Brad Mehldau Plays The Beatles on Solo Piano

Cover of the album being discussed

Exactly one week ago Nonesuch released its latest album of jazz pianist Brad Mehldau. Your Mother Should Know: Brad Mehldau Plays The Beatles is a live solo album, which was recorded in September of 2020 at the Philharmonie de Paris. Of the eleven tracks, nine were the joint efforts of John Lennon and Paul McCartney; and one was a tune composed by George Harrison. The final track is David Bowie’s “Life on Mars,” which many take as a transition from the Beatles repertoire to the “next stage” of popular music.

Anyone going to college during the Sixties (myself included) can probably remember how hard it was to find any location (other than a library) were a Beatles tune was not blaring out of a loudspeaker. If it was not coming from a Student Union building (including eating places), it could be heard from no end of dormitory windows. I suspect that the earworms that had the greatest impact on me were “I Want to Hold Your Hand” and “I Saw Her Standing There.” The second of these was the third selection in Mehldau’s performance.

What interested me the most was that, as new albums were released, many of the tracks were more adventurous. It is hard to imagine that “Yellow Submarine” did not raise eyebrows when it was first released. Nevertheless, it rocketed to cult status and eventually emerged as an animated film that was as over-the-top as the original song (if not more so).

Mehldau’s tracks, on the other hand, will probably not raise any eyebrows. In some cases they may well revive the sort of feeling of nostalgia that might visit one listening today to an album like Rubber Soul. More likely, however, is that the attentive listener will recall the tune and then get wrapped up in the improvisations that Mehldau spins out around that tune. As for those that were not “present at the creation” over the years when the individual vinyl albums were released, Mehldau’s tracks are “just tunes” to inspire solo piano jazz tracks. The new album includes the sounds of applause from the Paris audience; and the response came across, for the most part, as dutifully polite.