THE EARLY BEATLES

On the heels of its biggest repackaging success to date - the creation of the number one single Eight Days a Week b/w I Don't Want to Spoil the Party - Capitol Records made its biggest miscalculation.  By March of 1965, it had been five months since Vee-Jay had lost its rights to the early catalog of material by the Beatles, so perhaps Capitol felt the time was right to repackage that material, but Vee-Jay had already oversaturated the market with the same sixteen songs so many times that its own repackaging attempts had met with less and less success over time.

Nonetheless, Capitol assembled a typical eleven track album with the following running order:

SIDE ONE

Love Me Do
Twist and Shout
Anna (Go to Him)
Chains
Boys
Ask Me Why

SIDE TWO

Please Please Me
P.S. I Love You
Baby It's You
A Taste of Honey
Do You Want to Know a Secret

Note that the song Anna's subtitle (Go to Him) is printed only on the record label, not on the front or back cover of the album.  Also, the photograph on the cover is not an early 1963 shot of the boys, as the title might suggest.  It is, in fact, taken from the back cover of the December 1964 British album Beatles for Sale.

When choosing eleven tracks out of the fourteen available from the group's first UK album Please Please Me, leaving off I Saw Her Standing There was probably a given, since Capitol had already released this song twice - as the B-side to I Want to Hold Your Hand and on the album Meet the Beatles!  However, the omission of both Misery and There's a Place - both fine, early Lennon/McCartney compositions - is hard to understand.  Neither of these tracks would appear on Capitol until the 1980 US version of the album Rarities.

The response to The Early Beatles, issued on March 22nd, 1965, was underwhelming to say the least.  Most fans must have already had the Vee-Jay album Introducing...the Beatles in their possession, as this release only hit number forty-three on the Billboard chart, making it by far the poorest performance of any official Beatles' album during the group's career (I am obviously discounting the oddball Vee-Jay repackagings).  Even the two-record documentary The Beatles' Story had gone all the way up to number seven, while every other American album went to either number one or number two.

An EP & an American #1

As 1965 began, Capitol Records surprisingly decided to issue a second Beatles EP.  Surprising because the previous year's Four by the Beatles had only hit number ninety-two on the Billboard chart, but it had inspired the label to start an entire "4-by" line for its artists.  Thus, on February 1st, 4-by the Beatles appeared.

SIDE A

Honey Don't
I'm a Loser

SIDE B

Mr. Moonlight
Everybody's Trying to Be My Baby

Of course, all four of these songs had already been released back in December on the album Beatles '65 but, as Bruce Spizer relates in his book The Beatles' Story on Capitol Records, Part One: Beatlemania and the Singles, the idea behind the "4-by" series was to "complement the artist's singles and albums and not compete with the performer's current hit single."  Still, this EP merely peaked at number sixty-eight on the charts even though, by leading off with Ringo's vocal showcase from the recent album, it seemed to be another attempt to cash in on the drummer's popularity with American fans.

Several years ago, I stumbled upon a copy of this record (minus its cardboard picture sleeve seen above) at a yard sale in a pile of singles.  Though it was very scratched up, I still considered it to be quite a find, and that was before I learned that Capitol deleted this item at the end of 1965.

On February 15th, only two weeks after the release of the EP, a new single arrived.  This one was a true stroke of genius on the part of Capitol (probably Dave Dexter, Jr., we should admit).  Two songs were chosen from the six still unreleased from Beatles for Sale to create the single Eight Days a Week b/w I Don't Want to Spoil the Party.  Whether Dexter or any other decision-makers at Capitol were aware of it or not, the Beatles themselves had considered releasing Eight Days a Week as a single before John came up with I Feel Fine, so it was clearly a wise choice.  Issued as it was in the dead of winter, this song was a natural hit and a breath of fresh air with its breezy pop sound, rising straight to number one and giving Capitol's repackaging campaign its first major victory.

BEATLES '65

While Vee-Jay was flooding the US market with its final flurry of re-releases in the fall of 1964, Capitol was uncharacteristically laying low, though not for lack of trying.  With the permission of manager Brian Epstein and the Beatles, the LA-based label had recorded the group's Hollywood Bowl concert on August 23rd with the intention of issuing a live album, but the relatively primitive equipment of the time and the overwhelming screaming of the crowd made those recordings unusable (thirteen years later, producer George Martin and engineer Geoff Emerick would find a way to create an album using those same tapes).

Instead, Capitol assembled a documentary album entitled The Beatles' Story and issued it on November 23rd.  Amazingly, this two-record set went all the way to number seven on the Billboard albums chart.  On the same date, the single I Feel Fine b/w She's a Woman was released, four days ahead of its UK debut.  These exciting songs were the first new material from the group since A Hard Day's Night back in the summer, and the single quickly became a number one hit.

On December 15th, just barely in time for Christmas, the latest album arrived - Beatles '65.

SIDE ONE

No Reply
I'm a Loser
Baby's in Black
Rock and Roll Music
I'll Follow the Sun
Mr. Moonlight

SIDE TWO

Honey Don't
I'll Be Back
She's a Woman
I Feel Fine
Everybody's Trying to Be My Baby

Eight of these songs were from the new British album Beatles for Sale (in fact, the tracks on side one of this album are the first six from that one, and in the same order for a change).  Of course, that left Capitol with six tracks in reserve for a future compilation.  In addition, we were finally treated to I'll Be Back, the one leftover from the UK version of A Hard Day's Night, plus the almost obligatory inclusion of the two songs from the latest single.

At this point, I find it necessary to invoke the name of Dave Dexter, Jr. - a name which lives in infamy for many Beatles fans.  It was he who had turned the group down on behalf of Capitol Records multiple times in 1963.  When the label eventually agreed to issue their material in the US, Dexter was the man who decided how to repackage it for the American market.  He also had the authority to reproduce the recordings, frequently sweetening George Martin's preferred dry sound by adding reverb.  The most extreme example of this by far is on the songs from the single, I Feel Fine and, most egregiously, on She's a Woman.  Yet when these tracks are followed on this album by Everybody's Trying to Be My Baby - a song on which Martin and engineer Norman Smith themselves added a tremendous amount of reverb to George Harrison's vocal - they don't sound that out of place.

Vee-Jay's last gasp

The over-saturation of material by the Beatles in the American market during the latter half of 1964 was only partly due to the multiple releases of songs from A Hard Day's Night.  The other side of the story involves our old friends at Vee-Jay Records, whose six-month window of opportunity to cash in on the early Beatles catalog was about to close on October 15th. 

The first flurry of activity occurred on August 10th, when Vee-Jay re-released the following four singles (two of which had originally appeared on its subsidiary label Tollie Records):

Please Please Me b/w From Me to You
Twist and Shout b/w There's a Place
Do You Want to Know a Secret b/w Thank You Girl
Love Me Do b/w P.S. I Love You

Fans seemed to have had enough of this older material as all four of these singles failed to even chart at this time.  Unfazed, the label made plans to re-release Introducing...the Beatles under various guises.  The album had been a great success for Vee-Jay despite the legal entanglements with Capitol Records earlier in the year.  In fact, when the Beatles appeared at the Hollywood Bowl on August 23rd, Vee-Jay presented the group with a Gold Record award for sales of 1.3 million units.

One repackaging took advantage of both of Vee-Jay's former superstar acts in a deluxe two-record set with Introducing...the Beatles on one record and Golden Hits of the Four Seasons on the other featuring Sherry, Walk Like a Man and Big Girls Don't Cry.  Though highly unusual, The Beatles vs. the Four Seasons is a truly outstanding collection for anyone who did not previously own any of this material.  Either many fans already did or the price of a double album kept them at bay because this release only hit number 142 on the Billboard album chart.

The other re-release was entitled Songs, Pictures and Stories of the Fabulous Beatles.  It was simply Introducing...the Beatles in a three-quarter gatefold sleeve with information about the boys printed inside that you might find in any typical fan magazine of the time.  This release performed somewhat better, eventually peaking at number sixty-three.  Though the covers of these two albums were new, Vee-Jay did not even bother to change the label on the record within, still listing it as Introducing...the Beatles.

On October 10th, just before Vee-Jay's rights expired, it also reissued Jolly What! The Beatles and Frank Ifield on Stage with a new cover depicting the Beatles as pictured at the top of this entry.  If the information in the Wikipedia article about this album is correct, less than one hundred copies were pressed, making this an extremely rare item and one of the most valuable for collectors.   

Thus ended the Fab Four's association with the tiny, troubled label that had taken a chance on them  and attempted to introduce them to the American market when no others would in early 1963.  From this point forward, Capitol Records would handle all future releases of the official Beatles catalog in the USA.

SOMETHING NEW & Matchbox b/w Slow Down

On July 20th, 1964, the same date that the singles I'll Cry Instead b/w I'm Happy Just to Dance with You and And I Love Her b/w If I Fell were issued, Capitol Records also released the album Something New.  It contained all four songs from those singles, thus marking the third release of said songs in less than a month when you factor in the United Artists album A Hard Day's Night.

Probably because of United Artists' exclusive rights to an official soundtrack album tied in to the film, Capitol avoided including the title song and even I Should Have Known Better, though Tell Me Why did appear (and why was that song was not on a single in place of the non-soundtrack song I'll Cry Instead?).  It should be noted that the song A Hard Day's Night never appeared on a Capitol album during the group's career.

SIDE ONE

I'll Cry Instead
Things We Said Today
Any Time at All
When I Get Home
Slow Down
Matchbox

SIDE TWO

Tell Me Why
And I Love Her
I'm Happy Just to Dance with You
If I Fell
Komm, Gib Mir Deine Hand

Oddly, the song I'll Cry Instead is presented in its full-length American version in mono, but only in its truncated British form on the stereo album.

Three songs from the non-soundtrack side of the British A Hard Day's Night album are featured, along with two cover versions of American rockers from the UK EP Long Tall Sally.  The final number is the German version of I Want to Hold Your Hand.  The inclusion of this track is curious, even taking into account that Swan Records had released Sie Liebt Dich a few months earlier.  Add to that the fact that Capitol left the terrific song I'll Be Back (also from the UK version of A Hard Day's Night) in the vaults for several months instead of  releasing it here.

It was not an uncommon practice for American record companies to issue songs as singles after they had already appeared on albums, so it should have come as no surprise to see the arrival of Matchbox b/w Slow Down a month later on August 24th.  This seems to have been a clear attempt to capitalize on Ringo's popularity in the US.  He had been the most popular Beatle with American fans from the start, and his wonderfully understated performance in the film only added to his personal fan base.

Ringo's take on the Carl Perkins number only reached number seventeen on the Billboard chart, however, while John's scorching rendition of the Larry Williams rocker on the B-side hit number twenty-five.  There is no question that the market was over-saturated at this point in time with Beatles' material, much of it redundant.

Capitol floods the market

For the second time in only a matter of months, Capitol Records learned that it had been outfoxed.  A legal settlement had finally been reached with Vee-Jay Records over control of the Beatles' earliest output, but there was simply no legal recourse to be had against United Artists.  UA had secured the exclusive rights to release the official soundtrack album of the group's first feature film back in 1963, months before Capitol even showed any signs of interest in the Fab Four.  But Capitol still maintained the rights to all of the Beatles' recordings, so it could also release the same material as long as it did not package that material as a soundtrack album. 

United Artists was allowed to issue its album first on June 26th, 1964 which, as I noted in my last entry, was a few weeks ahead of the film's premiere.  Capitol waited until the film's debut and then reissued most of the songs from the soundtrack, some of them more than once.  Though this was a clear case of overkill, sales were still impressive.  In fact, neither Capitol nor United Artists could complain in the long run.

Three singles appeared in rapid succession, the first on July 13th featuring A Hard Day's Night b/w I Should Have Known Better.  (The film's title song was the only single issued in the UK at this time, but it was backed with the non-soundtrack song Things We Said Today.  As with I Want to Hold Your Hand, Capitol somehow felt the need to change the B-side for the American audience.)  The label on each side of the single contained the words From the Motion Picture "A Hard Day's Night" A United Artists Release.

The next two singles both arrived a week later on July 20th - I'll Cry Instead b/w I'm Happy Just to Dance with You, and the two great ballads And I Love Her b/w If I Fell.  All four of these songs bore the credit From the United Artists Picture "A Hard Day's Night" (as pictured above) even though I am compelled, as always, to note that I'll Cry Instead is not used in the film.  The American version of the song both here and on the United Artists album is also about twenty seconds longer than the version released in England as the result of a different edit.

All three A-sides made the Billboard Top 40, with I'll Cry Instead hitting number twenty-five, And I Love Her coming in at number twelve and A Hard Day's Night becoming the group's fifth number one hit in the US market.

But Capitol wasn't content with merely issuing singles...

A new label, a new album, A HARD DAY'S NIGHT

The decision-makers at United Artists had either remarkable foresight or extraordinary good luck in October of 1963 when they secured the rights to a feature film starring an English rock and roll band called the Beatles.  It was probably a combination of both, but the fact of the matter is that the group was completely unknown in America at that time, yet one of the main reasons that United Artists signed them to make a film was to also get the exclusive rights to the accompanying soundtrack album for release in the US market - a curious roll of the dice, to say the least.

But even before filming began in March of '64, the United Artists gamble paid off as the Fab Four unexpectedly became the hottest property in show business in the intervening months.  The only worry, if there was one, was that their popularity might peak before the film and album could be completed and released.  United Artists was permitted to issue their album on June 26th, a few weeks ahead of the film's premiere and even ahead of the British album of the same name, thus making seven of these songs world premieres.

SIDE ONE

A Hard Day's Night
Tell Me Why
I'll Cry Instead
I Should Have Known Better - instrumental
I'm Happy Just to Dance with You
And I Love Her - instrumental

SIDE TWO

I Should Have Known Better
If I Fell
And I Love Her
Ringo's Theme (This Boy) - instrumental
Can't Buy Me Love
A Hard Day's Night - instrumental

I'll Cry Instead (which is not an actual soundtrack song) is incorrectly listed on both the back cover and the label as I Cry Instead.

I'm sure I was not alone in hating the instrumentals by the George Martin orchestra, which interrupted the flow of each side of the album for me but, while the compositions and (to some extent) the recordings of the Beatles have a timeless quality about them, these instrumentals are positively stuck in time.  They are a perfect representation of how rock and roll was homogenized for the older generation in popular entertainment in 1964, and I now find them to be absolutely wonderful, especially the insanely kitschy version of And I Love Her.

Thankfully, the entire album is now available on CD both individually and as part of the 2014 release The Beatles U.S. Albums.   

3 labels, 2 singles & 1 EP

You may recall that in January of 1964 Vee-Jay Records was forced to scrap its initial release of the album Introducing...the Beatles when it was sued by Capitol Records, whose publishing company Beechwood Music owned the rights to the songs Love Me Do and P.S. I Love You.  Now that the two companies had finally settled, Vee-Jay was free to release the songs, and it did so as a single on April 27th on its subsidiary label Tollie Records.  In fact, the A-side had already made an appearance on the Billboard chart as a Capitol of Canada import featuring Ringo on drums - the September 4th, 1962 version.  This new single used the more common September 11th, 1962 version with Andy White on drums and Ringo on tambourine.

The Beatles' sound had quickly become more sophisticated in the studio in only a year and a half, yet American audiences gobbled up this relatively primitive early recording and pushed it all the way to the top of the chart, making it the group's fourth number one single in the US. 

Capitol Records made an unusual move on May 11th by issuing an EP comprised of the four other songs that had appeared on Capitol of Canada singles on the US charts a month earlier.  Perhaps the feeling was that the demand for Roll Over Beethoven and All My Loving was still strong, but this new release only managed to hit number ninety-two on the Billboard Hot 100.  Unlike the sleeve printed above, the running order was:

SIDE A

Roll Over Beethoven
All My Loving

SIDE B

This Boy
Please Mister Postman
   

The strangest new release was surely this one.  Swan Records only held the rights to two songs - She Loves You and I'll Get You - and could only issue them as a single (which was why Capitol was allowed to include both of them as album tracks on The Beatles' Second Album).  Upon learning that the group had recorded a German-language version of She Loves You for EMI's Odeon label, Swan somehow got its hands on the recording, believing that it had exclusive rights to it in the US market.  Once again, I'll Get You served as the B-side and the single was issued on May 21st, 1964.  It met with little success, however, peaking at number ninety-seven, partly because Capitol sued the smaller label, which did not actually have the rights to this particular recording.