The Beatles' "Rubber Soul" - Putting together the proper tracklist

I think, you and many others from the US have to understand that outside the US, that track list almost doesn't exist and hardly no one cares about it, it's like if there was a Swedish Rubber Soul album with some made up track list and some odd mixes, I'd like everyone to hear it - well, at least perhaps such an album would be interesting as a sort of exotic oddity, not as a US commercially made up cartoon like mishmash, no offence.

 

The Beatles themselves got out-rebelled by Capitol. I like how it messed with their minds. 'Beatles V, or '65'...

Help!, indeed... 'Maybe next album, Ringo'...

 

Yeah, I wouldn't expect most fans - aside from the ones that bought or listened to Capitol albums (or received them as hand-me-downs, or found them second-hand later on) - to know the track listing. But that's millions of people in the US who count the Capitol album as the real deal, at least in their life. For many of us, there is room for two Rubber Souls, even if we might prefer one over the other.

 

The difference being that more people bought the US Capitol Rubber Soul than any other version.

 

The amount of people buying has no relevance, we're talking about art, not a market for plastic spoons.

 

Not all of us consider pop music to be "art."

 

Also, they don't take into account that, from 1987, the US got the UK version too. So most people who discovered the Beatles in the last 32 years in the US heard the correct track listing.

 

A very tiny place compared to The United States of America. Africa looks big on a map, didn't sell a lot of Beatles records.

 

Wow, thanks for the education on how singles were used. What's funny is within a few years time the American way of building an album (putting the hit songs on the long player itself) not only became the way the Beatles operated but became the defacto standard for the entire world and has been for the last 50 years. Man, those Americans are really bad at records, right?

And I am no little man. What is it with corporate lawyers and their inferiority complexes. It's quite vexing. I had to let one go the other day, he just wouldn't listen to me.

 

This is Rubber Soul from Wikipedia. More copies of Capitol's Rubber Soul were sold in the state of New Jersey than Parlophone's Rubber Soul was sold in the entirety of the United Kingdom.

 

Good post. Think of it this way:

The person on a budget in the UK in 1963 could purchase I Want To Hold Your Hand as a single, enjoy it, pass on the pricey album, but still wind up with the hit song.

The person not on a budget in the UK in 1963 had to purchase both the I Want To Hold Your Hand single and the With The Beatles LP just to get the latest Beatles release to include the best song. That meant that they had to spend 30% more than if they only had to buy With The Beatles alone, that 30% going to fund Little Child, a filler track.

In the US, both the budget buyer and the non-budget buyer were both treated fairly. They could buy the single or eschew it completely because it was on the album. If you bought Meet The Beatles, you got I Want To Hold Your Hand, no need to buy the single at all, you saved 30%.

So this idea that Parlophone treated its customers more fairly than Capitol is a complete myth, utter garbage. Both labels fleeced their customers, just using different tactics to water down the Beatles output and force the diehards to buy more vinyl.

 

UK RS was release in 99% of the countries around the world, the USA RS only in USA (duh), Canada and Venezuela, even in Mexico, that is next to USA, released the UK version.

 

Yes. Filler tracks are more tolerable if the buyer also gets the hit songs. If the hits aren't on there, the entire album becomes different degrees of filler. Meet The Beatles blows away With The Beatles. With The Beatles is filler city.

In America, the singles on the albums was/is the standard, and it's better that way, you get a higher quality of music for your money. Rubber Soul having its singles removed was done for marketing purposes, to make the Beatles look less commercial to a more mature audience at a critical point in their overhyped early existence. It was a tactic that made the album more cohesive and more artistic.

Think of a movie, like Hitchcock's Psycho, for example, where its huge box office star is killed off in the first 5 minutes. Just shocking. But then what remains is elevated because it bucks convention so cleverly. You realize that a film without a star can be just as good, better perhaps. That's US Rubber Soul.

I believe that part of Capitol's motivation to 'do it the Parlophone way' with Rubber Soul came from the fact that it was late 1965 and there was likely a fear that Beatlemania was going to end at any moment. At the time, many thought that the Beatles were a one-trick-pony, a gimmick of Bug Music not much different than Beach Music, and the likes of Dylan, Byrds, and the emerging Folk scene was going to be the next big thing. So to squeeze every last dollar out of the Liverpool cash cow before it all came to an end, they played games with the singles and the "Yesterday" LP project.

Either way, the decision to eschew the singles makes US Rubber Soul a very intriguing listen. It's decidedly un-commercial. Exactly what the Beatles needed at that time.

 

Mexico missed out having I've Just Seen A Face and It's Only Love on any album, as they got US Help!, UK Rubber Soul and Y&T.

 

Maybe both are on the Mexican version of Rarities

 

All My Loving is a terrific song, one of their best. Now imagine With The Beatles featuring She Loves You (existing and recorded 2 weeks before the With The Beatles sessions) and I Want To Hold Your Hand (existing and recorded 6 weeks before With The Beatles was released).

With The Beatles is a curious album, a difficult listen. Put She Loves You and I Want To Hold Your Hand on there, get rid of Little Child and I Wanna Be Your Man, and you have something epic. That's the tragedy in the Beatles albums from 1962 through 1966. They weren't as good as they could have been. Shame on Parlophone for butchering the Beatles like this for a buck.

 

Since this is all about preferences and opinions, I'll say that I prefer most of the covers on WTB to most of the originals (some of their most mediocre songs, IMO). So even though Meet The Beatles includes 3 good tracks from singles, it's still a fail for me.

My opinion is that there were no singles on the US Rubber Soul for a different reason - Capitol was now releasing songs on singles OR albums in order to get the stuff out. So Yesterday/Act Naturally, Day Tripper/WCWIO, Nowhere Man/What Goes On, Paperback Writer/Rain (and the B-side I'm Down) all came out without appearing on a current album (until the Y&T compilation, that is). The Beatles were progressing quickly, so it was better for Capitol to just get it out before it might become 'outdated'.

For the US, yes. Though like I said, it was the third UK LP without any 'hits' on it.

 

What about per population and sales?

 

Let's see: you let the lawyer go, but he doesn't have to listen to you anymore.
Sweet deal.

 

In a remixed form, however. In other words, they didn't even hear the original UK album - just an updated remixed digital version. Most people have never heard the original UK album in its 1965 Mono and Stereo mixes.

 

I don't think that's relevant. For most people it's about the tracklist.

 

That explains the cross-border traffic.

 

It is relevant, not to the track list, but to what the album is/was and what it sounds like. It's not the 'original' album; it's a 1987 remix.

 

This thread is about track list. From 1987, the official version in the US is the UK version of it.

 

Good post slane, agree on all points. Except the covers.....I always prefer a Beatle original to any cover on any album. With the exception of Roll Over Beethoven of which I think the Beatles cover is the best version ever produced.