Review: Meet the Beatles All Over Again

Let’s say you’re an American Beatles fan in the Sixties, Seventies, or Eighties. You chat with a British fan about your favorite albums. But you have no idea what they’re talking about — what is Beatles for Sale? Or With The Beatles? Meanwhile, they’ve never heard of U.S. classics like Meet the Beatles or Something New or Yesterday and Today. You both agree how great Rubber Soul is — but you’re discussing two different Rubber Souls. How can this be?

That’s because the Beatles albums were totally different in the States. The vinyl box set 1964 U.S. Albums In Mono collects the first 7 Capitol LPs rushed out in the first wave of the Beatlemania invasion. (That’s counting A Hard Day’s Night, officially a United Artists soundtrack.) Capitol did not regard the moptops as true artists expressing themselves on wax — the label just wanted to crank out product as fast as possible, before fickle fans fell out of love with these long-haired limey loverboys. So they chopped up the 14-song U.K. albums into 11 or 12-song quickies. The Beatles couldn’t get any of their original albums released intact in America until Sgt. Pepper in 1967. The U.S. version of Revolver left out “And Your Bird Can Sing,” “Doctor Robert,” and “I’m Only Sleeping.”

 The 1964 U.S. Albums In Mono box finally gives these records a proper home. These editions have been forgotten by history, ever since the original U.K. versions came out on CD in 1987. But fans will never part with our cherished vinyl of Something New or Beatles ’65 — they remain evergreen classics, even though the Beatles never meant for them to exist.

Source: Rob Sheffield/yahoo.com

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