The obvious question in recording any Beatles tribute album is "Why?". The original canon is holding up nicely forty years down the road, and most of the "tributes" that come out in various media are either bizarre affairs or add no value to the proceedings whatsoever. Oddly enough, the ones that are actually fun are those done by the various tribute bands, more as a memento of a live show, but occasionally with a great live interpretation of songs the Beatles never performed live. The group 1964 The Tribute did precisely that, with a live album that had an excellent four piece rendition of "And Your Bird Can Sing" (the original recording of course featured that wondrous harmony lead guitar line, played by George and Paul, but it's of course exceedingly difficult to reproduce correctly live if the band is in character as the Beatles in their touring days; it's certainly possible to play a very credible version with only a "George" handling lead, but it isn't going to match the original recording).

Yellow Matter Custard is a (pardon the expression) supergroup composed of neo-prog-rock faves Neal Morse (Spock's Beard) and Mike Portnoy (Dream Theatre), guitar magazine cover icon Paul Gilbert and Matt Bissonette. There's some excellent musicianship in this group, which likely had its genesis in Transatlantic, which featured Morse and Portnoy regularly covering Beatles songs, including "Strawberry Fields Forever" on "Live In America" and most of the second side of Abbey Road on "Live In Europe". The versions on those albums are respectful, yet allow the band's personality to come through, and are actually a bit of an inspiration to a few of us weekend band warriors looking to expand our repertoire a bit beyond the obvious. Morse's "Testimony" DVD features some behind the scenes video of the band goofing around on Beatles songs backstage and on the bus, and it's obvious that Morse wanted to do a full-blown Beatles tribute project. This of course isn't something where they're in character as the Fabs, more along the lines of an ongoing tribute project called the Fab Faux. The Fab Faux, unlike a lot of tribute acts don't stock their stage with the Beatles preferred toolset (various Rickenbackers, Gretsches, Hofners and Epiphones, Vox amps) but merely concentrate on reproducing the canon as best they can. Yellow Matter Custard is in that same vein, however,some photos on the album show Morse with a Rickenbacker 360/12, and Bissonette with a Hofner. Truth be told, most bands reproducing the Beatles mid-period live don't have the correct amplification, for as lovely as a Vox AC30 sounds, the sounds of Revolver and Sgt. Pepper were more those of the ultra-rare Vox 7120 (and other than the 1966 US tour, the Beatles were never known to have used the Vox Super Beatle amps produced under license by Thomas Organ).