A big archival release from The Beatles is something that Beatlemaniacs have come to anticipate around this time each year, although what exactly the release might be has become harder to predict. For several seasons, we could count on big box sets devoted to specific albums. Then, last year, when fans were certain a multi-disc box set focused on Rubber Soul would be the thing, Universal Music zagged with expanded editions of the "Red" and "Blue" compilations. This year brings another somewhat unexpected release: vinyl reissues of The Beatles' first six American albums for the first time since the eighties.
I was actually expecting such a release for a while, ever since all of the Capitol albums (plus that one on United Artists) were put out as a CD box set in 2014 for the fiftieth anniversary of the boys' first trip to America. I'm a little surprised it took a decade to get the first half of those albums back out on vinyl, although this year does make sense as we've now hit the sixtieth anniversary of that first U.S. visit.
There was probably also a certain amount of fretting over how best to reissue these records since both of the most recent attempts to do so on CD were met with controversy. When the Capitol Albums Vol. 1 set was released in 2004, those who didn't realize or had forgotten that the original Capitol albums often included fake stereo and heavily applied echo to make them sound "more exciting" for the American market thought the albums sounded bizarre and voiced their displeasure. When the U.S. Albums set of 2014 came along, and the offending U.S. mixes were replaced with the British ones, critics whinged about inauthenticity.
The new vinyl releases essentially sidestep such issues by presenting Meet the Beatles, Second Album, A Hard Day's Night, Something New, Beatles '65, and The Early Beatles in mono, since it was the stereo records that had been subjected to most of that heavy-handed weirdness. This was probably smart, both to avoid the expected controversy and because it's easier these days to find clean vintage stereo copies of these albums, since they're the ones that remained in print until the late eighties, than mono ones. And mono remains the best way to hear the early Beatles, in any event.
However, considering how complicated Beatles history is, there's still no way to completely avoid potential controversy, because most of the original mono editions of these albums weren't actually proper mono through and through. Capitol only received the stereo mixes of them, which the label was then forced to fold-down for the mono releases. In other words, the stereo mixes were narrowed down to a single channel. Of the included discs, only Something New and Beatles 65 are legit mono, while "I Want to Hold Your Hand" and "This Boy" on Meet and "Love Me Do" and "P.S. I Love You" on Early are as well. The rest are folds. That's why these discs tend to have more up-front vocals than their UK counterparts and why "Thank You Girl" has that extra bit of harmonica at the end that is present on the stereo mix but missing from the UK mono one.
Despite such audio jigger pokery, these records stills sound fantastic, with the balance of highs and lows authentic to the original releases, only Beatles 65 sounding a bit more on the trebly side, though more dynamic, than the way old-school fans heard it. The vinyl is uniformly flat and quiet.
These six albums are available on their own, as well as together in a slipcased box set called The Beatles 1964 U.S. Albums in Mono (never mind that The Early Beatles was released in 1965 and exclusively features songs recorded in 1962 and 1963). The double-LP documentary disc The Beatles Story is included as a bonus exclusive to this set, more for completeness sake than because it's essential listening. But it's a very neat souvenir and its mere existence—the fact that five LPs of actual music weren't enough to satiate Beatlemaniacs in 1964—says more about the sheer lunacy of Beatlemania than any of the great LPs in this set do.
As for the American albums, which have been criticized for inauthenticity for sixty years because they are not the albums the band envisioned, they most certainly have their charms independent of records like With the Beatles and Beatles for Sale. In fact, I personally prefer the U.S. equivalents of those albums, Meet the Beatles and Beatles '65 respectively, because of their exhilarating distillations of great album tracks and great recent singles. And The Beatles Second Album has a fair share of fans who dig the way it focuses on The Beatles at their most rocking and rolling. The others feel slight compared with their UK equivalents, though I do have a soft spot for George Martin's muzak instrumentals on the heavily bowdlerized A Hard Day's Night. Each record should certainly stimulate its share of nostalgic bliss for those of us who grew up on the other side of Atlantic from The Beatles and their country-people, where we experienced our own lop-sided but no less electrifying version of Beatlemania.
