Why did the Magical Mystery Tour album become canon and Hey Jude didn't?

There was plenty of room for those songs, but I'm guessing that Allen Klein didn't want to give us too much bang for our buck. Most US albums (pre-Pepper) had 11 songs and sometimes 12. Hey Jude is the only one that has only 10. I guess he thought "Hey Jude" running over 7 minutes justified only putting 4 songs on Side 2. Just record executive greed, so they wouldn't have to pay as many royalties.

 

Mason + Fenn - Profiles (1985) on Rhapsody/Napster

 

RIGHT. We had the luck and pleasure of buying and hearing Beatles LPs and singles as they were released in real time. So we have a chronological and lifeline context that places these albums in their proper places in the soundtrack of our lives. We can identify a specific time and maybe even day when we bought each one. Really pretty cool.

Of course everyone's introduction to a impactful album has a fine place in their lives, but often totally out of order. How many of you that grew up in later decades actually were introduced to The Beatle catalog in order? Or any artist from that era. The growth and perspective of each album is kinda lost in a way, until you have listened in order and absorbed it all....so Hey Jude is out of the canon for me.

 

Great tracks too! A Harrison/Lennon song!

 

I, for one, have always liked the Oldies but Goldies cover. It's like a middle step between Revolver and Pepper.

In Spain The Ballad of John and Yoko had been banned, so side 2 had only 3 tracks . The title was Beatles again.

 

Magical Mystery Tour is a cohesive album of the psychedelic era and one of The Beatles (and George Martin's) finest. Hey Jude is just a compilation.

 

HJ is the most played Beatles record from my collection. I like everything about it, the sound of the UK for Export version is amazing, the cover ist great, the music (from different areas) is perfect!

 

and "The Inner Light" would have made a lot of sense, as "Lady Madonna" was included.

 

That blu e box was a uk release. Mmt was a7” ep in England.

 

OK, so my memory is incorrect. But still before LIB and AR, right? Slightly out of sequence but still as part of the same release schedule.

 

I think swapping out Can't Buy Me Love and I Should Have Known Better for I'm Down, The Inner Light and the single version of Get Back would have made a cool album even better!

 

I know that, but the canon turned "all UK" with the CD format in the 80s... save for the inclusion of the MMT album.

 

While historical context for me is important and I agree very much with this post, for those who did/do not share that as a personal experience I think the way MMT is a cohesive collection all from that specific psychedelic era should be more significant.

From my own perspective, living in America, the Hello Goodbye single had only come out days before MMT did. I did have the Penny Lane/Strawberry Fields single, but had not purchased the All You Need is Love one. So buying the MMT lp only made that PT/SF single redundant, which was fine. (In fact the irony about that single is that despite being recorded as part of the Pepper's sessions, its single release and not being included on the Pepper's album allowed us to feel it belonged very much on MMT.) For me MMT is one of their best, and I am very grateful to Capitol that America did not get the double EP.

As for Hey Jude, I never bought it despite having everything else up to it. WHy not? Well I did have the UA release of AHDN, so I did have I Should Have Known Better and Can't Buy Me Love from that (also had the Love single). Also had the Paperback Writer/Rain single. I did not have Lady Madonna, but my brother did. He also then bought the Hey Jude single. So by the time the compilation came out, it was clearly that despite it having some songs I had not purchased the single for, like Don't Bring me Down, that the lp was almost completely redundant in my collection.

So I didn't buy it.

That was then, but what about later? I totally agree that as time marched on, cd's came out, my singles got more and more scratched up, the eventual release of Past Masters was a brilliant solution (with of course the UK version cd release containing the two early songs from the Hey Jude lp).

So, in short at the beginning, Hey Jude was not compelling, and eventually it was made redundant in the cd era by the superior Past Masters.

 

They made a good decision with the Hey Jude album by changing the title from “The Beatles Again”, and trashing the original cover art. Original cover slicks have made the rounds among collectors, and they feature the same photos with amateurish lettering - they look terrible.

 

I came into collecting Beatles albums a bit after the fact. My parents bought me Meet the Beatles when it came out but it would be years before I bought albums. My allowance only allowed me the luxury of picking up 45s.

All but Let It Be were already released when I became more aware of their albums. I never connected the year or two difference between the last few singles and the album release date.

It might have been interesting if they had tried an early Beatles side (stretching it to Paperback Writer) and a later Beatles side. Ultimately, I wish they had made it all later Beatles tunes and included tracks such as Get Back, Across the Universe and Let It Be. I have a playlist of such and love it to death.

Still, I remember playing the album for the first time and being thrilled when Can't Buy Me Love came roaring out of the speakers. I knew it was an older tune, was confused why it was on a later Beatles album but was so happy to have it all the same.

 

Well the Magical Mystery Tour album was released by Parlophone in the UK in 1976 so it was 'canon' in the 70s.
On the other hand, 'Hey Jude' was released by Parlophone for export in 1971 and then in the UK officially in 1979.
While 'Oldies' was 'canon' right up until 1978 when the blue box excluded it and the budget label 'Fame' issued it.

 

This question is like a beach ball over the plate, isn't it?

The disparity between the release dates of Can't Buy Me Love and Hey Jude accentuate the disparity between MMT and Hey Jude as being part of the real Beatles' legacy.

 

The full definition is this:
'a sanctioned or accepted group or body of related works – the canon of great literature'

or this:

'Originally, an ecclesiastical code of law or standard of judgment, later any standard of judgment, usually based upon determinate set of authorized texts, like the canonical books of the Bible, Torah, Qu'ran, or Sutras.'

I think this really means a group works by different authors that become canonical (ie. recognised as important - ratified by a load of self-appointed literary nobs or priests of high art) within a certain culture. The very idea is now ideological suspect for culturally bias and exclusivity.

The list of works considered to be permanently established as being of the highest quality.
‘Hopkins was firmly established in the canon of English poetry’

Either way, it feels a bit pretentious, not to say controversial, to talk about the canon of The Beatles (or any artist for that matter). And whether an individual compilation album (i.e. not even a set of original works) belongs to a 'canon' is not really applicable in any sense I can see.

 

The Blue Box was a good 7 years before the CDs were released. However, as I have said before, the Blue Box is lacking a lot of songs, it only included the core albums that The Beatles Released in their lifetime, plus Rarities, to mop up B sides, but it managed to omit songs like She Loves You, IWTHYH, Paperback Writer, all the 67 tracks, Hey Jude, and many many more. So for a one-stop buy, it was not.

In 1980, you would still need to buy MMT, 1962-1966 and 1967-1970.

 

Hey Jude was a U.S. only album.

Had they made a UK edition with the track listing
ONE Day Tripper/We Can Work It Out/Paperback Writer/Rain/Lady Madonna/The Inner Light/Revolution
TWO Hey Jude/Don't Let Me Down/Old Brown Shoe/The Ballad of John and Yoko

That would have mopped up all the extant post MMT singles and with a bonus track of You Know My Name/Get Back (single)/Let It Be (single)/Across the Universe (wildlife version) would have made a fine mop up CD with the same track listing as PM Vol 2

 

When Hey Jude came out, I already had all the songs in one format or another. As many have mentioned, it was just a compilation of singles anyway. MMT was an album of all originals.

 

Come and Get It wasn’t recorded for public consumption (and wasn’t a Beatles recording)... and Mary Jane wasn’t fit for human consumption.

 

True story, what a letdown that was when released in 98.

 

Yeah but... so what? They were still previously released on a Beatles LP that was commonly available in the States and that fans would have had already. The fact that it was on a different label didn’t change that.