Seven Beatles LPs Issued in the U.S. in 1964 and Early ’65 Are Coming Back to Vinyl This Fall
The 60th anniversary of the peak year for Beatlemania in the United States, 1964, is being celebrated with the release of “The Beatles: 1964 U.S. Albums In Mono,” a forthcoming boxed set that compiles seven albums that were released by the Fab Four in the States during that year (or, in one case, early 1965).
Apart from their release as a collection, six of the seven titles will be made available for sale individually as well — with the exception being “The Beatles Story,” a sort of audio documentary double-album that will only be included in the boxed set. All of the individual and collected titles will come out on Nov. 22.
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The six albums that will be included in the collection as well as become available singularly again are, in order of original release, “Meet the Beatles!” (which came out Jan. 20, 1964), “The Beatles’ Second Album” (April 10, 1964), “A Hard Day’s Night (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)” (June 26, 1964), “Something New” (July 20, 1964), “Beatles ’65” (Dec. 15, 1964) and “The Early Beatles” (March 22, 1965).
These particular U.S. albums have all been out of print in the LP format since 1995. Almost all the material on them (excepting the non-musical oddities on “The Beatles Story,” a release most fans consider noncanonical) has been available in the interim via differently configured equivalents of the catalog as they first appeared in the U.K.
An announcement Thursday from Apple and Universal Music said that all the LP releases will sport faithfully reproduced artwork, along with freshly conceived four-panel inserts featuring essays written by American Beatles historian Bruce Spizer. The vinyl lacquers for the reissues were cut by Kevin Reeves at East Iris Studios in Nashville.
O.G. Beatles fans in the U.S. may cherish these reissues like long-lost friends, while some of those who only began following the group in the decades well after their 1970 breakup may become acquainted with these domestic configurations for the first time via this set, as Apple has largely stuck with the British versions of the Beatles’ early and mid-’60s releases in the CD-and-beyond era.
As Universal noted in a press release, an album like “Beatles ’65” — which was put together specifically for the American audience and was not issued in the U.K. — consisted of eight tracks from “Beatles for Sale” (an LP that did not originally come out in the U.S.) and added three U.K. singles (“I’ll Be Back,” “I Feel Fine” and “She’s A Woman”). If you’re a latter-day fan who has a hard time charting why the Beatles’ U.S. and U.K. releases prior to “Sgt. Pepper” were so different, you’re hardly alone — everything about the group’s early catalog should be labeled “it’s complicated.”
Preorders of the new releases can be had here.
For most Beatles fans, news of these reissues will be welcome, although some will be disappointed that, with this being the group’s big holiday 2024 release, it means the faithful will have to wait a little longer for a boxed set of “Rubber Soul” in the fashion that has been done for all of the band’s releases from “Revolver” forward. It’s believed — but officially unconfirmed — that Giles Martin has been or will be working on new stereo mixes of all of the group’s material from “Rubber Soul” backward, including the tracks found in this collection, using the audio separation technology employed on the “Get Back” movie and the recent “Revolver” remixes.
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