The Beatles - Hey Jude (1969)

 

HEY JUDE

1. A Beginning

2. Revolution

3. Paperback Writer

4. Rain

5. The Inner Light

6. Across The Universe

7. Hey Bulldog

8. Lady Madonna

9. Hey Jude

10. Old Brown Shoe

11. The Ballad Of John And Yoko

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    The Beatles recorded a large number of songs that didn't make it onto their albums. These songs were collected on the Past Masters compilation in the late '80s, but I find it lacks cohesion when listened to from start to finish, and as such makes for an unsatisfying listen; as a result, I have been dividing those tracks (and select others) into several much more stylistically unified albums. This one is called Hey Jude, and is based on the compilation album of the same name that was released in over 30 countries that are not England in February 1970 and contains many of the same songs. The tracks included in this version, however, were all released on singles in 1966, 1968, and 1969, except for two. The radically different original version of "Across The Universe" was released on a charity album in 1969, and the orchestral introduction titled "A Beginning" was originally recorded for, of all things, their country song "Don't Pass Me By." I laboured over the song flow of this album for several years in order to make it as cohesive as possible despite being recorded over such a relatively wide period. Both mono and stereo mixes of the album are presented here, with mono being recommended because the mixes are stronger; however, the final two songs are stereo on both releases, and the mono "A Beginning" is just a fold-down from the stereo mix. 

George Harrison's Wonderwall Music soundtrack.

    All tracks were recorded in London, England, except for the backing track of "The Inner Light," which I would like to highlight. Besides some singing, none of the Beatles actually play on it; the instrumental take was recorded in Bombay, India, by guitarist George Harrison at the tail end of the sessions for his incredible Wonderwall Music (1968), which, orientalist or not, is in my opinion the best album to come out of the Beatleverse beyond some of Yoko Ono's work. The music here, which I find very beautiful, is played by several excellent Indian musicians: Ashish Khan on sarod, Mahapurush Misra on tabla and pakavaj, S.R. Kenkare on flute, Sharad Ghosh/Hanuman Jadev on shenai, and Rij Ram Desad on the beautiful harmonium. The genesis of the lyrics is also rather unique for the band; here is an excerpt from the Beatles Bible about how they came to be:

    "On 29 September 1967, Harrison and John Lennon had appeared on The Frost Programme to talk about Transcendental Meditation. The programme was a success and they were invited back on 4 October to take part in a further discussion. Among the other guests was Juan Mascaró, a Sanskrit scholar at Cambridge University, who later sent Harrison a copy of his anthology Lamps Of Fire. Mascaró highlighted a passage within it from chapter 47 of the Tao Te Ching [a major, ancient Daoist text], which he suggested could be set to music. The original words were:

Without taking a step outdoors

You know the whole world;

Without taking a peep out the window

You know the colour of the sky.

The more you experience,

The less you know.

The sage wanders without knowing,

Sees without looking,

Accomplishes without acting."

CD-quality down-low'd linc's here