Love
© Sony

Mania Grade: A+
Music By: The Beatles
Distributor: Sony Classical
Details: 26 tracks, 78 mins
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"Love"

Love is a new Cirque du Soleil stage show, co-produced with Apple Corps and featuring the music of The Beatles, opened in June 2006 in Las Vegas. 

The soundtrack, released last week on Sony Classics, comes in a standard single-CD version, but the real must-have version is the deluxe double disc version, which includes the standard CD as well as a DVD-audio version of the same tracks in stunning 5.1 surround sound.  Love is truly all you need, as it proffers 26 Beatles classics put together in a fresh and unique mix from the original masters by George Martin and his talented son, Giles.  

The music for the show – and now the album – is a unique fusion of ten years of Beatles classics, combined and mixed together in a fashion where songs merge together and blend and contrast in an extremely interesting musical collage of Beatles’ 60s pop and rock.  The project was undertaken with the endorsement and support of Paul and Ringo, and Yoko Ono and Olivia Harrison.   

Love opens with a the a capella harmonies of “Because,” each verse broken into separate and distinct statements, beneath which waft the sounds of birds and insects taken from “Across the Universe” and “Sun King.” The sound design then morphs into a backwards version of the signature piano chord from “A Day In The Life,” bridged by the opening guitar strum from A Hard Day's Night which segues into Ringo’s drum solo from “The End,” morphing into “Get Back,” which, having the same beat and meter, makes for a fascinating and quite cool sonic synthesis.  Crowd noises from “Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” add a degree of expressive depth to the rendition.  Snippets of the guitar from “Julia” cuttings from “Revolution #9” as both herald a potent mix of “I Am The Walrus.”  Audience screams are overdubbed on top of the studio mix of “I Want To Hold Your Hand” to recall the heyday of Beatlemania.   

This musical blending affords long moments of nearly full songs, contrasted with pieces and snips from dozens of Beatles songs, including demos and outtakes.  George Martin – and if anyone deserves to be called the 5^th Beatle, it is Sir George Martin, whose influence on the Beatles’ recording sessions from 1962 to 1963 was immeasurable – and his son Giles have collected a wealth of musical moments that draws upon early demos and studio talk and final releases to craft together an amazing continuous soundscape that provides a whole new way of listening to these tunes – kind of a Music in the Key of B way of listening to these well-known and timeless songs. 

Among the high points are “Strawberry Fields Forever,” opening with John's original demo and progressing through into an early take of the song and then climaxing in a musical collage including the piano solo from “In My Life,” the harpsichord pattern from “Piggies” and lots more.  Harrison’s “Within You and Without You” intertwines with Lennon’s bizarre “Tomorrow Never Knows” in an even trippier harmonic union, held together by a Ringo’s hypnotic drum beat from “Tomorrow.” “Sun King” is played backwards as “Gnik Nus” over sinewy strands of “Within You Without You’s” sitar to achieve a neat new melody and tonality.  Tablas from “The Inner Light” play behind “Here Comes The Sun.”  Storm sounds from “Rain,” the jaunty rhythm of “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da” and McCartney’s drumming intro from “Why Don’t We Do It In The Road?” lead into the chorus from “Lady Madonna,” which funnel into Brian Jones’ saxophone phrasings from “You Know My Name (Look Up The Number)” which then emigrate into McCartney’s “Lady Madonna” piano material.  Provocative phrasings from “Penny Lane,” “In My Life,” “Sgt. Pepper’s,” “Piggies,” and “Hello Goodbye” harmonize with the ending of “Strawberry Fields Forever,” which morphs from John’s original acoustic demo (from Anthology II) into several different versions of the song as it evolved. 

The project afforded George Martin his second opportunity to compose a score for a Beatles song, the first being the string accompaniment for Paul McCartney’s “Yesterday.”  Here, Sir George scores a wonderful string part for an early demo of George Harrison’s “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” (including the cool deleted verse included on Anthology III.) The strings enter quietly with Harrison’s second verse and built and grow in a flowery, lyrical and wondrous mass, giving the song an entirely new quality, one of exceptional and powerful poignancy.   

Martin & Son have pushed back the boundaries, investing the same kind of creativity that blossomed when these songs were first created by the Fab Four + One.  Love will add to the enduring legacy of the band that changed pop music forever. It’s not just the unusual musical mix, but in many ways the stereo dynamic of these songs, cleaned up and sharpened to amazing clarity – especially in the 5.1 surround mix on the DVD – are honestly breathtaking.  Also, George Martin’s mixes of the songs from the Let It Be sessions really show how good that album would have been had he been producing it.   

The album includes a 28-page booklet full of psychedelic color photos, and introductory notes from both Sir George and Giles.