Music Album Review: 'Bach Meets the Beatles: Revisited'

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On February 15, 1993, the Minnesota-based classical music record label Pro-Arte released Bach Meets the Beatles: Variations in the Style of Bach, an album of piano pieces that blend the music of John Lennon and Paul McCartney and the Baroque composition style of Johann Sebastian Bach. Conceived and performed by pianist John Bayless, Bach Meets the Beatles presented 15 hit songs by the Fab Four, including All You Need is Love, Hey Jude, Something, And I Love Her, and Nowhere Man. 

A sequel to Bayless’ earlier Bach on Abbey Road, Bach Meets the Beatles was just one of many Beatles-classical music mashup recordings; Joshua Rifkin had done a more ambitious take on the Lennon-McCartney canon in his 1965 bestselling LP The Baroque Beatles Book, and Arthur Fiedler and the Boston Pops Orchestra covered the “lads from Liverpool” in Arthur Fiedler and the Boston Pops Orchestra Play the Beatles.

Both records sold well; Bayless is a classically trained pianist (he studied music at Julliard) and is intimately familiar with the works and styles of the icons of classical music. In addition, like many professional musicians of his generation, Bayless is also comfortable with works by more contemporary artists, including film composer John Williams and, of course, The Beatles. 
Fourteen years ago, a now-defunct Nashville, Tennessee record company called Compendia Music Group released a third album of Bayless’ Baroque-style covers of Lennon McCarthy songs titled Bach Meets the Beatles: Revisited. This CD was dropped on June 29, 2004, around the same time that the company was shuttering its Alpharetta (Georgia) distribution center.
Bearing the same cover art as Pro-Arte’s Bach on Abbey Road (designed by artist Jake Shores), Bach Meets the Beatles: Revisited is the shortest of the three Bayless albums in the series. The CD only has a dozen tracks – Bach on Abbey Road has 17 songs, while Bach Meets the Beatles: Variations in the Style of Back has, as noted above, 15. 
Cover designed by Jake Shores. (C) 2004 Compendia Music Group. Photo Credit: Amazon LLC. 

Bach Meets the Beatles: Revisited
(All songs, with the exception of Imagine, are credited jointly to John Lennon and Paul McCartney; Imagine is credited solely to Mr. Lennon.)
1.      Penny Lane (3:20)
2.      Yesterday (2:24)
3.      Can’t Buy Me Love (2:06)
4.      Let It Be (4:12)
5.      If I Fell (4:13)
6.      Imagine (3:18)
7.      I Want to Hold Your Hand (3:01)
8.      Michelle (3:49)
9.      A Hard Day’s Night (3:12)
10.  And I Love Her (3:00)
11.  Eleanor Rigby (4:06)
12.  Lady Madonna (2:59)

My Take

Back Meets The Beatles: Revisited is an enjoyable “little” album, especially for listeners who are well-acquainted with (a) The Beatles, (b) the works of J.S. Bach, and (c) the classical crossover genre. It’s – literally – fast-paced (none of the tracks have a running time that comes close to the five-minute mark); at 39 minutes, it’s one of the shortest albums in my collection.

It’s also a fun one – Bayless obviously loves the works of Lennon, McCartney, and J.S. Bach, and it shows. Each of the 12 songs is performed with panache – just check out the way in which Bayless transforms Yesterday into a cantata that could have been heard in the Baroque era. 

Bach Meets the Beatles: Revisited might not be an original concept; as noted earlier, other classical music artists and orchestras have done Beatles cover albums. But if you like easy-on-the-ear piano music and different takes on familiar rock classics, you might want to check it out.

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