Giles screwed the poochie. Let’s just be real about it. The Abbey Road 50th Anniversary remix was less than stellar. Poor Ringo sounded like he was shoved in a closet and told to play with a tin bucket over his head. While everything else was re-equalized to some degree, the orchestra remained as flat as it did on the 1969 recording session on that “wonderful” new transistor mixing console. The balance of the solo guitars that once shredded through the final tracks of Abbey Road into history… were off by a mile in this new dandy Giles Martin monstrosity of a “remix”. I hated almost every single thing about it.
So… of course… I gathered my crew together (that’s total bullshit… I don’t have a crew… but it sounded wicked-cool, didn’t it!?)…. ummm… where was I… oh yeah… I gathered all the multi-tracks that I could find, including unused vocal takes that (in my humble opinion) beat the heck out of the more “polished” Paul McCartney final vocal tracks… leads that were never used, bass lines that were beyond incredible, harmonies and backups that remained in the vaults, etc. I also left some brief elements from the Giles mix and the George Martin mix intact in some areas that I felt couldn’t be improved upon. The result: 3 mixes of the Side 2 Medley. The first one (below) had the only objective of freeing Ringo. I wanted to yank him outta the closet and put him back in the cavernous Abbey Road studio environment with the others. I think I’ve partially (at least) succeeded in doing that. More to come!