Who Can Really Say?

Speaking of the Beatles

Speaking of the Beatles, my favorite Beatles site is Steve's Beatles Page. It's a great place to find out stuff about individual songs and albums.

A few days ago I heard Capitol Records was releasing a multi-CD set of the Beatles first four American released LP's. A few days before that I was thinking how the CD's I now own aren't the albums, or collections, of music I listened to when I fell in love again with the Beatles. I fell the first time in 1964 and never really fell out -- but I was a kid and back then -- I collected 45 rpm records and listened to Cousin Brucie on WABC. My older brother owned the later Beatles albums like Sgt. Pepper's and the White Album so I knew them well, but And Your Bird Can Sing? or Got to Get You Into My Life? I'd barely heard them by the time I went to college. Fortunately my roomate had the gap filled and I got to fall in love again, or further, or whatever.

But when I finally bought the entire collection on CD I had to relearn which songs went where in the earlier part of the catalogue. That wasn't a bad thing, really, since Capitol simply split the songs up among albums unknown to the band's British fans, to match the US release schedule. So now those original Capitol albums are available for the first time on CD.

I don't know but if they'd been available at the time I still probably would have bought the original UK releases. And at $50 I don't think I'm going to be buying them any time soon, but one of the Amazon reviews almost tempts me.

For those of you who have been waiting breathlessly for Capitol Records' infamous "Duophonic" (fake stereo) versions of the Beatles' catalog to appear on CD, well has Capitol got a treat for you!

"The Capitol Albums Vol. 1" contains the first four of Capitol Records' Beatles' albums (well, their first four music releases, as the 2-LP documentary "The Beatles' Story" came out on Capitol before "Beatles '65"...)

Yep, these are the reverb-laden Capitol mixes we all grew up with! For good or bad, this is what most of us remember. They're not the Beatles' albums as the Beatles envisioned them, but so what? They are a lot of fun to listen to!

So, what's good? Well, you get both the stereo and mono mixes of each album. When the Beatles' catalog was released on CD in 1987, only mono mixes of the first four albums were made available. This release is therefore the only place where you can get stereo mixes (albeit *reverb-laden* stereo mixes...). What's more, the sound quality is much better than the sound quality of the many "Capitol albums" bootlegs that have been on the market for years. It's great to have discs mastered from the original tapes! (Although, there is a glitch / dropout 18 seconds into the stereo version of "Don't Bother Me"...)

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These really *are* the original Capitol masters! The stereo version of "Komm, Gib Mir Deine Hand" *has* the strange noise in the vocal channel before the singing starts! The mono version of "When I Get Home" *has* the alternate vocal line! The mono version of "Any Time At All" *has* the mixed down piano during the instrumental break! For those of us who need to have all the known mixes, you *will* find the original Capitol mixes here!

And, even though Capitol's "Duophonic" (fake stereo) mixes are infamous, the fact is Capitol only really used them when true stereo mixes weren't available. These are the only songs in Duophonic:

Posted by Peter at November 17, 2004 08:53 PM