Category Archives: Beatles Collecting

Ringo Starr – Postcards From Paradise

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Our CD copy of Ringo’s Postcards From Paradise has finally arrived. Apparently Australia Post has recently installed new automated machines which sort packages – and they are not going well…..

It has cost A$500 million to install the new system, but since then over 20% of parcels are being delivered to the wrong address! I’m blaming this on the length of time it took this little CD to get from Canada to my front door…..Ringo Postcards 1Ringo Postcards 2Ringo Postcards 3

It’s actually a pretty good listen with some really catchy hooks, clever lyrics and musical ideas. Here’s Ringo himself with a YouTube update:

Here’s the link to that cover story in Rolling Stone magazine that he mentions. And here Ringo is interviewed about the recording of the album:

And finally an album review from the April edition of Rolling Stone which gives Postcards three stars:

It’s been more than 50 years since Ringo Starr declared himself a fan of Beethoven — “especially his poems.” But all that time, he’s reigned as one of rock & roll’s most beloved sages. Postcards From Paradise, his 18th solo effort, is a masterful summary of Ringo-ness: his cheer, his cheek, his wisdom. He gets a little help from old friends like Joe Walsh and Todd Rundgren — no Kanye or Rihanna on this track list — and builds the title tune out of Beat-les quips: “It’s like I said the night before/I’ll love you when I’m 64.” Best of all is “Rory and the Hurricanes,” celebrating his pre-Beatles band — the one that made Ringo a star in Liverpool when the other three Fabs were nobodies.  ♦♦♦

And you can read an interview with Postcards From Paradise recording engineer Bruce Sugar at Beatles Examiner.

Warman’s “Beatles Field Guide” Book

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We found a cute little Beatle book the other day. It’s called Warman’s Beatles Field Guide. Published in 2005 it is a small (but thick at 512 pages), pocket-sized book listing prices and descriptions for a wide range of Beatle collectables.  Beatle Guide 1

Inside you’ll find articles on “Why the Beatles Still Matter” and “Ranking the Beatles” as well as commentary and information on their post-break-up and solo careers.

But the biggest and most interesting chapters are the sections on “Memorabilia” – which is a comprehensively illustrated price guide (in 2005 US$ of course!):Beatle Guide 3

The “Singles” (again lavishly illustrated and with indicative prices):Beatle Guide 5

And then a lengthy section detailing each of the “Albums”: Beatle Guide 4

These sections are all based around the US releases only – but it’s a great ‘ready-reference’ style book with a huge number of photos, background information and examples for each of the entries. A really worthwhile little book to have.Beatle Guide 2

Four Recent Ebay Purchases

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We got an email from PayPal the other day saying we’d earned a $10.00 credit that could be used on any Ebay purchase, and so we delved into the collection to uncover some items that were missing.

Turns out we’re drastically under-represented when it comes to early Ringo Starr Apple singles. For some reason or other these were a blind spot in the collection and so these three items have now been added:

Ringo Beaucoups of BluesRingo It Don't Come EasyRingo Back Off Boogaloo

These 7″ 45 rpm singles are all Australian Apple Records releases.

“Beaucoups of Blues” is taken from the 1970 album of the same name.

“It Don’t Come Easy” is a 1971 non-album single produced by George Harrison, and “Back Off Boogalooo” (also produced by Harrison) came out in March, 1972.

The same seller also had a Wings single we didn’t have and hadn’t previously been aware of:Wings Arrow Through Me 2

“Arrow Through Me” is b/w “Old Siam, Sir”, and both songs come from the 1979 album Back to the Egg.

The Rutles – LP

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As their website says:

The Rutles are a legend. A living legend. A legend that will live long after other living legends have died. This is the semi-legendary story of the Prefab Four who made the sixties what they are today!

For such a huge cultural phenomenon the Beatles have attracted surprisingly few parodies and send-ups over the years. That is until The Rutles came along…..

We’ve just scored a nice vinyl copy of their 1978 LP The Rutles:IMG_9939IMG_9940IMG_9946

Created by Eric Idle and Neil Innes for British television, The Rutles first appeared in 1975 as a sketch on the BBC TV comedy series called Rutland Weekend Television. The sketch presented a mini-documentary about the 1960s band “The Rutles”, and featured Innes singing “I Must Be In Love”, a pastiche of a 1964 Lennon-McCartney tune.

The Rutles gained more fame after their 1978 mockumentary television film, All You Need Is Cash (in which George Harrison actually appears). The Rutles LP is the soundtrack album from that film and it contains 14 of the film’s 20 songs.

The Rutles comes with a gatefold cover and pasted inside is a lavish 16-page, full colour book containing text and images detailing the history and (imaginary) releases of the band. Here’s a selection:IMG_9941IMG_9943IMG_9944IMG_9945

And there’s an inner sleeve containing more band parodies, too:

IMG_9947

What we have here is the US pressing. Released on the Warner Brothers label in 1978.

If you’d like a taste of what The Rutles are about:

Two Beatle-related Second-hand Finds

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A couple of weeks back we got the chance to re-visit the harbour city of Newcastle in New South Wales. We’ve previously scored some Beatle goodness there (click here, and here) and this time was no different.

The first item came from Rices Bookshop on Hunter Street:DSC03469DSC03470

The Long and Winding Road – An Intimate Guide to the Beatles is a soft cover book (124 pages) by Ted Greenwald*. Published in 1995 in the USA, it details the history of the band from different perspectives. There are biographies, discographies, details of major stage appearances, films, significant books, as well as details about Beatle family and friends. As you can see, the layout inside is rudimentary, but there is a lot of information here:DSC03471

The book is mostly chronological and there are lots of Beatle photographs, record cover images, and examples of memorabilia inside: DSC03472 DSC03473 DSC03474

Just up the road from Rices is the Indigo Bookshop. They usually only sell second-hand books, but this visit they also had some boxes of used LP’s on display which we’d not seen before. In one box we found this little Beatle-related rarity:DSC03475DSC03476

As you can see this example has some water damage to the cover (which looks worse in the photo than in reality), but the vinyl itself is in mint condition. Denny Laine of course was a long-time McCartney collaborator and member of Wings. It’s no surprise then that Paul and Linda McCartney feature on a number of tracks of this 1984 solo album by Laine. Also represented are fellow ex-Wings members Steve Holly, Denny Seiwell, Lawrence Juber and Henry McCullough.

The song ‘Send Me the Heart’ was co-written by Laine and McCartney in 1974 and has Paul on bass. It was recorded during the same Nashville Wings sessions for ‘Junior’s Farm’.

‘I Would Only Smile’ was made at the same time as the sessions for the McCartney/Wings release Red Rose Speedway (1972). Similarly ‘Weep for Love’ was an out-take from the recording sessions for the Wings 1979 LP Back to the Egg. It features backing vocals by Paul and Linda. DSC03478DSC03477

So, once again the second-hand stores of Newcastle come up trumps!

* Ted Greenwald is also the author of The Beatles Companion – The Fab Four in Film, Performance, Recording and Print, published in 1992:Beatles Companion 2

The Beatles in the News

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Stumbled across a blog site that takes an interesting approach to Beatle history.

The Beatles in the News is just that – a site where multiple, random articles from across the decades and from all over the world are aggregated and re-published daily.

There are newspaper and magazine articles, concert reviews, TV news, and advertisements. It’s not only about the Beatles as a group but also as solo artists. Around 500 items from the past are uploaded every month.

One of the posts from January 23 this year caught our attention. It features – in full – a special colour supplement produced by the iconic Australian Women’s Weekly magazine in March, 1964 at the very height of Beatlemania:australia womans march 18 1964 bOf course, being a “women’s magazine” from the day meant you had to have a section dedicated to what to cook for that special Beatles party:australia womans march 18 1964 f

Just love those mop-top muffins with the chocolate hairdo’s! And also how to dress in Beatle fashion:

australia womans march 18 1964 g

Fantastic stuff.

With this site you never know from day-to-day just what gems might pop up.

For anyone interested in the Beatles The Beatles in the News is well worth visiting regularly. You never know what you might find.

Eight Arms to Hold You – A Book Celebrating the Beatles “Help”

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Crowdsourcing (or kick-starting) has been defined as “…the process of obtaining needed services, ideas, or content by soliciting contributions from a large group of people, and especially from an online community, rather than from traditional employees or suppliers…” and it’s become all the rage as a way to get new projects of all sorts off the ground.

For example a friend just crowdsourced A$10,000 in funds from fans and well-wishers to help pay for studio time to record her new album. Heck, Neil Young even used it to back the multi-million dollar development of Pono, a new high-definition digital playback system.

Now comes an idea for a crowdsourced Beatle book called Eight Arms to Hold You – The Forgotten Archives:8Arms3It’s called Eight Arms to Hold You because that was the working title of the 1965 Beatle film now better known as Help!.

2015 marks the 50th anniversary of the movie’s release.

Cue the specialist archival restoration publishing company, Archivum which has launched an ambitious plan to produce a limited edition, high-quality book detailing the making of that historic film – using as its centrepiece a huge cache of rare and previously unseen photographs taken during the making of the film. But to pull it off they need the help of Beatles fans around the world to pre-order the book in a variety of forms. Collectors and keen Beatle fans can help contribute to the creation of a unique, limited fan edition, with every pledger who pre-orders the first edition being immortalised with their name in the credits.

Through direct-to-fan site, Pledge Music there’s also the opportunity to directly play a part in the content, with the best stories, memorabilia and fans photographs being included. In addition, pledgers also gain the chance to attend book launches at the legendary Cavern Club and other famous Beatles venues. Alongside the collector memorabilia contributions will be great, previously unseen photos like these lavishly sprinkled throughout:8Arms18Arms2

The book will have over 250 photographic pages, featuring fully restored colour and black and white photographs. Find out the full details at pledge music.com

I Want to Hold Your Hand – Beatles Rare Japanese Promo CD

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When we posted on last year the Beatles 5 CD Japan Box we were intrigued by a thin paper postcard included with he set. We can’t read Japanese, but it looked like you could fill out your details, attach a postage stamp and send off to receive an additional, limited edition CD single of ‘I Want to Hold Your Hand’ in a replica sleeve of the first Beatles Japanese vinyl 45 from 1964. The postcard looked like this:japan-box-insert

Turns out we were correct. Only a few lucky Japanese Beatle fans were eligible to get what undoubtably will become a rare collectors item to add to their Japan Box box sets as the special offer/application postcard was valid only to purchasers of the box set who lived in Japan. The offer expired on July 9, 2014 – and even then it was like a ballot. Only some of those who applied got a copy.

We’ve been checking around the web to see if any had since come up for sale.

The big music collectables online site eil.com now has this listing for the rare CD single – but no copies are currently available:  “The Beatles ‘I Want To Hold Your Hand’. Super rare 2014 Japanese only 1-track promotional only mono CD, only available to competition winners by sending a postcard from the Japanese Album box set, and was a lottery as to who receives a copy. The disc is printed with the similar design that featured on the 1964 legendary 7″ with the Odeon Records label, housed in a custom card wallet picture sleeve replicating the artwork from the single with ‘Sampler / Not For Sale / Promotional Use Only’ text on the front, whilst the back promotes the actual Japan Box release, comes with a two page Japanese press release. Another stunning promo from Japan that is sure to become very sought after and highly collectable SIC-9045).”

One copy was recently on Ebay – with an asking price of US$538.00. It was accompanied by these photographs which gave some more detail about the CD single:$_12d$_12c$_12a$_12b$_12$_12e

So – this is indeed destined to become one very rare collectable. If anyone has one and wants to tell us how they got hold of it please get in touch!

Different Photo Montage for Wings at the Speed of Sound

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In our last post we featured the two Best Buy editions of the recent Venus and Mars and Wings at the Speed of Sound Paul McCartney Archive Collection reissues.

Darienzo has pointed out that the photo montages of the band on the back of the 2014 reissued Speed Of Sound are not the same as those used for the original sleeve in 1976.

Here’s the original rear cover for the Wings at the Speed of Sound LP:1976

And here’s the 2014 Speed of Sound Archive Edition LP:

2014

Not really sure why they felt the need to re-do all those photos…..

By the way, Mojo magazine last year had a very interesting article about the photo shoot for that rear cover, including these original images (by photographer Clive Arrowsmith) which were used to create the striking over-layed look of the five band members: Wings-3Wings-2Wings-4Wings-1Wings-5

P.S. It was Clive Arrowsmith who took the famous Band on the Run front cover image:band-on-the-run1

Best Buy Wings/McCartney Archive Series

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It’s taken a while to feature these latest Paul McCartney and Wings items because of the convoluted process involved in securing copies for the collection.

These are the Best Buy limited editions of the latest Paul McCartney Archive series of CDs. The CD’s themselves are the standard US triple gatefold two-disc sets consisting of the remastered album on one CD, plus a Bonus Audio CD of rare tracks. Here’s Venus and Mars:Venus BB coverVenus BB rearVenus BB disc1Venus BB disc2

And here’s Wings at the Speed of Sound:ATSOS BB coverATSOS BB rearATSOS BB disc1ATSOS BB disc2

But as you can see by the stickers on the front of each – these were sold with a voucher inside to receive a bonus, limited edition 7″ 45 single – one from each album. The difficult (and time consuming part) for collectors living outside the USA was that these singles (reportedly limited to 5,000 copies each) were only available to customers of the Best Buy chain who were US residents. The process is that you mail back the voucher with a small postage and handling fee included, and Best Buy then mails you a picture cover replica of an original vinyl single from either album. Residents outside the States had to find an accomodating Ebay seller who would do this – and then post the whole lot to you…..hence the delay in being able to show these items on this blog…..ours have finally arrived.

For Venus and Mars the vinyl single is ‘Letting Go’/’You Gave Me the Answer’ (not ‘Venus and Mars/’Rock Show’ as original advertised by Best Buy back in October last year):Letting Go coverLetting Go rearLetting Go labelAnd from Wings at the Speed of Sound its ‘Let ‘Em In’/’Beware My Love’: Let Em In SingleLet Em In rearLet Em In label

Both these vinyl singles have front covers which are replicas of the originals, but the rear covers are dedicated to promoting the 2014 reissues of the Archive Collection CDs. And as you can see in the photos (if you look closely) there’s a sticker on the rear of each saying “Made in Germany”. It appears that subsequent to the Best Buy deal these singles were also made available in limited numbers to some independent record stores in Europe and the UK.

As with previous releases in this series, inside both CDs is a small paper insert advertising what could be the next two releases in the Archive Series Tug of War and Pipes of Peace:Venus BB insert

The other thing to note is that both the Venus and Mars and the Wings at the Speed of Sound Best Buy CDs have stickers pasted over the originals with different barcode/UPC numbers to the usual releases. These are 88072 36382 3 and 88072 36383 0 respectively. The non-Best Buy discs are 88072 35650 4 and 888072 35671 9.

For a video of how Venus and Mars and Wings At the Speed of Sound are packaged, the booklets, etc. have look at these YouTube clips prepared by Jose Miguel Grey: