In an earlier post I included an audio extract from a US National Public Radio podcast featuring Beatles historian and writer Kevin Howlett. He was talking about some of the fascinating differences between the Stereo and Mono versions of the Beatles Remastered CDs.
Then the other day I stumbled across this website where a guy called Jake Brown has gone to a lot of trouble to detail a lot more. He’s spent time cutting together actual audio examples and palcing them side-by-side so we can all quickly hear what differences are. He’s also detailed in text form some other variations. Have a read and a listen. Thanks Jake!
Beatles Blog 
You’re welcome for pointing you toward that video, but I cannot take credit for making it. YouTube user brodieman1999 did that, not me. All I did was embed the video onto my site and transcribe some of the highlights that brodieman1999 compiled.
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Thanks Jake for the further info and attribution. It really is a worthwhile YouTube post by brodieman1999, so go have a look, and thanks for putting it up an making it available.
Beatlesblogger
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It hasn’t been updated for the remasters, but this site:
http://www.columbia.edu/~brennan/beatles/
has always been very helpful in distinguishing not only mono vs stereo differences, but also differing takes and mixes that have shown up on different releases. Also, specifically relating to the mono vs stereo “Help!”, there’s this:
http://blog.beatletracksband.com/2009/03/03/recording-the-beatles–the-mystery-of-the-mono-help.aspx
Although it doesn’t mention it there, the desire to remove the tambourine on the mono track may have had something to do with the song being used in a “performance” sequence at the start of the film, in which there is clearly no-one (fifth Beatle or otherwise) playing tambourine.
[ I haven’t had a chance to listen to the Kevin Howlett audio yet, so I hope I’m not covering old ground ]
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Thanks for these links Michael. Some very interesting reading here.
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