George Harrison remixed The White Album in 1968 in America

There is something that interests me for a long time . Apple manager Ken Mansfield told in interviews that George Harrison listened to the master tapes in 1968 of the Beatles White album , but didn t like what he heard . In october 1968 George hired Capital Studio s to do a new mix of the album .
I also read that there are mix variations when you compare the USA 1968 mix to the other mixes .
Does anybody have more information and exaples of these mix variations by George ?

 

Remastering, not remix.

 

I thought that George stopped Capitol from doing whatever they planned (compression and changing things). No?

 

This is a myth, as anyone who has the stereo US and UK versions can tell you.

The mono mix, which was not released in the US originally, is very different.

 

Yes, the UK and US are apparently the same, apart from a glitch on Cry Baby Cry. I did read somewhere though what i said above about George stopping Capitol's plans to change the sound, don't know how true it is. Apart from that, I think the US version ended up having shaved bass and lowered volume because of the long album sides, is this correct?

 

Well , this is what Ken Mansfield says somewhere in an interview :

Well, there's a lot of, there's a lot of different versions of that, I know. I was very careful in researching this. Because, you know, James, [in] my book, I go off of memory and what I remember what we were doing? And so my memory is real simple: We were working on Jackie's album and George was dissatisfied with the White Album and so we were remastering that. That's, that's what I know.


And he spent several weeks doing it.


Oh, yeah. I think I, I got him a house for, like, three weeks or something over in L.A. And I believe in the book that's probably the time the Clapton-Donovan story comes about, where we were all hanging out one night.


Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,317539,00.html#ixzz23zOlXdzf

 

I think, I read somewhere, that George heard the US cutting, and requested that Capitol re-cut it. Because of the side lengths they were a PIA to cut properly. I don't think the US had the Neumann cutting head on their machines. The UK may not have yet either, but supposedly did a better job on theirs. Had two or three people tell me over the years, that the original German 1st pressings were actually superior to everybody elses.
I'm sure there are some experts on this board that would know for sure.

 

I read about this first in 'Every Little Thing' by William McCoy and Mitchell McGeary. I don't have the book here, but I seem to recall they speculated on George Harrison having heard the mono mix. Can anybody who has this book look that info up maybe?

 

It's in the Ken Mansfield book, and also in the Spizer Apple one (p.118).

 

No mention of remixing anywhere. If anything happened, it had to do with recutting. Not uncommon in those days.

 

Spizer says that George remastered and recut the album, working with Capitol's technical staff, after the geniuses at the label had decided to Dexterize what EMI had sent them.

 

Wouldn't the 'Dexterization' have been done when copying the tape to make a new master? Surely George just instructed them to use the original tape if anything.
I wonder if Dave Dexter ever thought that his surname would become an often used adjective when discussing Beatles recordings?

 

"the engineers had run the sound signal through a limiter and compressed the volume range of the recording by cutting back the high volume peaks and bringing up the low passages."
Sounds about right.

 

I've usually heard the story told as a "remix". I suppose "remastered" is more plausible. Still, pretty tough to believe that Dexter created a master that George doesn't like, so he takes it upon himself to remaster the album, overseeing Capitol's engineers - and there's no documentation anywhere?

Spizer is pretty thorough in his research, so I am curious. Did he locate records at Capitol that establish that George oversaw a remastering of the album?

 

That's exactly what happened. Capitol put it through a compressor/limiter and George didn't like the lack of dynamics. George had it recut under his supervision. It didn't take weeks, probably just a day or two. (I just finished Ken Mansfield's book).

There were a very few copies of this lp pressed; I think Perry Cox sold one about two years ago.

 

I assume that by "recut" you mean remastered. So George didn't like the compression and remastered it in a day or two? That's fascinating if true - any documentation for this, or anecdotal? And what exactly did Perry sell - an actual test pressing of the "bad" mix? That would be amazing, and I would be interested in what it sold for - do you have a link or any other information?

I stopped collecting Beatles stuff about 10-15 years ago. This must have been uncovered relatively recently.

 

Michelle66 put up samples of the pre-George cut in this thread awhile back. I doubt the links are still active but should be interesting reading:

The compressed Capitol mastering of the Beatles' White Album



Some more discussion here, including comments from our host:

Beatles' White Album US pressings?

 

It was remastered, not a "bad" mix. It had to be recut and something like 33 lacquers had to be destroyed. A couple of lacquers were used by mistake.

It is documented in Ken Mansfield's "White Book."

http://www.worthpoint.com/worthopedia/beatles-pre-remaster-white-album-lp-3-known

http://collectorsfrenzy.com/details/260924074120

 

Remastered and then recut, as in recut the mastering lacquers. According to Mr. Spizer, 33 of the Capitol lacquers made with the pre-George compression were discarded and replaced with the good, unfutzed- with ones.

Edit: looks like mne563 and I tied!

 

So these are not test pressings, but actual labeled copies. That's awesome - you can bet that there are more out there, in collections, and in attics and garages. It's pretty amazing that it took all this time for people to figure it out.

This is the kind of stuff I used to love when I was a collector. I once held in my hands the Pepper acetate with the original track order - it was $3000, which would have been about my monthly take home back then. I still almost bought it.

 

It's not news, it was first revealed in the December 1968 issue of The Beatles Monthly. Mal Evans related how George was so upset by the cut he heard at Capitol that he took all day re-equalizing it so it sounded like it should.

 

Nikh, if you read my post, you'll see that I was referring to the fact that there labeled LP's with matrix numbers below A34 that have the original US mastering.

I was a pretty serious collector from the 70's to about 1993/94, and this was definitely unknown at the time.