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The legacy of The Beatles has been as carefully guarded as any musical entity in the history of music. Sample the Fab Four’s discography at your own peril — you’ll have a cease-and-desist order in your mailbox faster than you can say “The Grey Album.” The Beatles corporation should be commended for allowing music to be used only for what they deem “high-end” projects. Whether a Cirque du Soleil show meets those standards is another debate, but this soundtrack to that production is really what caught acrobatic-dance-resistant Beatlemaniacs’ attention when it was first announced. Famed Beatles producer George Martin and his son Giles were enlisted to create the soundtrack for the choreography. What they came up with is a glorified internal mash-up, with the Martins pulling individual parts from various Beatles songs and segueing them into a mostly seamless mix. It’s a cool novelty for Beatles fans, often clever — the “Drive My Car”/”The Word”/”What You’re Doing” and the trippy “Within You Without You/Tomorrow Never Knows” mashes are highlights, while “A Day in the Life” and “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” elegantly blend in original demos and alternate takes. It’s mostly a great use of source material, but it is essentially a “remix” album. While DJs George and Giles had a show to think of when making the album, one can’t help think what a better stand-alone project this would have been if helmed by a more contemporary, progressive mind, someone without an inexorable tie to the original band, like, I don’t know, say, Danger Mouse. Given The Beatles’ admiration for experimental music (see: McCartney’s Liverpool Sound Collage album and Lennon’s more esoteric post-Fab work), it would be great to see something like LOVE sanctioned for a younger generation. Some have suggested this album reveals new things about the Beatles music, which it does occasionally. But a full-bore experimental project would have revealed so much more. Imagine the fascinating music that would result if The Beatles’ estate loosened their trademark clamps and let other musicians have at their catalog. For a cutesy once-or-twice listen, LOVE is all you need. If you crave something more imaginative, troll the ‘net for illegal, renegade mixes. Just don’t tell Yoko I told you to do it. (Mike Breen) Grade: B-
This article appears in Dec 6-12, 2006.
