The Beatles: UK Response to US Capitol versions?

This is very clever, but flawed, I think. The top-right corner should be a slice of the Revolver cover. Then it would match the Yesterday and Today track-list, starting at the 12 o'clock position and proceeding clock-wise.

Of course, as the Kokomoyan President has pointed out, the Revolver cover was probably not available when Yesterday and Today was released.

 

Not to mention "Second Album" (ka-BOOM!) and "VI," which DD Jr brilliantly programmed to kick off with Kansas City into Eight Days a Week.

The earliest Capitol albums were programmed to rock harder because they weren't competing with English pop like Cliff Richard and Helen Shapiro, they were competing with stuff like the Kingsmen ("Louie Louie") and the Trashmen ("Surfin' Bird"), not to mention Motown and surf music. The guys at the Capitol tower were already pumping out ass-kicking records by Dick Dale and the Beach Boys - records filled with attitude - so the more 'polite,' 'refined' British albums that George Martin was sending over didn't cut it for the US market... or so it was perceived in 1964 Hollywood.

 

We've certainly never had this debate before

It's actually quite simple:
- If you grew up in the U.S. in the pre-CD era, the American version of the albums are the ones you very likely know and love. The conversation about them not being "real" albums is truly meaningless, and will never change how we view them or feel about them. So, for those of you not in this category, get over it.

- If you did not grow up in the U.S. in the pre-CD era, the American albums most likely do not mean much to you, and are seen as foreign, "chopped up", incomplete, or interesting oddities at best. So, for those of you not in this category, you will not convince the other side how meaningful the U.S. albums are.

 

The last 3 on your list were originally released on the UK Revolver. Capitol held up the release of Revolver in the US and purloined 3 advance tracks from it to fill out the Yesterday and Today compilation which also contained single sides and leftovers from the UK Help! and Rubber Soul albums. "Bad Boy" is the only one specifically recorded for a U.S. release. The other 3 were originally on Side 2 of the UK Help!

 

"'Yesterday' And Today" was Capitol demanding new masters from London to meet the insatiable desire for new Beatles product in the USA (especially since a summer tour of the States was about to launch). It had been six months since they had a new album on the shelves, which was a lifetime in 1966.

"Revolver" wasn't ready for release yet, so George Martin rushed over a few early mixes, which Capitol combined with some leftovers to produce a new album.

 

I agree. "I've Just Seen a Face" and "It's Only Love" fit the largely acoustic-based texture of the album better than "Drive My Car" and "What Goes On", both of which, to my ears, clash with it (although that was the original sequence). Reportedly, since the Byrds had become very big at this time, Capitol deliberately recast Rubber Soul as a folk-rock album, and they came up with a very consistent one. This may have been a happy accident, but I love the way "Girl" follows "It's Only Love" in the same key. A direct segue (unheard of at the time) would have worked even better.

 

Held up? The Parlophone and Capitol Revolver issues came out within a few days of each other in August 1966.

 

A matter of personal taste. I hear "Michelle" as a beautiful melody with a witty lyric about falling in love with a French girl who doesn't speak English so he just tells her in French, "These are words that go together well." I also love the way George Harrison made his guitar sound like a French horn (with George Martin's direction). There are others who don't like the song, but there's a reason why it became a standard.

 

Yes. That's more accurate. The tracks were still originally slated for Revolver. The US advance appearance of them on Yesterday and Today led some to believe the UK Revolver included "old tracks" from Y&T.

 

That's about the only example I've ever heard of a Gretsch Tennessean's "mud switch" ever being useful.

 

The reason some of feel that they "got it right" is that by including "I've Just Seen a Face" and "It's Only Love", they created a consistent folk-flavored album. "Drive My Car" and "What Goes On" were probably included on the original album to provide contrast and variety, but for those of us who grew up with the US Rubber Soul, those songs clash with the texture of the rest of the album. As for "artistic design", the story goes that Capitol was going for a folk-rock approach to mirror the success of the Byrds (which does make "If I Needed Someone" a curious omission since it was admittedly Byrds-influenced).

 

Born in '63, I didn't have the opportunity to experience anything other than the US LPs in the early-mid '70s when I got my listening legs under me. The US Rubber Soul and Revolver are fantastic releases, but now that I have the UK releases of these, I'm totally in your camp. But, I still enjoy listening to them for sonic differences; not to mention the nostalgia of the track sequencing. And despite exhortations to the contrary, I've never been satisfied with answers from the band members regarding the butcher cover. The answers I've seen all seem to point toward the purpose of the photo shoot and not the eventual outcome. I can buy that the purpose of the shoot wasn't to comment on Capitol's practices, but it's really hard for me to imagine John or George seeing the proofs and not thinking "these are exactly perfect for the cover of the next US release."

 

[QUOTE="cmcintyre, post: 14364627, member: 32051"

In the context of the 1960's and consumerism as practised then, the modifications of the albums in the US were a product of their time. Therefore I have more acceptance of what Capitol did then, given the general company behaviours of the time , than what Apple did two years ago when releasing the US album set. If they're about reproducing a moment in time, then reproduce them as they were - sound modifications included. Rewriting history is not where the western world is at nowadays.[/QUOTE]
This is the most concise and coherent statement that I have read on this topic.

 

Completely agree. But it kind of takes the fun out of the debate, doesn't it?

 

I think that at the moment that Caputol release some USA albums in 2004 and 2006 (original USA mix) and 2014 (using UK mixes) makes the USA album at the canon discography now (I know that the Japan albums was released in 2014, but just for Japan, the USA albums was in many countries).

 

Completely agree. I view the U.S. and UK configurations as alternate listening experiences. One not necessarily better than the other - just different.

 

Nearly. It's Only Love is in the key of C major (played in G major, capoed on the fifth fret); Girl is in the key of C minor (played in E minor, capoed on the eighth fret).

 

But since both are in C, it flows.

 

You are quite right, my mistake. For some reason I mixed up It's Only Love with I'm Only Sleeping.
Here's a corrected version – starting from 12 o'clock it goes...

1. Drive My Car (Rubber Soul)
2. I’m Only Sleeping (Revolver)
3. Nowhere Man (Rubber Soul)
4. Doctor Robert (Revolver)
5. Yesterday (Help!)
6. Act Naturally (Help!)
7. And Your Bird Can Sing (Revolver)
8. If I Needed Someone (Rubber Soul)
9. We Can Work It Out (single)
10. What Goes On (Rubber Soul)
11. Day Tripper (single)



I'm sure the Revolver artwork existed in June 1966, it just wasn't released to the public until the following month.

 

While we're on the subject of the Revolver artwork, its origins - or rather Klaus' own inimitable style - appear to date from 1963:


Klaus Voormann : Portfolio »

 

The last 3 were originally released on Yesterday and Today. The other 3 (You Like Me Too Much, Dizzy Miss Lizzie, and Tell Me What You See) were originally released on Beatles VI, almost two months before the UK Help.

 

That's correct. What I should have said was that they were originally planned for release on their respective UK albums. Only "Bad Boy" was recorded specifically for the American market where it appeared on Beatles VI before later appearing on the UK Collection of Oldies.

 

Never really gave it much though before, but why didn't Capitol put the orphan B-side "I'm Down" on Yesterday and Today? Maybe they planned in advance to only issue 11 songs on Revolver (like most of the others), so they got the other 3 out of the way early.

 

They probably wanted some new songs for the "Today" part of the album.

 

Lewisohn says that on May 10, 1965:

".....the Beatles returned to London for a recording session at EMI, where - taping especially for the US market - John steered the group through two of his favorite songs by the American rocker Larry Williams: Dizzy Miss Lizzy and Bad Boy. Both were completed.......and mixed into mono.......George Martin took away the mix tapes and dispatched them by airfreight the next day to Hollywood.........."

"At best, so the music press reported at the time, the songs might turn up on a British EP later in the year."