Beatles Album Covers Turning Brown

I looked over my Beatles vinyl LP collection recently and noticed all the late 1970's Capitol Beatle LP (Capitol purple label) album covers had turned to a noticeable brown where they once were bright white. Now I keep all my Beatle albums in Mylar sleeves, but the earlier pressings with the rainbow labels, stored side-by-side with the purple label issues, were still a nice white, especially when compared to the browning purple label covers. Those purple-label era album covers must have been more acidic to begin with to have all browned like this. Is this common with those covers?

 

Don't eat the brown album covers.

I've never noticed it on mine.

 

I think is is due to the fact that those albums contain the track "Old Brown Shoe" which tends to bleed onto the covers. This is a common problem. However this is not present on the 2014 mono re-issues as these are better than the originals in every single way.

 

Its probably how & where they were stored.

 

You can't take them with you when you go...

 

The Brown Album.

 

Mine too:

 

They were always stored with the rest of my Beatles albums in mylar acid-free sleeves in my bedroom. The Browning is particular to the purple-label late 1970's album covers.

 

oddly the only albums in my collection that seem to have changed color over the years are certain copies of the "White" album. Maybe that was the bands way of telling us that its "The Beatles" not the "White Album!"

 

The ridiculous reduction of the size of George's head on this cover has always p*ssed me off! Clearly Capitol/EMI though more highly of Ringo!

 

....or it was just a reproduction of a Richard Avedon photo.....
...a strange one because here Ringo has a bigger had than Paul's

 

That's why it annoys me. They altered Avedon's original photo.

 

Your question originally asked whether browning is common for the late 70's Beatles covers. I see these in bins fairly regular and haven't noticed it myself. Whether browning is indeed particular to these albums...I can't say. It seems it should be cropping up on covers made by the same outfit around the same time, but that presumes your browning LPs happened to all be made by the same outfit from the same supply around the same time. Thats why I suggested it may have been a storage or 'environment' issue. Paper made of wood pulp browns due to oxidation which triggers acids in the wood fiber, which can be accelerated by bleaches used in the processing. Humidity and temperature variation are the primary triggers. Its why two identical newspapers; stored in a stable house environment versus an unheated garage or shed brown - age at different rates.