The Beatles U.S. Albums box set - your impressions ... (continued)

He was exaggerating his position. Sir Joe Lockwood at EMI Manchester Square in London told Alan Livingstone at the EMI subsidiary Capitol Records tower in Hollywood to release I Want to Hold Your Hand in the US so Alan told Dave either he released it or he would pass over Dave and have someone else work on it. It was at this point that Dave suddenly saw the merits of the single.

 

The Beatles were as big as it was possible to be. Capitol didn't make them that way, The Beatles did. As Ringo said "We were never bigger than we were in Liverpool, we were the biggest thing there, we just got big in more places".

 

Berkowitz and Calbi started with the uncompressed versions, but their final product had their own limiting applied. Often they are slightly more limited than the 2009 versions (definitely for the monos, which were unlimited in 2009 but have limiting on the 2014's), but sometimes the 2014 stereo versions have slightly less limiting.

For instance, the 2014 stereo Got To Get You Into My Life has around 1.5dB more headroom than the 2009 remaster. That's the exception rather than the rule though.

 

From what I can tell, 'If I Needed Someone' is also probably a fold down. Capitol had already released the other two Rubber Soul 'leftovers' (Nowhere Man/What Goes On) on a single in their true mono mixes which were then recycled on Y&T. I have no idea why the other two Rubber Soul tracks were only folddowns though.

Not sure about the 'Help!' mono mixes - Capitol obviously released both singles in true mono, so I would assume they did receive all the mono mixes. As far as I can gather, Capitol could only be bothered to compile one version of this album (in stereo) and simply folded the whole thing down during cutting for the 'mono' version. They did the same thing with the 'Early Beatles' LP too (hence why both of those are digital folds of the stereo program on the Capitol Albums v2 box).

 

...which was a pittance really.

The Beatles royalty rate with EMI was one old penny (when there were 240 pennies in a pound) for each sale of a 'single' (two songs). This was split between them all though (and Epstein), and only on 85% of records (the missing 15% covered damages and promos).

I think someone worked out that each Beatle would have received around only £750 in performance royalties for a million selling single in the UK.

For foreign releases though, the royalty rate was halved. Even though a 12-song US album would have counted as 6 'singles', it was a terrible deal for the artists.

So, not that much in the way of 'compensation' from Capitol's sales (and altering of their music). But the Beatles deserved, and rightfully took, every penny they got.

 

Whaaaaat?!

Especially considering EMI could easily provided Capitol with the dedicated mono mixes for all four Rubber Soul songs...

 

Not doubt EMI did. It was just Capitol being Capitol...

 

I've already got the Y&T CD. The mono tracks are pretty close to my mono LP. "Drive My Car" is not the fold down and "Doctor Robert" fades a little early, but that's it. The unique U.S. stereo of "Day Tripper" and "We Can Work It Out" are, also, sweet. Better sounding versions of what I grew up with on the Red album LP.

 

Yes, I read that too in 2014 and posted the same information but @slane had his own findings.

 

In the U.S.A. market, in America...there was Capitol Records.

Decades later, many decades later, there was the Apple concoction: The "U.S." albums.

Try as they might, revisionists cannot change history.

"But, yes, well, however, this and that..."

Yet, History Remains.

 

It's an interesting debate. And I'll say it again -- I did not buy the US Albums Box. But I did buy the 4 CDs missing from the Capitol V1 & 2 boxes. These US albums will always be "essential" for me.

 

I stand by nigh33's perfect reply:

By the way, great quote by Ringo. Who would say he could be so insightful?

Capitol was the first to upgrade their catalog throughout the years. And no, a reissue does not change history, nor does it pretend to.

 

George Martin certainly thought Capitol needed to do what they saw fit.

 

Agreed they deserved it.
I never suggested they didn't deserve every penny.
It was an example.
Just like accepting the sales totals as legitimate or not attacking the practice in press conferences etc.
I'm saying as much as the group disliked what Capitol was doing, in the whirlwind of Beatlemania, it was bothering them less than it bothers many today.

 

I don't think he did. Can you provide a quote from him?

 

Even based on averages of the amount of people in Liverpool, Ringo may be inaccurate here.
The Beatles changed culture and conscience in the U.S.
That's not to say it was Capitol who was responsible but there was a sound that maybe the causal fans may have preferred that fit other American styles.

It's been discussed that EMI trusted Capitol's knowledge of the market.

 

It has nothing to do with averages or amounts.

Quite so. The Beatles did it, not Capitol. They did it all over the world with records issued on different EMI labels. Little known fact in America.

Not at all. Sir Joe TOLD Alan to release I Want to Hold Your Hand, Dave Dexter had already told Alan he wouldn't be releasing any Beatles records. So Capitol's "knowledge" of the market was zero, and EMI, realizing this, overruled Capitol.

I do find it admirably patriotic to continually find obscure titbits to try and shore up imagined fondness of the importance of Capitol records, but they were just a subsidiary of EMI of London, and The Beatles were from Liverpool.

 

Probably so. The overall tone of his book came off as being a blowhard.

 

Read the book The Beatles '66 The Revolutionary Year by Steve Turner. It chronicles the photo session. There was no mention of that being the reason for the pictures. The photographer just wanted to do something different.

 

I know, right? Some people seem to be more of a fan of Capitol's than the Beatles.

 

And most of them seem to think it's spelled 'Capital' too.

 

I don't see it that way. A lot of us grew up with the US versions of the albums and we'd like to have CD replicas of those albums that sound like the versions we knew.

Even if this means they offer substandard sound and other issues, that's what we want - "substandard" or not, that's the Beatles we came to know and love.

We can get - and already own - the UK albums with the "originally intended" mixes/sound, so if they want to put out a US albums collection, it should hold close to what they released in the 60s.

Like the 2 "Capitol" CD boxes did!

 

I'd like to have a CD version of a Beatles album on Parlophone that looks like and sounds like the album I knew back then, but no, still no 'Collection of Beatles Oldies'. Seems no one gets everything they want.

I did get the eight Capitol CDs in the two box sets, and love em. Would have been nice to have authentic-sounding Y&T and MMT too.

 

It did hold close. Not perfect by any stretch, but they got far more right than wrong.

 

You said it yourself: the 2 Capitol boxes did exactly that. You already have what you wanted (although it was missing Y &T). Why would the 2014 box release exactly the same? It was a different approach. I have both, they offer different experiences.