What was the level of awareness of British verisons in the 60s in the USA

My memory is hazy about those long gone years, but I know that in the late '60s at least a couple of record stores in Pasadena, CA carried imports. I remember buying the first Jethro Tull album before it was released domestically. However, imports were a couple of extra bucks -- 4.98 compared to 2.98 -- so there had to be good reason. For me as a 15 year old kid, all I had was a portable Magnavox record player, so sonics were not much of a concern.

ALso, I remember that the so-called "underground" FM stations in L.A. would fill us in about imports.

 

I don't think there was any general awareness of differences between UK and domestic albums in the 60s. I recall that one of the record stores near my college had a single bin of import albums. Most of them seemed to be of bands that did not have domestic releases, rather than alternate versions of Beatles, Rolling Stones, etc. records. OTOH, I purchased an early English import pressing of Electric Ladyland from that bin (on the black Track label with extra upside-down numbers on the labels, which is probably the most valuable album I currently own). Of course, the cover was an attention-getter.

 

I, too, discovered the "truth" by way of The Beatles Illustrated Record--though I did so back in the mid-1970s, not in the early 1980s. I recall feeling that I had been cheated--especially when I learned what had been done to Revolver. I also recall growing angry when I learned what had been done to Help and A Hard Day's Night. My feelings about Rubber Soul were more mixed, since this was one case in which Dexter's sabotage had created an aesthetically pleasing result. Still, my preference immediately shifted to the British version.

During the same period, while on a visit to London, I purchased UK versions of certain key Stones albums (Out of Our Heads, Aftermath, Between the Buttons). I was surprised to see how many significant variations there were between the UK and the North American versions. As someone who had grown attached to the idea that albums were meant to be consumed as cohesive units, I found these variations disorienting.

 

I wasn't aware of the UK Beatles albums until the mid 70s. I am not sure if there were any other groups who had different releases for UK and USA.

 

Donald, I still have those singles! Once she sent me a tape which was amazing for those times. I couldn't understand a damn word!

mud-

 

I was born in '68 and grew up listening to my mother's collection of Capitol lps - I learned "the truth" from Nicholas Schaffner's The Beatles Forever, which I read obsessively as a child. It had a pretty detailed comparison of UK and US single and lp chart positions, iirc. Somewhere along the way I picked up the Roy Carr Illustrated Record book as well. I remember buying the Parlophone imports of records like A Hard Day's Night at Schoolkids Records in Raleigh, NC during the early 80s. It was instantly obvious that the Parlophone albums were better than the Capitol albums in every way. I remember being so relieved a few years later when the decision was made to issue the Parlophone albums on CD - they got it right! Who could have guessed that 20 years later, Crapitol would be focusing its energies on reissuing the wretched American albums on CD?

 

Manfreds, Hollies, Zombies, Hermans Hermits, Georgie Fame, Who, Kinks, Small Faces, Wayne Fontana, etc etc etc

 

Indeed. Not to mention that The Hollies' entire second album In the Hollies Style wasn't released at all in the US!

One of the first import albums I ever remember owning was Begin Here, The Zombies' debut UK album. I copped it ca. 1970 from a kid at college who had orange crates full of LPs he was selling, including some imports.

I was a huge Zombies fan and had what U.S. albums there were to be had (She's Not There, Odessey and Oracle and the recently released Early Days) plus a few less-well-known singles. But the extra tracks on Begin Here were a revelation to me...espcially the exquisite "The Way I Feel Inside."

 

I got my first Beatles album the week after they appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show..it was a copy of the Canadian release "Beatlemania"..same cover art as the US release "Meet the Beatles"..believe it or not i got the LP from one of my sister's friends...who bought the disc after hearing about all the "hype"..but didn't care for it...(lucky me)...then a year later..a similar story..a friend's sister came back from a trip to England with a copy of the Parlophone release " Beatles For Sale"..she wasn't crazy about the disc..so she sold it to me for $5.00...i'll never forget holding it in my hand..it was unlike any LP i ever owned ...glossy, gatefold cover...great photos of the Beatles..and a few extra songs not yet available in Canada or the US...left out on Beatles '65...which was the North American release equivalent..needless to say i was one popular kid on the block..my friends always dropping by the house to hear those extra tracks...i guess that's why Beatles For Sale is one of my favorite albums.

 

The discography in the back of the Beatles' biography by Hunter Davies in 1968. I was 9 or 10 at the time. I liked the idea that the UK "A Hard Day's Night" and "Help!" LPs were all Beatles songs. I don't recall seeing the imports at the local record shop at that time, they could have been in a separate "Import" bin that I just never looked in. I picked up the BC-13 box almost 20 years later and it was like hearing the Beatles for the first time all over again.

 

I now remember that the daughter of my parents best friends - a girl who was my sister's age, two years older than me - started a petition to get Capitol Records to release Beatles For Sale in America! I would have been 10-years old and obviously didn't understand the machinations of this stuff... not that the 12-year old girls did either. She must have read about it in a Beatles magazine of some kind. She was an uber-Beatles fan and her parents really indulged her... she had one wall of her bedroom papered with Beatles wallpaper.

 

I've read stories of Parlophone Please Please Me albums finding their way to the U.S. prior to the Ed Sullivan appearance via flight attendants and the like - sort of the reverse phenomenon of the Beatles being exposed to rare US 45s via sailors returning to the port city of Liverpool. How cool would it have been to be the only kid on the block with a copy of that album the day after the Sullivan show?

 

You were fortunate Steve to live in LA then...maybe your allowance got eaten up quicker but seeing imports back in '68 must have been a revelation. I got my first imports in 1973 at Jordon Marsh Dept store in Boston. For some reason, they had a great record department, and they started carrying some Beatles, Who, Stones imports. I still have the Horzu Help album, Aftermath and a Who album from France, weird greenish cover that started off with Armenia City In The Sky...forget the actual title....but it has 2 or 3 rare stereo mixes on it. Even then I knew some of the mixes were very different....Aftermath blew me away

 

I wasn't particularly keen on imports until I picked one up from a seller in Goldmine about 15 years ago. It was a UK Cream "Disraeli Gears", 2nd press. I think it was about $15 or $20. Anyway, I started looking for them more and would pick 'em up if they were nice copies. Record shows and Goldmine were my only sources, but if you kept an eye out, you'd come across stuff. They were almost always priced a little higher, but nothing compared to what that stuff goes for now. Seeing clean stuff wasn't that uncommon either. Who could've known how things would be now? I was really just collecting stuff then. It wasn't an audiophile thing at all, just something neat to collect.

Anyway, I never gave much thought to stampers or anything before coming here. Didn't mean anything to me. I didn't start on the audiophile path until I began getting MFSL CDs and records. DCC and MasterSound golds followed after that and I eventually found my way here, lurked for a while, then joined. Now look what I've gotten into.

So, my awareness started back in the early 1990s when I was collecting as a collector, and not an audiophile.

 

A friend of our somehow got a catalog from a UK mail order firm, Heanor Record Centre, in Derby. One of my band mates sent off right away for some who singles or something. We were all impressed, and started ordering stuff. We'd sit down and work out an order together. It was big excitement when the packages would show up with stuff we had never seen before. They were dirt cheap too, singles were $.75 and albums were about #3.50 airmail! As a result, I have a good collection of uk 45s by Hendrix, the Who, Move, Cream, Stones, Mayall etc. Pretty soon you could start getting stuff at our Discount Records shop. As soon as I could, I got a job there, and became the buyer. This was a few years later, in the early 70's. People from all over the Bay Area would come down to San Jose to shop. I used to go up to the city and raid the cheap bins at Tower. Still have two copies of the Let It Be box I got for $1.99 each.

I did get to Europe in 1970. It was heaven. Paris, London, Madrid, Munich.. I found all kinds of shops and loads of pic sleeves. The next two trips I made in '75 and '78 also turned up heaps of goodies. I had a pal in London who could take me to every shop and stall. Amazing. Now, it's all picked over, and expensive, if you can even find anything.

 

My lack of awareness of UK versions in the 60s hasn't improved.

 

Did not know there was a difference until I found the Parlophone LPs in the Berlin PX in 1970.

 

I love the fact that this typo hasn't been fixed in 12 years

 

I'm on the side of this fence. Being on 32 and not even a glimmer in my parents eyes when the Beatles were recording, it amuses me somewhat to have learnt (by joining this forum) in recent times that the UK releases wasn't what was being sold to you all in the US.

 

I know this isn't totally on topic, but what-the-hey. Are the jackets on European vinyl LPs today still that shiny, flexible cardboard that they used back in the '60s? If not, when did they get phased out? I still remember getting a kick out of those sleeves.

 

It was around 1971, a Saturday afternoon and i was in Times Square Department Stores (TSS, Long Island, NY)..I was in 8th grade at the time. As always, my parents went their way and I went straight to the record department. As I sifted through "Beatles", I found "different" albums mixed in with the "usual" ones. I looked them over...and went, "whoa!!! These are the originals from ENGLAND!!" There were about a half dozen of them including PPM which was the one I went home with that day (still have it).

 

My impression is that U.S. kids had almost no awareness that UK records were different for most of the '60s, but that this started to change by the end of the decade.

And I think that Beatles obsessiveness was the main factor, with the desirability of say, a British pressing of Abbey Road starting to kick in, along with belatedly learning that an album like Rubber Soul had a significantly difference track listing, etc.

For me this didn't become a seriously big deal until the mid-70's and punk, when stuff like the first Clash album and all those UK punk '45s became a thing in hip record stores.