Patatoa

For most people, for many years, this was the only version of the song. The one most people know best. When I first heard the song, it was this version as well. I was pretty shocked at the sound. (Keep in mind, I'm probably 9 years old at the time.) This iteration sounds like I took a Benadryl in a church restroom, and John Lennon is singing from the bottom of the toilet. It at once sounds pooly recorded and over-produced. I understand the technicals behind the track. Spector slowed down the original tape, but somehow his added harps and choir also sound warbled (maybe on purpose to match). The whole thing sounds muddy and sleepy; not like you're ascending to heaven, but, the other way around.

It's inclusion on Let it Be all together is really maddening as it is especially distracting in its "original" presentation. Even as the third track on the album, to that point the album's sound is already established — straight, clean recordings of guitar music with maybe some banter. And then this soggy thing comes in out of nowhere. Once it leaves, nothing else sounds like it, syrupy orchestration aside. I refuse to believe this version of the song left anyone inspired.

The "original" version by technicality. Apart from the bird sounds on the ends of the track, this is what the band had in the can throughout '68. It's certainly peppier than the "Spector" version and provides much appreciated clarity. But, I can understand why they kept it back. There are some goofy arrangements — the female backing vocals, plus John and Paul's falsetto answer to the chorus. They feel like the right ideas, but maybe not the right execution. Contrasted with the Spector version which did appear on a proper Beatles album, its easy to imagine that this incarnation wasn't what John had in mind for the song.

For decades, we lived on the Phil Spector version or the Wildlife version. Dismal. But now it's the 90's and soon a new concept will sweep multimedia. George Lucas took the flack for it, but The Beatles beat him to it — revisionism. The Beatles Anthology projects provided the first avenue to make some "what ifs" come true. "What if The Beatles recorded three, two more songs together?", "What if Pete Best drummed on Love Me Do?", "What if Across the Universe didn't sound terrible?". Part alternate take, part remix, the Anthology 2 version provides yet another look at the song. However, I don't feel particularly won over by this one either. By the nature of the Anthology series, part of the novelty is hearing the different ideas they played with. For example: the different refrain in Taxman, the different arrangements in Penny Lane and Lady Madonna, 12 Bar Original all good to hear but ultimately left out for a reason. The Across the Universe presented here falls somewhere in that spectrum as the sitar and other sounds used don't really hold up.

We are in full-blown revisionism-mode now. And for my money, at the time it arrived, the gold standard. This is the first version of the song that has any dynamicism. The first verse is quiet and delicate, it builds, it expands to feel ethereal before receeding back to earth. Perhaps this version could still be somewhat inhibited by the mission on the "... Naked" project. Let it Be... Naked was advertised revisionism, straight up. "What if Phil Spector didn't muck up the Get Back tracks?" The goal was to follow through with the "back to basics, stripped back production" intent of the original project? But how do you do that with a song that was scarecly related to the project, and not even recorded concurrently? Just as the Spector version stuck out, a more adorned version here would also feel unwelcome. Maybe there is potential left unexplored, but fitting on the album does help ingratiate the song. A fantastic incarnation and the first one deserving of recognition.

In 2017, Giles Martin remixed Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band and somehow it was the most exciting thing I heard that year. It was feeling like listning to a whole new album — hearing it in widescreen. The following year he did the same with The White Album. Maybe its because The White Album is my favorite album ever and I know it so intimately well, that I didn't really dig on the remix this time around. But, there was a "Super Deluxe" version, and being the White Album, there was a beavy of extra material to pack in. I think I'm pretty knowledgable of Beatles minutia, but I found stuff to be surprised about here too: an early version of Let It Be, Revolution 1 (Take 18) (which circled the internet years earlier as "Revolution 1+9"), the fabeled 12 minute Helter Skelter, What's the New Mary Jane? (which Anthology 3 had already helped make clear that it sucked. Oh well!), and some working material from what I just called "the era-less era" — including Across the Universe.

Ironically, more stripped back than the "Naked" version, all we have here is John singing and on guitar and Ringo tapping on the bongos. In the process of writing this, its hard to tell when different things sound different and when similar things sound the same, but to my ears take 6 is different from the one used on the Spector/Naked versions and the Anthology 2 versions. Completely unadorned, at one time I would have been extra-keen on hearing this. The complete opposite of the Spector version. While this is a competently beautiful version, there does seem to be something missing. In an imagined world where this was the version we got, I'd take it.

And for the record, Revolution 1 (Take 18) rules, and they should have let John release it like this. (I know he wanted it as a single though. And there's no way he woulda had it go out with Paul vamping Love Me Do.)

If there is one idea that only gets reinforced over time is that The Beatles shouldn't have double-backed on their plans with the Get Back project. The Glyn Johns version of the album is superior in every way (except maybe a truly horrible start to the record with One After 909 and then the messing-around-in-the-studio track. Sheesh.)

Across the Universe was not in his original order of the album, but was added on his second iteration the following year. (Clearly there was some resolve to get this song out there.) His version shares a lot of DNA with the "Wildlife version" with the female vocals present (but mixed back), and John and Paul's backing vocals wisely excised. More focus on George's tomboura builds the song up to make it more than a stripped-back acoustic number, but retains some clarity that the Wildlife version lost. If The Beatles hadn't been so uptight about playing at Twickenham, maybe we could have gotten a superb version of the song much earlier.

Here we come full circle. Giles Martin somehow assimilates all the ideas available, hears what Phil Spector might have meant, and focuses it into the best version on Across the Universe yet. The take is slowed down, like the Spector version, but now we have the technology to let John sound like John, and not like he's trying to communicate across the water-verse. The song feels quiet and vulnerable at the right parts and swells to bursting at the right parts.

This too might be held back by its project's mission. While the remixes certainly have leeway for creative interpretation, it still needs to represent the 1970 album. Would a full re-imagining of Across the Universe be in order? Hey, there's an idea to re-release The Beatles catalog yet another time!

Like the real McCoy, I have complicated feelings about the Fiona Apple version. On the one hand, it has become the canonical version of the song. I think every Beatles iteration since is informed by the this version. It's confessional and quiet, it's unexpected and surreal, it's practically anthemic. I've come to feel like when people these days talk about Across the Universe, they're really talking about this version. Listen to the Naked or Giles Martin version for educational purposes, but this is probably the one you should listen to.