The Smiley Smile Message Board

Have you guys seen this latest announcement? Sgt. Pepper is getting Pet Sounds Sessions-style treatment:

http://sgtpepper.thebeatles.com/

That 6 cd set is insane!  :o

... Why no Carnival of Light ???

Anyway good decision to clean up the vaults. Looking forward to this.

Sweet baby Jesus!!!!!  :o All that's missing is "Carnival of Light", and a 3D box.

Yeah, McCartney seems to be pro-Carnival of Light coming out. I'm surprised they didn't take the opportunity to put it out here.

Nevertheless, this looks like an amazing compilation.

So, The Beatles are jumping on the deluxe reissue gravy train.  I was wondering when they'd finally do that. 

Does this mean 2020 will be a massive Let It Be / Get Back box?  Hopefully with the Let It Be movie on DVD/BluRay. 

I wish they would finally put out Carnival of Light. Paul tried to release it as a part of the Anthology collection in the 90s, but I think it was George who rejected it. I don't think we're ever going to see it released, even though Paul has been trying to get it out for quite some time.

Ever since TSS, I've been hoping that The Beatles would take a good look at it and do something similar. I never dreamed that they would actually do something beyond a basic one or two cds of outtakes.

I'm disappointed that the 1992 special seems to be only blue ray. I have vivid memories and special(to me) memories of my dad and I watching it on The Disney Channel, and being amazed at the excerpts of the early takes of "Strawberry Fields Forever". 

Thanks for the heads-up! I nearly dismissed this as a belated April Fools joke.

I'm surprised this thread isn't getting more traffic. :brow

Did anyone listen to the video promo for this mix on the Amazon page? Those remixes sound bloody amazing. This may be a boxset I have to spring for.

I did. It sounded very amazing!

I think I'm gonna buy 2CD edition.

Two related video:

Said 50th Anniversary Release Promo :www.youtube.com/watch?v=9x-DQBuervc (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9x-DQBuervc)
1992 unreleased documentary film Promo: https://youtu.be/n2uUckwL6oo (https://youtu.be/n2uUckwL6oo)

I'll reserve comment until I can find out what Geoff Emerick's involvement was or is in this project, and specifically the remixes. If Geoff isn't involved, I'm not interested.

And I say that simply because Geoff was as crucial and as vital to the album being what it was and is as the band and George Martin. He won a Grammy for engineering it at age ***21*** and EMI was so shitty they kept the statuette in their executive offices for a time rather than just letting Geoff have it. And this was after EMI invited news crews to Abbey Road to film Ringo giving Geoff the award when it arrived at EMI.

That is quite an awful story. I read his book and it is one my favorite books I own. That being said, if the mixes sound great and they do more to help me explore and appreciate more of this music, I am definitely going to purchase it.

No doubt - actually Geoff's book is where I first heard that story about his Grammy debacle with EMI. I'm on the fence with this one for the moment, and part of that is also because of hearing how both Geoff and George Martin pulled whatever weight they could when the final mix of Pepper was delivered to be mastered, and breaking the rules so to speak, they gave specific instructions (demands?) that the mix they turned in was not to be changed, specific to EQ and balancing and the rest, by the mastering staff. They wanted it presented to the listeners exactly as they approved it and as the band heard it through the studio monitors, and specifically - maybe ironically - the band was hands-on for the mono mixing yet the stereo mix where the band wasn't as involved in the mix process was what helped break ground in terms of mixing a rock album in stereo.

People who dismiss Pepper as "hype" might not realize how in terms of the technology used to create those mixes, it simply had not been done prior to Pepper, and in a lot of ways like Brian's mixes for Pet Sounds and other 65-66-67 mixdowns, what was done in the process could not be replicated because a lot was done "live" and was hit or miss in terms of the mix being a live performance as much as a process.

I'm in no way saying anything about Giles Martin, I think he's done a superb and respectful job with perhaps the recorded legacy of all recorded legacies in terms of 60's rock. But at the same time, Pepper moved the goalposts in the concept of the recording engineer's role and importance in the process of creating the music versus balancing faders, tweaking EQ, and delivering a final mix. If those tabla drums had not been close-mic'ed, if Emerick had not cooked up a way to record McCartney's Rickenbacker bass to deliver those sounds the Beatles were always chasing but not quite getting, if he had not adjusted that tape delay slapback *just right* for Lennon's Day In The Life vocal, if he had not overloaded the preamps and compressed/limited the signal quite the same way as he did on key tracks, if he and the EMI staff had not basically invented EQ units to add to the signal chain to boost frequencies that conventional EQ's could not pinpoint, if he had not recorded and rode those faders on Ringo's ADITL drum fills to specifically answer each of Lennon's lyric lines, etc...we wouldn't have Pepper as we know it.

I'm happy it's happening, for sure! I'm just waiting to be truly excited about this considering the guy who George Martin himself requested get an engineering credit on the album cover at age 21 and won a Grammy should be intimately involved in something like this where creating mixes is involved. I don't know his involvement yet, so I'm waiting.  :)

Guitarfool, thanks for the post. It has been ages since I read the book so I guess I completely forgot about that anecdote! I totally see what you mean regarding that original stereo mix. I'll probably see this remix as a study version, so to speak. It's like, the original mono 'Don't Worry Baby' is perfect on the original LP, but I also truly dig the 2009(?) stereo remaster done by Linett, if only because it exposes harmonies kinda lost in the mix.

In that promo for this Sgt Pepper album I can hear horns and other instruments I never heard before (or at least they never caught my ear before), so I think I'm gonna dig this mix no matter what.

Edit; Watamushi, thanks for linking the promo vids!

Geoff is an old man. Judging the box set's worth by the level of his involvement strikes me as kind of dogmatic.

He's an old man? Here is a recent shot of Emerick and Richard Lush - another old man - aka the guys who recorded Pepper.
(http://cdn.newsapi.com.au/image/v1/238ee842dffe6b23c05a4fea18795da7?width=650)

They knew every note and edit that was made, I'd say old or not they have as much insight into the making and mixing of it as anyone and if it were not a factor in this set, I have to question it. But I just don't know yet.
 
Consider that George Martin would often get tired during the late night sessions to where his wife Judy would come pick him up and say one-liners like "looks like Teddy has lost his stuffing" to the younger Emerick and Lush, who would stick around many sessions until dawn recording various parts.

It also reminds me of a studio legend, I believe it was Earl Palmer, doing a rock session later in his career. A young producer told him a beat to play, and I think Earl's reply was "Son, I invented this sh*t."

I understand why he should be revered. But to say without him the box would lose all worth is a bit, again, dogmatic.

Also Geoff is 71. Yes, he is an old man.

The Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, which Rolling Stone named as the greatest album of all time, turns 50 on June 1st. In honor of the anniversary, and coinciding with a new deluxe reissue of Sgt. Pepper, we present a series of in-depth pieces – one for each of the album's tracks, excluding the brief "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" reprise on Side Two – that explore the background of this revolutionary and beloved LP. Today's installment focuses on how Paul McCartney's solo travels after the end of the Beatles' final tour inspired the title track and gave Sgt. Pepper its famous "alter ego" concept.


Beatles' 'Sgt. Pepper' at 50: How Paul McCartney's Travels Inspired the Title Track

http://www.rollingstone.com/music/features/beatles-sgt-pepper-at-50-what-inspired-the-title-track-w482061

Just listened to the remix today on Spotify. Overall, it's pretty damn different compared to what I'm used to! In my opinion though, the 2015 remix of "Strawberry Fields Forever" could have been done better. Some parts of it sounded kinda muddy compared to the other instruments, though that might just be due to Spotify's compression. The new stereo mix of Take 7 sounded amazing though!

Highlights for me would definitely be "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds", "She's Leaving Home", "Within You Without You", and "Lovely Rita".

Here is a nice unboxing video from a member at a Doctor Who board I read.  :lol

He does a nice job.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8dmjHesy-SA&feature=youtu.be

My 6-disc set arrived today. Listening to it right now. Wonderful experience!

I've now been through the box set entirely and then some! There are some remarkable tracks here.

There's been talk about whether or not The Beatles would attempt something like this again. If so, my proposal would be to not do a set of another album but, to, instead, do a box set for tracks between Pepper era and The White Album era (while picking up some tracks recording during the Pepper era not included on the current box). The track list might look something like this:

1. All You Need is Love
2. Only a Northern Song
3. Baby You're A Rich Man
4. Hello Goodbye
5. I Am The Walrus
6. Magical Mystery Tour
7. The Fool on the Hill
8. Flying
9. Blue Jay Way
10. Your Mother Should Know
11. All Together Now
12. It's All Too Much
13. You Know My Name (Look Up the Number)
14. Lady Madonna
15. The Inner Light
16. Hey Bulldog
17. Across the Universe

The subsequent discs could have outtakes for the above plus things like Carnival of Light, Christmastime is Here Again, etc. I think it would be a nice companion to the current box set.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D5caf6mAACA

32 mins in Brian is spoken about

I posted this on the Hoffman Board (and I suppose I'll regret it) but hey:

Why more about Sgt. Pepper, with so much already written?

Because of what hasn't been: about the music itself—how it made you feel. Not about the mix. Not the levels. Not the compression, the pressings, the matrix numbers.

After the tumult of '66, the Beatles could have done a lot of things: broken up. Retired. Written and recorded a whole new album of material from a point of cynicism and burnout, which could have sold merely on their name (though they couldn't have done that more than once, surely). They could have sung about fame, reviews, success, sales, money—by this point, it was what they knew best, what they had been living for a few long years.

But they didn't.

As summer dawned in 1967, something hit the record racks that was entirely unexpected: a new Beatles album that looked unlike any Beatles album previously. They didn't look like themselves. There were strange lyrics printed on the back. They appeared to hide behind an outlandish name, and stood beside corpselike wax replicas of themselves, amid what looked like a manicured town square, backed up by a myriad of faces from the past and present. No block letters screaming “BEATLES!”, no list of hits separated by bullet points. It did not look like an advertisement for itself, but more like an instant souvenir photo to grow old in a frame on the wall.

And the music reflected all that, a sonic wedding of old, new, borrowed, blue. It hit you immediately, but it took time to sink in—its treasures were not made obvious, as commercial teen pop songs had long done. You had to listen, not once or twice, but repeatedly—not with the frustration of banging your head against the wall, but with the layered revelation of nuance, feeling, meaning. These were strange new songs brought to you via familiar voices and names, yet this new strangeness was not a cheat, not a cop-out, but a clutch of lovingly-crafted letters from a group of friends we had not seen in a while—if we ever really saw them in the first place. They had been places, they had seen things, they had changed as a result. And here they were, back at last, and they were ready to share it all with us.

Not all of us bought the LP right away—for some of us, our first exposure to Pepper was on AM radio. Back then, most AM stations were loud and fast, with pop songs, ads, and banter nearly indistinguishable from each other. A loud rapidly-aging DJ  announced a record like making a pitch, then maybe  the Dippity-Do jingle or a Pepsi commercial might scream on, and then the bright jangly rock and roll. Suddenly, something was different: the Dippity-Do pace stopped in its tracks, and a jewel-like arpeggio came out of the transistor speaker: this is how I first heard this thing called “Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds”. I was four years old, on a lake beach in Okoboji, Iowa, and it was coming out of radios across the sand. I could walk down the shore with my plastic bucket and hear the whole mysterious thing. Was this The Beatles? I recognized the voices, but had no idea what it was all about. Then it was over, the loud DJ confirming that yes, this was The Beatles, from their new album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, the long, odd title always recited completely. Maybe 20 minutes later, after a BrylCreem ad, the station's onslaught would come to a halt and there would be this other thing about things “getting better all the time”. Again: The Beatles, from their new album. No 45s, just the album. And again, more songs from it, on every radio around, radiating into the summer sky.

A side point here: this was all in mono, coming across AM radio, through tiny speakers, outdoors, in the car, in your house on a cabinet record-player. Talk of mixes and brickwalls and processing never came up.

I was four. I could say, as many people do, that to hear Pepper now is to take them back to the moment they first heard it—in my case, on a beach, in swim trunks, eating Bugles and building sand castles. But that is merely what they call nostalgia, and does no justice to what was really starting to happen. Sgt. Pepper was strange and new and different, but it didn't scare me away. It got under my skin. It made me see things in my dreams, daydream colorful pictures against my white ceiling, look at familiar things differently: I could see how the irises of a girl's eyes could look like kaleidoscopes. I could see a regular old meter maid as something fanciful, even coquettish. There was a tune about being old yet still in love, at a time when youth was the constant focus on TV, radio, magazines. A buzzing orchestra graced another song that felt like a thoughtful walk in the garden during the show's intermission, that asked us to consider how small we really are, yet absolutely a part of something so big as everything. And to consider how it feels to walk out after a show into bright overcast daylight, to face the daily news and wars and fatal car crashes, and feel a horrible pressure build up into a moment of sudden decision: do we take some of the show with us, or give in entirely to grim reality?

It was one of the first things that welcomed me into seeing things differently, feeling what was under the most obvious surfaces we were sold every day. And like most great music and art, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band made me want to do things. Write things. Make things. Sing things. It touched the ethereal beyond the physical. Years later, George still backed this, saying, “This is available to everyone.”

The Beatles may have sold us a new record we paid cash for, but the free gift inside was so much more than a sheet of cutouts—it was a friendly invitation to make more out of what we already have. Some may have tried (and failed) to dance to it, others may have shut down in the face of its sudden strangeness, but for the many more of us open to it,  Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band was a window to a new way of living life. Identical haircuts, suits, and mandatory grins were no longer good enough for them, so why not for us, too?

A piece of plastic came out, housed in colored cardboard. Millions bought. Millions listened. Millions considered the possibilities, and millions acted differently than before. Changes and differences were made; many were triumphs, many mistakes. The world wasn't made perfect, and neither were we. Waking up to a beautiful sunrise can make us feel inspired to do anything—then we have the work of doing it, and though it can never be perfect, it's usually better than doing nothing. And a new sunrise comes for us another day.

This summer, there is a new Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band out there—a new mix, a new package, a new hubbub lending us a chance to hear it all afresh. Some complain loud and long that it isn't exactly the same as what they already had for 50 years—it's been changed, it's different. How strange to hear these things said against the spirit of a work that was about nothing less than change and difference, about moving into the new while keeping something of the old in its back pocket.

While some will continue to cling to the seemingly immutable—chart positions, waveforms, catalog designations, and factual numbers of other sorts—some will still be listening to Pepper and really hearing it, something even AM radio never had the power to stop back in '67. We will still feel it. We will still find ourselves in it, and find itself inside of us. And hopefully, we will let its wisdom and whimsy give us yet another fresh look at the world we live in right now, changing ourselves, changing it.

Good morning, good morning.

Hmmm, I think that George Martin's words on Pet Sounds (in relation to the Beatles late/mid-60s work) says it all. The Pet Sounds influence wasn't blown out of proportion like Emmerick says. Rather I don't think Emmerick was around the Beatles much outside of the studio enough to make a claim like that.

There's no reason for the producer/arranger/etc of the Beatles' music to be so humble like this:

"Without Pet Sounds, Sgt Pepper wouldn't exist."

...if it weren't true.

For those with access to Sirius/XM, the Beatles channel (channel 18) will have the following:

All times US Eastern

1 June, 5pm. The SP album will be played.
            10 pm. Alternate Pepper (with alternate takes)

2 June,  SP Forever.  1 pm, 8 pm; 3 June Noon; 4 June 10 pm.
(This is a 2 hour documentary)

In addition, on the PBS network there will be a doc, SP's Musical Revolution, at 8 pm on Saturday ( check local listings)