Let me be the first to admit
that I am prejudiced against jazz musicians covering the Beatles. This is in no
way related to the source material: like all sentient mammals on the Planet
Earth, I adore pretty much every note the Fabs recorded. It's just that their
material is so weighted with cultural and nostalgic baggage that (unlike standards
like, say, "All the Things You Are" it retains too much of its
Beatleness to be just a set of chords: it's them. Or it's us - Abbey Road and
Revolver have inhabited our collections so long that they're intertwined in our
lives. It only took Dave Kikoski's gorgeous piano intro and Brian Melvin's
hypnotic tabla pattern on "Yes It Is", the opening track of
BeatleJazz's third CD, With a Little Help From Our Friends, to confound my
cynical expectations. BeatleJazz is composed of Melvin on drums and tablas,
Kikoski on piano and synth, and Larry Grenadier on bass. The core group is
augmented by the "friends of the CD's title: John Scofield and Mike Stern
on guitar; Mike and Randy Brecker on tenor sax and trumpet, respectively; and
on four tracks, Boris Koslov substituted on bass. The results are for the most
part delightful. Many jazz-covers-rock albums allow the musicians to sleepwalk
through bland, jazz-lite arrangements, content to let the familiarity of the
material sell the product. Not here: the performances teem with deep
concentration and the arrangements are imaginative and very, very smart. For
example, "Strawberry Fields Forever" sheds the baroque studio
experimentation of the 1967 single but is otherwise played straight. Kikoski's
piano does the melodic heavy lifting, and when the group plays the coda
(Grenadier's bowed bass taking the place of the groaning strings of the
original), one is struck dumb by how wonderful, how novel that section of the
song is. The lack of harmonic development on John Lennon's solo rant
"Working Class Hero" is dealt with by going pedal-point: Mike Brecker
and Kikoski channel Coltrane and McCoy Tyner, respectively, and remake the song
as a searching, beseechingly modal ten-minute prayer. Not everything is that
wonderful. Randy Brecker and Kikoski do their best on Lennon's
"Imagine", and very nearly pull it off - not surprisingly, as a
ballad - but here the song is just too intractable. Even though it's a solo
Lennon composition, its utopian sentiment makes it the most Beatle number here
in the way it signifies so much more than its words or melody. Brecker's
playing that melody so faithfully, right down to the two notes of Lennon's
vocal "you-hoo", doesn't help. On the other hand, John Scofield
absolutely nails "I Will"; this Paul McCartney number's chords lend
themselves well to jazz and Sco's solo is the best he's done in some time -
sweet, spacious, and wise. It's a tribute to the quality of this album that my
unfortunate bigotries could be so thwarted. Too bad BeatleJazz can't
immediately do another CD: I'm eager to hear their versions of "All Things
Must Pass" and "She Said She Said". ~ by Paul Olson, AAJ.
Lightyear Entertainment, LTY 54685-2,
2005
Recorded 20th April, 2003 at:
Peter Karl's Studio,
Brooklyn, New York
System Two Studios, Brooklyn,
New York
Musicians:
Dave Kikoski - Piano,
Synthesizer, Arranger
Larry Grenadier - Bass
Boris Koslov - Bass
Brian Melvin - Drums, Tabla,
Arranger
Guests:
Michael Brecker - Saxophone
(#6)
Randy Brecker - Trumpet (#3)
John Scofield - Guitar (#2,5)
Mike Stern - Guitar (#7,10)
Tracks:
01. Yes It Is {John Lennon,
Paul McCartney} (7:32)
02. Piggies {George Harrison}
(7:52)
03. Imagine {John Lennon}
(9:54)
04. Strawberry Fields Forever
{John Lennon, Paul McCartney} (4:59)
05. I Will {John Lennon, Paul
McCartney} (8:09)
06. Working Class Hero {John
Lennon} (11:03)
07. A Hard Day's Night {John
Lennon, Paul McCartney} (5:55)
08. Across The Universe {John
Lennon, Paul McCartney} (4:36)
09. Lovely Rita {John Lennon,
Paul McCartney} (5:16)
10. And I Love Her {John
Lennon, Paul McCartney} (5:50)
11. The End {John Lennon,
Paul McCartney} (4:04)
12. Chains {Gerry Goffin,
Carole King} (4:48)
Total Time: 79:58
Credits:
Producer - Dave Kikoski
Producer, Mixing, Liner Notes
- Brian Melvin
Executive Producer - Hisao
Ebine
Engineer - Peter Karl, Jon
Rosenberg
Mastering - Matt Baxter
Cover Photo, Photography -
Carl Studna
Photography - Takehiko Tokiwa
Art Direction, Package Design - Doug Haverty
