Re-Sequence The Beatles Albums - Capitol USA Versions As The Starting Point

You can't pretend to advocate for the "complete form" of albums and then defend The Beatles Second Album or the Capitol truncated Rubber Soul.

You just change your criteria depending on the discussion.

 

You keep implying that the singles tracks were somehow 'demoted' from the album. You have it the wrong way round - singles were the more popular format, and were 'promoted' from just being album tracks.

 

that is a good idea

 

Thanks, I had no idea the MMT EP was still available. I did find a 1990s stereo UK reissue online here, although second hand availability is not good.

This is still available on retail shelves? I wonder when it was last being manufactured?

 

An album isn't complete without its best songs.

"Format" doesn't help someone putting a CD in a slot or streaming on Spotify. "Hey Siri, play Rubber Soul by the Beatles" and on comes Drive My Car. Barf.

 

Makes sense, right? The Greatest Beatles Album receives The Greatest Hard Rocker and The Greatest Concert Closer and saves Side 4 from boring us to death.

Revolution knocks the pants off of Revolution 1. And Hey Jude was just made for the White Album which closes out on a whimper of a Ringo snoozer instead of something epic. White Album should close like Sgt. Pepper. And it does if you put Hey Jude where it belongs.

 

Speak for yourself; I love "Drive My Car" as the opener of Rubber Soul. That jazzy intro was pretty innovative for 1965, the lyrics are clever and ironic, and the "beep beeps" are a nice little touch.

So from your point of view, the US Rubber Soul also failed since it excluded "Nowhere Man", the song Capitol selected as the single.

Now if your point is that the original albums would have been improved by the inclusion of singles, I can agree with that. But the UK albums are still great in the form they were conceived, and I can still listen to the singles whenever I want to.

 

I just saw this post...couldn't agree more.

 

Okay...time for some Good Night defense!! When I very first got and listened to The White Album, while I was transfixed by the whole thing, it was side four which i found the most hypnotic. I was just about to enter 7th grade at the time which was actually a year after the album had come out...but I'd been familiar with only parts of it. Side Four was an album-side journey like no other i had experienced to that point. Almost surreal from the smooth stoned vibe of Rev 1, followed by the retro-phantom like prance of Honey Pie, slightly balanced by the pure joy Pop-Rock of savoy Truffle, into a dreamlike Alice-like fairy tale which made more sense atmospherically than lyrically, into the short solo chant of what, to me, felt like a zombie stuck in purgatory.. then followed by the nightmarish, apocalyptic vibe of Rev 9, which drifts into Good Night which combines haunting beauty with the sadness of a completed long journey (the entire album)that can't quite fit tangible description. HJ and Revolution was arguably THE mind blowing 45 of 1968 and needs to stand alone as such. There are certain Beatles singles that would have worked great on the album of the time period...Paperback Writer and rain on Revolver or SFF and PL on Pepper...but The White Album, IMO, stands perfectly as is. Somehow, these two songs don't rightly belong.

 

No, the US Rubber Soul is the one time that the lack of the hit single on the album made a difference. The US Rubber Soul is an acoustic folk-rock masterpiece. The UK Rubber Soul is Help 2.

Drive My Car is straight out of 1963, it's the cousin of I Saw Her Standing There. No way it belongs on Rubber Soul where the rest of the songs are such a dramatic departure from the formula of "have to have a snappy peppy dance number, yeah!" "have to have a Ringo song!". The US did away with those conventions and that's why its version of Rubber Soul is beloved by millions of Americans and important US artists who were completely inspired by it.

 

Good Night is another kids song for Ringo. Yellow Submarine. Octopuses Garden. Good Night. Three embarrassments on immortal albums. "Ringo is a fan fave! The girls love him! Have to give him a song! Take 10 minutes in the loo and write him something!" This is where Dave Dexter Jr.'s experience as a savvy marketer saved the day for Rubber Soul. Imagine what he would have done with a Ringo-free Revolver, White Album, and Abbey Road. Chills.

As for Revolution 9, don't bother defending it, the world hates it. As for Revolution 1, nothing wrong with it but the fast version is much better and gives Side 4 a burst of energy it desperately needs so the White Album doesn't go out with a whimper. Which, on the released version, it unfortunately does.

 

It can be ordered from EMI Hayes , it was last pressed for the MMT DVD/BluRay box set in 2012.

 

I truly don’t mean this as an insult, but do you play music? I ask because Drive My Car and I Saw Her Standing There are very different musically. Yes, they both have love themes (but that’s true of 99% of pop songs), but Drive My Car is fairly innovative for the time. The structure of the bass line and solo is not at all a throwback to 1963.

 

Hilarious. Capitol's Rubber Soul actually has two left over Help! songs on it. Buffoonery of the highest order.

 

No, "Drive My Car" is by no means a 1963 song. The sound was innovative and the lyrics are interesting (more than those from "I've Just Seen A Face", actually).

I can "tolerate" the inclusion of "What Goes On" if I'm not deprived to listen to gems like "Drive My Car", "Nowhere Man" and "If I Needed Someone".

 

Actually 3 out of 12 songs were from Help! sessions, if you count "Wait"; while the UK Rubber Soul only had 1 out of 14.

 

Opinion respected...we just disagree pretty much the whole way through.

 

Think about poor Tommy. After being 'literally' forced to buy all the UK albums, singles and eps, and even though he had no money left for the White Album, could still afford the Hey Jude/Revolution single. Definitely a win for him.

 

-"Let's make a folk-rock masterpiece with the next Beatles album"
-"Ok, boss, we have two Harrison songs here, one is inspired by the most famous folk-rock band The Byrds. The other is a very strong rock number with fuzz bass"
-"Leave the rocky one in. We don't want to go too far with this folk-rock thing"
-"Well, then we have a mid-tempo folky Lennon track with really interesting lyrics inspired by Dylan"
-"Out with it. We're going with Run For Your Life so that the real folk-rock songs shine more"
-"You're a genius, boss."

 

The only (intended or not) "trick" was putting "I've Just Seen A Face" as the opener instead of "Drive My Car" to generate the illusion of a folk-rock concept. The Byrds' debut album also featured "It's No Use", which has little to do with folk-rock, but since it's not the opening track it happens to be camouflaged. I see Rubber Soul as a magnificent rock/pop album with several folky songs, but it didn't need to be limited to one genre to be considered a masterpiece.

 

That poorly photoshopped White Album side 4 label gets a chuckle out of me every time I scroll by.

 

Take a step back off the technical merits of Drive My Car and instead consider how it was viewed in late 1965 / early 1966 by a 23 year old college graduate listening to Simon & Garfunkel, digging Lenny Bruce, smoking grass, growing a goatee, and dabbling in beatnik poetry. To him, Drive My Car isn't cool, it's another version of a Beatles LP dance opener that his preteen sister would bop to whilst scribbling "I love Paul" on the album sleeve.

Dave Dexter Jr.'s version of Rubber Soul doesn't have a dance track, doesn't have a hit single, doesn't have a Ringo sham. If the Beatles were tying to reinvent themselves and move into the rarefied Dylan air for a more mature audience, Capitol's masterpiece positioned them there far better than Parlophone's me-too album did.

It's not the Monkees, it's Peter Paul & Mary. You dig? No 1966 hipster in a Jaguar XKE is going to play an 8 track with What Goes On for his passengers, he isn't going to make it with the cool crowd listening to Beep Beep Yeah! either. Those turds didn't belong on the Beatles most important body of work, the one that defined them as being more than an exploitive prepubescent moptop group.

 

Didn't matter in the US as we'd never heard them before and Dexter realized they fit in beautifully with the core Rubber Soul tracks, especially with those two duds that needed to go. Genius of the highest order.

 

But I thought you sooooo enjoyed Past Pasters Volume 1 and 2. You know, the dumping ground for some the Beatles best work, the battle of the bastards, the island of misfit songs. They'd fit in beautifully over there with all the other songs that Parlophone cast off from the LP's they belonged on.

Your priority shouldn't be UK marketing decisions. Your priority should be 'art'. The Capitol versions of many albums present the Beatles in a far more artistic way.

 

Poor Tommy paid for 20 minutes of White Album filler. That's the crime. Drop Revolution 1, Revolution 9, and Good Night and replace them with that fantastic single and it's a far better financial and artistic value.