her pop music, being completely nonplussed by this upon its release. Its effect, together with the film, was massive at the time. This bonkers song has been analysed and re-analysed endlessly over the years, so I won't start, but its cultural effect and the consequent public perception of The Beatles changed dramatically with this one song. They now became bearded oddballs - why, even that loveable Ringo has gone a bit funny. The remastered version sounds superb, full of bassy power. Get those knickers down.

I remember being on a bus in late 1967 going to the pictures with my parents on a dark November night and some teenagers were playing Hello Goodbye at the back on their tinny transistor radio. That was the first time I had heard it. Every time I hear it I can't help but recall that night. It is so damn evocative. I've never forgotten that moment, as if I knew I was listening to a part of history. Musically and lyrically, it is another hippy hymn.

A plaintive McCartney ballad, The Fool On The Hill is one of the group's most hauntingly beautiful songs. There is something a bit ethereal and vaguely hippy-ish about its characterisation and airy other-wordliness too.

Magical Mystery Tour is rousing and goofily appealing, with some excellent Ringo drums. We all know it, so there isn't much more to say other than it is vibrant, joyful and hugely nostalgic. It rocks out too, beautifully and brassily. The remaster has Ringo's drums sounding as good as they have ever done.

Lady Madonna was an ever-so-slightly underwhelming non-album single, led by McCartney's barrelhouse, clunking piano and lyrics in praise of a hard-working housewife. Just a little patronising? Maybe. "A tribute to women everywhere", said McCartney, the man who resented Jane Asher's career. Hmmmm. The song is upbeat and enjoyable, but I've never been a huge fan although I can't really explain why. Maybe I find it a bit trite. I like the blaring saxophone on it though.

Get those hands in the air, light up those phones - now all you girls sing, now all you guys....McCartney's seven minute-plus singalong in Hey Jude remains my favourite Beatles song of all. Why? Pure nostalgia. Simple as that. I first heard it at half time at a football match in October 1968. I was nine years old and I can still remember its effect on me - the minimalist, haunting opening, the timbre of McCartney's voice, the joy of the chorus. They ate into my DNA and remained. It was special and it now may be hackneyed and over-played but I still love it. Oh, and Lennon gets away with saying "fucking hell" a few minutes in and no-one - including the über-sensitive BBC censors - noticed!

For me, the fuzzy, rocking version of Revolution is by far the best one of Lennon's cynical, angry rant. I love the fuzzy guitar and the general upbeat, in-your-face confrontation and turmoil expressed throughout the song. Possibly the group's best rock number. It's just so 1968 too. Good God Almighty this new remaster has some speaker-shaking power to it. Most impressive. 

Back In The USSR was a great start that finds The Beatles actually become something approaching a rock band for once - McCartney's Beach Boys pastiche rocks joyfully from beginning to end. It was an undeniably great opener to its sprawling album and it opens disc two wonderfully well here too. 

Dear Prudence was Lennon at his most psychedelic and mysterious. It was impressively covered by Siouxsie & The Banshees in the early eighties. Love that deep bassline and trippy vibe.

Harrison's classic mature melodic rock, While My Guitar Gently Weeps, a track I have always felt would have better suited Abbey Road than The White Album. Oh, and it's Eric Clapton on guitar, though. What more could you ask for? Great song. It is so good that it stands head and shoulders above much of the material on its album. Harrison's best song to date.

Ob-La-Di Ob-La-Da was a somewhat clumsy calypso take-off that I can't help but like. McCartney's serving of reggae-calypso-ska is a bit dispensable but one can't avoid singing along to it and it provides some levity to the proceedings. Incidentally, as someone who was ten when this album came out I went several years thinking that Marmalade's hit version of the song was the only one. It took years before I realised it was a Beatles song. That was the way it was back then - one could take years to get round to listening to stuff. The radio was all I had, along with the few singles/albums that I could afford, which weren't many. Nothing was instant as is it today. The same applied to films, it could be years after a release that you actually got to see it.

Good old Lennon's wry Glass Onion. I have always loved his quipped lyric -  "I told you about the walrus and me, man, you know we're as close as can be, man, well here's another clue for you all -  the walrus was Paul". Good old sarky John, eh? He knew how to take the piss, didn't he?

McCartney's Blackbird was said to be an allegory for the US Civil Rights Movement and was a beautiful, haunting acoustic song. I could never quite link it with the Civil Rights Movement in my head, really. If it is a reference, it is decidedly clumsy. Its folky beauty seemed incongruous. 

The bluesy Hey Bulldog was written during the period of the Lady Madonna sessions. Lennon was tiring of acid-addled experiences now, and this song, by far the best of the material on the Yellow Submarine soundtrack album, signified the end of that. It had been a cool trip, man.

Actually dating from before Abbey Road, something signified by its position here nobody can really argue with Get Back as a copper-bottomed rocker, particularly with regard to the totally barnstorming version that appears on the Let It Be album. It is possibly The Beatles' best ever true rock song. Only right at the very end of their career did they start properly rocking. The version included here is the single version, which, to be honest, is just as good.

The Beatles got the blues on the underrated Beatles deep cut Don't Let Me Down featuring Billy Preston on keyboards. It was a Lennon blues rock number, written pleadingly to new love Yoko Ono. To me, it has always carried bluesy hints of McCartney's Let Me Roll It that we did with Wings and also I've Got A Feeling from the Let It Be album, another McCartney song. I so like the Beatles when they rock like this. Proper blues rock.

A perhaps surprise number one here. The Ballad Of John And Yoko was a slightly country-tinged rocker that told of John and Yoko's travails in trying to get married. Only Lennon and McCartney appear on the recording. It must have been a piecemeal recording. It sounds like a full band, so a good job was done in the studio. Lyrically, Lennon makes the song all about him and he tells us all how they're all out to crucify him. Yeah right. I love the big bassline though.

Another deep cut here. Harrison's upbeat, catchy country blues Old Brown Shoe is pleasant enough, but nothing special. Despite that, it's a song I have always liked, particularly the clunky piano, twangy guitar and George's lazy, effortless vocal. 

Harrison was on a roll in 1969. A song that became an all-time classic. Here Comes The Sun is impossibly catchy and summery. Everybody loves it and rightly so. Steve Harley & Cockney Rebel had a fine hit with it in 1976. 

Lennon's Come Together, with its "here come old flat top" lyric borrowed from Chuck Berry’s You Can’t Catch Me and his own I Am The Walrus “ju ju eyeball” stuff was a shuffling, rhythmic, Southern States bluesy number. It perfectly summed up the weirdness of the times and also the sexual freedoms hinted at, saucily, in the title “come together, right now, over me”, like something from a hippy orgy. 

I told you Harrison was on a roll - his now timeless classic, Something, was arguably his finest song, although ironically it was originally written for Joe Cocker. With beautiful lyrics and melody, it was a stunning love song, covered by many, many artists, including Frank Sinatra, who famously and erroneously credited it to Lennon and McCartney.

The less said about Ringo Starr’s Octopus's Garden the better, so I won’t. Ok, some may love it and that's fine by me.

McCartney’s Oh! Darling was a 50s style rock 'n' roll ballad, a song that Lennon would have appreciated, albeit seven years or so earlier. It sits a little uncomfortably on its album, to be honest. It's alright, but nothing more.

True to its title, I Want You (She's So Heavy) was possibly the most credible and heavy “rock” number The Beatles ever did. A mix of “progressive rock” progressions and changes and blues chords, it was a lengthy pleasure to those of us who wanted The Beatles to actually sound like a proper rock band for once. It was the last ever track the group would record in the studio with all of them playing together. Perhaps aptly, it ended abruptly, as indeed did The Beatles.

I have always enjoyed the more raw, edgy cut of Let It Be - with its muscular guitar solo and infectious percussion - that was used on its album to this single version included here. Over-sentimental it may often be accused of being, but I can't help but get a tingle down my spine whenever I hear it. It makes me emotional every time, so there you go. It works, whatever Lennon thought (he hated it, of course). 

I have never quite understood the opprobrium often thrown at Across The Universe. I find it most atmospheric and haunting. Give me that over Rocky fucking Raccoon or Martha My Dear any day you care to name. David Bowie did a fine cover of it on his 1975 Young Americans album too, another one that I seem to be alone in liking! There was, though, an earlier incarnation of the song dating from 1968 that Lennon wanted releasing as a single but it was (probably) rightly rejected in favour of Lady Madonna. The original version is weak and lacking in any real cohesion. This is definitely a song that Phil Spector's production improved immeasurably.

I Me Mine - this fetching George Harrison number has some searing guitar on it and a catchy vocal from him too. It has that typically George quiet-ish appeal and is very much the sort of thing that would appear on his subsequent seventies albums. 

A lot has been made of the supposedly malign post-recording influence of resident session nutcase Phil Spector, who basically put some strings on this song. For me, I love the plaintiveness of The Long And Winding Road, always have done and, as I said earlier, I have no problem with the strings. They are beautiful, as is the song - I don't get the criticism of it. It is a truly great one, let's be honest. McCartney still plays it in concert and everyone loves it, don't they? It would be in my top ten Beatles songs, so there you go. I like the brass orchestration in it too.

As far as I am concerned, this compilation should have ended with the appropriateness of The Long And Winding Road. Instead we get this over-hyped re-hash of a plaintive 1978 Lennon solo demo in Now And Then. It is the product of contemporary AI studio trickery. I know lots of people love it, but, no, not for me. Sorry. And in the end, The Beatles ended in 1970. Let it stay that way. 

The 2023 remaster track listing -

The original track listing -