Phil Spector, who had just recently severed his ties with reality, had a very clear and interesting notion about mono, the format that for most of his career as a producer defined his sound, and which he preferred over stereo even at the face of anachronism. This did not have anything to do with the quality of the sound (quality, or the lack of it, wasn’t the issue) or a Brian Wilson-style auditory defect that forced him to use only one speaker. His reason was obvious yet still surprising: mono was indestructible. As a format for broadcasting and consuming popular music, it was practically fool-proof. According to Spector, at least where hearing is concerned, the dynamics of stereo are hugely affected by the listener’s position relative to the sound source.

Thus, unless one is using headphones (hardly available at the time) or is seated at an exact distance to the source and never moved, certain parts of a song—a guitar lick, the hi-hat, or heaven forbid, the vocals—will either be lost or muddled. The final result is that the song’s fidelity would be compromised. Not a problem with a mono mix. In mono, no matter where you were in the room, no matter the size of your speakers or your radio’s reception, a mono mix’s, well, oneness guaranteed that you will still hear the same piece of music that was recorded in the studio. Everything is balanced and undisturbed. That fabled Wall of Sound will remain standing; Diana Ross’s voice will still be crystal clear; and that drumkit will still sound like it was recorded in a humongous bathroom. In other words, the song as it was intended remains intact. Uncorrupted. True.

Of course, all these abstract, old-school concepts mean absolutely nothing to us folks in the 21st century. In the age of the personal touch, the idea of not being able to tamper with or even choose how to enjoy your own hard-earned downloads is ludicrous. However, if you strain your ears, there are ghost notes in Spector’s production. His obsession with mono puts forth the ideal of the producer as God and the final mix, his indisputable law. This is not megalomania. This is art. To be able to dictate the rules of the game has always been a true artist’s hallmark. Kubrick, Picasso, the Marquis de Sade, Yoyoy Villame are but a few of those who have time and again asserted their individuality and revolutionized their respective eras.

But even greatness has to step in line with the march of time. How quickly one era’s technological wonder becomes the next one’s clunky curiosity. Mono, for all the superlatives heaped upon it by Spector, could not hold back the change to stereo any more than silent movies could hold back the change to talkies. I myself prefer stereo because I want stuff coming at me from both sides. I want to be constantly reminded that both my ears are still working. And when I’m wearing headphones, I love the feeling when a certain sound goes in one ear and out the other. It tickles.

So it was with a mix of curiosity, cynicism, and mild confusion that I received word of The Beatles’ mono remasters. What the hell is so special about those mono releases? Didn’t they burn those at the Tennessee bonfires during the “Bigger than Jesus” scandal? Still, I secretly approved of the sheer genius of it. Those clever bastards, I thought. What could a man do but search online? There was some sort of waitlist for the remasters (this was a year ago). Crunch time. The rave reviews, techie blogs, the obscene price tag, the frantic search on eBay. It kept me giddy and bug-eyed for a whole month.

I’m no audiophile. I just love listening to music in whatever shape or form. I like the best stuff. The trumpets have sounded that this was the Holy Grail of boxed sets. Still, I’ve listened to the whole catalogue so many times that whatever new revelations were in store in listening to it again even in the “definitive” version would be few and, at best, underwhelming. I was half-right. The first five albums yielded very little new insights. Four of them have already been released in mono 20 years ago. And yes, those sounded like crap.

Skip to Rubber Soul, their sixth album. A collection of elegantly crafted pop tunes which coincidentally saw the seeds of their studio-tinkering starting to bud (pardon the pun). They were also participating more in the mixing sessions, a fact that the geniuses at EMI marketing didn’t hold back in establishing the supreme superiority of these remasters. You see, the mono mixes had the Fab Four’s personal touch, being the only format that mattered at the time (stereo was for hardcore audiophiles!). The stereo mixes they simply tossed to George Martin and the engineer. Yes, it’s like EMI is saying the stereo masters are crap.

Mono is a focused ball of energy, power balanced on a tightrope of electricity. This occurred to me as the whole band joined in after the guitar lick on opener “Drive My Car.”

Ringo was really pounding on the drums. I believe the Filipino word for this is bumabayo. Whereas his drum kit was always relegated to literal “side” status (incomprehensibly panned all the way to the right or left side) in the stereo mixes, he takes center-stage in mono and really drives the song forward. The bass was fuller. When you’ve got the rhythm section locked in, the song turns into a monolith instead of a bunch of scattered rocks. On the normally grating “Think for Yourself,” the fuzz bass now enhances the rhythm instead of distracting you like some pesky housefly. So this Spector guy really was onto something.

The trend continues on the more sinister Revolver, where on “I’m Only Sleeping” a stray back-masked guitar lick appears where it shouldn’t be. Clearly, the band was more inclined to play around with the mono mixes. Score one for EMI. And is it me or does “Yellow Submarine” actually sound better?

I’ve always thought Sgt. Pepper was hugely overrated. Still do. It’s not a bad album; it just doesn’t live up to the hype. This is mainly due to the fact that it sags in the middle. The culprits, as any fan will tell you, are the draggingly dull “She’s Leaving Home” and the draggingly duller “Within You Without You.” Somehow in mono the former is livelier (it’s faster than the stereo version) and Paul seems to be singing in the right key now. Elsewhere on the album, “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” achieves heights in the chorus never reached by the stereo version.

Too self-aware for its own good, Sgt. Pepper cannot hold a candle to Magical Mystery Tour, a tossed-out, hastily compiled soundtrack to a universally reviled TV movie. It starts with the rousing title track and never lets up, the highlight being “Strawberry Fields Forever,” a song every bit the equal of “A Day in the Life.” By this time of course, the same amount of attention was being lavished on the stereo mixes. No doubt the band realized that stereo offered even more room to play with, especially in light of the now growing number of available tracks (four). This is no more apparent than in the monster White Album.

This eclectic album (forays into noise, reggae, avant-garde, heavy metal, folk, all lassoed by a jarring Old West motif) probably motivated the coinage of the word eclectic. It’s no exaggeration to say that the mono version blew me away for the second time. The band’s jagged magnum opus has now become a perfect album. How so? “Don’t Pass Me By,” Ringo’s regrettable time-waster, has been transformed into a fun saloon romp, all thanks to a little nudge to the pitch control knob, similar to “She’s Leaving Home.” Yup, sometimes a few BPMs make all the difference.

The White Album heralded the last gasps of mono. From then on the Beatles would mix exclusively in stereo, while mixing in both formats became exclusive to singles. The real revelation was not how the number of channels revolutionized records, but that it didn’t matter how much meat you packed. It is crucial to strike the proper balance, and this is no more apparent than in the seemingly insignificant differences in the remasters. Sgt. Pepper could’ve been a real classic. Ringo could have been a real contender for best singer-drummer. Whole wars could have been averted. Billions of lives saved. See? There’s some truth to that shit after all. (Ely Buendia)

“Phil Spector mugshot,” though generally attributed to the Los Angeles Police Department, belongs to the public domain. “Wall of Sound” by wauter de tuinkabouter, via Flickr. Some rights reserved. “Kodak Stereo-Phonic” by piterart, via Flickr. Some rights reserved. “The Cavern replica of the Beatles Story museum (2)” by Hens Zimmerman, via Wikimedia Commons. Some rights reserved.

I don’t remember when I first saw the faux adjective “Beatlesque” being used in a rock feature. I didn’t know what it meant (I still don’t), but I had a nagging suspicion that it had something to do with a band’s melodic adventurism. Still and all, I find the exercise of defining something in terms of another thing that’s wildly vacillating—“Please, Please Me” wouldn’t even pass for a distant cousin to “Everybody’s Got Something to Hide (Except for Me and My Monkey)”—well, futile. Wikipedia’s suggestion that “Beatlesque” refers to “pop bands and musicians who were influenced by The Beatles and make music that is very similar” is about as helpful as a hole in the head. Because, after all, there are questions to be answered, among them “Is it more John or Paul?,” “Is it more moptop or Revolver?,” “Does it have sitar?,” and similar queries. If you think about it, Oasis’ not-so-subtle stabs at Beatlesqueness are a function of fashion—wire-rimmed specs, ‘70s-Lennon denims—rather than the music itself.

To adjudge a musical piece as “Beatlesque,” in my opinion, is as clear a reference as ether, an element hailed by author Joe Milutis as “the nothing that connects everything.” In any case, had my favorite lexicographer Samuel Johnson been alive today, I’m sure he’d come up with something more enlightening, or at least characteristically hilarious (such as his self-deprecating definition of a “lexicographer” being “a harmless drudge that busies himself in tracing the original, and detailing the signification of words”).

Pardon my abrupt detour to scientific and lexicographic territories in the context of the Fab Four (of all things); sometimes I get carried away.

Anyway, of lesser popularity is the mangling of the boys’ last names (i.e., “Lennon-esque,” etc.), a phenomenon that has more to do with the extravagant sloth of rock journalists than the clear-cut identities of Dr. Winston O’ Boogie, Macca, and Harrison (for some reason, it never occurred to critics to associate anyone with Mr. Starr, who just turned 70 last week by the way). Meanwhile, when the Fab Four’s moniker becomes part of a locale-specific prepositional phrase—“The Beatles of India,” “The Beatles of Zimbabwe”—it may mean one of two things: that the band in question is an explicit tribute act residing in said country (pull a search and you’ll choke) or, yes, the biggest band in the land (wherever that land may be). That it has earned a spot in the lexical canon (i.e., the Oxford English Dictionary circa December 2009, not the aforementioned “free encyclopedia”) is enough to ease my scowling at such pop-culture coinages.

Interestingly, other Beatles-related idioms have informally made it to people’s vocabularies. When someone alludes to a person who’s this-and-that-band’s “Yoko Ono,” I guess we can be in agreement that she (or he) is not the band’s best friend. I personally don’t approve of this dismissive usage—mainly due to the scope and influence of Mrs. Lennon’s art (evident in the career-spanning compendium Yes Yoko Ono)—but I guess history has been unkind to the Japanese widow.

As Lennon and Macca aimed to be “England’s Goffin and King”—a dream they doubtlessly achieved and even overshot—countless band members the world over aim to be viable replicas of the killer duo, to enjoy, even for a brief moment, being their band’s “John” or “Paul.” (Aldus Santos)

Samuel Johnson portrait from Wikimedia Commons. Liam Gallagher image (“oasis.liam.gallagher.007”) by freschwill, via Flickr. Some rights reserved. “Neil Harrison—Bootleg John Lennon” by hddod, via Flickr. Some rights reserved. Bed-in image (“Jlbedin3”) by Roy Kerwood, from Wikimedia Commons. Some rights reserved.

“Kandinsky saw the spiritual and the earthly as opposites, but for indie rock’s spiritual explorers, they are inextricably linked.”

Berman, Judy. “Concerning the Spiritual in Indie Rock.” The Believer Magazine, August 2009.

There is a long-pervading contention that says music is both material and spiritual; as such, parallels to religion have been drawn and argued in contexts academic and otherwise. Berman, in Concerning the Spiritual in Indie Rock, provides an analysis of the musical object as a bearer of an experience similar to a religious phenomenon.

An inevitable extension of this mindset is the fact that artifacts of musical production—as well the places that have a direct connection with music—hold a fair amount of quasi-religious significance as well. Period instruments, old orchestral scores, and drafts all fetch a high value in the auction markets around the world not because of the default value associated with them (being old objects), but rather because of the stories that they beg to tell, about what they have gone through and/or what they were made to do—much in the same way that alleged fragments of Christ’s cross used to be traded at premium prices in medieval black markets not because they were antique wood, but because they carried so much history.

Places, on the other hand, follow a similar economic pattern—with the difference lying in the fact that they are rarely bought by private entities. Of course, market forces play a massive role here, as the mere maintenance of these locations can already prove to be costly (realty taxes, repainting, etc.) without any promise of increased value other than the natural appreciation of real estate with respect to time. In most cases, these sites are kept afloat largely through the money that droves of visitors pay to see these places, which one may liken to pilgrims journeying to holy places to better understand what they believe in.

I was fortunate enough to have gotten the opportunity to take the Magical Mystery Tour in Liverpool early this year. The almost-two-hour-long tour is regularly run by the guys at the Cavern Club and goes through most of the places in Liverpool that were immortalized by the Beatles in their music. The tour also features a fancy bus painted very much in the style of the eponymous Beatles album.

The bus picked everyone up at Albert Dock, where The Beatles Story Museum was located, and first proceeded to go to Penny Lane. This part of the tour was one of the more interesting bits, as I generally felt that everyone onboard was trying to remember the lyrics to the song and trying to find the corner where the banker was with his motorcar, the barbershop where photographs were shown, etc. We eventually hit the corner, near the roundabout, in the middle of which was a shelter—where the fabled barbershop used to be in.

We then drove off and headed to the flat where George Harrison spent the first few years of his life. 12 Arnold Grove looked pretty ordinary for a place that carries so much cultural value in it, and I was amusingly puzzled by the fact that this apartment was still being rented out to this day.

The tour then proceeded to Strawberry Field Children’s Home which, in its state of disrepair, was quite saddening to see. The original gate was still there but corrosion has inevitably set in, and the home’s grounds appeared to have been unattended for quite some time. It was a relief, though, when the tour guide mentioned that the old and unusable bricks of the Cavern Club were being auctioned out to raise funds to open the children’s home again.

20 Forthlin Road, Paul McCartney’s former home, was the next stop. It was unfortunate, however, that the tour did not allow us to go into the house and see the room where the Beatles rehearsed and wrote a large part of their early catalogue. As distant as I may have been, though, I could still imagine the proverbial walls speaking to me about how certain songs came about and how rehearsals were like during those days.

The last stop on the tour was 251 Menlove Avenue, John Lennon’s former home; it’s now owned by the National Trust and has the familiar blue plaque that shows the name of the famous person who used to inhabit the place. Like in the McCartney house, the tour didn’t allow us to enter the site but it was enough to see the windows in John’s room from the street. I was told that there was a special tour that allows guests to go around the house, but before I was even able to ask about it, the tour guide told us that guest bookings at that time were already booked for the next three months.

I picked up my souvenirs after we were dropped off at the Cavern Club, and stayed for a few minutes to take it all in: long stairway down to the actual club; the old wooden bar which Beatle elbows may have dented; the club’s brick walls worn down by the loud music we’ve all come to love.

If one asks any pilgrim as to why he or she makes it a point to go to a holy place, one may be confronted with the answer that pilgrimages allow you to have a religious experience like no other, that the place itself reeks of holiness. One walks away from such a journey feeling like a new person with a clearer understanding of what he or she believes in. Needless to say, having “rolled up in the mystery tour” elicited a similar feeling in this particular pilgrim. (Marco Harder)

Visit the Cavern Club’s official site. Also, go on the same tour Marco took by accessing the official site of the Beatles Tour. All tour photographs shot by and courtesy of the author.