You'll most likely have to download it and open it to zoom in really good.

I didn't know this. Thanks, that's really interesting.

Quote:

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contract.
- what resulted (not show here) was Introducing... the Beatles which had most of those tracks from the UK Please Please Me release. It had various packaging from different pressings as Vee-Jay rushed to get out any product they could so there are many versions with different audio quality and back covers (one blank, one with ads for other Vee-Jay records, and one with the track listing). Between injunctions they would print anything they could and rush it out.
- but the Beatles were about to release their second UK album called With The Beatles and EMI the parent company of Parlaphone who had the UK rights retained the rights to everything else and their US division Capitol records released Meet The Beatles 10 days later with most of the songs from this second album. This album went to #1 for 11 straight weeks and the Vee-Jay record was #2 for 9 of those weeks.

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When I started collecting Beatles records as a teen in the 1980's, the first ones I went looking for were these two albums (Introducing… the Beatles and Meet The Beatles). I found them at a record store in San Francisco and bought what they had. As a 15 or 16 year old I had very little money to spend, so they look like crap. Years later I found out one of these Introducing… albums is actually a bootleg. None of that matters to me because of the sentimental value.

Yeah I read that there were many knockoffs after the original went out of print. And the originals had multiple variations of back cover and even the track list was different as Vee-Jay got sued over inclusion of two songs and swapped them out for the 2 they had left off originally in subsequent pressings.

But thats still really cool that you have them.

Some of the knockoff versions had no shadow to the right of George Harrison as a telltale sign but yours appear to have his shadow.

If anyone is interested here is the track list for the original UK album and the three different versions of that album that released in the US at some pont.




Version 1
On 16 January 1964, less than a week after Introducing... The Beatles was released, Vee-Jay was served with a restraining order stopping further distribution. Beechwood Music, Inc., Capitol Records' publishing subsidiary, owned the American publishing rights to "Love Me Do" and "P.S. I Love You", and because the two songs had not yet been officially released in the US, Beechwood refused to issue a license for Vee-Jay to release them.

Version 2
To circumvent the restraining order, Vee-Jay quickly reconfigured Introducing... The Beatles. It removed "Love Me Do" and "P.S. I Love You" and replaced them with the previously omitted "Ask Me Why" and "Please Please Me", though some pressings of the album did not alter the track list. The new versions were prepared in late January and began appearing in stores around 10 February 1964.

The cover art was nothing short of terrible - a rush job by Vee-Jay records. The front cover photograph was actually a reversed image of the original photograph (from the British EP "The Beatles' Hits"), which is why the parting of their hair and the balance of their facial features look somewhat odd now. Although at the time most Americans did not know what they looked like in that detail to tell the difference. But they just look awkward at best and it is not a flattering picture.





The Capitol version was released more than a year later after Vee-Jay's negotiated license window expired:

Vee-Jay and Capitol battled in court throughout the early part of 1964. Injunctions against Vee-Jay's album were issued, lifted and restored more than once. Because the album was often pressed quickly between restraining orders, there are almost two dozen different label variations, including mono and stereo copies, manufactured at numerous pressing plants. Finally, on 9 April 1964, the two labels settled. Vee-Jay was granted a license giving it the right to issue the 16 Beatles' songs it controlled, in any way it saw fit, until 15 October 1964. At that time, its license expired, and all rights would revert to Capitol.

I used to own everything on the US side from Magical Mystery Tour through Let it Be, plus Live at the Hollywood Bowl, plus Hey Jude(that one on cassette), plus Rock and Roll Music, plus the Red and Blue Albums.
(plus an album with their annual Christmas messages to the fan club) I got them mostly if not all during the 70s.
I wish I still had them.

Just 10 days after that Vee-Jay rushed release of Introducing... The Beatles, Capitol records in the US hit the market with a repackaged variation of the Beatles second UK album (called With The Beatles in UK) which they called Meet The Beatles.

So here is why the first and second Beatles albums were released just 10 days apart in the US:

The early Beatles singles in the US failed to chart or just barely in the case of the third one
"Love Me Do"/"PS I Love You" released in late 1962 in the UK but was not released in the US until 1964
"Please Please Me"/"Ask Me Why" released by Vee-Jay failed to chart in the US
"From Me To You"/"Thank You Girl" released by Vee-Jay only reached #116 in the US

In addition to the failure of those singles, Vee-Jay records who had the album rights was embroiled in controversy and near bankruptcy. So they never bothered releasing the album or reporting sales numbers for royalties from those first two singles. As a result their contract was deemed void.

The next single "She Loves You"/"I'll Get You" was licensed to Swan records in the US instead and released in September 1963. But it also failed to make much traction early on and did not chart in the top 100. An interesting twist of fate would also perhaps delay the early attempts to break into the US market while The Beatles were huge in the UK already.

CBS News and Walter Cronkite planned to do a 5 minute national news story on Beatlemania in the UK and it featured snippets of the song "She Loves You". This would have been some great promotion. And in fact the story aired on the morning news on November 22, 1963 which was mostly seen by adults of course. But that was a fateful day in the US and the planned re-airing in the more watched evening news was cancelled due to the assassination of JFK that day and the subsequent next week of news showed nothing but JFK coverage through the funeral.

Meanwhile a couple of Beatles releases in Canada and Europe outside the UK had charted as well.

On December 10, CBS finally aired the segment in it's evening news and that was the catalyst the US market needed. Perhaps even as just some distraction from the national mourning that had been pervasive suddenly The Beatles were a hit. The song quickly started rising on the charts and would hit #1 in January of 1964.

Now there was a rush for anything Beatles and just two weeks later on December 26 the next single "I Want to Hold Your Hand"/"I Saw Her Standing There" was released. It would also reach #1 and the B side would hit #14.

This then is what finally triggered Beatlemania in the US. Their planned arrival in January of 1964 was now very timely. So Vee-Jay now rushed out Introducing The Beatles (and all the lawsuits). And Capitol decided to put out Meet The Beatles just 10 days later.

Vee-Jay also decided to re-release "Please Please Me" now backed with "From Me to You" the two previous A -side singles packaged together and they would chart at #3 and #41. And in March they released "Twist and Shout"/"There's A Place" which charted at #2 and #74. They also had the rights to "Love Me Do"/"PS I Love You" which they finally released in April and it went to #1/#10 respectively.

Capitols reconfigured release on January 20 1964 Meet the Beatles would trigger the mish mash of Beatles albums for the next few years. They wanted to stick to the 12 song standard of US releases and also include their big hit single.

Capitol also chose to avoid American cover songs which appeared on the UK "With The Beatles" album, thinking that Americans fans would be more impressed with The Beatles' original songs. The Beatles' covers of American songs "Please Mister Postman," "Money," "Roll Over Beethoven," "You've Really Got A Hold On Me" and "Devil In Her Heart" were left off of the album. But they kept one cover, the more mature sounding "Till There Was You" which was written by Meredith Wilson (a composer of musicals) in 1950.

So this resulted in them leaving off 5 tracks (of the 14) and adding 3 from singles. It would reach #1 in the US quickly and stayed there for 11 weeks until it was supplanted by The Beatles Second Album.




The cover would use the same photo as the With The Beatles cover (UK) but with a blue tint applied and Capitols typical more obvious marketing slogans (but no song titles this time).

Less than 4 months after their debut Capitol release in the US (which was technically the 2nd Beatles album released in the US) Capitol releases the third Beatles album called The Beatles' Second Album of course.

Having held back 5 songs from their second UK album (With The Beatles) Capitol packaged those with 3 songs from various UK/US singles, 1 song from the forthcoming UK LP A Hard day's Night and 2 songs from the not yet released next EP in the UK.

This is the first US album that bears no resemblance to any UK release and contains material not yet released in the UK. In fact it was 2-3 months before those songs would release in the UK.

The demand for more albums in the US market outweighed any control Parlophone/EMI thought they had in the UK.

And the songs selected by Capitol were specifically aimed at a US audience with more pure rock and roll sound (less pop and no ballads). A lot of the songs were cover songs.

I gotta admit I kinda like it. I would have been hooked if I was a music buying teen in the 60s. You can find the playlist for it on Apple Music actually as Disc 2 under The Beatles "The US Albums" compilation releaed in 2014. It has mono and stereo versions of the songs.




The artwork used as collage of various performance pictures and the typical Capitol marketing and songs listed on the cover formula. The cover art would be used on the forthcoming EP Long Tall Sally in the UK.

Next up in the US market just ONE MONTH later and a month before the UK and movie release is A Hard Day's Night.

It shares the name of the movie and UK album release but is markedly different. The UK release would have 13 songs - 7 from the movie on the A side and 6 additional songs that were just added to it. Although I'll Cry Instead was intended for the film.

But the US version took only the 7 from the movie and I'll Cry Instead but packaged in a different order and combined with 4 orchestral soundtrack songs created by George Martin with a full studio orchestra for the film.

The reason for this is the album rights were not owned by EMI/Capitol in this case but by United Artist recording arm because they had the film rights and thereby the soundtrack rights in the US but they did not have rights to songs not in the movie (Parlophone/EMI had the rights to everything in the UK). Most of the songs left off would appear on the next Capitol records release.

The four instrumentals were versions of Beatles songs in the movie as well.

This album (both US and UK) versions was a decidedly more pop sound than the previous covers and songs on the US Beatles Second Album. But this album also shot to #1 quickly making it their third straight #1 record in the US.






The cover art was borrowed from the UK version but a single head shot (from the eyes up) of each of the 4 Beatles as opposed to the montage of 20 images on the UK cover. The background was changed from blue to red and included the words Original Motion Picture Soundtrack that did not appear on the UK version (really just an LP that happened to have songs from the movie and other songs).

I am 76. My year-younger sister and I saw either the Cronkite excerpt or the much longer excerpt on Jack Paar's Tonight Show in early January 1964 (before the Sullivan show) and that hooked us. Maybe we saw both of them.



I appreciate all the effort you have gone to in assembling this analysis. We were not aware of the differences at the time. We bought some, but not all, of the albums. By the time Sgt. Pepper's rolled around I was the only one still interested enough in the music to buy it.

I was introduced to the album from listening to KOMA (which had a huge broadcast range at night across the small towns in the Great Plains) play "A Day in the Life" over and over while my girlfriend and I were very innocently making out in the front seat of my car.

My sister always maintained a nostalgic love for the earlier songs rather than the later ones, though she was the one who introduced me to Abbey Road by telling me with a wink that Paul was dead.

The Beatles were a huge part of our lives.

Thanks I appreciate the response. I've seen many of your posts over the years and it's great to see this connects with some old Ags who experienced it. I can't really imagine it. By the time I was cognizant of any musical groups in the late 70s the Beatles were long past and considered "oldies". But I certainly came to appreciate them later when my tastes evolved.

I was not sure if any one here was really interested in all of this, but it's fascinating to me. And as I tend to do with anything I'm doing a deep dive into a subject and so I'm just sharing as I go. I plan to continue through the US releases here, at least until they start to be identical to the UK releases.

Fascinating look.

The music business has always been sleazy but those were dark times for artists.

Less than a month after the US release of A Hard Day's night (on UA) and 10 days after the British release this was rushed out a month early to capitalize on the hit film and single of the same name. Capitol figured anything Beatles related was of course a hot ticket right now and they released the ironically named Something New album. That made this already the fifth Beatles album released in the US in 1964 between January and July.

It contained really almost nothing "new". In fact 5 of the songs had been on the UA release of the official soundtrack for A Hard Day's Night and 3 others had been on the British release that had nothing to do with the movie anyway. And 2 additional songs had been part of an earlier EP in the UK (Long Tall Sally). The last song was the German language single version of "I Want Hold Your Hand" called "Komm, Gib Mir Diene Hand".

Anything to associate this album with that movie was fair game and so the words "...plus the hit vocals from the Motion Picture "A Hard Day's Night" " were included and in small print "A United Artists Release" underneath that along with a list of the songs. A true money grab and typical lazy marketing.

Visually the cover art was one of the better US versions - it was a picture from one of the last Beatles appearances on Ed Sullivan so also trying to tap into that success.

The album (deservedly imo) stalled at #2 behind the aforementioned A Hard Day's Night official soundtrack.





Three singles would be released from this album in the US although none reached #1

"And I Love Her" / "If I Fell" #12/#53
"I'll Cry Instead" / "I'm Happy Just to Dance with You" #25/#95
"Matchbox" / "Slow Down" #17/#25

Between late July through November 1964 the Beatles had no new recordings to release and since Vee-Jay and Capitol had pretty much completely flooded the market with 5 albums in 7 months (compared to just 3 in 16 months in the UK) they both decided to do something/anything to satiate the demand for more Beatles in the US.

Some real gems (100% sarcasm) would fill that void horribly and serve to do nothing but rip off customers.


Vee-Jay which only had the rights to the Please Please Me songs in the US and a legal window until October to capitalize on that repackaged that original (Introducing... The Beatles) album not once, not twice, but three times.

First up Vee-Jay repackaged some of those songs with one of their only other viable British artists for a horrible combination with 4 Beatles songs and 8 songs from an Australian-English country crooner named Frank Ifield. He had several #1 singles in the UK in 1962 and 1963 so they crammed those into a release. The first iteration had been back in February (called "Jolly What!") but not knowing the Beatles would blow up yet it emphasized Ifield more. And it said "On stage" which was highly misleading as it was studio material. So mid year they re-released it with a Beatles centric cover listing the Beatles songs by name but still with the "On Stage" claim. This was the only US album to contain the song "From Me to You" until it was included on the so called red 1962-1966 compilation album released in 1973. Here are those covers.



By October Vee-Jay decided to once again try this type of ploy and packaged the entire Introducing... The Beatles LP with a The Four Seasons greatest hits LP called Golden Hits of the The Four Seasons in a double album. The Four Seasons had 10 charted songs including 3 #1 hits before 1964 and were Vee-Jays only other marquee artist. They called this combined double LP The Beatles vs The Four Seasons and it included a scorecard inside to rate the songs head to head. They even called the Beatles record their greatest hits in the marketing material even though it was really just that first Introducing... The Beatles album. They didn't even bother changing the label on the vinyl disc. Incredibly this album spent three weeks on the Billboard chart in October 1964 and peaked at number 142.





Also in October right before their window to publish Beatles music closed they re-released Introducing... The Beatles again this time as Songs, Pictures and Stories of the Fabulous Beatles. This was nothing more than the exact same Introducing... the Beatles album (again the label on the vinyl disc was not changed) but a more colorful cover and foldout gateway album design that included all kinds of Beatles bio information advertised on the cover as:

"Look inside. Complete story of their favourite male and female singer, their favourite foods, types of girls, sport, hobby, songs, colours, real name, birthplace, birthdays, height, education, color of hair & eyes."

Incredibly this album charted on Billboard peaking at #63






Finally in November. Vee-Jay decided to release something that Capitol could not even challenge or sue them over. They got several recordings from interviews the Beatles gave to KRLA radio Dj's in LA and packaged it into an "album" called Hear the Beatles Tell All. This was nothing more than interviews but in an era without syndication this was how they propagated it to the country.




Not to be outdone Capitol decided to try the same approach and released the double album The Beatles' Story a few weeks later. It is a documentary double album featuring interviews, press conferences, and snippets of original, live, or orchestral versions of Beatles songs, with voice-over narration. This version incredibly peaked at #7 on the Billboard album chart and stayed on the chart for 17 weeks.

The next Beatles UK album release Beatles For Sale was recorded following promotion for A Hard Days Night in mid August through late October 1964 in breaks between US tours.

So the next US release Beatles '65 includes eight of the fourteen songs from Beatles for Sale. It also includes "I'll Be Back", which was the last released track from the UK version of the Hard Day's Night album, and both sides of the single "I Feel Fine" / "She's a Woman". The latter two songs were issued in "duophonic" stereo and included added reverb to cover up the use of the mono mixes sent from the UK.





The album was released in mid December 1964 just before Christmas and 10 days after the UK release of Beatles For Sale.

The COVER art for these two albums could not have been more different.

The UK release Beatles for Sale had a iconic cover with the Beatles in a more dour and somber mood matching the albums tone. It was a gatefold release and one inner sleeve image was of the Beatles posing in front of cut outs of celebrities - a forbearer to the iconic Sgt. Peppers cover. The cover bore no marketing per se and the title was even in a small font.





Meanwhile the cover of the US version Beatles '65 was just bad. It depicted the Beatles in 4 photos representing the four seasons supposedly. Umbrellas for WINTER in the UK (???) but that did not make sense for a US album, literally holding giant physical springs for Spring (what?), brooms with leaves for fall (ok that made sense) and parasols and and a handkerchief for Summer but still in suits (again???). Misguided at best and made no sense to a US audience. It had the typical US marketing tags extolling the bands "Great New Hits" with their names and listing the songs. Easily the worst cover of the US albums.

It would quickly jump to #1 in the US in early January and stay there for 9 weeks. The first of three #1 albums that year.

I remember looking to buy Rubber Soul and seeing the American release without "Drive My Car" and "Nowhere Man". That makes a huge difference and a no brainer for the British release. I wonder what prompted that decision.

citizenkane06 said:

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I remember looking to buy Rubber Soul and seeing the American release without "Drive My Car" and "Nowhere Man". That makes a huge difference and a no brainer for the British release. I wonder what prompted that decision.

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Well I'll get to that one....and no spoilers. jk. But interestingly there are many who consider the US release of Rubber Soul to be the better of the two and the best of all the US albums. Not because those removed songs are bad but because the songs removed fit in better with some stuff they combined with them to make Yesterday and Today and that the replacement songs make the US version of Rubber Soul a more consistent folk rock sound throughout. Having been first exposed to the British version I agree with you. But apparently back in the day those that first heard Rubber Soul US version prefer it unlike most of the other albums because it sounded like a complete album and not a mishmash like the previous ones.

TXAG 05 said:

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This has been a great thread. Please keep it going.

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Thanks for the props there - I've been wondering with little response I guess but I was doing it for myself anyway (I get more than a little hyper focused on subjects at times). But I did keep seeing the thread views increasing so I hoped some were enjoying it anyway. Good to know. It's been a real education for myself and I'm simultaneously exploring their music again particularly through the Beatles The US Albums compilation which you can find on Apple Music to really listen to those versions. Not sure if it is on other sources but I've seen a few spotify playlists at least with those versions.

This is that compilations cover - an image I've never seen before but apparently promotional from their 1964 US tour. The flag used has 48 stars so an older version and thus not an official current flag. They are actually standing on it which would have perhaps been disrespectful if it was the current flag. That part was cropped out of it.



Uncropped

I just found a source of very high quality US album cover artwork so I'm updating the images. Most of them suck but at least you can see them now as good as if you had them in hand.

With every release, Capitol was just printing money.

Aust Ag said:

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With every release, Capitol was just printing money.

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Yeah it actually kind of crazy but the US sales were so much higher.

Even the definitions of Gold and Platinum are different for the two countries. I always thought they the UK certification you might see on labels meant the same thing but

Platinum in the US means 1M and in the UK it means 300K
Gold in the US means 500K and in the UK it means 100K

Those early Beatles albums were lucky to make Platinum in most cases in the UK. Whereas the US albums were selling multiple Platinum in some cases and given the definitions that was a lot more.

Looking at individual albums the US only versions sold a lot more than their UK counterparts. In total the Beatles sold somewhere around 22M albums in the UK whereas they sold 150M in the US.

Just look at one album that is fairly similar but
Rubber Soul in the UK was 2x Platinum thats about 600K
Rubber Soul in the US was 6x Platinum and almost 7x at 6.9M


Some are closer but still
Sgt. Pepper sold 5.4M in the UK
Sgt. Pepper sold 12.5M in the US


And the way Capitol was packaging them into more albums meant a lot more albums sold.

Of course the populations played a factor. In 1964 the US was 192M and the UK was 54M.

Interesting!

Grok says, due to the sorry contracts the inexperienced Brian Epstein got them in, they had only made about $40 million total (which was taxed at 90-95%) on the albums and singles prior to his death in 1967. Allen Klein came in and got everything reworked to where the band got 58% per album, a massive increase.

So basically starting with the White Album, their bank accounts started to explode.

The next album up is technically a compilation or re-release depending how you look at it. Because it's in the graphic in the very first post and because it was a Platinum album in the US in its own right and the predecessor is long out of print I'm including it here in the US Capitol release chronology.

The Early Beatles was released in the US in March of 1965. This album effectively replaced the now defunct Vee-Jay records release called Introducing... The Beatles which was legally required to cease distribution after October of 1964. As Capitol liked album releases every 2 or 3 months they shoehorned this release into the cycle after Beatles '65 had a nice run at #1. It would peak at #43 in the US but it did go Platinum in both the US and Canada.

The song lineup was different than any of the other "first" Beatles albums including Please Please Me (UK) and both versions of Introducing... The Beatles (US). It included the four songs that were swapped on the different Vee-Jay versions while dropping "I Saw Her Standing There" as Capitol had put that on the Meet The Beatles album. And it also left off "Misery" and "There's a Place" which had both failed to chart on releases as a single by Vee-Jay. Those two songs would not show up on any Capitol release until the compilation Rarities in 1980.



The usual cover design saw a simple photo of the Fab Four with the title and a tag line of "Eleven of their 1964 American Hit Recordings" and the list of song titles.

Post subtitle could be: The Capitol records bottom out

I've been pretty negative about the Capitol versions of Beatles albums so far and this one is the worst for many reasons. The good news is it only gets better after this one.

By May of 1965 Capitol was desperate for more Beatles content. The effective re-release of the The Early Beatles had run it's course and The Beatles were busy working on both the film and music for Help!

Having released 4 albums and sold 15 million albums in the US in 1964 Capitol wanted to repeat that formula in 1965. So far the only release was The Early Beatles which was retread material and it did not sell very well by comparison barely cracking platinum status. The Beatles only had plans for 2 albums of new material in 1965 and they would be later (August and December).

Capitol was not content to wait until August as they had 6 songs in reserve from Beatles For Sale UK release to package with something to make an album. Unfortunately they were not the best stuff from Beatles For Sale because they put the prime picks on Beatles '65. And 2 of those were cover songs as well. And they had "Yes It Is" the B side from the recent Ticket To Ride single.

They needed 4 more songs to make an album. And I suppose things could have been worse. They could have gone with unreleased tracks left off of The Early Beatles ("Misery" and "There's A Place") and the Vee-Jay failed single "From Me to You" plus another German language version "Sie Liebt Dich" (She Loves You) like they did on Beatles '65.

What we got was better than that but not much. They called George Martin and asked what else they had. Well they had just recorded 4 potential songs for the Help (UK) album that were not part of the movie and so would not be on the US soundtrack version. And Martin had given them similar songs from A Hard Day's Night sessions that Capitol included on The Beatles Second Album before they were released in the UK. Martin was agreeable to doing that again. Two of those were ""Tell Me What You See" and George Harrison's "You Like Me Too Much" which were acceptable. But Martin and The Beatles considered the other two songs unreleasable "That Means A Lot" and "If You've Got Trouble". In fact those songs would only finally appear on the compilation called Anthology 2.

So they still needed 2 songs. Martin turned to The Beatles and asked if they could record a couple of songs for the US market specifically. They agreed and went into the studio but without much of a plan. They had spent the day (May 10) shooting scenes for Help! and arrived at EMI studios at 8 pm. As it was Larry Williams birthday (a 50s R&B/rock and roll black artist from New Orleans), John suggested recording covers of two of his songs. The Beatles had been big fans of his music and often played these songs in their early touring days especially in Germany in 1961-1962. It was something they could do easily and had been a long day already.

So between 8pm and 11:30 they knocked out 7 takes of "Dizzy Miss Lizzy" and 4 takes of "Bad Boy" including overdub takes. The engineers spent the next few hours mixing them until 1:30am and they literally shipped them out by air freight to the US the next day. "Dizzy Miss Lizzy" was actually later included on the UK album version of Help! although it was not originally intended for that. "Bad Boy" would not be released in the UK until a compilation album called A Collection of Beatles Oldies in late 1966

So this album of leftovers from Beatles For Sale including two covers, a B side single, a couple of new covers and some filler tracks from the forthcoming Help! album was decided.

But Capitol would make a mess of the release still in it's packaging and marketing. They were rushing to release something by June so it had some time to get max sales before Help! was released. Having at least the titles they set to work designing the cover art. But why spend time doing something of quality when you can just do a rush job and still sell millions of albums.

First of all the title is terrible. I mean the US Capitol releases to date were not great titles:
Meet the Beatles - ok it made sense but just lazy really
The Second Beatles Album - someone got paid for that, and technically it was the 3rd album
A Hard Day's night - unchanged
Something New - it wasn't new and it wasn't creative at all
Beatles '65 - besides the fact that it was released in '64 it was again just lazy
The Early Beatles - perfunctory at best without saying it was a compilation really, again not creative

Well they topped themselves this time as the eighth Beatles album (counting Introducing... the Beatles, or even 7th if you just count Capitol releases) they decided to call Beatles VI. It was even not just a little confusing considering we had Beatles '65 6 months earlier. Proving that naming them by year if you were doing 4 per year was just dumb. And numbering them only made sense if you were numbering them all along (and counting them correctly). It was peak laziness.

The original back cover just included the songs by name with no track order since it had not yet been decided. Subsequent printings did order them properly.

Not to be outdone the artwork boys invested almost zero time and picked a photo from the photo shoot of the previous album (Beatles '65) and just cropped it. You will notice they are wearing the same clothes as that terrible cover just with their jackets removed. There they had looked solemn as they found the photo shoot very dull and drab. But here, they actually look smiling and happy which is a big improvement at least. But oddly they are all holding something only it is cropped out so it just led to questions and lacked any context.

I'll show the cover below but also the shot it was cropped from and others for context. You can see they were holding a large knife and having a little fun while cutting a cake and messing around. I think it would have been better with a montage of photos from that instead. In fact the cake had been delivered by Capitol during the shoot to celebrate the platinum status of some previous album. Hell you could have even made some better album title from that theme.

Lastly there were some gaffes made on the album wording itself. The song "Dizzy Miss Lizzy" was misprinted as "Dizzy Miss Lizzie" on the cover and label. They later corrected the record label but never altered the cover or song listing on the back cover. They also listed just "Kansas City". They got sued over that as the middle of the song bridges into a cover of a specific rendition of that song by Little Richard released in 1959 called "Hey-Hey-Hey-Hey". Again reprints of the album would correct it to "Kansas City/Hey Hey Hey Hey" on the record label but they never fixed the cover art.

In addition the order of the songs just seems glaringly random as nothing transitions and there is of course no uniform sound with a true hodgepodge of songs never meant to be an album. A true stopgap album. It is a good thing it contained the one hit song "Eight Days A Week" which was #1 in March. That song only got released as a single because radio stations had gotten ahold of the UK album Beatles For Sale and were playing the song which prompted Capitol to go ahead and release it as a single.

And of course it had the usual kind of verbiage "The World's Most Popular Foursome!" and their first names. It listed the new songs first that were not yet released in the UK and the hit single "Eight Days a Week" to promote it's unique songs.

Still it was the worst selling of the US Capitol releases to date barely making platinum status in the US.






Here are the context shots from the photo shoot.







Here you can see the original back cover with the incorrect playing order (and the note to "See label for correct playing order"). Also the misprint of "Dizzy Miss Lizzie" which was never fixed. FYI these shots were from the Beatles For Sale studio recording sessions so there is at least some context and Ringo playing the tympani's for "Every Little Thing" which was actually on this album.




When they fixed the order of songs on later reprints they still left the typo and changed some pictures for some reason.

Next up in August of 1965 is the soundtrack to the movie Help!

The previous soundtrack for A Hard Day's Night had been released by UA who owned the rights to the movie and soundtrack. That was a deal made in 1963 when Capitol had passed on the Beatles and shopped the first album, film and soundtrack around. Vee-Jay had ended up with the first record contract and UA got the film and soundtrack rights. But almost immediately after in late 1963 when The Beatles were breaking big Capitol locked up all future movie and soundtrack rights as well. So they would be producing this release in the US.

The previous album had been such a big hit that Capitol decided to follow the same formula that UA had done. UA added the instrumental orchestral pieces since they only had the rights to the 7 (8 initially) songs in the film. So Capitol wanted instrumental orchestra pieces produced as well. But George Martin who had conducted and arranged the previous numbers had quite a rift with the films director and producer and they refused to work with him again. So Capitol enlisted Ken Thorne to produce these instrumental tracks.

Five instrumental tracks were created. 3 were based on previous Beatles songs (From Me to You, A Hard Day's Nigh and You Can't Do That) and the other 2 were original numbers by Ken Thorne.

With the 7 songs from the movie (which comprised the A side of the UK release of Help!) and the 5 instrumentals they had a 12 song album. The order of songs even on the UK album do not follow the movie and the US release is also different with the instrumentals interspersed between songs. The remaining 7 songs from the UK release of the movie album would be of course held back by Capitol for another album later.

Unlike UA on a Hard Day's Night, Capitol never released those instrumental tracks as singles. They only had moderate success at best but UA was looking to capitalize on everything they could for their limited involvement with The Beatles.

As the plot involves a fictitious eastern religion/cult plot and characters of Indian descent the orchestra music involved some eastern themes. This would be the first Beatles album that would include a sitar and other instruments in the instrumentals that The Beatles (particularly Harrison) would include on later songs after their visits to India.

Side note: the representations and stereotypes of so called eastern religion and cult sacrifice presented would not fly today of course. It's hard to actually find the film anywhere.




One interesting note about the music and title. All the other songs were prepared already but they did not yet have a title or title track for the film. Only after it was filmed did they come up with the idea of naming it Help but they insisted it be Help! with the exclamation as part of the title. Once that was approved they wrote a song to match the title. So Help! was simply created to match the title and energy of the bumbling chase movie plot. Lennon wrote most of it after being frustrated by the name change and Paul wrote the countermelody. They recorded it in one day in 12 takes including overdubs on April 14 1965.

The US version include an uncredited "Bond like" prelude entry to the first song "Help!" that is not on the single or UK version.

As for the cover art Capitol once again could not simply use the more simple and classic UK album design and wanted to emphasize that this was a soundtrack album. They took the image of the foursome from the UK album and superimposed it over some more flashy graphics and the usual verbiage promoting the film and songs. While they used colorful logo wording they changed the pictures of the lads to black and white and for some reason decided to alter the image and move the order of the four of them around moving Ringo . Originally from left to right it was George/John/Paul/Ringo on the UK cover but changed to George/Ringo/John/Paul on the US cover.

Originally the idea was for the four to spell out HELP using so called flag semaphore poses (below) but the photographer did not like how that looked and so they did some random ones and ended up spelling NUJV on the UK cover and NVUJ on the US cover neither of which mean anything. Personally I never noticed they were different until it was pointed out as I read about the making of it.






The album quickly shot to #1 in the US and stayed there for 9 weeks. The singles for "Ticket To Ride" and "Help!" both went to #1 in the UK and US.



On the back cover there is a picture of the four on a beach as seen in the movie but the song listing was done so early that the instrumental numbers are just listed as "Instrumental". They would be labelled correctly on the record label but they never fixed the back cover.







What the correct semaphore flag position would have looked like - it would have looked awkward for sure.




UK cover

This was a good album. We bought it and I at least listened to it quite a bit. Really good songs for the most part.

Again, I am enjoying your commentary. You should write a book!

Agreed. Those 7 Beatles songs are superb really. Consecutively as they were on the UK album on the A side they are great. I can imagine US listeners having to literally move the needle to skip over those songs or they had to sit through 2 minute musical interludes if they listened to all of it. That's an artifact of the vinyl days. With the CD version on The Beatles US Albums compilation you can also skip them. Not that they are bad but if you just want to listen to The Beatles I imagine you would just now play the UK version.

By the way not all the blatant money making concepts came just from the US.

George Martin and UA could not help but try to capitalize on the film in some way having been left off the soundtrack completely this time.

So George Martin and his orchestra who had done the instrumentals for a Hard Day's Night released their own album of instrumental numbers from the movie Help!

He had similarly done a few other orchestral albums of Beatles songs in the interim.

Super interesting thread and deep dive into the record history. I am a massive Beatles fan, and really our whole household is. They are on constant rotation for listening.

Have never heard about a bunch of this stuff before! The US version of Rubber Soul is intriguing to think about. I do agree Drive My Car is a standout from the rest of the album on the other version, but since it's the very first song it doesn't feel as haphazard to have on there. It's not breaking up any sequences.

Nowhere Man is a wonderful song, I wonder how my opinion of Rubber Soul would go if it wasn't on there. Over time I've mulled over Rubber Soul or Revolver as my favorite Beatles album, but I have been settled on Revolver as my favorite in recent years.