I’ve been collecting records since, well … I can’t remember since when. It doesn’t seem like there was ever really a beginning to it, that there was actually a time when only one record - that first record - was my entire collection.
Or even before that, with no records.
Everything has a beginning and with me it was The Beatles 1962-1966, otherwise known as The Red Album, a sort of greatest hits collection put out by Alan Klein, their then-manager and (some people say) all 'round asshole.
There isn’t a bad song on this record. But how could there be? It’s The Beatles! The cover photo is of four innocent, pre-Beatlemania young boys looking over a balcony railing, completely oblivious to the heights they were about to scale and the glorious chaos they were about to unleash on the world.
The photo was also used for the Please Please Me album cover, and was taken at EMI’s Manchester Square headquarters in London, in 1963. I look at the faces in that photograph and wonder, “What are they thinking?”
By the time I bought the record, sometime in the early 1970s, The Beatles had broken up. But I had no idea. AlI I knew was there was a song on that record called Help! and I wanted it. I wanted it bad. I’d never heard anything like it. I remember my dad asking me why I’d bought it. “Why are you interested in a band that broke up?” he asked me. “They’re not going to make any more records. They’re done.”
All these years later I don’t know how many records I have. Thousands. Oddly, this one isn’t among them. I don’t know what happened to it. I’ve thought about buying it again - there’s a nice red vinyl reissue out there somewhere - but what would be the point? I already own all the albums The Beatles released (both mono and stereo), plus a bunch of bootlegs.
But this record - this is where my record collecting addiction started.
This compilation was released with its counterpart, 1967-1970 (The Blue Album), in 1973. It reached number three in the U.K. and number one in the U.S.
As stated above, the album was compiled by the band's then-manager, Allen Klein. Interestingly, even though the group had success with several cover versions of songs they liked, only songs composed by the Beatles were included on this record. Also interestingly, no George Harrison songs were here, although several were included on 1967-1970, along with one Ringo song.
This compilation was put out by Apple/EMI partially in response to a bootleg collection titled Alpha Omega, which had been released the previous year. Advertising for both records stated these collections were "the only authorized collection of the Beatles".
The cover was taken by photographer Angus McBean during the cover shoot for the group's 1963 debut LP Please Please Me. In 1969 The Beatles asked McBean to recreate this shot which they originally intended to use as the cover for the planned Get Back album that never appeared and instead ended up as the cover of the 1967-1970 collection. The Get Back album would eventually - sort of - appear as Let It Be.
The British and American versions of the vinyl album contain notable differences. Help! on the American edition includes the same pseudo-James Bond intro as the mix found on the American Help! LP, while the same song on the British edition does not. Also, the British LP uses the stereo whispering intro mix of I Feel Fine, while the US LP uses the mono Beatles '65 mix, which is unfortunately drenched in added reverb.
There have been several reissues and remastering of this album. The most recent is the aforementioned 180-gram red vinyl edition, taken from the original UK master. The fake stereo mixes of Love Me Do and She Loves You are replaced by the true mono versions - reason enough to pick up a copy if you don't already own it.
I’ve been collecting records since, well … I can’t remember since when. It doesn’t seem like there was ever really a beginning to it, that there was actually a time when only one record - that first record - was my entire collection.
Or even before that, with no records.
Everything has a beginning and with me it was The Beatles 1962-1966, otherwise known as The Red Album, a sort of greatest hits collection put out by Alan Klein, their then-manager and (some people say) all 'round asshole.
There isn’t a bad song on this record. But how could there be? It’s The Beatles! The cover photo is of four innocent, pre-Beatlemania young boys looking over a balcony railing, completely oblivious to the heights they were about to scale and the glorious chaos they were about to unleash on the world.
The photo was also used for the Please Please Me album cover, and was taken at EMI’s Manchester Square headquarters in London, in 1963. I look at the faces in that photograph and wonder, “What are they thinking?”
By the time I bought the record, sometime in the early 1970s, The Beatles had broken up. But I had no idea. AlI I knew was there was a song on that record called Help! and I wanted it. I wanted it bad. I’d never heard anything like it. I remember my dad asking me why I’d bought it. “Why are you interested in a band that broke up?” he asked me. “They’re not going to make any more records. They’re done.”
All these years later I don’t know how many records I have. Thousands. Oddly, this one isn’t among them. I don’t know what happened to it. I’ve thought about buying it again - there’s a nice red vinyl reissue out there somewhere - but what would be the point? I already own all the albums The Beatles released (both mono and stereo), plus a bunch of bootlegs.
But this record - this is where my record collecting addiction started.
This compilation was released with its counterpart, 1967-1970 (The Blue Album), in 1973. It reached number three in the U.K. and number one in the U.S.
As stated above, the album was compiled by the band's then-manager, Allen Klein. Interestingly, even though the group had success with several cover versions of songs they liked, only songs composed by the Beatles were included on this record. Also interestingly, no George Harrison songs were here, although several were included on 1967-1970, along with one Ringo song.
This compilation was put out by Apple/EMI partially in response to a bootleg collection titled Alpha Omega, which had been released the previous year. Advertising for both records stated these collections were "the only authorized collection of the Beatles".
The cover was taken by photographer Angus McBean during the cover shoot for the group's 1963 debut LP Please Please Me. In 1969 The Beatles asked McBean to recreate this shot which they originally intended to use as the cover for the planned Get Back album that never appeared and instead ended up as the cover of the 1967-1970 collection. The Get Back album would eventually - sort of - appear as Let It Be.
The British and American versions of the vinyl album contain notable differences. Help! on the American edition includes the same pseudo-James Bond intro as the mix found on the American Help! LP, while the same song on the British edition does not. Also, the British LP uses the stereo whispering intro mix of I Feel Fine, while the US LP uses the mono Beatles '65 mix, which is unfortunately drenched in added reverb.
There have been several reissues and remastering of this album. The most recent is the aforementioned 180-gram red vinyl edition, taken from the original UK master. The fake stereo mixes of Love Me Do and She Loves You are replaced by the true mono versions - reason enough to pick up a copy if you don't already own it.
BONUS TRACK
When the red and blue compilations were brought up in an interview years after their release, John Lennon said he didn’t want "lousy versions" going out. "I wanted them to be as it was," he told Andy Peel, in 1980. "And I asked Capitol/EMI, or EMI/Capitol whichever, please ask George Martin - would he take care of this, so at least he knows what to do.
"I didn’t want some strange guy, you know, making dubbed versions of it and putting it out, because of the versions that were going out (on other compilations) the reissues were pretty poor. I hadn’t even listened to them, because I just presumed they’d take the tape as we made and make a master and put it out again, but they didn’t.
"They’d been screwing around with a few of the early ones. I didn’t know that until it was too late. So on that last package where they had Beatles 60… different periods - that one. I made sure. The Red and The Blue, that one.
"I made sure George Martin was there and I made sure they put that picture which I got Linda (sic) to take of the same pose as the very first album over the Abbey Road … No what is it that … EMI office in some other place, some square? Manchester Square.
"So I was involved in that respect, in that package making sure that the cover was what I wanted and that the sound was done by George Martin. So I don’t mind that one. Checked the remix after he’d done it, it was as good as you could get out of whatever mono recording we did then."
MORE BEATLES
When the red and blue compilations were brought up in an interview years after their release, John Lennon said he didn’t want "lousy versions" going out. "I wanted them to be as it was," he told Andy Peel, in 1980. "And I asked Capitol/EMI, or EMI/Capitol whichever, please ask George Martin - would he take care of this, so at least he knows what to do.
"I didn’t want some strange guy, you know, making dubbed versions of it and putting it out, because of the versions that were going out (on other compilations) the reissues were pretty poor. I hadn’t even listened to them, because I just presumed they’d take the tape as we made and make a master and put it out again, but they didn’t.
"They’d been screwing around with a few of the early ones. I didn’t know that until it was too late. So on that last package where they had Beatles 60… different periods - that one. I made sure. The Red and The Blue, that one.
"I made sure George Martin was there and I made sure they put that picture which I got Linda (sic) to take of the same pose as the very first album over the Abbey Road … No what is it that … EMI office in some other place, some square? Manchester Square.
"So I was involved in that respect, in that package making sure that the cover was what I wanted and that the sound was done by George Martin. So I don’t mind that one. Checked the remix after he’d done it, it was as good as you could get out of whatever mono recording we did then."
MORE BEATLES
