Today finds us with a triple-pronged post about The Beatles. Yes, those The Beatles. One of the very first records I owned and loved, in 1971 at the age of eight, was a scratched vinyl LP of A Hard Days Night, which for some reason came to me inside the cardboard sleeve of With The Beatles. I played that thing to death, and later moved on to most of the band’s other catalogue. But after the age of 14 when I discovered The Clash, and John Cage shortly thereafter, I never voluntarily listened to The Beatles again. As an adult I have mostly felt about The Beatles the same way I feel about Beethoven; geniuses who revolutionized music, but all due respect, I’d most often rather listen to Bach.

Eighteen months ago I started working as the sound designer on Julie Taymor’s new film Across The Universe, and I was surprised to realize that not only do I know the lyrics to almost every Beatles song by heart, but the music is stunning. This may seem like a vapid or disingenuous statement, but I mean it sincerely. At this point in history, The Beatles music has become an archetypal cultural touchstone to Western Civilization that functions in the same way folk music has operated for earlier cultures.

Across The Universe is a musical featuring 35 re-imagined Beatles songs. It tells the story of a young man from Liverpool named Jude who comes to America looking for his father and becomes embroiled in the counter-culture of the 1960’s in New York. The film features new versions of the songs, sung live by the actors, with a few celebrity cameos from the likes of Bono (I Am The Walrus) and Joe Cocker (Come Together). The film is 95% finished, and I think it’s great - one of the most enjoyable working experiences of my career, and the most elaborate sound design I have created since The Abyss in 1989. The film is scheduled for a release in September 2007, and you can see the (corny but effective) trailer here.

Since I’ve been spending so much ear-time on The Beatles, I keep stumbling across Beatles-related items and cover-versions, and today’s mp3 post is one of my favorites. Laibach are a group of Slovenian conceptual-industrialist crypto-nationalist parodist nutjobs who archly responded to charges of fascism by saying “We are fascists as much as Hitler was a painter.” Their 1988 re-working of Let It Be is a radical demonstration of the durability of The Beatles music; the songs maintain their integrity and essential function even when torn to pieces musically, politically, sonically, and artistically. If you like this track as much as me, be warned that it is not typical of the Uber-metal thrashing screaming stuff which beautifully comprises most of the rest of the album. You can buy this version of Let It Be here. Laibach have an official site here, and their Wikipedia entry here is efficiently enlightening. Thanks to my colleague Igor Nikolic for suggesting this record to me.

The final prong for today is the extraordinary book Recording The Beatles by Kevin Ryan and Brian Kehew. If you are interested in the historical development of the recording studio, or you love gear, or you are a technically-inclined fan of popular music, this is a bible. Exhaustively, obsessively, insanely, the authors have documented the minutiae of everything related to how The Beatles records were created. We get floor plans and architect’s blueprints for the studios at Abbey Road, detailed photos of knobs, nostalgic recollections from the tiniest of minor technicians, diagrams of who sat where, lists of percussion instruments used on specific tracks, on and on and on. And the whole thing comes in a beautiful collectors-edition package big enough to prop open the heaviest asylum door. Could these guys PLEASE make another book like this about Lee Perry??? Mind-boggling and highly recommended. You can see excerpts and buy it here.