Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * * *
Imagine being at Candlestick Park, the home of the San Francisco Giants, in late August 1966, or around two and half years later, on January 30th 1969, at ground level in Central London, looking up to the heavens and hearing the now unfamiliar live sound of four men from Liverpool. Imagine understanding that both these two events were so significant in the annals of music history, not only for the band, but for the wider implication of what went on between the two dates and what would follow; it would almost certainly be the stuff of legends, a screaming mob of fans who paid between four and six Dollars to attend the final throws of infant pop, and the almost quiet drawing on a London street of the curtain on the first part of legendary status confirmed for ever.
For the last fifty years, The Beatles’ fans and gig goer alike could only imagine what it would have been like to hear the band at arguably their most influential, their journey into Psychedelia, their sojourn into the world of Progressive enlightenment, the final days on stage, perhaps a sell-out, one last moment in Liverpool before going their separate ways. Albums that have gone down in history for never having been played, Let It Be, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Heart’s Club Band, Abbey Road, and arguably the Daddy of the them all, a recording of absolute experiment, of power and, for many symbolism, what become synonymously known as The White Album, but was just truly the most perfect of monikers, The Beatles.
You can only dream of what The Beatles would have sounded like on stage, an almost impossible landscape and aural dream to replicate, symbolism aside, just to have the amount of personnel around to make the evening go like clockwork, to have musicians performing at high constant pace and seeing tracks such as Revolution Number Nine, and even the incredible Piggies come together as a fluid movement, is a dream which belongs only perhaps as theatre in the audience’s mind.
It is a dream fulfilled though, remarkable, enjoyable, passionate and sincere, not a tribute as such, for how can such a word exist when The Beatles never performed the album, and even Paul McCartney has only played selected tracks during his solo career; to see Dutch band The Analogues perform the album in its entirety is to salute genius, it is to acknowledge the album as the significant piece of music history that it is. Not a tribute, a compliment, the highest praise, the realisation of myth made real for all in attendance inside the Liverpool Philharmonic Hall fifty-two years on from the moment when The Beatles silently and without warning, despite one brief cold day in London, never performed live together again.
Supported by a wonderfully generous orchestra, the five-piece group, alongside the special guest of the talented Felix Maginn, who had gallantly stepped into the fray when it was revealed that one of the members had been ill with hearing issues, took to the stage amongst excited but perhaps apprehensive applause, within moments that apprehension was dissipated into the air like a cloud evaporated by the heat of rising sun.
Throughout all four sides of the album, across songs such as the opener Back In The U.S.S.R., Dear Prudence, Glass Onion, the brilliance of The Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill, While My Guitar Gently Weeps, Rocky Raccoon, Julia, Everybody’s Got Something To Hide Except Me and My Monkey, Helter Skelter and Revolution1, The Analogues gave an exulted performance, one that shone like a beacon, burning bright, creating a memorial to which many would never have conceived as being possible.
Imagine, it may only be an album to some, but for many it is a force that never quite fully saw the light of day, that was never allowed to breathe properly, until now. A magical evening of music that arguably will not be replicated in Liverpool again, at least not with the same longing and initial desire; outstanding!
Ian D. Hall