Charles Waring’s article Jazz Beatles Covers: The Best Jazz Tributes To Liverpool’s Fab Four might give the impression that every jazz musician of the past 60 or so years has cut a Beatles tribute. And here is yet another jazz-meets-the Beatles venture, courtesy of Norway’s Rubber Soul quartet. It follows the group’s similarly cast Blackbird of 2020.
Jazz was among the many factors which fed the Beatles’s development – factors including 1920s jazz, rock ‘n’ roll and country music, blues and R&B, Motown and Indian music as well as a modern jazz classic like Lee Morgan’s Sidewinder. But how meaningful is it to seek to give a jazz reboot to such a singular musical synthesis?
Rubber Soul’s Torstein Ellington (d) says “The goal is not to copy but to improvise and swing, to disassemble the musical building blocks – and put them back together again.” But with no radical deconstruction to speak of and some tracks featuring vocals which are – shall we say – a touch less riveting than the originals, is the game worth the candle?
There is world-ranging colour and rhythm to enjoy; Eleanor gets to say hello to Wes and Eight Days is partly inspired by Giant Steps. And the spirit of Django (Reinhardt, not Bates) is also abroad in music which is never less than well arranged and executed. However, Something falls prey to the problem of many a jazzed-up Beatles number: the problem of the relation of the primal to the sophisticated – and the superiority, often, of the former over the latter.
I was a teenager when most of the Beatles albums came out and the thrill I felt then can still be rekindled by listening to a string of Beatles hits like those on their 1 retrospective. But I’ve always felt that “jazzing the Beatles” is an oil-on-water idea. And so, to my ears at least, it proves to be here. Sorry, guys!
Discography
Something; Eleanor Rigby; The Fool On The Hill; Eight Days A Week; I’m Only Sleeping; Day Tripper; Help!; Michelle; And I Love Her; In My Life; You’ve Got To Hide Your Love Away (47.01)
Bård Helgerud (gs); Håvard Fossum (ts, ss, f, cl); Andreas Dreier (b, background v); Torstein Ellington (d, pc). Halden, 22-24 April & 2 June 2022.
Losen Records LOS 2752
