Mono White Album - Beatles' Involvement and Intent

Good thread idea !!!
The 50th whitealbum Anniversary no doubt will have other new goodies included ie mono /stereo related.
Definitive version ?
Think emphasis was on the MONO, but time was spent on the stereo to make both versions unique.

 

Quoted where and by whom? Do you have an actual citation on this? It's been said many times, but the most anyone has ever provides is "George Martin once said..." or "John Lennon said..." and never any source. I've been looking for years, and...nothing. Unlike every legitimate quote, which are always well sourced.

 

Lovely anecdote from the article:

 

White Album being The Beatles last mono album. Ten months later Abbey Road( stereo),mono was a thing of the past Lp wise.

 

According to Wikipedia Paul has contradicted himself a couple of times with regards to the meaning of the song Blackbird. We’ll never really know will we? As long as we get the White Album remix this year I don’t care

 

There is a audio recording of Paul&Donovan and Paul mentions the Diana Ross /Blackbird song reference.

 

Seems to bother some people here. Dunno why.......

 

The Beatles DID attend stereo mixes for Pepper. Howver, there were differences in HOW the mixes were done. Typically, a mono mix was done after the last take of a song was recorded, quite often at the end of a designated session. Since the song was fresh it was not at all uncommon for the group to remain in the studio while the song was mixed.

The stereo mixes, typically, were done after the ALBUM sessions were completed. The Beatles, or some of the members might be in the studio, or leave the mix up to Martin and company. The are exceptions to these norms too. Mono mixes done in their absence and stereo mixes done with their direct involvement.

This process continued through the 1968 sessions too. It's worth mentioning that the staff changed a bit in 1968. Chris Thomas was at the helm for a month. The Beatles themselves produced some sessions.... Ken Scott replaced Geoff Emerick 6 weeks in. A few reasons why there were so many mono/stereo anomalies. Ron

 

When did he contradict himself?

 

?????
Nope. Nada. Nobody. Not one person ever noticed a difference between the mono and stereo mixes on any Beatles' album until 'Rarities' came out. Beatles fanatics weren't interested in that kind of stuff until the label pointed out the differences out to the them.
Nobody noticed that the mono version of 'Helter Skelter' was shorter than the stereo version. I know that I found
"I GOT BLISTERS ON MY FINGERS" to be a totally forgettable line. Thank heavens 'Rarities' opened my eyes and ears to this!

On a serious note...Once you noticed differences between the mono and stereo mixes on one album, you started looking for differences on all their albums. It was part of the fun of listening to the Beatles. We didn't need the record label to tell us what to listen for.

 

Wha-a-a-a-at? You doubt the mighty all-knowing and infallible WIKIPEDIA?
Blasphemy!
:--)

 

I know that. So, then why bother deliberately creating different mono mixes?

Not only that, many of us were too young to appreciate mono and stereo releases and simply bought what was in front of us. Here in Europe, disposable income was not a thing that the youth of that era enjoyed and for most of us, the luxury of buying the mono and stereo versions of Beatle records or indeed multiple copies of anything, would have been nigh-impossible.

 

Haven’t Ken's alleged recollections been poo-poo'd elsewhere?

 

What's does?

 

Is this still a thing? The Beatles were in the record making business. They weren't there to approve mixes or enforce their love of monoral soundscapes. They were trying to make records for EMI and relied on the engineering staff to record them, mix their recordings, and master them for their primary markets in europe and america on mono vinyl records. As it is likely that a slim percentage of fans in their native england owned stereo record players... stereo was a secondary consideration, though EMI released mono and stereo versions of each of their albums. At first the stereo would be released afterward and targeted at a small cohort of their british audience. Even in america.. the ratio of mono to stereo was 3 to 1 in the time before pepper. In other words... the Beatles were far from audiophiles. They wanted their records to be good, worked hard on them, and wanted to hear the final mixes to see if the job was well done. If the engineers were still yet to be finished with as yet incomplete stereo mixes then the Beatles wouldnt have been there to worry about that as they were touring or making movies or living life. By the time they stopped touring they were more involved... but the process of mixing was still an engineers job. At EMI mixes were done in one go.. if the mix was bad the engineer did another take. So a song mixed for mono in 10 attempts might be remixed along with 5 or 6 others for stereo three days later. It wasnt because they didnt care about stereo. It was because mono mixes would be played on radio, singles would be mixed exclusively in mono, and stereo would be sold to a small minority of the buying audience so it was not a priority YET it was important for the growing stereo market particularly in the US to know that Capitol Records was committed to releasing records in Stereo and that their artists were available in this exciting format. George Martin and EMI were careful to make stereo masters available to Capitol and other labels carrying Beatle releases and made what they considered good quality mixes. Meanwhile EMI studio supervisors determined which equipment the Beatles used, which productions could use stereo monitoring equipment, which engineers were assigned to work with which artists, and enforced strict guidelines. So being young british men of the postwar era..the Beatles had no cause to be audio tech heads(though they had their tape recorders and made loops and mixtapes...neither lennon nor macca were pete towshend..), audiophiles(though they hung out with magic alex!), or stereo fanatics. They just wanted their wax to come out good.

The definitive interview is George Martin's 1988 interview about the 1987 reissues he explains everything about his recording philosophy and what he was trying to achieve. Just about everything else is revisionism. Lennon's 1974 radio interview is from a man who made 4 albums and one bullet hole in the ceiling with phil spector and used a headphone with one earpiece to monitor his recordings. McCartney recorded an album without a mixing board. George is probably the only one to take seriously because of his apprenticeship at blackers and the Living in the Material World album's sonics(and his stewardship of FPSHOT). And of course we all know of Ringo's committment to surround sound!

But everytime you're tempted to claim the Beatles did or did not "approve" or "oversee" the nuts and bolts technicalities of what went on in the room upstairs where they went to sip tea and listen to playbacks of material their producers and engineers were preparing for their releases, first sit in the darkness for 20 minutes listening to lovely rita and wild honey pie over and over!

 

People like simple explanations and things that fit their worldview, a Beatles song being written in support of civil rights activism (from McCartney, no less)... doesn't

Yes I do. The editor who used the word "contradictory" backed it up by linking an article pointing out the self-contradictory imagery in the song's lyric — "light of a dark black night" — not anything McCartney said about the original inspiration

 

because the rest of the world still had mono?

 

Yes, but that’s not the issue. I don’t accept Macca's post-the-fact stated reasons for creating differences. It simply wasn’t within most of our budgets to buy two copies of each LP then.

I distinctly remember noticing the differences in various copies of Blonde on Blonde (ALL lent to me) around 1968 on, but had no idea why. I also remember noticing the missing "blisters" comment around 1970 but again had no clue why - but again The Beatles was lent to me as I had no money and no big brother(s). Others did.

The amount of people who may have had more awareness and more disposable income than me or my fellows back then was neglible but it’s certain that it was never a topic of discussion among us -and we were all music lovers and buyers of whatever pocket money permitted. Above all, nobody had any notion that these things would not one day be around, that they should be taken care of or that the copy you might buy in the 70s would not be exactly the same.

As a marketing ploy, Paulie, it was a non-starter -and a fable.

 

I note you're from Belfast, which is economically depressed, as is Baltimore, where I live.
...but here's another perspective.
It's not unreasonable to think, even in '68, po' folk didn't buy more than 1 copy of an album.
for example, I got it on 8-track and cassette back then, and trashed my original by 1970 so had to buy another copy on vinyl
as Apple was a marketing biz, anything and everything (individually numbered copies?) was used to boost sales.
also, a lot of well to do adults also bought Beatles music, and especially in those days, they were studied by any modern thinker not rooted to the past.
my clothes may have been crap but my Fabs collection was met, which in those days was far more important.

 

I stand corrected. Thanks

 

As I said earlier, in *Europe*, youngsters did not typically have the disposable income to buy multiple copies of anything -or even LPs. Hence the massive sales of singles and EPs all through the sixties. Sure, those in work bought some LPs and maybe a few fanatics bought a couple of copies, but that would have been a very rare thing indeed.

When The Beatles was released in 1968 its sales were such that they rivalled those of singles -a most unusual event - and therefore it charted in the singles chart as well, reaching, if memory serves, N° 12 -I remember it being included in the countdown on Top Of The Pops.

Records were expensive here and a luxury item. It wasn’t until the seventies that buying LPs and cassette versions became mainstream as we grew up and either became students or began earning a wage. It’s my understanding that these items were cheaper in America and that kids had much more disposable income.

It’s one reason why LP charts in the 60s were massively different in the U.K. from the ones in the States. Most teenagers here had no clue who Jim Croce was, for example while Irish charts could be dominated by The Johnstons "Travelling People" and the U.K. ones by "The Sound of Music", bought by adults for years and years and years.

In those days, there was no such thing as marketing blitzes in today’ s terms -pop music was frowned upon and advertising was confined to music papers and teenage magazines. None of it was trailed on commercial radio or TV then. Music shows were limited to the 30-minute 'Top of the Pops' until the advent of pirate radio which of course was hard to receive.

I’m afraid, by European norms, it is perfectly reasonable to think, nay to assume, that "folk" and especially "po’ folk" did not buy more than one copy of anything. There were mouths to feed, clothes to be bought and above all there were these things called parents -had the latter found more than one copy of a given record in our fledgling collections, they would have gone buck daft, to use the vernacular.

Belfast is economically depressed?

 

Don't think it was a marketing ploy myself, more a case of catering for the new fangled stereo appreciation. Hendrix opened the door left/right speaker channel phasing and what not.

 

I suspect it has more to do with the Beatles' recordings being made on 8-track along with the burgeoning of stereo as a format of choice. Suddenly, stereo mixes could actually be interesting and fun: there were more options about where instruments could be placed. So, perhaps, the mix differences exist simply because they could. That is, why not make them slightly different just for the sake of it?

Not every decision has to have a reason behind it.

 

No, Paul told Diana that it was about Mary Wilson, and Diana slapped Paul in the face...

Only joking.

Paul really said to Donovan: “I sang the song to Diana Ross the other night – she took offense!...not really.”

 

Belfast isn't depressed anymore? That's good news
I'm not trying to argue, just offer my perspective.
In general I never bought more than 1 copy of an album and felt ripped off (magical mystery tour) when over half of the album I already had on 45.
I'm only offering up that the Fabs just didn't cater to the poor, they were happy to play to the rich and take their money as well
Just the idea that it was available in 4 different formats at the time (reel, 8-track, vinyl, cassette) and even Playtapes
shows they and the record company wanted to milk it in every way possible, so alternate mono/stereo does not seem out of character in those experimental days.