It’s usually
around Christmas time when the air is crisp or after the first site of
freshly fallen snow that The Beatles are missed the most. Now
with the untimely passing of George Harrison, lead guitarist and
visionary songwriter of pop music’s most celebrated group, it’s even
more obvious the legacy of The Beatles will be continued forever. Over
the past 33 years musical trends have come and gone, but the music The
Beatles recorded during the heyday of the ‘60s lives on. One of the
most inspiring covers album of Beatles tunes was recently released by
L.A.-based pop savant and instrumental wiz Jason Falkner. Falkner turned
the music world upside down with his brilliantly conceived 1999 solo pop
album Can You Still Feel? Following that album,
Jason parted ways with Elektra Records, yet in recent years, he’s been
keeping busy with a variety of solo projects and compilations for
diverse labels. The latest Falkner project to hit the music world is his
all instrumental CD 
Bedtime With The Beatles, just
released by the New York based Sony Wonder. Subtitled Instrumental
Versions Of Classic Beatles Songs - A Lullaby Album, the
11 track album is filled with the good vibes that always accompanies the
sound of Beatles music. Falkner turns his guitars, keyboards and amps
way down low and approaches his Fab Four tribute like a nocturnal
children’s classic complete with fairytale imagery and musical pixie
dust. Jason explains, "Great songs are hard to come by and The
Beatles wrote and recorded possibly the most consistently brilliant
collection of songs in the 20th Century." As was the case on his
pop classic Can You Still Feel?, Falkner produced, recorded,
performed and mixed the entire Bedtime With The Beatles album
himself with the exception of the lush string section, which was
arranged by Jason and Roger Neill. Funny enough, in the liner
notes, Jason adds, ‘although this album is gentle and sleep inducing,
it also sounds good at maximum volume.’ Asserting that, "Figuring
out which songs to include on this album was not easy - believe
me", Jason has assembled an array of 11 heavenly Beatles favorites
such as the album opening "Blackbird", "If I Fell",
"Across The Universe", "I’m Only Sleeping" and
"In My Life". In Falkner’s hands, the Beatles lullaby
concept works quite well. Play it for the little ones and after they’ve
drifted off to sleep, turn the lights down, move up the volume, relax
and enjoy the album for yourself. In the following interview conducted
by MWE3.COM reviews editor Robert Silverstein, Jason Falkner talks about
Bedtime With The Beatles, guitar hero George Harrison, his
guitars and related mystical insights. The following interview took
place on December 3, 2001.
RS: I want to tell
you that I really enjoy your new Bedtime With The Beatles CD. I
know it’s just pure coincidence that you don’t cover any George
Harrison songs on the new Bedtime With The Beatles album. How did George
affect you as a guitarist and how are you going to remember his
brilliant guitar work and his vast influence on musicians and music
lovers?
J
F: It’s immense.
First of all the reason there’s no Harrison is ‘cause I wasn’t
allowed. Because Sony only deals with Lennon & McCartney catalog. So
I actually couldn’t do any Harrison, y’know. I want to do "Here
Comes The Sun", for sure... and I wasn’t allowed. So that’s why
it’s all Lennon & McCartney. Yeah, I mean George...it was really a
drag because I didn’t know anything about him passing away and I had
an interview the following morning with the RollingStone.com and the guy
is like, ‘so how do you feel about George?’ and I’m like ‘I
think he’s great’ and he’s like ‘well he passed away’...I had
no idea. That was so strange. George is definitely in my handful of
favorite guitar players just because of the way he was not flashy at
all. He was sort of relegated to being just the guitar player and never
was satisfied with his input as far as his songwriting in the band yet
he never abused that role in the band. Everything he did musically was
so tasteful. He’d contribute part of the song as opposed to standing
out as a guitar hero type. All his guitar playing is so well written and
so beautifully played, so emotional. Maybe because of his privacy, his
being kind of a quiet character, he never embarrassed himself like the
other guys did (laughter). That’s kind of not really an important
point but...I don’t know, he was brilliant. I’m indebted to him for
everything he sort of taught me as a listener, as a kid being such a
huge Beatle freak. I haven’t really been able to put his passing away
in any kind of perspective yet. Yeah, it’s such a big thing to me,
such a big deal. But as a musician, yeah, he certainly greatly impacted
me.
RS: Having lived
through the whole Beatles phenomenon myself I still feel to this day
that it was like a dream.
JF: Yeah,
definitely. Nobody will ever be able to make that impact ever again. I
feel they were so blessed in so many ways, not to mention their talent,
their collective talent but also because pop music the way they made it
was such a new thing and they were leading the pack in so many ways. And
they were also so successful so quickly that I think that they had this
freedom to do whatever they wanted to do when most people will never
feel that sort of professional freedom without people around them
telling them what they need to do to make things more palatable for the
public. They just did whatever they wanted to do. With George Martin and
Geoff Emerick they made these records (laughter)...they don’t make any
sense, they’re so good and they’re so consistent and so challenging.
That’s another thing about that group. It’s like they were at the
top of their game, they ruled the pop universe but they were not
pandering at all to the public and they were not condescending at all,
they were in fact the opposite. They were the most challenging musical,
sort of pop group, I think of all time. I mean there’s a few other
people that I would put in that same category, but they certainly were
leading that. They were in a really fortunate position. I know all the
musician friends I have we all respect and completely envy that position
(laughter). ‘Cause it’s so rare that you’re able to be at the top
of the pop universe, but also be able to be sort of teachers as well, y’know
musical and poetically speaking, everything. All the planets aligned for
that group.
RS: Do you have any
special Beatles period or favorite Beatles album?
JF: 
Definitely my
favorite Beatle album is Revolver. The songs on Revolver, the
sound of Revolver just kills me to this day. That record sounds
good on any sound system, from a ghettoblaster to a Macintosh Hi-Fi. It’s
just amazing. And the songs, the fact they were still kind of in between
their more giddy kind of pop universe, certainly not as psychedelic as
they got. There’s sort of preliminary hints of their psychedelia
which, it’s so exciting. That record just sounds like four guys that
were really unified, that were having so much fun. I don’t really know
if they were. I think they were still having alot of fun together. It’s
still kind of innocent. And I love that kind of combination of innocence
and wisdom that’s on that record. And then of course I really like the
later stuff too, but I also love the early stuff too. John Lennon’s
voice on that early stuff is just unbelievable! It’s like nothing to
lose!
RS: Could you give
a little background information on how Bedtime With The Beatles
came together?
JF: Yeah, well let’s
see. This girl that I’ve known for a long time since I was in this
band Jellyfish, she called me, left a message basically saying, ‘you’re
the guy on my list to do this project I just thought of and your the one
guy on the list, if you want to do it then it’s yours.’ And she kind
of explained it to me and my immediate reaction was, I was sort of
confused about it. I wasn’t sure I wanted to do it because to date I
think most of these sort of Beatle records that are sort of tribute
records, or reinterpretations, are things that I really don’t want to
listen to. I always think that they’re not usually done very well and
they’re kind of trying to hit a certain market. Especially I guess,
the children’s ones, children’s packaging records of pop things,
especially a band like The Beatles. There’s so many kid’s Beatles
things. I always think they’re a little bit ‘sacrilegious’? And so
I had a lot of trepidation doing this project and then I learned more
about it. When I found out that it was going to be instrumental that
helps alot because I didn’t want this whole Peter Frampton syndrome of
playing Beatles stuff. Because I just think it’s a really bad idea.
You can’t cover The Beatles, you can’t cover Bob Dylan. Y’know
there’s just certain things you just can’t do. Because if you’re
gonna cover something, in my opinion, you need to shed some new light on
it or even try and sort of better it. My point is, you can’t do that
with The Beatles (laughter). So, all that in mind I was concerned about
doing it. Then I thought, well, if I don’t do it, somebody else is
going to do it and they might just make a complete joke of it and it’ll
be another one of these sort of records that’s sort of talking down to
people. I didn’t want to make a children’s album that talks down to
kids because I remember when I was a little kid, I had some of the most
amazing fantasies and my imagination was completely intact. Certainly
more intact than it is now as an adult. And so I wanted to tap into
that. And of course, I obviously agreed to do it. I just approached it
like...my favorite things about my memories of being like very young and
listening to music. I was blessed to have a father that had a kind of
experimental record collection, which included Beatles and Beach Boys
and Love and Piper At The Gates Of Dawn, Syd Barrett stuff. Also
some kind of avant garde people like Terry Riley, things like that. So,
I just made the record like I make my own records. I just went in
started doing things instinctively. I didn’t really spend alot of time
milling over what songs to do. I didn’t spend alot of time figuring
out the arrangements. And the beauty was also I knew these songs so well
already, so I just kind of played them really gently. I kind of wanted
to make the album sound like the soundtrack to the lunar landing
(laughter) but with these great Beatles pop songs. I didn’t want to
make it too organic. I wanted to kind of fuse a real organic aspect to
it, which The Beatles had in tow and then I also wanted to make it more
kind of futuristic and space age as well. That was my objective.
RS: Perhaps if Sony
Wonder comes through with a Volume 2, I was hoping you could put a focus
on George’s songs in The Beatles. I know you said Sony has nothing to
do with his music?
JF: Yeah, they don’t
have anything to do with his publishing. I guess it was separate.
RS: I guess we’ll
have to find another label to do George’s songs!
JF: Yeah, I know
that would be great. Because it could encompass his solo stuff too.
RS: I was amazed
that on Bedtime With The Beatles you were able to retain the same
dreamy feel as the Beatles’ original versions.
JF: It’s true. I
definitely wanted to sort of retain...there’s so many sort of
psychedelic, sort of overtones to their music, even the pre-psychedelic
period for them. That’s what I always heard when I listened to The
Beatles. That’s the thing that I latched on to. It was the songs and
it was the lyric and especially with John and George - the lyric, but it
was also just these kind of sounds, I didn’t know what they were...
That’s probably the greatest impact The Beatles and other bands, sort
of from that era, made on me which was sort of sounds... I didn’t
understand what they were. Those are the things I was drawn to. That’s
kind of what I wanted to focus on on this record. Those are the kind of
things, a mind that’s really open, i.e., a child’s mind is really
capable of hearing and applying some sort of meaning to them. That’s
what I did as a kid. I didn’t know what they were but there were these
abstract qualities. Those are the things I really loved and what I
really tried to bring out on this record.
RS: In keeping with
the lullaby concept, I was a little surprised that you didn’t touch on
obvious selections like "Goodnight" from the White Album and
"Golden Slumbers" from Abbey Road. Did you consider
those and what other songs were in the running?
JF: Oh yeah,
absolutely. I didn’t want to do anything that I already considered
kind of a children’s song. I didn’t want to do a song that already
kind of fit this project. Which, "Goodnight", certainly the
people at Sony Wonder wanted me to do that and I flatly just said, ‘I
don’t want to do that because there’s nothing I can do to that song
to make it fit on this record.’ It already would fit on this record as
is. I also didn’t want to do "Yellow Submarine", I didn’t
want to do "Bungalow Bill" or anything like this because to me
it’s already kind of a children’s song. So that’s why,
"Across The Universe" and "I’m Only Sleeping", and
"Blackbird" and things like that. And like "If I
Fell", from the earlier stuff. Those were the most fun to do ‘cause
I got to really change what they originally were.
RS: The Beatles
were known to use some amazing instrumentation, their weird effects on
their records. I want to ask about the instrumentation, special guitars
and keyboards you used on the album. Your version of "In My
Life" features a stellar composite of acoustic guitar, keyboards,
Leslie guitars, backwards guitars and mellotrons.
JF: Yeah, there’s
a little bit of Mellotron, there’s alot of old analog synths. I have
an Oberheim two-voice, I had a mini-moog on there. I also had that
Andromeda. That’s a nice synth in that it’s real analog synth. This
was like the last big thing that they put out. We were using one with
Air, I just finished a tour with Air and we were using Andromeda on
that. I don’t like to use any kind of preset sounds. I always mess
with things myself. I bought a really nice old Martin for the project. I
touched on it earlier, but I wanted to blend organic sounds and organic
instruments with these kind of other instruments that you can’t really
tell what they are. I also used this thing called a Hammond Chord Organ,
which is the most underrated Hammond organ. It has nothing to do with the
B3. It has no Leslie. It doesn’t have those kind of classic Hammond
sounds. It’s a weird little thing. I think it was used in churches a
bit. It was also just kind of something like your Grandma would have. It’s
a single keyboard and on the left it’s got a bunch of buttons that
produce chords, y’know major, minor, diminished and augmented chords.
It’s just a brilliant sounding thing. That’s actually on "In My
Life", that kind of weird rolling sound on the verses.
Listen to a