It’s All in the Mind Y’Know…
…..and what you're doing. For George Harrison and Guy Laliberte, the founder of Cirque Du Soleil it meant creating a soundscape to accompany the ensuing visual performance tribute to The Beatles and their music now currently showing in Las Vegas of all places.
Behind closed doors at Abbey Road George Martin & crink Giles were given free reign to use anything the band had recorded. In anyone else's hands it would most likely have been an interesting little experiment but pedigree was wisely chosen over this weeks flavor with stupefying results. What you're confronted with is seventy nine minutes of continuous Beatles sounds like you've never heard; songs interwoven with others plus splices and snippets galore. Hard tho' it may be to imagine and equally a bit disconcerting upon an initial listen, experiencing "Drive My Car"/"Taxman"/"What You're Doing"/"The Word", "Lady Madonna"/"Hey Bulldog" or "Tomorrow Never Knows"/ "Within You Without You" as one and the same song with seconds of others flitting in and around the goings on are only a fraction of the mystery tour at hand. A painstaking effort indeed, loveingly crafted into a phantasmagorical symphony of sound requiring multiple listens to fully absord and appreciate.
Nowadays it's very easy to discount them, even fashionable in some circles. This serves as a reminder of how great they and majestic their music remain. It only took close to fourty years to make a Beatles album sound like a Beatles album sounded while psychedelisized. Scoring may be in order……..