In an era of declining music sales and rapid technological advancement, it’s still hard to fathom the sorry lot of the Beatles canon. Not only is the catalog of rock music’s most successful and influential act still not available for legal digital download, for the most part it hasn’t received even the basic remastering afforded pop music acts with a fraction of the Fab Four’s historical importance and consumer clout. Thus the Beatles catalog continues to be represented by thin-sounding, now two-decade-old digital mastering accomplished at the dawn of the CD era.
Worse, the culprits for the Beatle catalog’s perpetually sorry state of affairs seem to be the surviving band members and the heirs of John Lennon and George Harrison themselves. As partners in the band’s Apple company, they have final say as to what product music distributor EMI is allowed to issue — which, outside of the Anthology series a decade ago and the recent Love collaboration with Cirque du Soleil — hasn’t been much over the course of the 40 years since the band dissolved. Even more inexplicable is the fact that the Apple principles hired a veteran label exec two years ago specifically to develop a reissue program.
Typical of the situation were last year’s rumors — purportedly floated by an EMI insider — that the band was preparing a deluxe 40th anniversary edition of their monumental White Album. Instead, eager fans were eventually directed to the band’s official website, where they were offered a commemorative White Album fountain pen — for $395. And while the upcoming Beatles edition of Rock Band should please video gamers, what of the basic catalog of epochal recordings that inspired it?
Some Fabs fans already know that comprehensive sets of Beatles reissues are already available — they’re just not legally authorized. While an already sizable trove of leaked Beatles outtakes continues to grow (the latest, a radically expanded early version of “Revolution,” surfaced just last month, a cadre of more industrious — if legally unsanctioned — fans strives to preserve the band’s recorded legacy in other ways.
At least three different entities have now issued sonically upgraded versions of the Beatles catalog, usually using pristine vintage vinyl editions as source material for their digital upgrades. The most ambitious is a virtual “label” known as “Purple Chick” (the moniker is part wordplay on two notorious bootleg labels, Great Dane and Yellow Dog), which issues continually upgraded editions of each original Beatles album that include not only its officially released mono/stereo mixes and period singles, but every available alternate mix and studio outtake as well. Some PC editions are only two CDs in length, while their White Album sprawls over a dozen virtual discs.
When the separated master four-track recordings of a handful of Sgt. Pepper’s tracks surfaced in late 2007, Purple Chick quickly added yet another volume to its already comprehensive chronicle of the album. It can do so quickly because its releases are virtual, shared on the Internet via torrent, blogs and file sharing services, many of which are difficult to police at best. Then there’s the disclaimer the label adds to the equally accomplished artwork provided with its releases: “Fan Created..NEVER FOR SALE!!!”
The virtual label’s most ambitious project was A/B Road, an 83-volume set chronicling the Beatles’ January, 1969 sessions that eventually yielded Let It Be. Painstakingly assembled from a jumble of film sound outtakes and other sources, the set took a full year to complete. PC has also tackled other personal music obsessions, like the Beach Boys lost Smile sessions and, most recently, an exhaustive, 10-volume chronicle of Buddy Holly’s career.
So if/when September 26 rolls around this year and there’s no official, remastered 40th anniversary edition of Abbey Road available — or, worse, a $395 commemorative fountain pen instead — be advised that Purple Chick already has a version available (three discs worth, in fact) somewhere in cyberspace.
