Probably the biggest strength of the U.S. versions were their inclusion of singles, which were typically strong tracks, missing from the UK albums, like I Want To Hold Your Hand, She Loves You, I Feel Fine, Day Tripper, etc. Since early albums were largely just song collections anyway, reconfigurations didn’t have a major negative impact. However, by Revolver this reworking certainly had a damaging effect for sure, which may have been mollified somewhat had they included Paperback Writer or Rain.
No, I understand that. But you said their success in the US made them a worldwide phenomenon, I was just saying they had succeeded in some countries already, it was not US success what made them big there. Sure, their historical importance is undeniable. But I'm against the notion that it was the albums' configurations or occasional differences in sound that made them a success. The Beatles was already an unstoppable phenomenon with IWTHYH, and I believe they could have sold any album configuration. They even got away with including instrumentals in AHDN and Help! Wouldn't those two albums have sold even better with 14 Beatles songs?
Of course, everything we're doing is speculating. But, lots of bands did that then petered out because they couldn't break here. Better than they did? Early 60s US teens were not a sophisticated market. They weren't trying to sell to 21st century Beatles fans. They gave those US teens exactly what they wanted and they knew what US teens wanted because they were in the business of marketing to US teens. Again, we can speculate that if they tried to release the albums more true to the UK pressings they would have been just as successful. But we're making that determination from 60 years in the future and our jobs and the possible fate of our company aren't relying on us being right. They made their choices for a reason and looking at the results I can't see how they could have been any more successful.
$20 is two medium combo meals at McDonald's. It is not steep for any 1970s Capitol pressing that is in near mint shape. I have yet to come across a 1983 Rainbow in a store here in Southern California. I did grab a 1986 Allied Abbey Road with the Rainbow label for $19.99. My attitude when I go it an indie store is to drop $20-$60 bucks just to help them stay in business so I can enjoy the good stuff when it does appear.
With The Beatles without the I Want To Hold Your Hand single could have flopped in the US. You never know. They had trouble charting in Canada in 1963-early 1964 before Meet The Beatles.
As much as I love the US albums, I tend to think The Beatles would have been every bit as big here even if Capitol had released the UK albums here instead. I just don't think it would have mattered that much. The Beatles were such magic in the 60s and the mania was very real. The variance in the albums wasn't going to change that, imo. Of course we'll never know for sure.
They were also trying to squeeze the most out of every note of music. They knew those "unsophisticated US teens" (your words, I don't think we can generalize like that) would buy anything by The Beatles, so they could get away with things like the instrumentals in the soundtracks, or selling again 5 songs from the AHDN album in Something New, along with a German version of IWTHYH. You may be right in one thing: maybe the original albums wouldn't sell more, but not because the Capitol configurations were irresistible, most likely because their audience would buy anything. Impossible. In the context of January 64 nothing by The Beatles would have flopped in the US. As I said, Introducing the Beatles by a small label was number 2.
A fourteen-song Beatles album would likely have the price jacked up on it in the mid-1960s. So it might sell far less albums, and buying singles might remain the big thing for young consumers. Or even EPs, like in the UK. In the UK, the fans were paying for those fourteen songs per album, and sometimes the singles were on the LPs.
Apart from the terrible albums released in their name. They didn't do a bad job in making them pretty popular in the UK with the real albums.
Hmm..very interesting point about Capitol’s handling of the albums as it related to their success in America. Initially I completely disagreed with you but in many ways you have a point.
Guess what…the American market made the Beatles…and vice versa. Dave Dexter was late to the party, looked like a square with his crew cut , but ultimately did what EMI in London let him do: exploit Beatlemania with their blessing and tape dubs. The UK albums sounded better, were originally what the Beatles wanted put out but in the end it didn’t matter. Millions more English speakers heard Meet The Beatles rather than With The Beatles. The Beatles might have been unwilling partners but in 1963-1964 they didn’t have the luxury of choice.
Anything is possible. It's all speculation, as we said. All we can do is look at how it really went down. Not all that bad for the band or the label. I realize we kind of strayed a bit. We were mostly talking about the sound and Dexterization. He did what he did to the sound and the kids ate it up and here we are 60 years later and the Beatles still have near universal name recognition. Second guessing the decisions when the results were what they were is fun but we can't pretend they didn't know what they were doing or didn't give the audience they were targeting exactly what they wanted to hear. Some of the decisions they made were crass and only involved money and had nothing to do with artistic vision. But it was teen pop not high art. It may be looked at different today. But we shouldn't lose sight of who was consuming at the time. When the marketing guys were getting together to sell millions of records, they had to generalize. Of course there are always exceptions but in the 50s and 60s marketers were not trying to cater to them. They were catering to the teen dance crowd that would buy bucketloads of records and were not exactly concerned about instrument separation or how airy it was.
It was a bit of gentle mocking. They're not aimed at audiophiles. Who cares about audio-fidelity? The records were made for teenagers to dance to. They were perfect for their purpose.
Well, I guess You are a wealthy man, and I'm happy for You. Really, I'm not being facetious, and it's not personal. My attitude was always that $20 is an average price for good import pressing, which was the case until recently. And most US pressings hardly worth more than $10 - THEY NOT RARE!!!, though most of the time I simply don't care for them, I prefer to pay more and get UK or German one. Of course lately prices getting higher for obvious reasons, and I have to pay $25-35 for pressing that before was $20, but I'm not paying for that $50 or $100. Not because I'm cheap or can't afford that, - I can, but I don't feel like being gypped by a greedy bastard in the store. As for "supporting your friendly neighborhood record store", nah, I don't buy that common story that all of them struggling just to make ends meet. If record priced $20 in the store, that usually mean that the guy who brought it there was paid $2-3 and that is best case scenario. I witnessed it myself many times. Most of the record stores today, just trying to cash in on growing LP format popularity. While it still possible.
