THE ERROR THAT LAUNCHED A THOUSAND + NEEDLE-DROPS!

Sir George was wrong.

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Some thoughts ahead of the long-long, long, long-awaited Beatle CD remasters skedded for September:

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When about 22 years ago, the world was hyped to death with the Beatles first appearance on CD, the producer of the material, George Martin, claimed that the first four Fabs albums were not up to snuff, stereo-wise, so we got Please Please Me, With the Beatles, A Hard Day's Night and Beatles for Sale in digitally drecky mono that most hated.

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Martin said in interviews that the first four were never really recorded in stereo, but rather, "two-track mono."

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Well, he was the one that was there, but to my ears, only the first LP could be categorized that way-and even that is a stretch-and certainly AHDN and BFS were 4-track full stereo productions that demanded stereo CD releases.

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And Apple being, well, Apple, there may have been a question of time/issue(s) to wit, the CDs were eagerly awaited, and Martin knew that to let the old stereo mixes out would have at that time ended up sounding like some of the future Capitol Albums Vol. 1, so the mono mixes were technically superior.

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But, to my ears the first four always sounded flat, and stale. Even sickly sterile.

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Of course capitalism hates a vacuum, so those devilish bootleggers conjured up some pretty decent needle-drops of the first four LPs in stereo. And even though-as Martin alleged-they did not sound right, they were nonetheless what most North Americans-and some Europeans- grew up with, crap, or not.

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And I have digressed to this historical wank-fest by way of setting up my thoughts of what the new remasters of the first four will sound like.

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Unlike Martin, who probably had 18 months at best to prepare the releases, the Apple rocket scientists have had about 6 years.

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So, look for half decent stereo mixes of even Please Please Me, as going back to the two track tapes and centring the vocals-which by the way Martin did for I Want To Hold Your Hand for the Red CD comp in the early 90s-should produce much better imaging than vocals, hard right, centre, mostly nadda.

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But perhaps even a bigger audio addendum will be whether they get the mono mixes of the first four to sound fresh and alive.

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THAT outcome, may be the real news!