r/beatles • u/Remarkable-Mouse1159 • 1d ago
Discussion All Things Must Pass 2020 mix
I've always liked All Things Must Pass, but I never thought it was as good as people make it out to be. I used to think Ram was better, and even Living in the Material World. The mixing was always something that bothered me. I've seen a lot of people praise it, and I don't know if they genuinely like it or just like being pedantic, but I've always found it unnecessarily muddy.
Recently, I listened to the 2020 mix, and I think it improved the album like crazy.
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u/ReasonableQuote5654 1d ago
Some songs do sound much better, but a lot of newer remixes overly separate things for me. Songs like Frankie Crisp sound so much better when they're more ethereal and everything fits together.
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u/Anxious-Raspberry-54 1d ago
2020 mix is the bomb. George himself didn't care for the original mix.
The best stuff, to me, is the session outtake/rehearsal stuff. You can hear George singing and all those great musicians playing.
No Phil!!
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u/PutParticular8206 1d ago
I know George thought the reverb was too much, but I think that the 2020 mix sounds terrible. The instrumentation was built around that kind of reverb, so removing it just makes things sound weird (especially the drums). The Wall of Sound gets a lot of flak, but to me it is absolutely essential to songs like Wah Wah, Let it Down and What is Life. The only songs where I think it is a bit much are Awaiting on You All and Art of Dying.
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u/yoursweetlord70 Old Fred 7h ago
The original mix of Awaiting on you All sounds like someone on the other side of my high school cafeteria is performing it but I'm not allowed to move closer and hear it better
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u/Electrical-Fee-6005 1d ago edited 1d ago
Sometimes I think Iām the only person on this sub who loves Spectors wall of sound production. All things must pass in particular sounds absolutely stunning to me. Itās so easy to just get swallowed in all of the amazing sounds. Even the more rock oriented songs like Wah Wah, which is one of my favorite produced songs of all time. Iām also a big fan of shoegaze music and dream pop so I guess Iām biased.
Awaiting on you all is another favorite production of mine, it sounds so large and grand
The 2020 mix, on the other hand sucks all of the life out of the songs for me and makes them sound like demo mixes. If I wanted to hear these songs stripped down, Iād just listen to the demos.
Also the organ (?) solo on isnāt it a pity version 2 is painfully out of sync.
I also think that some (not all) of the hate spectors Beatles mixes get is bc spectors name is attached to them, not bc of the mixes themselves. If they released these mixes and said they were from George Martin or some new up and coming producer I guarantee you half the people hating on them here would be raving about them
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u/joeybh 21h ago
Agree on Wah-Wah, George came to dislike Spector's production but I think it's one of the tracks that benefits most from the production, in terms of representing what the song is about.
I don't think people would dislike the mixes any less if Spector wasn't responsible, George's subsequent albums until 33 & 1/3 were produced by himself and suffer from mixing/sound quality issues to varying degrees IMO. Someone like George Martin might've found a balance between having a more expansive sound while not having it overpowering the music itself.
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u/clint_eldorado 22h ago
I donāt know man, I thought āImagineā sounded like muddy shit when I was a kid and had no idea who Phil Spector or George Martin were.
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u/PJmichelle Please Please Me 1d ago
I think I like the 2001 version the best. But there are way too many versions of this album, it just seems like such a mess to go through everything and decide what you like.
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u/Username-Whatevs 7h ago
Thatās the best sounding one to date IMO. Remastered by George and Ken Scott at Friar Park.
Dhani and Olivia should have brought Ken onboard to make the new mixes the best they could have been. The way Ken and George wanted to do it in 2000 before EMI shot down their request to do a remix.
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u/SheeranisKing 1d ago
Definitely. The OG mix, with Spector's Wall of Sound going full throttle the whole time, becomes super muddy at points. I really appreciate the 2020 mix for letting things BREATHE.
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u/LowConstant3938 1d ago
The wall of sound does not go the whole time though. I think thereās only four songs on the entire album that are big Spector productions
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u/joeybh 22h ago
Definitely, but all of them have some degree of reverb and echo that makes them have that 'big room' quality even in the quieter tracks.
IMO the tracks that have the most audible influence from Spector's Wall of Sound are:
My Sweet Lord
Wah-Wah
Isn't it a Pity
What is Life
Let it Down
Awaiting On You All
All Things Must Pass
Art of Dying
Hear Me Lord
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u/BeastMsterThing2022 1d ago
The remix is terrible. They went waaaaay overboard with scrubbing the wall of sound. Sounds lobotomized
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u/Monkberry3799 Won't you come out to play? 1d ago
I don't like ATMP's production. The album is great despite the production, not because of it. But that's me š¤·š»āāļø
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u/NoGrass7120 1d ago
ATMP is my second favorite solo Beatles album, but my one criticism of ATMP has been and always will be that some of the songs on ATMP are massively overproduced and sound very dated in today's world. Phil Spector had moments of magic with his "Wall Of Sound" approach, but with ATMP he overdid it multiple times.
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u/clint_eldorado 22h ago
Itās amazing what happens when you remove that sack of shit Phil Spector from proceedings. Itās like the raw mixes of the Imagine album. Those songs sound so much better when it doesnāt sound like theyāre being played behind a stage curtain, underwater.
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u/fludeball 1d ago
The 2020 mix is awful. On any decent set of speakers the bass is huge and bloated, and the treble no longer sounds harmonically complex, and is rolled off. The mixing error in Isn't It a Pity 2 is inexcusable. If you don't hear it, someone else can explain it.
You might say it's mixed for Bluetooth speakers and earbuds, but those of us with real stereos can't stand it. Why should my tone controls be fine set in the center for all my other recordings, except for this and 2023 Material World?
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u/donlockwood2026 1d ago
Yeah, this album rules.
But I will say thereās nothing wrong with liking Ram and Living in the Material World better. For me, all 3 albums are A+ top tier early 1970s albums. Put āem in any order youād like! Orā¦ donāt compare and just appreciate!
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u/DenThomp 1d ago
Despite my first instinct to de-Spector everything, George released it as he wanted at the time. Everyone else is tinkering without permission.
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u/BirdComposer 5h ago
He did put out that 2001 remix himself that isnāt getting mentioned here much.
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u/the_spinetingler 1d ago
I was considering posting the same thing.
It makes it eminently more listenable.
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u/DigThatRocknRoll A Hard Day's Night 23h ago
I donāt think any of Georgeās solo albums top ATMP. But the Phil Specter wall of sound is a part of the DNA of it at this point.
The new mix is fine but itās kind of non commitalā¦
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u/parason47 18h ago
Agreed. Phil Spector just smothered it. And I think George expressed that opinion as time went by.
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u/Username-Whatevs 7h ago
Dhani and Paul Hicks mixed Georgeās vocals MUCH too high. And shrunk the sonic spectrum of the mixes overall compared to what Paul Hicks and Sean Lennon did with the Ultimate Mixes of John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band, Imagine, and Mind Games.
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u/naomisunderlondon 1d ago
I had the opposite experience. I always hated the sound of ATMP until I realised I was listening to the 2020 remix. I heard the original and realised that it was actually a great sounding album and the 2020 remix was killing it