[Author’s note: This review repeats, with minor adjustments, substantial portions of my prior review of the 50th anniversary reissue of The Beatles 1962-1966. Call it a remix with bonus tracks, i.e. the paragraphs that address this album exclusively, rather than both of them.]

Like many who straddle the line between Baby Boomers and Gen Xers, I have childhood memories of hearing The Beatles’ music, but didn’t buy my first album until after they had broken up. My first Beatles purchases—and for many years, the only albums of theirs I owned, other than the mandatory Sgt. Pepper’s—were the red and the blue albums: 1962-1966 and 1967-1970.

Greatest hits albums had of course become industry standard by the early ’70s, but like the act they celebrated, this pair of collections broke the mold back in 1973. A double-LP greatest hits package was a novelty in itself—but two double LPs? That’s crazy talk.

Unless you were The Beatles, that is: a group that entered the scene in 1962 as the world’s first popstar band and exited in 1970 as counter-culture art heroes, a quartet that set out to entertain the masses and ended up changing the world—the musical one, at a minimum.

In truth, four LPs was barely enough to skim the surface of what John Lennon, Paul McCartney. George Harrison and Ringo Starr achieved together, but damn if the compilers of the originals didn’t do a pretty fine job of collecting the highest of the high points. Almost all of the truly monumental songs from the lads’ eight years as a recording unit are present on the original 1962-1966 and 1967-1970 albums.

Almost.

Which gets directly to one of the main points of this release, a 50th anniversary CD reissue of the 1967-1970 double album. There are three notable differences between the original 1993 CD release and this 2023 reissue:

1. The Liner Notes: John Harris’ 2023 liner notes essay is a masterclass in this sort of thing, summing up beautifully the trajectory and velocity of both the music and the group making it, while hitting all the right notes in terms of how The Beatles and the culture influenced one another during this impossibly significant and fertile period.

2. The Recordings: Each and every recording here has been remixed and remastered by Giles Martin, son of the original producer Sir George Martin. The results—even sharper separation between elements and scrubbed-with-a-toothbrush sound—deliver clarity so noticeable that at times these almost feel like different recordings… wonderful recordings, but noticeably different from what long-time listeners’ ears anticipate.

3. The Tracklist: The original 1993 CD version mirrored the original LP release, with 28 songs. As we all know, though, CDs can hold substantially more music than vinyl LPs, and this reissue takes advantage of that reality by adding nine songs to 1967-1970, one to disc one and eight to disc two.

Disc one opens the band’s psychedelic era with both ends of the epic double-A single “Strawberry Fields Forever” and “Penny Lane,” moving quickly into key highlights from Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (the title track, “With A Little Help From My Friends,” “Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds” and “A Day In The Life”), Magical Mystery Tour (including “All You Need Is Love,” “I Am The Walrus,” the title track and more), and a handful from The Beatles (The White Album), closing with the one-two punch of “Hey Jude” and “Revolution.”

The second disc opens with more from The Beatles, including “Back In The U.S.S.R.” and “While My Guitar Gently Weeps.” Then, because the track order follows release dates rather than recording dates, we’re on to Abbey Road and the likes of “Get Back,” “Don’t Let Me Down,” “Here Comes The Sun,” “Come Together” and “Something.” The original version of 1967-70 closes with a trio from Let It Be: the title track, “Across The Universe,” and “The Long And Winding Road.” (I’ve wondered a few times how John felt about giving the last word on the band he founded and initially led to his friend-slash-rival Paul; I suspect at that point, in 1973, he genuinely didn’t care.)

On the 2023 reissue, the sole addition to disc one is “Within You Without You,” George Harrison’s subcontinental contribution to Sgt. Pepper’s. It’s as revolutionary as anything the group ever recorded, a sitar-and-strings jam whose hypnotic cadences and melodies still dazzle, with the sort of spiritual/philosophical lyric that would feature often in Harrison’s subsequent solo work.

Disc two of 1967-1970 undergoes the most substantial transformation of any of the four discs in this two-volume set. From The Beatles, they add a healthy dose of John’s late-era bluesy psychedelia in “Dear Prudence,” “Glass Onion” and “Hey Bulldog,” along with one of the most egregious omissions from the original: Paul’s gorgeous, purposeful ballad “Blackbird.” Later on, they add Paul’s “Oh Darling” and John’s “I Want You (She’s Heavy)” from Abbey Road, as well as George’s lamenting/raging we’re-clearly-about-to-break-up number “I Me Mine” from Let It Be.

Finally, we get to the fan-bait: “the last Beatles song,” a recording titled “Now And Then” that Paul, Ringo, and Giles patched together from a Lennon piano-and-vocals demo, guitar parts George laid down during the 1995 Anthology sessions, and more recent guitar, bass, and drums added by Paul and Ringo, plus strings. It’s a bit of a muddle, an underdeveloped song idea that’s been Frankensteined into existence using technology, but there’s no escaping the emotional pull of hearing John and Paul harmonize together one more time, with George and Ringo at least figuratively at their sides.

It should not surprise anyone that a writer whose fantasy baseball team was proudly named the “Whining Traditionalist Yahoos” still has a sentimental attachment to the original LP version of this album, complete with its less scrubbed-and-polished mixes. Those will always feel to me like the definitive recordings of these Beatles classics, but this lovingly presented, vibrantly remixed, and appropriately augmented reissue should nonetheless please fans of all ages and musical persuasions.

“And the time will come when you see
We’re all one and life flows on"

- George Harrison

Rating: A-

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