Revisiting an old book

There are things you may have and do feel like revisiting such as books you had for an awful long time and today I'm writing about one.

A good many years back was the internet was becoming more a thing and I first got online I learned from sites I visited not just a bit more about upcoming releases and some variants of Beatles albums but also of books that went more into the history the Band and their Singles and Albums together with marketing.

One name I learned about was the American Bruce Spizer who did write and I eventually got his more useful supplement to 2004's Capitol Albums Volume One box set which had more of the facts, figures and story of these albums than the official enclosed booklet.

Some years ago I bought a few in a kind of paper back form the first editions of a new series of books he wrote around specific albums and one I recently re-read was The Beatles Finally Let It Be, the title being a pun based upon just how long and how many attempts that sessions that ended up as the Let It Be album and its accompanying movie it book until they were "let be" and released.

In it for example you learn of Magic Alex who saw himself as an electronics wizard inventor who appeared to the ear of John Lennon and his plan to build for them the bestest recording studio around with 72 tracks in a world where most had only 8.

That plan effected the recording of this album they only found a 8 track system riddled with so much hum and noise it was simply not fit for purpose, a building where there was no provision for cabling from studio to control room to recording consoles and where the was so little screening of noises such as that from the boiler, it had to be turned off whenever they were recording.

He also inexplicably had eight speakers, one per track where you only needed two for stereo mixing.

Magic Alex was really way out of his depth lacking real knowledge but John believed him even though he was close enough to people who worked and even owned, as George Martin their producer did, studios and knew just what was really needed and possible.

That fascinating little story one of several showed just how gullible the four beatles, not least John were back then handing over vast sums of money to people who knew little but how to gain their money.

It was fun re-reading this volume.