The Beatles: The Capitol
Albums, Vol. 1
Capitol B00065XJ48
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 I have earlier
memories of the holiday, but my recollections of Christmases past are inextricably
connected with the sensory memories of the smells, tastes, and sounds of candy canes,
pecans, walnuts, tangerines, and Beatles records.
My parents saw to the first four. I don’t know if
those are traditional Southern stocking stuffers or not, but that’s what my
Christmas stocking was always packed with -- nuts and candies, with a tangerine bulging in
the tip of the toe. As a middle-class child in the affluent 1960s, I never thought twice
about the tangerine, but when I ponder my father’s Depression childhood, I suspect
that a tangerine was a rare object of wonder on a December morning in Farmville, Virginia.
And, of course, my parents were responsible for the
presence of the Beatles album that was just as inevitably under the tree -- but it was
because of those canny marketers at Capitol Records, who reassembled the 14-track
Parlophone Beatles albums into 11- and 12-track US releases that also included tracks that
had been released as singles and EPs in the UK. This meant that there were three US
Beatles records for every two released in Britain. (It also meant that those of us in the
US who bought 45s wound up buying them again on the albums, unlike our Limey brethren. In
the UK, songs released as singles were not included on the same group’s LPs.) Sgt.
Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band ended this practice, not least because the
Beatles eschewed pauses between songs, making the album pretty much impossible to butcher.
The moptops apparently despised what Capitol was doing to their records, which was the
whole point of the notoriously collectable "Butcher" cover for the US release Yesterday
. . . And Today.
The differences between the US and UK LPs didn’t end
with the track listings. The track sequencing was very different -- as was the sound. The
early Parlophone records were monaural, but Capitol released them as artificially enhanced
"stereo" -- primarily increased reverb and the use of slight differences between
the channels to make the mix seem "bigger."
(Dear hard-core Beatles fans: Yes, I know I’m
simplifying matters somewhat for the sake of concision -- you don’t need to e-mail me
to point out which songs existed in stereo and mono versions and which were mono converted
to "Duophonic." Let’s pretend that everyone who wants to know the Beatles
minutiae at this level just does, okay?)
I didn’t know any of this when the records included in
The Capitol Albums, Vol. 1 came out (all in 1964, by the way, which means that many
of my Christmas memories came from releases that followed Meet The Beatles, The
Beatles’ Second Album, Something New, and Beatles ’65, all
included here). I probably wouldn’t have cared. I never heard any of the Parlophone
releases until the late 1970s, so for me at least, the Capitol mixes were simply how the
Beatles were supposed to sound.
That’s a point American fans have been debating ever
since EMI released the Beatles’ catalog on CD in 1987. The CDs followed the original
UK albums and track sequences, meaning that we got With the Beatles instead of Meet
the Beatles. We also got "two-track" mono as opposed to a true mono mix,
which sounded just as strange to those of who’d begun to accept the Parlophone LPs as
gospel as it did to American fans who’d grown up on the Capitol sound.
Beatles completists have complained from the get-go about
the way EMI has served the Fab Four’s catalog. The Beatles Anthology series
has been richly derided as "outfaces," because of how it mixed guitar tracks,
vocals, and rhythm tracks from various alternate takes to create versions different from
the ones in the canon, but not really versions the band created, either. A bootleg
industry has sprung up based on the studio masters of all the component tracks that went
into creating the original LPs -- fascinating, but too obsessive and too expensive
for this fan.
However, while some American fans have felt dissatisfied
that the Capitol LPs of their youth never appeared on CD, most of us were more concerned
about the missed opportunities represented by the 1987 mastering and sound. In the 15
years since then, we’ve learned a lot about CD sound, sonic reconstruction, and
musical scholarship -- how come we were still listening to the same CDs we had never
thought worthy of the music they contained?
So when EMI announced that it was releasing The Capitol
Albums, Vol. 1, some of us thought it was an insane idea. Those records sounded like
crap compared to the Parlophones -- didn’t they?
That’s certainly the way I remember it, but TCA
V1 makes a much stronger case for the American albums than I ever would have imagined.
However, I don’t think that anyone who has grown used to the leaner sound of the
Parlophone originals will consider switching their allegiance to these. Some of the stereo
tracks seem pumped up by the extra reverb, but almost all of the Duophonic tracks seem too
swimmy to me.
However, when TCA V1 gets it right -- as it does on
most of The Beatles’ Second Album -- the sound is what I remember hearing when
the college boys across the street would crank up their big ol’ K-horn/Eico system on
Saturday night. Oh yeah -- or should I say Yeah, yeah, yeah?
I’m not convinced that American Beatles fans will feel
they’re getting the original albums in terms of sequencing -- TCA V1 gives us
the mono and stereo versions of many songs. This destroys the flow of the
"authentic" fake originals, which had relatively short sides -- especially when
compared to CDs containing more than 20 songs each.
The packaging is subpar, with "mini-album"
sleeves and a folder that won’t stay closed. Where are we supposed to store it? It
doesn’t fit on CD shelves, and because nothing’s printed on the spine -- it
doesn’t have a spine -- I’d never find it on my bookshelves, either. I
guess we’re supposed to leave it on the coffee table -- where it will flop open.
At the end of the day, I’m enough of a Beatles fan
that I’m glad I bought The Capitol Albums, Vol. 1, although, once again, I
wish it had been done more with us fans in mind. I’m a bit of a Beatles completist
and cannot be considered normal, however.
Should you consider picking it up? Well, yes, if
you’re a hard-core fan, too -- or if you disliked the 1987 CDs because they
weren’t the ones you grew up with and loved. On the other hand, if you’ve been
holding out for a high-quality remastering of the Beatles’ canonical works,
you’ll have to wait some more. I hope it won’t be long, but who can say?
In the meantime, it’s almost Christmas and I already
have my new Beatles album. Now I need a stocking, some nuts, a few candy canes, and a
tangerine -- if only for the way it smells as I rock out to "She Loves You."
...Wes Phillips
wes@onhifi.com
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