"The Beatles 1964 US Albums In Mono"—A Complete Success?

I went in a cynic came out a believer—with a few minor caveats

If you were not expecting greatness from this set be prepared to be disappointed. The box set's producers understood that the high bar set by the all-analog 2014 The Beatles In Mono box set required this American follow up to be at least equally good, if not better, even though it covers but a single year in the life of The Beatles and the group's relationship with Capitol Records. But what a year it was! Filled with label competition, marketing intrigue, and a business backdrop most Beatles fans—even the most committed—to this day don't fully appreciate. They will after experiencing this box set.

Rather than providing an overview booklet covering the set, which includes Meet The Beatles!, The Beatles Second Album, the United Artists soundtrack album release A Hard Day's Night, Something New, Beatles '65, The Early Beatles and The Beatles Story, the producers wisely chose to have Beatles expert Bruce Spizer write enlightening annotation for each album included in a glossy full sized folded "one sheet" insert in each record that details the album-by-album history of how Capitol and its head of foreign product Dave Dexter of necessity sliced, diced and assembled these albums that mostly differ greatly from the British releases of that time. Spizer portrays Dexter as neither a hero nor a villain. Though most of us see Dexter as the latter, chances are good you'll come away with, if not a flattering opinion of him, a more respectful one. I came away with a far greater appreciation of Dexter's accomplishments, though of course he's also responsible for four times rejecting and not releasing The Beatles, so basically he caused all of his subsequent troubles!

But before getting to the story, consider the box and its production. The master tapes used to cut the originals back in 1964 were used here (yes, of course these master tapes are from copies sent to Capitol by George Martin at EMI), cut by Kevin Reeves on a lathe that originated in 1971 at Capitol Studios in Los Angeles that was later moved to Nashville. The Early Beatles tape appears to be a flat dub copy produced 5-21-71, based on the tape images provided for each record.

Reeves's name set off alarm bells for me and many others who did not appreciate his work cutting the Verve By Request series. Many, though not all of those records were cut at unacceptably low levels and sounded weak compared to streamed files, almost as if inexplicably cut at a fixed groove pitch. I heard complaints from many readers who'd bought some of the By Request records and found them to be defective.

Then, before listening to any of these records, I watched a video featuring UMe's Pat Kraus who I'd gotten to know when I toured UMe's Iron Mountain vault outside of Pittsburgh.

When Reeves talked about the process used to produce these mono records my concerns grew. At one point he described lacquer cutting issues including high cutting levels and vertical modulations that can cause both cutting and playback issues, but mono cuts are 100% lateral. There are no vertical modulations so why refer to those in this video?

My low expectations evaporated a few seconds into "I Want to Hold Your Hand", which was cut hot and with lots of energy even though the grooves looked kind of tame. This record should rock. It was aimed at teenagers who'd just suffered an assassination trauma! I'm not going to go record-by-record here because the sound was generally consistent throughout (with one exception) and yes, I compared these to my original monos. The overall sound is a bit brighter and harder on top than on the originals but that's similar to the differences between the U.K. original monos and the 2014 mono box also cut from tape. I ascribe those differences to perhaps cutting electronics or to the fact that Capitol's mono lathes in 1964 were, according to my sources, Scully, not Neumann. Different chain, different sound, but not fundamentally different as has long been the case with digitally remastered sound (it's getting more difficult to hear 'digital' as the sampling rates and bit depth increases—these tapes have a memo on each saying "digitized at 32 bit/192K"). Wouldn't it be interesting hear a record sourced from tape on one side and from that file on the other? The MPO pressed records are of exceptionally high quality: flat, concentric, quiet—all of them in the box I received. I hope yours are equally well-pressed.

If you're looking for a writer who's going to go track by track and compare to the originals, you've come to the wrong place. I don't see the point to that. I sat down and played through the entire box in one sitting and enjoyed almost all of it.

That says something to me because if it wasn't fully enjoyable sonically I couldn't have done that, but these transfers had the musical and sonic "flow" and transparency you're hoping to get. And the dynamics within the limitations of the compression applied in the original production and transfer. My only criticism is that I found Beatles 65 exceedingly bright, but at the time I figured it also could have been listener fatigue after a few hours of listening loud, sometimes singing, and often remembering where I was and what I was doing when I first heard the tunes all those years ago. It will take you back if you go back that far! But make no mistake: you can crank most of these records and the sound only gets better, not harsh and in your face. And the bottom end is not overly attenuated. It's appropriate to the tracks and varies between them. This was not a "cookie cutter" mastering job.

The next day (today) I listened to the box set's Beatles 65 and then to an original mono pressing and then to the same tracks on a U.K. copy of Beatles For Sale, which means all of side one minus "Kansas City". And yes, the new remastered Beatles 65 is excruciatingly bright compared to the original Capitol and especially to the U.K. original, which sounds a bit meek and polite. The U.K. needs cranking up to come to life, the box set Beatles 65 needs turning down to prevent ear-bleed and the American original sounds best, though somewhat teen-squashed. Look, these are not audiophile specials!

But now here's a bit of a shock—and I admit I didn't know this though perhaps some of you did—and kudos to the producers for divulging it on all of these records: for instance on Meet The Beatles! only tracks 1 and 3 on side one ("I Want to Hold Your Hand" and "This Boy") were true mono mixes sent by Martin/EMI to Capitol. The others are fold downs from the stereo tracks sent to Capitol "made by Capitol's Lee Minkler from stereo masters on December 19, 1963" (the original cutting engineers are credited for each record, which is a nice tribute). The mono version accounted for 90% of sales because mono record players are what kids had back then.

The source news improves on subsequent records: On The Beatles Second Album five of the eleven are true stereo. And on Something New and Beatles 65 all of the songs are sourced from true mono tapes. For The Early Beatles only "Love Me Do" and "P.S. I Love You" were sourced from mono (most readers know there were no stereo mixes of those). The others were fold downs.

The goal here is to give you the experience of what kids (maybe you but maybe not) experienced when you first heard and bought these Beatles albums and that's what these records provide. They are louder and more American Pontiac GTO, less British Hillman Husky. The acetate backed tapes have held up extremely well for the most part, like the Scotch 111 that serves Blue Notes so well.

The "stereo" United Artists A Hard Day's Night featured fake stereo Beatles songs and real stereo George Martin instrumentals. The mono record features fold downs of everything so I suppose if you want the instrumentals in stereo you'll need a stereo original.

The packaging and annotation are meticulous and outstanding. The artwork reproduction is equally top quality as you'd hope for. There's a bit more blue in the faces on the reissue than on my early copy but colors varied back then.

No bar codes, and you get the original labels and even inner sleeves including for the United Artists A Hard Day's Night soundtrack album as well as full sized tape box images.

The producers give you the correct track listing on the UA album for "I'll Cry Instead", instead of this one:

And even the correct United Artists inner sleeve:

Why post a section of the UA inner sleeve showing the jazz titles? Because wouldn't you want copies of Undercurrent, Money Jungle, Brazil, Bossa Nova and Blues and Three Blind Mice? BTW: that Herbie Mann record has got grooves to die for and is highly recommended. But what's with BILLY HOLIDAY!!! Unfortunately my original A Hard Day's Night doesn't have the insert so I don't know if that's a mistake on the original inner.

There's even a case to be made here for the inclusion of The Beatles' Story. As the amazing Beatles year of 1964 came to a close Capitol had on its books: 3,650,000 copies sold of Meet The Beatles (the label estimated sales of 250,000), more than 2,000,000 copies sold of The Beatles Second Album, more than 1,000,000 copies sold of Something New (sales somewhat limited because side two duplicated tracks from UA's A Hard Day's Night soundtrack, which by the way sold 1,000,000 copies within four days of its release almost two months before the film hit theaters so UA could beat Capitol's Something New release, and eventually sold 4,000,000 copies!), and Beatles '65, which went gold by the end of '64. The Early Beatles wasn't released in 1964 but since it was a replacement for Vee-Jay's Introducing The Beatles released in 1964, fair enough to include it here. It didn't sell that well at first, but eventually sold 1,000,000. It was released March 22nd, 1964 two years to the day that Parlophone released Please, Please Me in the U.K.

The Vee-Jay saga, well summarized in the annotation for The Early Beatles is well worth reading. The label had the rights, then lost it when it ran into financial difficulties and couldn't pay royalties. Through lawsuits it won and lost release rights throughout the year and released the album using more than a few cover and title variants. The annotation covers the Swan and Tollie singles saga too. But it omits the greatest Vee-Jay variant of them all:

That's a joke record someone produced that I saw in a Detroit record store a few years ago, probably to parody The Beatles vs The Four Seasons which was an actual Vee-Jay release..

My point regarding The Beatles Story is that Capitol wanted to cap the amazing year with a Beatles live album for a holiday season release but The Beatles and George Martin blocked the release of the August 23rd, 1964 Hollywood Bowl concert because they didn't like the performance or the sound so Capitol hatched this plot and had it ready to release November 23, 1964 and it sold surprisingly well though it's almost 100% Beatles-free and was produced without input from the group or George Martin. (The only factual error I found in the set was in The Beatles Story annotation that claimed the live album would be the follow up to Something New when it should have been Beatles '65).

For Beatles cynics who don't like much of what Capitol did with the catalog, chopping it up and reinventing it for its own craven commercial purposes, this souvenir is a perfect end cap to a year of Beatles and teen exploitation and properly completes the box set!

Conclusion

In 1963, jazz fan and Capitol Records exec in charge of foreign projects Dave Dexter, Jr whiffed on The Beatles four times, leaving an opening for the small, indie label Vee-Jay to license content from EMI and release that year a series of poor selling singles: "Please Please Me", "From Me to You" and "She Loves You".

Due to its weak finances and an inability to pay timely royalties, the rights to the songs Vee-Jay had licensed would bounce back and forth, producing a cloud of legal confusion and records in and out of the bins. By the end of '63 the noise from England was too great to ignore and Capitol signed up, but only after agreeing to drop $40,000 to publicize the group after it already had stiffed on Vee-Jay.

By then EMI had released With The Beatles, the group's second album. Meanwhile by the fall of 1963 The Beatles and Brian Epstein were angling for a film deal and got one with United Artists, which figured while the movie would flop and not earn back its production costs, it could make up the money with record sales. Both United Artists and Capitol would get the rights to release songs from the "small" teen film.

Capitol released Meet The Beatles on January 11th 1964. The Beatles arrived in America and played on The Ed Sullivan Show first time on February 9th. Seventy three million people watched and all hell broke loose.

This box set attempts and succeeds at unraveling and explaining through "songs, pictures and stories of the Fabulous Beatles" to borrow a Vee-Jay phrase what the hell happened from there as the past present and future Beatles collided that one year,1964.

I thought I knew the story but I didn't. The producers of this box tell it effectively. As you listen to the music and read the annotation you're sure to have a new appreciation for how Capitol chopped, peeled, sliced and diced Ron Pompeil-like the songs they had on hand that required being turned into coherent albums—at at time when kids didn't really buy albums—and churned them out all in a year's work. It's an amazing story.

The star attraction of course are the records and the mastering and pressing are for the most part really good. Ironically, Capitol messed more with the stereo records that few at the time bought than with the mono ones, which were left nicely dry and direct. Beatles '65 was the only shrill sonic disappointment. It would have been nice had someone done a sidebar explaining the tape box numbers and information. But you can't have everything.

Of course it's your choice to spend $299.98 or not but I really think if you do, and you listen through and read as you go, when it's over you'll feel it was money well spent. And surely you'll listen to much of it more often. I already have.