(Kingston, Ontario, Canada)

In my previous post, I ranked the Beatles’ studio albums from least best to best. This time around, I’m looking at the most significant post-break-up releases that you are likely to come across. And I’ll reverse the order, so that I’m starting with the “best”. My criteria is simple: which releases are best for repeated listening?

Past Masters, Volumes One and Two

I could end the list here. These are the only truly essential post-breakup releases. They contain every non-album track (singles, EPs) ever released while the Beatles were together. Volume One is solid, with a slew of classic singles.

But Volume Two is light years beyond. “Day Tripper”, “We Can Work It Out”, “Rain” (the drumming!), “Lady Madonna”, “Hey Jude”, “Revolution”…even the B-sides such as “Old Brown Shoe” and “The Inner Light” still stand up nearly 60 years later. Although it is technically a compilation, I would easily rank this in the top half of the Beatles’ studio albums. It’s hard to believe that they left all of this stuff off their regular albums.

Love

Whatever you think of the Cirque du Soleil show for which this remix/mash-up was created, this album remains a surprising and thoroughly enjoyable listening experience. The songs are truncated, turned inside-out, and even mashed together with other songs. In my view, those mash-ups are the ones that truly reward repeated listening. The collision of “Drive My Car”, “The Word”, and “What You’re Doing” takes two unheralded tracks, adds a third, and somehow creates a roller-coaster of middle-period magic. The mash-up of “Within You Without You” and “Tomorrow Never Knows” is almost as good.

Let It Be…Naked

The original Let it Be album was a mixed bag. (Very) Overproduced by Phil Spector after the band had called it a day, it frustratingly veers between unpolished “back to basics” tracks like “One After 909” and overproduced goop like “The Long and Winding Road”. Did that simple ballad really need strings, harps, and choirs? Let it Be…Naked seeks to rectify that, by presenting a crisper collection of songs without the overproduction. And it mostly succeeds. It’s no Abbey Road, but it’s a marked improvement on the original Let it Be. (And it’s also better than Get Back, the shelved first attempt at making a listenable album out of the Let it Be-era material).

1962-1966, 1967-1970 , and 1

All of these are perfectly serviceable compilations for the casual listener. The 2023 remixes/expansions of 1962-1966 (the “Red” album) and 1967-1970 (the “Blue” album) get my vote for adding songs that were left out of the original 1973 releases…and in most cases, the additions deserve the inclusion. Some of the remixes are especially good: “You Can’t Do That” and “I Saw Her Standing There” come to mind. But most of these early songs come to life in their newly-demixed/remixed form. Paul McCartney’s bass playing is a particular revelation.

I’m not as enamoured with 1. In part, this is because I don’t think all of the Beatles’ best songs were singles. “A Day in the Life” and “Here Comes the Sun” are just two examples of songs that are absolute classics but were never released as singles when the band was still together. There is also a certain degree of overexposure with the songs on 1 too, as every one of them was (as the title suggests) a chart-topping single. But I’m not the target audience for 1 anyway. It is still a great introduction to the band for those who are less familiar with their work.

Anthology, Volumes 1 to 4

When I first listened to the three Anthology albums released in the mid-1990s, I thought they were great. In addition to the “new” songs “Free as a Bird” and “Real Love”, they contained a bunch of previously unreleased/unknown songs that had only been rumours…or available only on dodgy bootlegs (“Leave My Kitten Alone” was much stronger than a number of songs officially released by the Beatles in 1964). The alternate takes were fascinating. And some of the live tracks were tremendous recordings, full of the energy of the band’s early days.

Over time, however, my opinion has changed. Yes, they are essential listening for serious fans. But, in most cases, the unreleased stuff was in fact inferior to what was released the first time around. as the years go by, I listen to them less and less. I cannot see myself ever needing to upgrade my mid-1990s Anthology CDs to vinyl. And, in a telling gesture, I have yet to acquire a copy of the new Anthology 4 (released in 2025)…which duplicates many tracks from the various “Super Deluxe” editions that have been issued in the recent past.

Live at the BBC (Volumes 1 and 2)

These releases features songs that the Beatles recorded for their BBC appearances in the early years of Beatlemania. In addition to many of their best-known tracks, the two Live at the BBC collections also include songs that the Beatles never released on their albums. For me, those are the treasures of these compilations. And I like how they recreate radio shows of the era, with brief interviews and introductions. But even there, my appreciation of these collections is qualified. For the most part, these recordings can be described as…fine. Without a true audience, there is no urgency. There are no lost classics. Just competent, but quickly recorded, renditions of songs in their repertoire. And given that these albums are both in excess of two hours long, it is hard to get excited about repeat plays.

Live at the Hollywood Bowl (2016 version, released with Eight Days a Week movie)

While this remixed collection of concert recordings from 1964 and 1965 sounds better than the 1977 Live at the Hollywood Bowl LP that it replaced, it still suffers from rough sound quality, rather sloppy performances, and less than ideal recording conditions. It definitely has historical interest, and shows just how insane the concert conditions were. However, like the BBC and Anthology recordings, I can go years without playing this record.

This ends my Beatles “mini-series”. I’ll continue to include the occasional music-related post, but the next post will definitely be travel-related!

[The copyrights in the album covers lie with Parlophone/Apple Records. And the photo at the very top of the post is of the famed Abbey Road studios in London, England.]