The real surprise about this remastered version of the Beatles’ swan song-besides the offputting title-is only that it took so long. Paul McCartney has never been shy about his loathing for the strings and dense production added by producer Phil Spector when the fracturing Fabs couldn’t even stand to be in the same room with each other, let alone finish the record themselves. Did he have to wait for the knighthood before he had the clout to get his hands on the master tapes? Beatlephiles (maybe the most minutiae-driven group in all of rock fandom) have been trading bootleg de-Spectored versions of this material for years-it’s truly incredible just how much marginalia and apocrypha from the Beatles’ studio sessions is floating around. But for those of us not off the deep end, this is a good opportunity to finally test whether McCartney’s conception is really better than the Wall of SoundÑand, ideally, to treasure both versions.
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