Wednesday, 9 April 2025

What next for The Beatles U.S.vinyl reissues?

We are approaching Easter so there is some preparation for that here and I have been continuing on with sorting some duplicate copies out and straighting some of the storage out so it's easier to finding things and is straight.

Over at a music forum, a pretty busy one actually, follow last years release of six (plus one exclusive to the boxed edition) of a series of classic mainly American beatles album from 1964 marking how that year and the "British Invasion" impacted america talk has moved to what about the other albums.

A basic fact in so far as their catalogue goes is after 1967, any UK albums were released in same form as in the U.K. in the States so there are less varients so there are limits to how how any reissue series can go with those albums being available anyway new.

Three 1965 U.S. albums are potential candidates, June 1965's Beatles VI (That's Six if you don't do roman numerals!) that featured the number 1 single Eight Day's A Week, Yes It Is (the "B" side of Ticket To Ride) and two tracks record originally for this album alone.


In the U.K. Help! was issued in September 1965 and had seven film songs and seven others on the second side while in the U.S. Capitol issued it in  gatefold sleeve with instrumentals from the film.

That would have collector appeal.

Finally Rubber Soul emerged at the end of the year but while it shared the same title as the U.K. edition, the U.S. version only uses ten songs of the fourteen and adds two more folky songs previously issued in the U.K. on that second side of Help! that it is held changes the feel of the album and some do prefer.

1966 saw two albums, Yesterday and Today, enjoyable mixture of singles held back from U.S. versions of Help! and Rubber Soul such as Yesterday, a number 1 single in September 1965 and with a highly controversial initial cover (the so-called "Butcher Cover") and Revolver that was just like the U.K. except it missed three tracks issued on Yesterday and Today.

I feel good arguments can be made for all the 1965 albums as they do offer something different to the now standardized U.K. catalogue especially on vinyl which we've not had since the late 1980's but Revolver is just the UK version minus three tracks.

You might be nostalgic for it but in the racks would you choose it?

For extra albums to me the only clear cut option is the 1970 originally U.S. only Hey Jude compilation for its cover and being the first time many of these singles had been available on a U.S. album in stereo.

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