The Usenet Guide to Beatles Recording Variations Part 1-Introduction version 1.1, May 2 1994 compiled by Joseph Brennan copyright 1994 by Joseph Brennan--no unauthorized use permitted ----- INTRO: WHAT'S A VARIATION, AND WHY DO WE CARE? Fans often play their favorite recordings over and over, and find they have memorized many small nuances of the performance on record. Sometimes, when they listen to a song on a new record, they detect a variation in what is otherwise a very familiar recording. There may be a voice or instrument in one version that is not in the other, for example. This is a variation. Just when people started noticing Beatles variations is lost in the mists of time, but by the end of the Beatles' recording career as a group in 1970, lists of variations had become a perennial topic among some fans. One's credentials as a Beatles fan need not rest on whether one can recognize most of the variations. Plenty of genuine fans feel this is one of the most obsessive and boring topics imaginable, and would much rather discuss the meaning of the lyrics, the invention of the melody, or the background of the song in the Beatles' lives and times. But who cares about all that, eh? No no, that's not what I mean... The variations let us in on a little bit about how the recordings were made and prepared for release. The differences tell us something about how the sound appears on the master tapes, and about what the engineers did to make records out of them. At least, they tell us something if we care to ask -how- the variations happened. Hasn't it "been done"? Well you may ask. Lists have certainly appeared before. One reason to compile your own list is simply to collate all the previous work on this topic. When it was suggested I compile something about variations, I was dissatisfied at simply rehashing old lists. Aside from the copyright violations-- not that it's stopped writers of some of the books I've seen while researching this-- it did seem a little boring as well. Nearly all of them are just lists. There are two reasons I've done this. -- I found by listening that many of the variations were not well described, and at times I can't even hear an alleged difference, or find it to be not at all as described. I've mentioned a few cases in the list, but usually have passed over these silently. -- The only list that relates variations to what we know about the recording sessions is a series of articles by Steve Shorten in "The 910", which has been limited by space to highlights. As Steve noted in his first article, the publication of Mark Lewisohn's book "The Beatles Recording Sessions" in 1988 provided an important framework on which to base an improved listing of variations. For the first time, we had specific information about dates of recording (some of which had been known) and of mixing (none of which had been known, I think). This made it possible to look for variations based on how many times a song was mixed at EMI Abbey Road, instead of the hopeless method of listening to every record released in the world. Not only is "The Beatles Recording Sessions" a goldmine of information, but Lewisohn lacked the space or inclination to apply his data to the problem of variations. He even lists some mixes as unused based on nonappearance in England. Tom Bowers and I did some work on finding those in 1991, reported right here in rec.music.beatles. It became clear that most of the mixes done were used somewhere, and they accounted for some of the variations that had been spotted previously. Mark's excellent work also provides enough information to figure out -how- the variants arose. Some of them, especially the earlier ones recorded in 2-track, are editing differences, while others are differences in how the multi-track master tapes were mixed down for record. Let me emphasize that, with just a very few exceptions, the mono version of a Beatles song is not the stereo version combined into one channel. On the contrary, George Martin mixed for mono first in almost all cases and then did a stereo mix separately. Right here we have a reason for variations, since the same edits and mixing had to be done twice. In some cases there are two or more mono or stereo mixes, providing yet more chances for variations. The mixes were supposed to sound the same, usually. However, his practice of making separate mono and stereo mixes shows that George Martin did care about how the record would sound in both 1 and 2 track reproduction and may have deliberately mixed some songs differently. Other times, small things are fixed in the second mix, or fixes are forgotten, and difficult editing may be done a little better one time or the other. George Martin and staff weren't perfect. The evident difficulty they had mixing songs the way they wanted makes the recording process seem a little less mechanical to me. Obviously the mono and stereo mixes of any song are different. One is mono and one is stereo! Besides that, careful comparison of the mono mix to the stereo mix played as mono would doubtless turn up some differences in emphasis. But what we're really after here in a variations list is larger game: different edits, sound mixed out in one version, different stereo images, and so on-- things that are really noticeable. Well, maybe I stretch the limits on "really noticeable" at times. Forget the ones that -you- don't care about. Aside from the dubious contribution of Capitol Records USA, I'm not, mostly, listing atrocities performed outside EMI Abbey Road. They're not genuine, just stupid mistakes mastering records-- speed problems, premature fadeouts, defects in tapes, even editing-- and the ever-popular mock stereo. Nobody around the Beatles authorized them. Even Capitol is included just out of parochial interest to me and to the large contingent of fans in the USA. I could argue that some other affiliates such as Odeon (Germany) got masters from Capitol. Capitol certainly doesn't end the tampering stories-- there's that "Penny Lane" from Brazil with a line edited out for no known reason, a "Devil in her Heart" from Mexico with the very end faded off... but I digress. If you live outside the USA, I invite you to catalog your own country's label's lack of judgement. ----- CREDITS Almost all the variations shown here have been listened to and certified real by me or Frank Daniels, and some more by Tom Bowers (ex-rec.music.beatles). Bruce Dumes contributed important information from his record collection, and so did Frank Daniels's friend Don Leighty from their earlier work on this subject. --If you'd think listening to the records would go without saying, it's not always evident on the part of some writers who've slavishly copied things from previous publications! The following rmb folks also contributed useful information: Mark W of Logica, Dan Kozak, Scott Galuska, Bob Clements, Ed Michalak, Michael Persick, Jamesa Willer, Dave Haber, Michael Shoshani... thanks! Your cooperation has made this work far better than I could have done alone. I felt more an editor than writer sometimes. That's why it's called the Usenet Guide. A list of "anomalies" by Michael Weiss and M J Brown, posted on rmb, was also consulted for possible variations (but not all of their anomalies are variations, so it's a different list). Special thanks to saki for suggesting I do this. If -you- know of a variation that isn't here, or have a correction, please let me know. The following printed sources proved more useful than most. The writers have all proved to be human: that is, they have made mistakes. I disagree with some of the variations they report, after using the books as listening guides. Note that some of the variations in our present list are in none of these items. I'd like to thank especially the Rodgers and Hammerstein Archives of Recorded Sound, part of the New York Public Library's Music Division, for collecting some of these and other items that I consulted. :: Every Little Thing, by William McCoy and Mitchell McGeary, Popular Culture Ink, 1990. A controversial book, "Every Little Thing" is two sincere fans' overblown guide to variations and oddities, marred by a slightly odd arrangement and silly errors. Read with caution. Despite the publication date, it's a pre-Lewisohn work from 1986 that the publisher should never have let out without revisions. Yes, I've checked everything they list. They assume too much that there is just one mono and one stereo mix, and the explanations, while a valiant effort, too often contradict what Mark Lewisohn documented in print 2 years earlier. In a few cases they even list original records I've become convinced they did not have. Despite it all, no one interested in the topic can ignore this book. Check your library. :: Listening to the Beatles, vol. 1, by David Schwartz, Popular Culture Ink, 1990. "Listening to the Beatles" is a curious work, ranking the sound quality of the vinyl singles that were in print in the late 1980's, mainly for the US, UK, Japan and Australia. The reports are detailed enough to identify variant mixes, a subject that the author hasn't a clue about. He has nothing to say about CD singles either. :: The Beatles / The Ultimate Recording Guide, by Allen Wiener, Facts on File, 1992. Widely marketed by its publisher, the "Ultimate Recording Guide" is a distinctly secondary source compiled mainly out of other books, and padded by repeating the chronology five times with variations. Pages 190-203 trot out some variations for the Beatles and the later recordings by the four, but with scant attention to why they should vary. It's pre-Lewisohn in flavor. :: The Beatles Album File and Complete Discography (US title: The Beatles on Record), by J P Russell, Scribner's, 1982. Pages 188-196 list some of the better known oddities. The book is a nice summary of UK and US releases to 1982, reflecting the state of knowledge of that time about the recordings. His comments on who plays what go well beyond what anyone knew, but reflect what was believed then by some people. :: The Beatles Forever, by Nicholas Schaffner, McGraw-Hill, 1977. Schaffner's good, selected international discography on pages 206-213 lists most of the foreign compilation albums needed to get all the rare mixes, although he does not actually list variations. :: Die Beatles: ihre Karriere, ihre Musik, ihre Erfolge, by Rainer Moers, Wolfgang Neumann, and Hans Rombeck, Gustav Luebbe Verlag, Bergisch-Gladbach, Germany, 1988. "Die Beatles" is a 500-page paperback containing mainly a chronology of recordings, with extensive German discography information. It is a pre-Lewisohn source with all the errors that implies, and their sources of dates and original pressings in Germany can be shown wrong in places. It is still well worth attention if you can read a bit of German. I corrected some information using Der Grosse Deutsche Schallplatten Katalog for 1964 to 1966 (mid-1963 to mid-1965). :: "The Tony Sheridan sessions" by Doug Sulpy in "Illegal Beatles" no. 14, 1988. This update contains a few interesting facts and opinions not seen elsewhere. :: "Fixing some holes" by Tom Bowers in "The 910", vol 1 no 1, 1991. Some of the "unused" mixes as Lewisohn calls them are identified, based on work done in rmb. (This is a rare case of a print article based on Usenet posts!) Even though I did some work toward this article myself, I no longer agree with some of it-- actually Tom may feel the same way. :: "We can work it out" by Steve Shorten in "The 910", vol 1 no 2 and no 4, 1991, and vol 2 no 4, 1993. This is the only attempt I've seen to not only list variations but explain them based on Lewisohn's reports. It includes a few not reported elsewhere, and the descriptions are well stated. Mr Shorten may take a bow. See also 3 pages of followup letters in v 1 no 3. And of course: :: The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions (US title: The Beatles Recording Sessions), by Mark Lewisohn, Hamlyn/Octopus (US: Harmony), 1988. Called "The Book" on r.m.b, this is the essential work. Every fan needs a copy. I cannot praise Mark's research and reporting skills enough. Even where his interpretations might be wrong, his facts can be relied upon. This is as close as we get to a primary source, based on his listening to the tapes and examining studio documentation. I've stolen a lot from this book, and yet it's just a fraction of what's in it. :: The Complete Beatles Chronicle, by Mark Lewisohn, Pyramid/Octopus (US: Harmony), 1992. The "Chronicles" is a condensation of three earlier books by the author, including Recording Sessions, plus new topics and updates and corrections. A very worthwhile companion to the "Recording Sessions" book despite the overlap (whole paragraphs are repeated). ----- SPECIAL COMMENTS ON US RECORD RELEASES For the record, the four Tony Sheridan songs on MGM "The Beatles with Tony Sheridan and their guests" were reissued in 1966 on Metro "This where it all started", and the four on Atco "Ain't she sweet" in 1966 were reissued on Clarion "The Amazing Beatles and other great English group sounds", and two from each set also appeared on the probably unauthorized Savage 1964 LP stutteringly titled "This is the... the savage young Beatles". I think there's another collection I've forgotten, and the situation in England and even Germany is only slightly better. I'm just not going to repeat all those under each of the eight songs! Vee Jay issued several LPs recycling 16 songs in different combinations. Of these I include only "Introducing the Beatles" in its 2 variants, and the 2 additional songs on "The Beatles and Frank Ifield Live on Stage". Stereo versions are so rare I nearly omitted them as unlikely reference sources for a variations collector, but they are here for their historical significance. Frank Daniels has confirmed what is on them. "Meet the Beatles", "The Beatles Second Album", and "The Early Beatles" all have quite a bit of echo added, and the twin-track stereo mixes have been remixed in an effort to make them less separated, especially the "Second Album". Mixing mixes doesn't pay though. I list all of these as remixes because of the deliberate differences. The white album and "Abbey Road" were filtered by Capitol to remove most of the bass sound and some of the treble, for the mundane purpose of making it easier to cut LP masters of their long 25-minute sides. Since bass requires a relatively wide pitch (distance between grooves), cutting these LP sides correctly required the cutting engineer to vary the pitch, making it narrow during quiet parts, to get the whole thing on the side at normal volume (and actually they also dropped the volume a bit). It might take a few tries to get right. Capitol may be the only affiliate that found this too difficult to bother about. I have NOT marked these as deliberate mix differences. They are extreme examples of what might be called pressing differences, a further category I think I want to keep away from. "The Beatles Book" reported George Harrison remixing the white album for Capitol in Hollywood after hearing how bad it sounded. This is nonsense, whether on grounds of George H's ability to do so, the unlikelihood of EMI sending all the masters away for this, or the horrible quality of the final product. It still sounds awful, so what did he do? The second reel-to-reel tape release of Capitol's white album, blue-edge box, two tapes, has several songs edited bizarrely as described in the "Every Little Thing" book, which however fails to mention that the edits appear only in the second issue (thanks, Frank Daniels, for this info). The reasons for this work were never revealed. Some of the albums on Capitol 8-track have extra songs from other albums, e.g. "Yellow Submarine" has Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds. The Capitol cassettes to this day have the songs in a different order than the albums, as usual for unknown reasons. Capitol's 2-LP set "Rock and Roll Music" supposedly has all songs remixed by George Martin from the original tapes, as stated in "Every Little Thing" for example. Reading near-contemporary interviews with George Martin convinces me he did the work in 2 days at Capitol's Hollywood studios, so he must have just fiddled with the mixed tapes Capitol had, not the originals, and the only ones that got noticeable work were some of the twintrack recordings, which do sound better. All of them got their stereo reversed by a simple and stupid error of crossing cables. Note: The first UK release uses the old unimproved mixes, so I list these remixes only as the Capitol release. The UK reissue on MFP as two separate albums uses the remixes. Capitol singles starting in the mid-1970's began differing from the original. Songs may appear in stereo, or in mono made from the stereo mixes. The labels are unreliable as to whether the record is mono or stereo, and some are even mono on one side and stereo on the other. These are nearly useless for anyone collecting mixes. It's a gamble what version you'll get. I hear the same may also be true for issues in other countries. ----- THE FILMS AND VIDEOS A nearly unexplored area, the mixes used in the Beatles' films and videos differ from the albums in some cases. I don't have the material to do a variations analysis of them but do report some things I could verify or have read. The original film prints of "A Hard Day's Night", "Help!", "Magical Mystery Tour" (a TV film), "Yellow Submarine" and "Let It Be" were all mono. The home videos, except for very early releases I hear about and can't get information on, are in stereo. "A Hard Day's Night" has been released on video with the original mono soundtrack and then with a stereo soundtrack that appears to use the same mixes as the records. Tom Bowers reports that there is another stereo video version with new mixes that mimic the mono mixes-- for example, And I Love Her has a single-track vocal-- but no one else has verified this and I wonder whether it is just the mono soundtrack labelled stereo. Do -you- have it? Another variation of sorts on "A Hard Day's Night" is that the songs are all slow and sound about a half-step lower in pitch than on record. Rumor has it the the film was shot at 25 frames per second, but was shown in the US and transferred to video as 24. Will this ever be fixed? "Help!" on stereo video sounds like the records. Steve Shorten in "The 910" says it has new mixes although he offers no differences. New stereo mixes were definitely made for "Magical Mystery Tour" home video in 1988 and it says so in a credit screen on the tape. Comments appear here under each song. The new mixes have not appeared on disk or cassette. "Yellow Submarine" on video, like "Help!", has been reported as new mixes but sounds like the LP mixes. It is currently withdrawn from the market and when it reappears the soundtrack should be checked. "Let It Be" uses relatively little musical material in common with the album and has never appeared with a stereo mix. There was once a home video release with the original soundtrack. It will probably reappear eventually and probably in stereo for those songs recorded on 8-track equipment (the sound recorded at Twickenham studios in the first weeks exists only on the mono film soundtrack tapes). ----- ORIENTATION Each listing contains the following information: | TITLE | basic recording- Recording date of the basic track. | additional recording- Date of additional recording. | master tape- Tape tracks and generations on the master. | | [a] mono|stereo|mock date|from | UK: releases | US: releases | CD: releases | [b] . . . | | Notes on variations Information about the recording and mixing dates and the tape tracks is almost all from Mark Lewisohn's two books. See those books for far more detail than this. All recording and mixing was done at EMI Abbey Road studios unless otherwise noted. The reason I note the tracks and generations is to give an idea how much is already mixed on the master. This limits what can appear on variant final mixes. Very often, input from more than one microphone, such as multiple instruments or voices, was mixed into one tape track during recording. Sound-on-sound overdubbing (mixing live sound with earlier recording into a new tape), used particularly in the twin-track days, is another form of mixing during recording. Bouncing down is another: with 4 or 8 track tape, they sometimes mixed down to 2 tracks (or 1 or 3) and fed it onto another tape, and then added to that, to create the master from which the final mix is done. See Mark Lewisohn's "Recording Sessions" book for varyingly detailed descriptions. Mixes are identified by arbitrary letters [a], [b], and so on, in the order they were created. Numbers [a1], [a2] and so on refer to variants of mixes, such as mono created from a stereo mix, or mock stereo created from a mono mix. Therefore for example [a] and [b] are distinct mixes made from the original master tape, while [a1] is just a variant of [a]. A mix referred to as "mock" is mono electronically rechannelled to simulate stereo (as it was often called) or duophonic (as Capitol liked to call it), a process of distorting mono sound by feeding different frequencies to right and left channel and possibly delaying some of the sound as well. This processing was popular when it was believed that a people wanted any kind of stereo on a record labelled stereo. I list the original UK and US singles and LPs, and the two UK EP releases with new material. In some cases a mix first appeared after 1970, or in another country, so then I list selected post-1970 and foreign releases, just to show where a US or UK collector might easily find the mix. Records are shown by country, label, number, short title, and year. I list the CD issue without label or number since the CD issues are the same worldwide. Again, only the original CD set (1987-1988) is shown, unless something comes up only on later releases. All the songs on the red and blue albums ("The Beatles 1962-1966" and "The Beatles 1967-1970") sound a little better than they do on the original album CDs. ---- End Part I