Beatles US albums

Today I grabbed the US Revolver at Walmart for 9 bucks to add more mono songs to my library.
So now with a pre owned copy of Help! which was from the Vol 2 Capital box set, and the newer individual releases of the US albums box set, Rubber Soul, Yesterday and Today and Revolver, this has give me a lot of mono tracks.
Now instead of continuing to purchase these individual newer ones, I think I need to get the vol I box set of the Capital albums.

 

You shouldn't have bothered with 'Help!' - they're all fold downs of the stereo mixes, except 'Ticket To Ride' which is a fold down of Capitol's Duophonic version

And if you do get Vol 1 of the Capitol Albums, all the PPM & WTB tracks are folds too. If you want the true mono mixes then you're better off getting the 'US Albums' versions, which have the folds replaced.

 

This is true, the only real advantage IMO the 2014 U.S. Albums set has over the Capitol Albums sets. It's why I'm glad my wife couldn't differentiate between stereo and mono versions when she found me original stereo versions of Meet The Beatles! and The Beatles Second Album for Christmas a couple years ago

 

Yeah, the Help! was only 5 bucks at a used cd store so no biggie.
But you bring up an interesting point and one that is causing me an issue lol.
One camp is saying the Capital vol 1 and 2 sets are garbage because of old mixes, while others are saying they're the way to go because those are the mixes that were on those albums upon their initial release on LP during the 60s in the States.
You have others saying the newer US albums cds are legit quality mixes and the way to go, while others are saying they are crap because, although good for the mono box that follows the UK releases, they are not the US albums sound wise.
Now I don't know if these perceptions are applying to just the mono or the stereo mixes on the different sets or both.
Which mixes (mono or stereo) represent "The Way The Beatles were presented to the States" on the Capital Vol 1 and 2 sets?
Then another question.
Is the mono on the 87 first four cds better than the mono on the Capital vol 1 and 2 sets?

 

Yes and no. Yes because the '87 mono CDs are true mono, not stereo fold downs as found on Meet The Beatles and Second Album, no because at the same time the '87 mono CDs sound kind of flat, particularly Beatles For Sale and With The Beatles.

My honest opinion, Price? If you've got a turntable setup, if you really want to hear the American albums the way they're really meant to be heard, you gotta get 'em on vinyl. Decent copies can certainly be found cheap enough, with the late 70's purple label and early 80's rainbow label editions being the best sound quality wise (a site like Discogs.com would be an invaluable resource on that score). When it came to my own collection it was the "60's authenticity" I was after so I was deliberately looking for as many original mono pressings that I could find- with only a handful of exceptions I actually succeeded, and even got extremely lucky once or twice when it came to cost. Probably the greatest score of my entire vinyl collection was finding on eBay a "lot" consisting of mono original Something New, Beatles '65, Rubber Soul and Sgt Pepper for $10 plus shipping, which was as I recall about $12. Damn good deal...the covers needed a bit of sellotape but the LPs themselves were in very good condition, I was surprised!

 

I agree - a good rule when it comes to the Beatles on Capitol is the later the pressing, the better the sound. I'm spinning my '80s Rainbow label Beatles '65 now and it sounds marvelous, as always.

A few years ago I decided to track down all of the original US Capitol/Apple mono and stereo Beatles LPs that I didn't have already. Some were cheap some were not, but it's nice to have them.

 

Ditto for my 70's purple label Revolver.

I don't think I paid more than $20 for any of my individual Beatles LP's. I think my Canadian Apple Abbey Road was the most expensive, and it was $20. I bought an original US Apple White Album -again, $20- on eBay and that's the only time I ever got 'burned' buying a record on eBay- the seller said it was "VG+"...like hell! "Fair" at best- pretty scratchy, and even skipped here and there. No poster or pictures, either (I ended up biting the bullet and replacing it with a new mono version when they finally reissued those on LP a couple years back, so I guess I did pay more than twenty bucks for that one). All my other Beatle LP's except for that purple Revolver , the '87 Capitol reissue UK Hard Day's Night and Help! I have on the way and my Apple Second Album (which just looks wrong for some reason) are originals, and all mono except for Meet The Beatles! (which my wife bought me, and at the time she didn't know the difference between mono and stereo.) I don't have a "Butcher Cover" (though I only paid $2 for my near-mint mono trunk cover Yesterday And Today I found in the 'discount' section at my favourite secondhand vinyl shop- I don't think the guy knew exactly what it was!) but I do have a "Beatles Again" version of Hey Jude. My Beatles collection is the pride of my record collection, for sure.

 

But for cds though, my question remains.
One camp is saying the Capital vol 1 and 2 sets are garbage because of old mixes, while others are saying they're the way to go because those are the mixes that were on those albums upon their initial release on LP during the 60s in the States.
You have others saying the newer US albums cds are legit quality mixes and the way to go, while others are saying they are crap because, although good for the mono box that follows the UK releases, they are not the US albums sound wise.
Now I don't know if these perceptions are applying to just the mono or the stereo mixes on the different sets or both.
Which mixes (mono or stereo) represent "The Way The Beatles were presented to the States" on the Capital Vol 1 and 2 sets?

 

Capitol

 

Ok here's what I did. I picked up the Capitol boxes volumes 1 and 2 and this copy of Yesterday and Today 45th Anniversary Edition, I believe this is an unofficial release however I can confirm that it contains the correct US mono and stereo mixes for I'm Only Sleeping . The backwards guitar in a different positions pretty much confirms this.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/BEATLES-YES...be60e48&pid=100033&rk=1&rkt=1&sd=291584698088

 

As I recall they used the 1987 mixes not the 1965 and just grafted on the false start.

 

No, for ILTY and The Word the original US stereo versions were used.

 

All of them. The 2004/2006 Capitol boxes used the original Capitol album masters and were remastered to CD by Ted Jensen. I think these sound very good, probably better than most of the vinyl versions that could be easily found. This is probably a popular opinion.

But the fact that they use the original album masters is also their shortcoming, according to people who want the best possible sound of the original UK mixes. The 2009 UK remasters and 2014 US Albums CDs replace all the fake stereo tracks with true stereo tracks if available, or the mono mix if no original stereo mix exists. There are no folddowns to mono. There is an excellent list here: http://forums.stevehoffman.tv/threa...your-impressions.341207/page-55#post-10043989 which shows the many changes to the 2014 US Albums from the original albums.

 

Nods. Ideally the US albums set would of replaced for all intents and purposes the Capitol albums versions having cleaner UK sourced mixes where identical and the actual mono mixes rather than the fold downs but for a significant number of us, the use of the 1987 remixes on four of that sets albums has lead to a situation when both are needed.

 

I've started to think that the use of the 1987 remixes was a simple mistake (not the first time that's happened with Apple). They did source nearly all of the unique US mixes (missing: the 3 stereo 'Revolver' songs on Y&T - though original vinyl copies didn't use them anyway, so maybe they don't count - and the stereos of 'Long Tall Sally' and 'I Call Your Name' - I believe these were likely excluded because they couldn't locate the original mixes without the reverb that Capitol added to the 'Second Album' tracks), they got rid of fake-stereo and folddown mono tracks, but then fell at the final furlong by including those 1987 mixes. My guess is that whoever supplied the tracks to 'fill in the blanks with the 2009 mono and stereo remasters', just made the mistake of using the common stereo versions of the 'Help!' and 'Rubber Soul' tracks by accident, forgetting that the original stereo mixes needed to be sourced from the Mono Box.

The 'Japan Albums' box that was released shortly afterwards correctly used the original 1965 stereo mixes for 'Help!' (RS was not included), so it's unlikely there was any opposition from Apple in using those mixes.

The 'US Albums' box could have been good. The only other change I would have made would be to include the 1963 stereo mix of 'I Want To Hold Your Hand' rather than the 1966 mix (because the latter did not exist at the time 'Meet The Beatles' was compiled, and because the style of the early mix would fit better).

 

Could you repeat which are the 4 albums on the US Box Set that used the 1987 mixes?

 

VI, Help!, Rubber Soul and Y & T all utilize the '87 mixes.

 

Absolutely (delivered in plummy RP accent!)

 

The thing is, personally I've never understood the big hullabaloo about the '87 mixes in the first place- I mean, I get the whole "messing with history" aspect, but, so they put a bit of reverb on (crappy, artificial sounding digital reverb, I'll grant you) and centered the wider stereo spectrum a bit- so what? I admit I've done the same kind of thing to the 1965 stereo mix of Rubber Soul (without adding any reverb, mind you) and I know I'm not the only one. And IMO it is an improvement. Hell, I wish George Martin and his '87 sound guys had done the same thing to the stereo Please Please Me and With The Beatles- that "wide stereo, vocals on one side, instruments on the other side" sound drives me batty. For the purists out there, who want the original dry wide stereo mixes and whatnot, they're still available (as John Lennon once said, "You've still got yer old records!"). The 1987 mixes aren't that bad, they're not horrible or anything, and it's not like they replaced Ringo's Ludwigs with cheesy sounding electronic drums like Zappa did in the 80's on a couple of his early records.

Should they have left well enough alone when preparing the original Beatles CDs in 1987? Maybe. Fact is, they didn't. And it's not like it was some outsider who knew nothing about The Beatles' records was making these decisions, it was none other than Big George Martin himself. I must admit I've always found the idea of a bunch of armchair record producers trying to second guess George Martin years after the fact rather amusing...

That the 2014 US Albums set used the '87 mixes I don't have as much of a problem with as that they didn't use the duophonic, fold downs or slathered in reverb mixes that the original US albums always had. Now that is messing with history IMO. That's where I'll give the edge to the Capitol Albums sets, at least they were authentic. So in that regard I can see why folks have an issue with the '87 Help! and Soul, but in general I suppose we all have to get over it, what's done is done, eh?

 

This is where I get confused.
The original Capital LPs in the 60s used duphonic fake stereo and fold down mono.
So did they just have one mix per song from EMI?
Some real mono and some real stereo?
Therefore if it was a mono album some songs were true mono and others were fold downs and if it were a stereo album, some were true stereo and others were duphonic?
So did each album from Capital have a mixed bag of true mixes and fake ones or did EMI send entire sessions worth of music under only one type of mix?

 

Most of the mono tracks are true mono mixes, or are not radically different from the mono mixes, and most of the stereo tracks use a true stereo mix.

Here's a breakdown of the mono/stereo variations on the original US albums:

• Mono mixed down from stereo tracks, on mono albums:
  
  
  Probably all tracks pulled from the first two UK albums Please Please Me and With The Beatles, and the song "Thank You Girl" are fold-downs. This includes most tracks on the mono versions of Meet The Beatles!, The Beatles' Second Album and The Early Beatles. For many of these tracks, there is not a lot of difference between the mono mix and the fold-down mix. I think Vee Jay probably did the same thing with Introducing the Beatles (except for "Please Please Me" and "Ask Me Why") but it is difficult to hear the difference. The worst offenders may be "Money" and "Thank You Girl".
  
  The US Help! soundtrack mono album is entirely folded down from the stereo master. There's seven Beatles songs here. "Ticket To Ride" is mixed down from the duophonic version.
  
  On Yesterday and Today, "Drive My Car" and "If I Needed Someone" are probably fold-downs. The differences from the mono versions are subtle.
  
  Everything else on the mono Capitol albums were from mono masters.​
  
  
• Duophonic (Capitol fake stereo) tracks made from mono mixes, used on stereo albums. These are mostly from singles for which they probably didn't have stereo masters at the time:
  
  
  Meet The Beatles! - I Want To Hold Your Hand
  Meet The Beatles! - This Boy
  The Beatles' Second Album - You Can't Do That
  The Beatles' Second Album - I'll Get You (no stereo exists)
  The Beatles' Second Album - She Loves You (no stereo exists)
  Beatles '65 - She's A Woman
  Beatles '65 - I Feel Fine
  Beatles VI - Yes It Is
  Help! (Soundtrack) - Ticket To Ride
  Yesterday and Today - I'm Only Sleeping (later replaced with true stereo)
  Yesterday and Today - Doctor Robert (later replaced with true stereo)
  Yesterday and Today - And Your Bird Can Sing (later replaced with true stereo)
  Magical Mystery Tour - Penny Lane
  Magical Mystery Tour - Baby, You're A Rich Man
  Magical Mystery Tour - All You Need Is Love​
  
  That's fifteen tracks, out of more than two hundred songs in the catalog. Everything else on the stereo Capitol albums were from the stereo mixes received from the UK. Fake stereo versions of "Love Me Do" and "P.S. I Love You" were made in the UK and used on Introducing the Beatles and The Early Beatles (and Please Please Me in the UK). "She Loves You" also appeared as (different) fake stereo in the UK.
  
  The three duophonic tracks on Yesterday and Today were replaced with true stereo versions a few weeks after the initial release, on the open reel version of the album, and on later pressings of the LP. "I'm Only Sleeping" at least, if not all three of these songs are from mono and stereo mixes unique to this album.
  
  
• United Artists only received mono masters, so the eight Beatles songs on the stereo A Hard Day's Night soundtrack are fake stereo, using some sort of panning method. It's not very good fake stereo, but at least it's not a radical departure from the mono versions.

There is much more detailed information here: http://www.columbia.edu/~brennan/beatles/index.html
and here: http://heroinc.hostingsiteforfree.com/btls/btls2.htm
including which songs have mixes that are unique to the American albums.

 

This probably has been discussed - MMT was nominated for album of the year. Is this the only compilation that has been nominated?

 

Why was Ticket to Ride doubly fake in mono?

 

Probably because it was easy. I think it likely they created only a stereo master for the album, which was run with the channels combined to mono when cutting the mono LP. It is possible The Early Beatles also had no mono master tape.

 

That is correct yes. There was a pressing of Rubber Soul that had reverb applied to the right channel, but it has never been issued on cd.