Here’s a Christmas present for the Beatles nut in your life: Capitol is reissuing the seven albums the fab four put out in the US during a crazy fifteen month period between January 1964 and March 1965 that represented the peak of Beatlemania in the States.
They’re out on November 22 on 180-gram audiophile vinyl. You can buy them individually or they’re available in an eight LP box set – one of the seven, The Beatles Story, is a double album, you see. Each album replicate the artwork from the original LPs and include new four-panel inserts with essays written by the Beatles historian and author Bruce Spizer.
It’s the first time the albums have been available on vinyl since the mid 90s. The seven are Meet The Beatles! The Beatles’ Second Album, A Hard Day’s Night, Something New, The Beatles Story, Beatles ‘65 and The Early Beatles.
It should been noted that up to Revolver, US Beatles albums were very different from their UK equivalents. The custom in the States in the early 60s was for a shorter vinyl running time and to include singles on albums – for example, Meet The Beatles includes the contemporary single I Want To Hold Your Hand as well as its B side, This Boy. Through this Capitol managed to eke out nine different US albums between 1964 and 1966 out of the band’s six UK albums and stand-alone singles.
The Early Beatles is a collection of material from their UK debut album Please Please Me, though confusingly it came in a sleeve from the same photo session in late ‘64 that produced the cover to the UK album Beatles For Sale.
Meanwhile, The Beatles Story comes with a health warning. Released in November 1964 it consists of audio snippets of Beatles press conferences, interviews and orchestral versions of Beatles hits. Blatantly exploitative, it still went gold in the US. But it’s stew out of old bones really, of interest only to completists.
The Beatles’ achievements in that first calendar year of global fame remain staggering to this day. They racked up 17 US Top 40 singles, including six Number Ones. Six of the albums went Top Ten with four reaching Number One.
The film A Hard Day’s Night was a global smash and in total they sold 15 million albums just in the US. In one week in April they colonised the entire Billboard Top Five. Never again we will see the like...
