Mono White Album - Beatles' Involvement and Intent

Discussion in 'Music Corner' started by Cast Iron Shore, Sep 13, 2017.

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  1. telepicker97

    telepicker97 Got Any Gum?

    Location:
    Midwest
    The reason that 60s stereo mixes sounded so wide and wonky with instruments completely panned to one side, vocals on the other, etc was so that those stereo mixes would sound fine when summed down to mono.
     
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  2. Jose Jones

    Jose Jones Outstanding Forum Member

    Location:
    Detroit, Michigan
    Information can be very interesting, yet not answer the question.
     
  3. Jose Jones

    Jose Jones Outstanding Forum Member

    Location:
    Detroit, Michigan
    I wonder if the nascent Cult of MONO protested that at the time? Probably not, since that was still back in the Age of Progress...
     
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  4. culabula

    culabula Unread author.

    Location:
    Belfast, Ireland

    No argument here.

    But the American perspective doesn’t play out here. If you for example, played back your Beatles on reel-to-reel, then that was your weapon of choice. People would have one playback system and therefore no need to buy more than one format. Even when cassettes came in, people chose them over vinyl for whatever reason but the Walkman was still 8 years away, so it wasn’t for that reason.

    I worked then in Belfast’s first dedicated cassette shop and was amazed that people were buying them at all, reasoning that there were no singles available in the format. There weren’t, but I was wrong and that did come later. However, the 7 » remained king.

    Of course record companies were in the business to make money but it simply wasn’t as commercial here then as in the States. Singles ruled, typically they didn’t feature on LPs and EPs continued to be manufactured for those who could afford more than a single but couldn’t quite run to an LP.

    76 was still a few years away and the advent of picture sleeves, 12” singles, coloured vinyl and multiple mixes to get you to buy the same record over and over and so on...

    These notions just didn’t exist in the 60s and if they had and the companies wanted you to buy, buy, buy, then they would have promoted the mono versus stereo mixes and exhorted you to buy both. However, they didn’t.
     
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  5. Jose Jones

    Jose Jones Outstanding Forum Member

    Location:
    Detroit, Michigan
    That is how commercial "art" is viewed now, and not just for music either. Notice how the only thing the media reports about new movies/films is the amount of their first week gross receipts; it's quality or lack thereof/significance/etc is rarely opined.
     
  6. lennonfan1

    lennonfan1 Senior Member

    Location:
    baltimore maryland
    you are right that there are differences in the two markets but I would counter that the White Album is a rare exception to what would be a 'rule'.
    for example, you mentioned cassette, as well as 8-track and here is where the exception comes in;
    as the White was almost like a religious experience to many at the time (not short selling this) the album comes out, you buy it on vinyl. You love it. You drive in the car with your friends/families brand new car tape player. How do you hear the White Album? you buy it again:)
    I think it's the same with reel or other formats as well...it's that rare circumstance where you could choose your 'weapon' only to find out you need it in a different arena. I'm inclined to think the mix differences were very deliberate and not happenstance, the Fabs are simply too labored over not to have pretty much all I's dotted and T's crossed:) Sure, there's accidental mix differences and mixes sent to different markets for different reasons but as you'll note the US market butchered up their lps to sell more copies, so again not that it was consciously common at the time but just as so much of the album was an experiment and the US stopped issuing mono lps, it wouldn't make sense to market it from that perspective. but from a worldwide release point of view, it just seems like another 'let's try THIS' move.
     
  7. jazon

    jazon A fight between the blue you once knew

    Location:
    ottawa
    I first bought sgt on cd in 1993 and i thought it was so cool that i could listen to only the vocals on one speaker and only the guitar and drums on the other, switching the balance from left to right and vise versa.
     
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  8. culabula

    culabula Unread author.

    Location:
    Belfast, Ireland

    Yes, of course. But again, you’re forgetting that here in 1968, there weren’t any commercially available cassettes. As for tape players, you’d be lucky if we had a radio in the car!

    I myself never saw a reel to reel player until the 80s and never saw such commercial releases of the Fabs in the format for sale - ever. I have no idea where people got them :)
     
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  9. Thanks to the OP BTW for this great, interesting thread and his/her informed perspective.

    ...Certainly most folks didn't buy TWO copies of anything in those days! And especially not of a double LP album! Pure nonsense to me... From a labor class point of view (my POV), even replacing such at one point with a fresher copy was kind of a luxury...

    ...In what other countries did the WA came out in genuine, dedicated mono form initially?
     
    Last edited: Mar 9, 2018
  10. lennonfan1

    lennonfan1 Senior Member

    Location:
    baltimore maryland
    an interesting side note, in the UK it was issued in mono and stereo on reel as well, sadly running 3.75 ips (same as US reel, US of course stereo only)
    ...and they weren't numbered! later, the US reissued the album as a 2 tape set @ 7.5 ips but with these horrible edits throughout the entire album!
     
  11. Don't Pass Me By alone would be a reason for me to prefer the stereo WA! I like this song, and the sped-up mono mix makes a joke out of it...
     
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  12. Frank

    Frank Senior Member

    ...which makes me wonder about his fable about the song's original inspiration. That contemporaneous comment is sort of the opposite of championing civil rights.

    Of course, everyone knows Paul McCartney has never been one to self-aggrandize, so...:sigh:
     
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  13. craymcla

    craymcla Forum Resident

    Location:
    Nashville, TN, USA
    I was thinking that as well. But for the record, reel-to-reel players were the audiophile's weapon of choice. You saw that primarily with jazz and classical, which makes sense reel-to-reel machines were very pricey and out of reach to the younger less affluent listeners who did listen to pop.

    Regarding someone's contention that putting albums in mono, stereo, reel-to-reel and cassette formats was a cash grab by the record companies, I see that as a rather cynical viewpoint. They wanted their product to be in whatever format the buyer preferred. Not cutting off a revenue stream is not the same as a cash grab.
     
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  14. culabula

    culabula Unread author.

    Location:
    Belfast, Ireland

    Grrrr.


    Here. This will break your heart. Around 1984,Golden Discs on Grafton Street in Dublin found a large box of unsold and therefore mint mono copies of The Beatles in a warehouse.

    They put them out for sale at 1.50IEP each.

    I found out about six months later.

    Fair broke my heart.
     
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  15. culabula

    culabula Unread author.

    Location:
    Belfast, Ireland

    Precisely.
     
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  16. culabula

    culabula Unread author.

    Location:
    Belfast, Ireland

    Sorry, but I much preferred your original version, "Don’t Pass Me, Buy".

    Would have made an excellent marketing slogan for the newly-released LP.
     
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  17. lennonfan1

    lennonfan1 Senior Member

    Location:
    baltimore maryland
    I took a trip to the UK and had friends in Leeds and they had a rare record shop there, I got mono copy in '82 for 60 pounds, no. 10772. pretty low no. and it's excellent. those '82 mono box sets were broken up and sold individually at Our Price, 3 quid each. the mono White I think was 4:) of course I got one of those too:)
     
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  18. culabula

    culabula Unread author.

    Location:
    Belfast, Ireland

    I know, but 1.50IEP! Originals! Numbered! Top-loaders! I’d have bought a dozen.

    (I got one of those '81 monos last week from eBay -Beatles for Sale for 6 quid - in excellent condition, but, boy, the vinyl is really flimsy. They did however use the original 3N stampers).
     
    Last edited: Mar 9, 2018
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  19. jmxw

    jmxw Fab Forum Fan

    Where do you get that assertion from? It was done in my family's house.
     
  20. jmxw

    jmxw Fab Forum Fan

    Nobody in the U.S. noticed because we didn't get the mono version here. One would have to seek out an import...

    I do recall Paul saying in an interview recently [last 10 years or so] that he intentionally wanted the stereo HS to have the extra bit at the end because it would make people used to the mono version "freak out" when they heard it.
     
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  21. lennonfan1

    lennonfan1 Senior Member

    Location:
    baltimore maryland
    oh that's a heartbreaker for sure, and yes the reissues are on thin vinyl but they're all original matrixes IIRC and if the pressing is nice and quiet they compare favorably to the originals, only difference being...thinner vinyl:)
     
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  22. craymcla

    craymcla Forum Resident

    Location:
    Nashville, TN, USA
    If we can assume for the moment that Paul did ask Ken Scott to deliberately make mixing differences between the mono and stereo versions, the the question to be answered is "Why?" I don't buy that is was a greedy self-enrichment plot to sell more copies. Unlike today's rabid collectors, myself included, I just don't think there were enough fans who both care enough AND had the financial means to own a stereo record player and want both versions to amount to more than a few thousand extra copies sold. Hardly an enticement to someone in his income bracket.

    But there is another scenario that does make sense. Stereo got to be much more affordable when the Japanese started making stereo record players. And many people moving up to the exciting new format would have wanted to upgrade at least some of their collection, similar to what happened on a much grander scale with the confluence of CDs and aging nostalgic baby boomers. So it's at least conceivable that Paul may have wanted to give those double dippers a bonus for buying the same album twice. However, I agree that there was never at that time any marketing campaign mentioning mix differences. The push to stereo was simply because it sounded better and the reward for record companies was that stereo records cost a buck more. ($3.98 vs $2.98)
     
    Last edited: Mar 9, 2018
  23. craymcla

    craymcla Forum Resident

    Location:
    Nashville, TN, USA
    Remember that stereo needles were made that could be flipped with a little lever. One side had a stereo needle and the other side had a mono needle.

    None-the-less, the stereo hype was so strong that sticking with mono if you could afford stereo was the same as choosing to live in the dark ages.
     
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  24. lennonfan1

    lennonfan1 Senior Member

    Location:
    baltimore maryland
    I agree with you except for what you don't buy:)
    selling records is the name of the game, and they knew this bigly in real time.
    you could be right on why but obviously the mono mix is very deliberate, I mean they create this massive new work and even George flew to the US to oversee mastering evidently so, just as a matter of sales being super important, the product was very labor intensive and fussed over. All those different sound effects and whatnot are no accident.
     
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  25. craymcla

    craymcla Forum Resident

    Location:
    Nashville, TN, USA
    I'll be more explicit here. Putting the same LP out in different formats is "Not cutting off a revenue stream". Putting the same LP out multiple times, but with the contents of each release being slightly different is "a cash grab".
     
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