Here's a longer version of our Giles Martin Q&A that accompanied Louis Pattison's lead review of The Beatles' self-titled epic in our issue dated December 2018. Martin, of course, remixed the album for this new version, and sifted through hundreds of hours of outtakes, demos and studio chatter. ...
It’s so weird that they double-tracked them.
It is quite weird – I guess it’s what they did. They were incredibly tight at double-tracking, it’s incredibly hard to do. I said we’d mix them, but I tried to make it as much like we were pressing play on a tape machine. I really think they sound great.
There’s another version of “Let It Be” here – that hasn’t been out before has it?
I think it’s from the session of “Guitar Gently Weeps”. The other thing about The Beatles, they wrote songs all the time. Most bands have to think about their next album. The Beatles had to think about the next time they could get in the studio to record the songs they’ve already got.
Will there be more of this kind of thing?
I don’t know. It’s very disorganised the way we work. But I think that we’ll see how things go with this. With Sgt Pepper there was a mono-stereo question. With this there were all the studio outtakes and the Esher demos. I always think we have to find something that’s not just a repackage to make it worthwhile. I get people asking, “When are you going to remix Revolver?” It’s down to The Beatles. They ask me to do it, so I go off and do it.