Capitol versions: Which Beatles records were remixed by Dave Dexter?

Discussion in 'Music Corner' started by nite flights, Jan 23, 2010.

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  1. Steve Hoffman

    Steve Hoffman Your host Your Host



    Dave Dexter, Jr. was a good friend. He had the best stories. I remember playing him some Jimmie Noone Apex Club Orchestra Vocalion 78's from 1928 and him telling me that he knew him well. I was in awe. "You KNEW Jimmie Noone?" I asked him. Wow.

    At any rate, he didn't think too highly of John Lennon. He thought he wasn't playing "the game" as they say in show biz regarding meeting the press and doing the usual press junket stuff. Can't blame John for not wanting to, especially meeting the crippled kids in wheelchairs. I know this scared John deep down but he wise-cracked it off. He should have told Dave of his fears but no one talked touchy-feely in those days.

    What the Capitol engineering staff did to some of the songs was meant to enhance them, not hurt them. Dave told me they were appalled at the sound of some of the Beatles master recordings coming out of EMI in the UK at that time. He told me that he had been over there in the late 1950's and the studios made lovely sounding records. He didn't know what happened with the Beatles stuff but no one at Capitol liked the way the stuff sounded in the beginning. He said the stuff sounded "dry, unmusical, lifeless, almost atonal".

    Heh, so they tried to add body, air, space and life to the sound by adding reverberation. They compressed the fed-back reverb and mixed it back in to the music. Dave singled out I FEEL FINE as one of the worst sounding.

    "I couldn't believe how dead the new Beatles single sounded when the tape came in" he stated to me in 1985.

    "It was like there was a recording mistake that went unnoticed by all. We tried to fix it by reverberating the sound and adding some actual bass and treble".

    Of course they really, really overdid it and when they did the fake stereo version of I FEEL FINE they double-overdid it, hee. Can't stand the way they sound now of course but back then it sounded pretty good on my Webcor phonograph with the 4" speaker.

    So there you go. I miss Dave. Love the guy. I don't like what they did to the Beatles songs though.

    By the way, Capitol used echo chamber #9 to "fix" the Beatles stuff. (Number 9, number 9...)
     
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  2. Jamie Tate

    Jamie Tate New Member

    Location:
    Nashville
    That's interesting Steve. Did he ever come around to appreciate the Beatles or their music?

    So, when everyone finally heard the UK versions of overly Dexterized songs like I Feel Fine was it a shock?
     
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  3. therockman

    therockman Senior Member In Memoriam






    Thanks Steve, great story. :cheers:
     
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  4. brainwashed

    brainwashed Forum Hall Of Fame

    Location:
    Boston, MA


    Nice rememberances Steve. I hope this helps some fellow members who love to deride Dave Dexter at every opportunity. Of course Dave and his staff at Capitol were trying to enhance the Beatles records, not hurt them. For those who weren't amongst us back in those days... hit songs on the radio were hot, punchy and compressed. This wasn't necessarily the way the Beatles mixes were being done by George Martin, especially the stereo mixes. And for the hundredth time (hyberbole intended) Capitol was forced to issue fake stereo mixes (their 'Duophonic' process) if they didn't have true stereo mixes to use. These are the mixes that suffer most... not the true mono or true stereo mixes they added some compression or reverb to. Ron
     
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  5. Steve Hoffman

    Steve Hoffman Your host Your Host

    Dave Dexter, Jr. loved the Beatles in a way and hated them in another. He LOVED how they evolved musically. ("Like great jazz musicians evolve", he once said to me).

    He hated what the British Invasion did to the stars that he loved, Sinatra, Basie, etc. Put them on the back burner, so to speak. It must have been hard working at a record company and having signed artists like Peggy Lee to the label all of a sudden to be outsold by these "atonal sounding British punks".. Sound familiar?

    On the other hand, his family (younger members) loved that he worked at Capitol Records, "the Home Of The Beatles". It gave him street cred!

    Dave told me he cried when he heard (on ABC Monday Night Football) that John Lennon had been killed. Dave said that his entire life flashed before his eyes at that moment. He sighed deeply and said "A tragic thing".

    So, I don't mind the bitching about this here. Heck, bitching is what we do best on the Forum.. I DO mind the idea that Capitol somehow was trying to hurt the Beatles records here by revectoring them. That is totally not true. They were trying to make them sound better ("better" in a 1964 sense, of course).

    Carry on.
     
  6. Jamie Tate

    Jamie Tate New Member

    Location:
    Nashville
    You bet. The more things change the more they stay the same.
     
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  7. ROLO46

    ROLO46 Forum Resident

    how can you improve 'i feel fine'
    its perfect
     
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  8. dotheDVDeed

    dotheDVDeed Forum Resident

    Location:
    So. Cal., USA
    Ugh, there can be no defense for the Help Mono soundtrack. Take the Duophonic tracks and fold them down for the mono album!
     
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  9. LouReed9

    LouReed9 Village Idiot

    Location:
    Philly Burbs
    I don't think he "ruined" anything. "Altered" yes. I still prefer some of the "Dexterized" material over the UK version.

    It's nice to have both however.
     
  10. mikee

    mikee Forum Resident

    Thanks for your comments, I was not thrilled with Marsh's vilification and really wanted to know a little bit about Dave (Dexter).

    The fact is he didn't "ruin" it. It worked - for the AM radioed, real cheap stereoed, and youthful audience that was the reality at that moment. If it was ruined it would have been ruined. Instead it was highly successful. They didn't destroy the masters and it was adjustable later for circumstances and technology that exist now. I thoroughly enjoy listening to the Dexter mixes, though they are not ideal from a technical standpoint, now. I'm more or less glad Dave did it. I am less entralled with the butchering of the albums up until Pepper. That hardly makes Dexter an ogre though, in my view.
     
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  11. nikh33

    nikh33 Senior Member

    Location:
    Liverpool, England
    Give the guy a break, he was used to the rich reverbed sophisticated sound of America beaming directly from the Capitol Tower- he didn't know or even understand that these raw North of England scallies were about to imprint on the 1960s in a way that made Sinatra and even Elvis seem passe. To him, From Me To You was unreleasable - to a lot of us here, it was THE song of Summer 1963- the sound of the American domination of the Music scene beginning to crumble
     
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  12. Oatsdad

    Oatsdad Oat, Biscuits, Abbie & Mitzi: Best Dogs Ever

    Location:
    Alexandria VA
    Exactly. Just using logic, why would Capitol try to ruin the music? They wanted to sell it, so clearly they thought what Dexter did would help move more 45s/LPs...
     
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  13. KennyG

    KennyG Forum Resident

    Location:
    Ireland
    That's my own sense of what happened. That said, I think he had a point about the technical quality of the records being produced at Abbey Road at that point - the bass was poorly recorded and EMI bizarre reluctance to invest in modern equipment didn't help either. :hide:
     
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  14. Runt

    Runt Senior Member

    Location:
    Motor City
    And sell it they did...a ton of it. Maybe there was a method to Dexter's madness after all. Of course, the quality of the music also helped a bit. :D
     
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  15. Greatest Hits

    Greatest Hits Just Another Compilation

    I think both the British and American versions of The Beatles albums respectively stand up well on their own, regardless of what the true creative intentions of the artists were.

    The American Rubber Soul, for instance, is one of the greatest folk rock albums of the 60s.
     
  16. Oatsdad

    Oatsdad Oat, Biscuits, Abbie & Mitzi: Best Dogs Ever

    Location:
    Alexandria VA
    Could be! :)

    Of course, we'll never know how non-Dexterized Fabs would've sold in the US. Did his treatment help sales/hurt sales/make no difference? No way to know...
     
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  17. PBo

    PBo Forum Resident

    Location:
    New England
    I’m so tired of the “it worked” argument regarding Dexterized versions and American audiences. Considering the play back equipment that the American teen or pre-teen had access to, I seriously doubt they cared how much reverb was added to a particular Beatles song. The Beatles were writing and recording great music and that is why they had such a huge impact. Sorry, it wasn't the eq settings that Capitol chose that created Beatlemaina.
     
  18. Greatest Hits

    Greatest Hits Just Another Compilation

    Right. It was the trousers.
     
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  19. Mister Charlie

    Mister Charlie "Music Is The Doctor Of My Soul " - Doobie Bros.

    Location:
    Aromas, CA USA
    All I know is how startled I was when I first heard the UK I Feel Fine & She's A Woman. I know exactly what dexter meant by dry. While I liked being able to hear much more clearly what was being played, it certainly lost a lot in the excitement department. It really was very dry!
     
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  20. nikh33

    nikh33 Senior Member

    Location:
    Liverpool, England
    You want dry, how about Thank You Girl!
    Anyhow, the Beatles trhemselves made up for it with Ticket to Ride, the next single after I Feel Fine which I BELIEVE was not tampered with...?
     
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  21. ROLO46

    ROLO46 Forum Resident

    < edit >
    'i feel fine'
    superb
    inmvuo
     
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  22. lukpac

    lukpac Senior Member

    Location:
    Milwaukee, WI
    In the years when things were actually getting "Dexterized", I'm not sure Abbey Road was any less "modern" than Capitol. Abbey Road arguably had better tape machines and was certainly using some of the best mics available. It seems the differences likely had more to do with what Abbey Road thought sounded good and/or was used to.
     
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  23. let him run...

    let him run... Senior Member

    Location:
    Colchester, VT USA
    Although I never met Dave Dexter my opinion of him was certainly colored by the article he wrote for Billboard magazine following the the death of John Lennon. I don't have it in front of me for an accurate quote, but as part of the headline was the message that John was an irritant to those who had to work with him. I remember thinking an article like that was totally inappropriate and in extremely bad taste.
    I can imagine that John may have been an "irritant" to Dave Dexter, Jr. but at the same time I'm guessing that "irritant" is probably a polite term for how John may have felt about Dexter, after seeing and listening to the "Capitol Versions" of their LP's.
     
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  24. ROLO46

    ROLO46 Forum Resident

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  25. hodgo

    hodgo Tea Making Gort (Yorkshire Branch) Staff

    Location:
    East Yorkshire
    +1 Couldn't agree more, you can put out the best audiophile albums from a technical perspective but if the songs are no good and don't speak to people they've no chance.

    That's the thing about great artists the music they create is what speaks to people and sells it, nothing more, nothing less.
     
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