I have had it up to here waiting for the Beatles catalogue to be remastered

so why couldn't they have released those singles on the album? you can begin there.

maybe that was a bad example. my point wasn't copyright law specifically fucked w the band, but that releases have been orchestrated by powers beyond their control. it doesn't matter if it is EMI or lawyers.

They absolutely could have put 'Penny Lane' and 'Strawberry Fields Forever' on Sgt. Pepper's but they chose not to, because in the '60s releasing an LP which had the singles on it in the UK was perceived as short-changing the fans by getting them to pay for the same thing twice. Singles and albums were seen as two distinct things back then. The "single" developed into an advert for the "album" later.

Secondly, prior to the "album era", which Sgt. Pepper's had a huge part in ushering in, the single was king. Therefore, I doubt The Beatles would have complained about those US configs as nobody was really as "precious" about the album in those days as they would become circa 1966-1967 onwards. Capitol also knew the US market better than Parlophone and The Beatles themselves did, so they did what they needed to do for that particular market - and it worked.

The 11- or 12-song US Capitol albums had nothing to do with copyright law; they had to do with royalty rates. Capitol (and the Beatles, but I doubt they knew this at the time) made more in US royalties from albums with fewer tracks, and lopping off songs had the added benefit of keeping them for future cobbled-together US releases.

the UK/US official releases from Pepper onwards were exactly the same tracklist-wise until the split. aside from MMT being an album in the US and a daft double-EP thing in the UK.

What was wrong with releasing the six songs as a double EP?

Nothing at all, IMO. I generally prefer the US config of Magical Mystery Tour but I can see why it was released as a double EP here... again, why get people to pay for something they already own?

It's worth mentioning that the Stones LP's also had different US/UK versions up to 1967. The album had suddenly become as important as the single.

gee I wonder if we can pinpoint which album signaled that change

^ LOL! Yeah!

the UK/US official releases from Pepper onwards were exactly the same tracklist-wise until the split. aside from MMT being an album in the US and a daft double-EP thing in the UK.

― piscesx, Thursday, April 13, 2017 2:18 PM (thirty-three minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Also the US-only 10-song Hey Jude, aka, The Beatles Again.

It wasn't US only - it was released in many countries. Does raise the question of how many countries took their cues from the US, though.

There are even UK pressings of it from later in the '70s.

The Past Masters compilations pretty much obliterated the need for those type of compilations.

I like how tidy The Beatles discography has become - sticking with the UK albums and using the Past Masters to gather up the extras.

If only the Stones had control of their '60s stuff, they could have done the same.

Weird, didn't know that about Hey Jude. Makes sense, since it was mostly singles compiled on an LP for the first time.

xp

also, not sure penny lane and SFF would have fit on the album without cutting something else.

Yeah, the only way that they'd fit onto the album is if the tracklisting was wildly reshuffled to the point where it wouldn't even be the same album.

The stereo mixes of "Rain," "Lady Madonna," and "Revolution" were all done for Hey Jude and I think those are the ones still in use. ("Paperback Writer" had been mixed in stereo for A Collection of Beatles Oldies.)

The tidiest package is the Beatles mono box, which has fantastic Japanese origami versions of the LPS, down to mini reproductions of the Emitex sleeves. The stereo box seemed provisional, since this stuff was likely to get remastered/remixed eventually.

A Collection of Beatles Oldies has one of the best covers. So does Hey Jude for that matter. Not to mention the cover for the white album that was scrapped but used for some compilation in some other country. I love the non standard album art.

" The tidiest package is the Beatles mono box"

well aside from the fact that it doesn't include Abbey Road or Let it Be.

I don't rate the stereo mixes of 'Lady Madonna' and 'Paperback Writer' very highly.

well aside from the fact that it doesn't include Abbey Road or Let it Be.

Those are best on LP, IMO.

fair enough. I am thinking of getting rid of my stereo CD box since I only listen to digital rips of these when I am not at home, at which time I actually just listen to older LPs from the blue box.

i wonder how many other boxes they can spin out of the catalogue this way? White Album next year for a cert.

Given how much work it took to put the Sgt. Pepper's thing together, I'd guess it would take longer to work on a box set for The Beatles, so unless this is currently being worked on right now, I'd say there was no chance.

Get Back/Let It Be box probably more likely.

also less interesting to me. would just be nice to get a better sounding release of the Kinfaun demos. don't know if that will ever happen.

are those the same as the Esher demos? i dunno, i can see them releasing those ...

Yeah, they're the same thing.

It would be hilarious if they announced a 7CD box for The Beatles and two of the CD's are just sessions for 'Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da'

is there an Esher/Kinfauns CD/Box that is considered definitive? i recall pre-2009 that the Purple Chick mob did the definitive 'remaster' bootlegs for example and peopel went nuts. all the Esher stuff i've heard is dreadful quality.

There are seven tracks of it on Anthology 3 and, in fact, that whole first disc is all White Album stuff (incl. "Hey Jude").

not sure. I have some version of it I downloaded from somewhere and it's ok. not dreadful, not superlative. I'm kind of increasingly surprised at how high a quality most of the leaked beatles bootlegs have been.

like the whole unsurpassed masters series (and the other one that was concurrent and overlapped with it)...those are perfectly listenable.

i like the way the Esher demos sound. it would suck to have them fix the phasing and messiness, it would suck the life out of them. but w/e i will buy a proper release

Bring life to them, more like. There's plenty of shit bands making deliberately lo-fi music for a cupboard full of hipsters in Oregon. The Beatles are a hi-fidelity band, thank fuck.

Ehhhh I mean they're home demos, right? The Beatles already went the route of turning them into hi-fi music by, y'know, making the White Album and Abbey Road. Trying to take the demos and morph them into a facsimile of studio product really might not get anywhere, and at worst might result in a "Real Love" kind of recording where it lacks the life of the demo and the oomph and richness that an actual reunited Beatles might plausibly have come up with.

the esher demos sound great, i said from the cupboard

Nobody is saying "turn the home demos into studio recordings", just to clean them up - reduce the tape hiss and correct any damage that may have happened to the recordings over the years. Beatles fans have come to expect a certain standard of product, and it'd also be a little silly to put out an official version of something that has been widely bootlegged unless there was some incentive for buying it.

'Real Love' sounds great, IMO. I genuinely believe they did their very best with what they had to work with - else it wouldn't have been released. I trust Paul McCartney, George Harrison, Ringo Starr and Jeff Lynne's judgement on those recordings.

the esher stuff included on anthology 3 sound good, right?

Yeah, I always thought the Esher stuff sounded fine, and in fact had to double-check the liner notes on Anthology 3 to make sure these were in fact "home" demos.

Hooof, well, we'll have to agree to disagree about "Real Love"! I liked it when it came out but I don't return to it much, and the Lynne gloss (which I do love on other records) kind of swamps it for me. Also makes it probably the tinniest thing ever put out under the Beatles name.

For me, it feels like what it is - an unfinished song that got a bunch of overdubbing to make it feel more "Beatlesy," boosting the ratings for the documentary and sales for the album. I'm sure George only agreed because he needed the money, as with the rest of the Anthology project. In the long term it hasn't really added anything meaningful to the Beatles catalogue and it would have been fine if it had never been done IMHO.

(Actually, is there a thread specifically about FAAB and RL? Feels like there would be...)

The Escher stuff on Anthology 3 was obviously cleaned up for release, as you'd expect.

I like "Real Love" a lot but agree it's basically an unnecessary coda to their discography

I recently listened to the two '94 songs again, and they really haven't aged well at all, solely due to Lynne's production, or rather, that fucking gated snare he inexplicably needs to use on absolutely everything.

COMING SOON: "Free As A Bird" & "Real Love"...NAKED

i don't *hate* the 94 songs, but yeah they are very inessential.

The anthology version of "real love" us awful. The demo version is lovely.