Mastering 'Love'

'Fifth Beatle' Martin, son create soundtrack of Fab Four classics

Mark Brown, Rocky Mountain News

Published November 21, 2006 at midnight

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Going into Abbey Road's massive Beatles tape vaults to create an all-new mix of the band's classics seemed like no big deal when Giles Martin took on the challenge.

Even if it was the highly respected Cirque du Soleil troupe that wanted the music for its new production of Love, the odds were stacked against the project because the band has rarely allowed a third party to use its music.

"The first thing I thought is it was never going to happen. The political tightrope you're walking with the Beatles . . . to unlock a door like this is incredible," Martin explains.

Rather than spend months in the studio and then learn the project wasn't happening, Martin says: "I thought the best thing to do to be useful was to catalog everything . . . get the original tapes and put them in high resolution into Pro-Tools (recording software)."

Even though the Beatles' tapes are among the best-preserved in modern music, no one had ever made backup copies of that irreplaceable music.

"I just thought it'd be a useful thing to do for the Beatles. If I could leave anything behind, I'd make sure that the masters were secure."

While doing that, Giles logged what key and tempo each piece was in, just in case. By the time that was done, the Cirque project surprisingly had the green light, and Martin - with his father George, the band's original producer - got to work making the swirling, hypnotic Love soundtrack, due in stores today.

The album is a mash up, taking songs from throughout the band's career and blending them. So Lady Madonna includes parts of Ob-la-di Ob-la-da, Why Don't We Do It in the Road, Hey Bulldog, I Want You (She's So Heavy) and more. It's amazing to the ear how seamlessly songs from different eras mesh.

"Players generally have the same signature or footprint. (Drummer) Jim Keltner plays behind the beat. Stewart Copeland plays in front of the beat," Martin explains. "With the Beatles, they play in a certain way. It doesn't matter what song they're playing, they still have their own feel. When you have Ringo and you put Ringo next to Ringo, it's still Ringo. It's all Beatles . . . they had the same sort of heartbeat to them."

Songs are snipped up and stitched together, vocals are taken out of one song and put into another, creating all sorts of left-turns where the listener least expects it.

Faced with limitless options, the Martins just dove in.

"You just sit and you do what you think sounds nice. People think there's some sort of rule. With music you just make a decision, just stick your neck out," Giles Martin says.

In the new mixes, "people just hear different things. The Beatles are so familiar to lots of people. If you change something, people are going to start listening again. It's like a beautiful wife or girlfriend just changed the color of her hair. You look at them again."

The 5.1 surround sound remixes are so clear that fans can hear details and hard work, as Giles Martin was able to go back to the absolute master tapes for every note.

"On A Day in the Life . . . that's them there. You can hear what they're doing, what they're trying to achieve. We just liked the warts-and-all approach."

Giles Martin would do some rough mixes, and George Martin (who produced every Beatles album except Let It Be) would let him know if he was on the right track.

"He's the Beatles' producer, not me. What he added was the authority of being able to say 'This is something that John would have liked or George would have liked.' Because he'd know. You can never second-guess people who have passed away, but he's better than most other people at doing it."

The hardest aspect of the project? What to leave out.

"It's frustrating. I did a version of Girl, which is very nice, which we had to take off because it wasn't in the show," Martin says.

Does this open the door for more projects? Fans have long complained about shoddy sound on Beatles CDs, first released in 1987.

"Knowing the four (Beatles and their estates), they don't want to rehash back catalog for the sake of it. There is a valid request to remaster CDs because they were done when digital audio was not very good. The CDs should sound better than they do," Martin says.

Bands like The Who and Steely Dan have been unable to do some reissues they wanted to because tapes were lost over the years. The Beatles collection, however, is well-preserved.

"With the Beatles tapes, there are two strokes of luck. One is that they kept everything," including alternate takes, a practice rarely seen back in the '60s, Martin says.

"The other great thing is they were on tape that doesn't disintegrate. It was just pure luck . . . they're immaculate. They used the right tape. That's simply it."

As a result, "the material itself just sounds fantastic," Martin adds.

"People say 'How do you make it sound young? How do you make it sound fresh?' We press 'play.' "

Mark Brown is the pop music critic. Brownm@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-954-2674

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