As if we didn’t have enough Beatle or Beatle-related product between now and Christmas….
Now comes news that four coloured vinyl LPs from the Ringo Starr camp are due October 24.
They are his first four solo releases, beginning with his solo debut Sentimental Journey, produced by George Martin and originally released in 1970, now on custom “buttermilk yellow” vinyl:
Also from 1970 comes Beaucoups of Blues, back in print on custom “baby blue” vinyl and in a gatefold jacket. Recorded in Nashville and produced by the legendary slide player Pete Drake:
The great Ringo album is pressed on “molten lava” custom vinyl and comes with the original 24-page booklet included in a gatefold jacket. Looks good actually:
And last but not least, Ringo’s fourth studio album Goodnight Vienna. Like the Ringo album this is one of his best, once again collaborating with the greats: John Lennon, Elton John, Dr. John, Billy Preston, Robbie Robertson, Jesse Ed Davis, Nicky Hopkins, Jim Keltner, Klaus Voormann and Harry Nilsson. Produced by Richard Perry, the LP features the Lennon penned title track plus other standouts like ‘No-No Song’, ‘Only You (And You Alone)’ and ‘Occapella’. This one is pressed on “psychedelic waves” custom vinyl:
At the moment these appear to be only available vie Ringo’sofficial store and through official Universal Music stores (for example here’s the US Udiscover Music store). Not sure if they’ll get a wider release.
Magic Christian Music is the second album released by Welsh rock band, Badfinger. They recorded 5 albums for Apple Records, and were the first non-Beatle recording artists signed to the label.
This release will be the first time the 2010 remasters of Magic Christian Music are available on vinyl, and the first time the album has been re-pressed since 1996.
Magic Christian Music includes the band’s first international hit, ‘Come And Get It’, written and produced for them by Paul McCartney. Of the fourteen tracks, seven were newly recorded for the album while the remaining songs were lifted from their first album Maybe Tomorrow, which had seen only a limited release. Three of the new tracks were featured in the film The Magic Christian (starring Peter Sellers and Ringo Starr). They were produced by Paul, and the strings on ‘Carry On Till Tomorrow’ were arranged and conducted by George Martin. SIx tracks were produced by Tony Visconti and five by Mal Evans.
This 180g blue vinyl version, out on October 18, is housed in a single sleeve featuring the original artwork, with poly-lined white inner sleeves.
In other Beatle-related release news, the push by BMG to get more George Harrison/Dark Horse Records titles officially onto their catalogue continues. On October 24 they will release the next batch including the self-titled George Harrison (from early 1979) on both vinyl and CD:
The CD has one bonus track, ‘Here Comes The Moon (Demo)’:
Then in June 1981 came Somewhere In England. It too gets a vinyl and CD re-issue on Dark Horse:
The CD is interesting. It comes in the original album concept artwork and has one bonus track, a demo of ‘Save The World’:
And then comes 1982’s Gone Troppo:
The Gone Troppo CD also comes with a single bonus track, the demo version of ‘Mystical One’:
Also due for an October 24 release are CD versions of Brainwashed; Cloud Nine; and Thirty Three and 1/3. Each of these has already seen a vinyl release under the BMG distribution deal. This just makes a CD version available to collectors:
All CD’s are in Digipak packaging. You can get all the details on all these releases, and place pre-orders, at the Official George Harrison Store.
Interestingly, also listed there (for an October 3 release) is a 3LP set of All Things Must Pass. This too is to bring that classic title in under the BMG/Dark Horse Records banner as a vinyl issue (there’s already been a CD released).
The question is, will it come out with Dark Horse Records labels, or will it be on the traditional orange Apple and Apple Jam labels? The pack shot has a prominent Dark Horse hype sticker (click on the image to see a larger version):
This vinyl is the 50th anniversary mix by Paul Hicks and the set includes the original poster – but with the back of the poster containing notes by Dhani Harrison and Hicks about remixing the album.
I guess we’ll just have to wait and see if the LPs have the Dark Horse label. For some reason our money is on Apple labels……look very closely at that hype sticker and you’ll see in the small print the words “Apple and the Apple logo are exclusively licensed to Apple Corps Ltd and used with permission.” So maybe it won’t have Dark Horse labels after all….
With Record Store Day Black Friday 2024 coming up we started thinking about all the RSD releases there had been over the years involving The Beatles both as a group and as solo artists. Just when did they start to get involved? And has anyone done a complete look back on all the releases associated with RSD over the years?
Record Store Day was conceived in back in 2007 at a gathering of independent record store owners and employees as a way to celebrate and spread the word about the unique culture surrounding the nearly 1,400 independently-owned record stores in the US – plus thousands more stores internationally.
The very first Record Store Day took place on April 19, 2008. Now in its 17th year it has grown in prominence as a day when fans and collectors are encouraged to physically visit their local record store to hunt down unique and limited items released specifically on the day.
While there’s only one Record Store Day proper in April each year, 2010 saw the first RSD Black Friday also join as an event each November. Like Record Store Day, the Black Friday event also provides local stores with exclusive releases to encourage bricks and mortar record store visits. And it helps them be a part of what has become the biggest sale shopping event of the year.
In 2020 the global pandemic saw Record Store Day morph into three “RSD Drop” dates which split the official list of releases between them – August 29, September 26 and October 24. There were two similar “Drops” in 2021 in June and July, and one additional “Drop” in 2022 (June). Record Store Day Black Friday continued throughout the pandemic.
So, looking back, just when did The Beatles start to get involved in dropping their own special releases for Record Store Day and RSD Black Friday?
Early information is a bit patchy because the official RSD Archive only dates back to the Black Friday releases of 2011. Before then we need to trawl through our own collection, consult articles we wrote for this site way back in the day, cross check in Discogs and generally snoop around the Internet. If you have any corrections or additional information please don’t hesitate to let us know!
Based upon that, we reckon the very first Beatle RSD-related release was in 2009. We gave this a brief (and it must be said a little bit vague) mention in November of that year:
Now, we say RSD-related for a reason. The Abbey Road Deluxe Vinyl Box was released in November. That is prior to RSD Black Friday starting up. However, publicity around the release at the time stated:
In celebration of the 40th Anniversary of the original release of Abbey Road, there will be a special vinyl edition of the album released on November 7, 2009. The Beatles Abbey Road Deluxe Vinyl box will include a vinyl copy of the album, a t-shirt featuring the original artwork from the 7″ single Come Together/Something, and a corresponding poster. This boxset will be released on Vinyl Saturday, which is sponsored by the folks behind Record Store Day and will be limited to 5,000 copies worldwide.
Information is difficult to find but “Vinyl Saturday” seems to have been a November precursor to the Black Friday event we now know and love. So, we’re nominating the Abbey Road Deluxe Vinyl Box as the first association between The Beatles and the RSD folks.
The following year for Record Store Day in April, 2010 came the very limited 7″ single, ‘Paperback Writer’/’Rain’ – just 1000 copies in the UK, and 5000 (some say 4000) in the US:
Also issued for RSD proper that year was the John LennonSingles Bag containing 3 x 7″ singles in an individually numbered Kraftpak envelope with button and string closure. Also inside were a custom plastic adaptor hub, a 24” x 36” poster and three postcards. The three 45 RPM vinyl singles (‘Mother’/’Why’; ‘Imagine’/’It’s So Hard’ and ‘Watching The Wheels’/’Yes, I’m Your Angel’) came in replicated original artwork covers. this was a limited edition and individually numbered, 7000 copies total.
The front of the box had a replica Apple hype sticker:
And a special RSD sticker on the rear:
The following year, 2011, contained just a couple of releases – both were for RSD Black Friday. These were The BeatlesSingles Box:
Inside this glossy red box were 4 x 7″ singles (‘Ticket To Ride’/’Yes It Is’ and ‘Yellow Submarine’/’Eleanor Rigby’ in replica US picture sleeves and on Capitol “swirl” labels, plus ‘Hey Jude’/’Revolution’ and ‘Something’/’Come Together’ on the Apple label in generic US Apple sleeves) plus a poster, plus a cool 45rpm record adapter with Apple printing on it. 10,000 copies for the US and 5700 for the rest of the world.
Also released for Black Friday 2011 was John Lennon’sImagine in a unique 2-record box set to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the album:
This was a limited edition with 6,700 produced worldwide. The box contained the remastered Imagine album on vinyl. It also included a poster and a 12″ EP on white vinyl which included songs previously released on the John Lennon Anthology.
RSD 2012 was fairly slim pickings for Beatle and solo fans. The only item that came out for the whole year was a replica Paul McCartney single ‘Another Day’/’Oh Woman Oh Why’. Limited to 2000 copies worldwide this was issued to help promote the forthcoming box set of Ram, the next title in the Paul McCartney Archive Collection:
2013 saw just two Beatle-related releases – both for RSD proper. These were a Wings 12″ re-issue of ‘Maybe I’m Amazed’, and the 3 x 7″ box set of singles simply called Ringo.
The Ringo StarrRingo singles boxis three 7″ singles, accurately reproduced in their original picture sleeves, in an Apple Records lift-top box. It came with a poster and a custom spindle adapter. The singles inside are ‘Photograph’/’Down And Out’; ‘It Don’t Come Easy’/’Early 1970’ and ‘(It’s All Down to) Goodnight Vienna’/’Oo-Wee’. It’s thought there were 5000 copies released – 2500 in the US plus 2500 in the UK.
The Wings ‘Maybe I’m Amazed’ (recorded live) was a replica of a 12″ originally sent as a radio-only promotional single back in 1976 ahead of the release of Wings Over America. It has mono and stereo versions of the song in two durations. This time around it served as a promo for what was to be the next installment in the Paul McCartney Archive Collection – Wings Over America. 3,500 copies.
The following year was a quiet one with collectors having to wait until Black Friday 2014 for a faithfully replicated Beatle EP, Long Tall Sally, cut from the original analogue tapes at Abbey Road Studios and complete with period-correct fold-back tabs on the rear. This served to promote the vinyl edition of the Beatles In Mono box set, which had been released just two months earlier. 7000 copies:
The whole of 2015 was given over entirely to Paul McCartney releases. The first was a Record Store Day re-issue of The Family Way, his 1967 soundtrack to the film of the same name. Long out of print in vinyl (there had been a CD re-issued in 2011), this served as a good way for collectors to add it to their libraries:
The next, also for RSD proper, is probably one of THE rarest Record Store Day releases of all time.
Sweet Thrash was a secret Record Store Day 2015 release signed by Paul McCartney. It never appeared anywhere in any lists or pre-publicity for the day.
From Discogs: “A first wave of records appeared in selected shops in the UK on 6th-7th of April, 2015. Selected shops in the US received a single copy and were instructed to not advertise it or include it with the rest of the RSD releases, but to hide it under the Paul McCartney section at RSD 18th of April. Each side contains a different unreleased alternate mix of “Hope For The Future”. Allegedly limited to 100 copies worldwide. The record was originally released in a white generic die-cut cardboard jacket, a thin white inner sleeve and an inserted card with details of how to download a ‘3D printable Paul’ figurine.”
‘Say Say Say [2015 Remix]’ came out as a 12″ single on transparent clear vinyl for RSD Black Friday 2015. The track, which had been included as part of the bonus audio for the Paul McCartney Archive Collection – Pipes of Peace box set, features previously unheard vocals by Paul and Michael Jackson, with the parts they sing on the original swapped in position in a remix by Mark ‘Spike’ Stent. For the full story check out this article on the official McCartney site. The B-side is an instrumental version of ‘Say Say Say’ mixed by John “Jellybean” Benitez as featured on the original 12” single, remastered for this limited edition release. This was limited to 3700 copies.
For 2016 Beatle fans (and their wallets) got a reprieve – until RSD 2017 when things picked up again….
For Record Store Day 2017 came an exclusive, limited edition (7000 copies) 7″ single of The Beatles’ ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’/’Penny Lane‘. The hype sticker states “New Stereo Mix by Giles Martin and Sam Okell” – a clear teaser product for the much-anticipated 50th anniversary edition of Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, which would be along in the following month.
Also released that year was a single-sided, three-song cassette of Paul McCartney and Elvis Costello Flowers In The Dirt demos. The limited edition, cassette-only release (on a replica Hog Hill Mill Studio label) was clearly designed to help promote the just-released Paul McCartney Archive Collection edition of Flowers In The Dirt. It was the first time these recordings (‘I Don’t Want To Confess’; ‘Shallow Grave’ and ‘Mistress And Maid’) had been be made available in the same form as when Paul and Elvis first cut them directly to tape.
Then, for RSD Black Friday, came more McCartney in the form of two 7″ singles of the song ‘Wonderful Christmastime’ in a new recording originally performed on The Tonight Show and featuring Jimmy Fallon and The Roots. One came in a green cover on green vinyl, with the song ‘Jesus Christ’ by The Decemberists as a B-side. The other came in a red cover on red vinyl, with the song ‘Peace’ by Norah Jones as the B-side. 3500 copies of each were released:
RSD proper 2018 came and went and it wasn’t until Black Friday that year that we saw a new Paul McCartney single released – in two different forms. It was a double A-side with ‘I Don’t Know’/’Come On To Me’, both taken from the Egypt Station LP. And there are two different pressings of this single, one for the US market and one for the UK. The US version is hand-numbered on the rear (from a total of 5600 copies) and comes with a non die-cut inner sleeve:
Note the rear cover top left hand-numbering (plus the FBI Anti-Piracy Warning below):
While the UK/Europe version is not individually numbered on the rear, has no FBI Anti-Piracy logo, and comes with a die-cut inner sleeve that reveals the labels:
The EU die-cut inner sleeve:
Welcome RSD 2019 and an 180 gram “audiophile” black vinyl LP called Imagine [Raw Studio Mixes] from the Lennon camp. This brought to vinyl for the first time CD3 in the Imagine – The Ultimate Mixes box set from the year before. Quantity was 5500 copies and it included a poster and printed inner sleeve containing credits, photographs, and liner notes.
For RSD Black Friday 2019 there was another Paul McCartney double A-side single released. It was again from his Egypt Station LP. This time it was the turn of ‘Home Tonight’/’In A Hurry‘ – on a picture disc with new artwork exclusively created for this Black Friday release. 12000 copies were pressed. Check out this article about the single on the official McCartney website too:
In August (Drop 1) came ‘Instant Karma!’ from John Lennon in newly mixed audio the hype sticker was describing as the Ultimate Mix version. This was a clear foreshadowing of how all Lennon reissues would be referred to in future. The artwork is a faithful reproduction of original UK sleeve. 7000 copies.
Then in September (Drop 2) came the 50th anniversary of Paul McCartney’s debut solo album, McCartney. It was being released as a Half-Speed Master, pressed from a master cut by Miles Showell at half speed using the original 1970 master tapes at Abbey Road Studios. It was made as a vinyl specific transfer in high resolution and without digital peak limiting for the best possible reproduction. 7000 copies pressed.
For October (Drop 3) there were no Beatle or solo releases, but RSD Black Friday 2020 still went ahead in November. That saw a George Harrison single ‘My Sweet Lord‘ on clear vinyl and in a very nice numbered, reproduction picture sleeve that replicated the one made for the Portuguese market in the former Portuguese colony of Angola back in 1970. The RSD site says 7500 copies, but going on the limited edition numbering system on the rear cover some speculate this could be as high as 15000.
We then see a two-year hiatus in Beatle and solo releases. It’s not until 2022 that some new titles are put forward. The first came in June that year as RSD instituted an additional mid-year “Drop”. Included was the 12″ single ‘Women and Wives’. On Side A was the Paul McCartney song of the same name, taken from his McCartney III LP, while on Side B was St Vincent’s version of the same song lifted from his collaborative album, McCartney III Imagined. The whole thing was also designated the inaugural ‘Record Store Day Song of the Year’. Limited to 3000 numbered copies this was tricky to get hold of:
For Record Store Day Black Friday 2022Ringo Starr joined in for the first time as a solo artist with a flurry of product. There was Old Wave on “brown smoke” colour vinyl (2000 copies), and on CD (500 copies):
There was Ringo the 4th on orange translucent (1000 copies) and blue translucent vinyl (755 copies):
And not satisfied with just those four, he also put out a RSD Exclusive Ringo Starr and His All-Starr BandLive At The Greek Theatre 2019, a double LP limited to 2000 copies on yellow vinyl:
The Lennon Estate issued for Record Store Day 2023 a very classy, numbered box set of 9 x 10″ EPs on white vinyl. In fact everything was white or whited out, including all the packaging. There were 36 songs in all, replicating the running order of the LennonGimme Some Truth Ultimate Mixes box from 2020. Limited to 1,500 copies (RSD site incorrectly states 500):
Paul McCartney had been looking for opportunities to keep releasing 50th anniversary Half-Speed Master editions of his albums and in 2023 he used Record Store Day to issue Red Rose Speedway. Once again the vinyl was cut by Miles Showell at half speed using high-resolution transfer of the original 1973 master tapes at Abbey Road Studios, London. It came with an OBI strip, a 12 page booklet and a ‘Half-speed Mastering’ certificate. 5000 copies.
Also in 2023 a re-issue of Ringo’sStop and Smell The Roses came out as a double red and white vinyl LP which included for the first time six bonus tracks (2500 copies). It also came out on CD (500 copies):
First up, a format first in the form of a tiny Beatles Limited Edition RSD3 Turntable set that plays tiny 3″ Beatle singles. The turntable sports a branded dustcover and facing and was housed in a Beatles’ box that included four super small vinyl records: ‘I Want To Hold Your Hand’; ‘Til There Was You’; ‘She Loves You’ and ‘I Saw Her Standing There’. Each record came in an outer box and picture sleeve, plus there was a poster with each too. The package also included a Beatle-branded record carry case that can hold up to ten 3” records. (2300 of these sets were manufactured):
If you didn’t want the record player and carry case, the four 3″ singles were sold separately (1500 copies each). These records only have music on one side:
Earlier this year the Lennon Estate was very busy forward-promoting the forthcoming Mind Games Ultimate Mixes box sets and so issued not one, but two 12″ EPs for Record Store Day. Both featured the same four tracks from the soon-to-be-released SDE’s. One was a “glow-in-the-dark” edition:
The other an “audiophile black 180G vinyl” edition:
The cover was a great photo of John, cleverly showing the image of himself he cut out and pasted on the artwork for the original Mind Games cover:
Ringo Starr also put out an RSD 12″ EP called Crooked Boy. It has a really cool cover too and 2000 copies were available on exclusive black & white marble vinyl :
Dark Horse Records is slowly bringing their rich catalogue under the BMG banner – with whom they now have a distribution and publishing deal. That of course includes the George Harrison back-catalogue. Part of the plan seems to be to eventually release all his titles as Zoetrope discs – and two of them saw light of day on Record Store Day 2024 – Electronic Sound and Wonderwall Music. Limited to 8,000 units globally and exclusive to Record Store Day, each is individually numbered in silver foil and include an insert reproducing the original album artwork:
And that’s about it for Beatle and solo releases across the 17 years of Record Store Day…..so far.
We also collect Dark Horse releases and there have been a LOT put out over past Record Store Days, so a separate retrospective on those plus other Beatle-related items is here: Record Store Day and the Beatles – Part Two.
As we said, if you have any thoughts, corrections, or items we’ve missed please do get in touch.
A very rare Canadian recording of The Beatles live in concert is on the market.
It dates from August, 1965 and was recorded off the mixing desk from an afternoon concert at Maple Leaf Gardens, then a huge ice hockey arena in Toronto.
The two reel-to-reel tapes appear to be the only audio record of the gig in existence, and its sound quality is markedly better than most other Beatle bootlegs.
Well-known Beatle collector and historian Piers Hemmingsen (below), author of the highly-regarded book The Beatles In Canada (which traces the early days of Beatlemania in that country in forensic detail), owns the tapes and wants to use them to fund publication of his next volume, telling the story of the band in Canada up to 1970.
Journalist Ludovic Hunter-Tilney is one of the few people who have heard the recording and he writes about it glowingly in The Financial Times. “The sound quality is raw but the music comes across strongly, especially Lennon and McCartney’s vocals,” he says. “The vigour and accuracy of their singing are striking. Meanwhile, George Harrison firmly strums his guitar and Ringo Starr keeps matters moving at the drum kit.”
Hemmingsen took the tapes to Apple back in 2015, playing them to none other than Giles Martin at Abbey Road Studios. Back then they was deemed too low quality and they passed on a sale, but since that time Hemmingsen has discovered he’d been playing the tapes on the wrong type of machine. Listening back on a half-track player was a revelation. “It was like day and night,” he says.
Add to that the potential now to treat the audio using the new MAL audio technology developed by Peter Jackson’s film production company and who knows how good the result could be.
Check out the full story in Hunter-Tilney’s article here.
Apple and Universal Music have now officially announced details of the expanded and newly remixed version of The Beatles’ 1977 live album At The Hollywood Bowl.
The new release will be known as The Beatles:Live At The Hollywood Bowl, and it is directly sourced from the original three track tapes of the concerts. Producer Giles Martin and engineer Sam Okell have remixed and mastered the recordings at Abbey Road Studios. The album will include the thirteen tracks from the original album produced by George Martin, plus four bonus tracks – 3 of which are previously unreleased recordings from the concerts. Those tracks are: ‘You Can’t Do That’ and ‘I Wanna Hold Your Hand’ (both from 23 August, 1964) and ‘Everybody’s Trying To Be My Baby’and ‘Baby’s in Black’ (both from 30 August, 1965).
Giles Martin gave this background:
“A few years ago Capitol Studios called saying they’d discovered some Hollywood Bowl three track tapes in their archive. We transferred them and noticed an improvement over the tapes we’ve kept in the London archive. Alongside this I’d been working for some time with a team headed by technical engineer James Clarke on demix technology, the ability to remove and separate sounds from a single track.
With Sam Okell, I started work on remixing the Hollywood Bowl tapes. Technology has moved on since my father worked on the material all those years ago. Now there’s improved clarity, and so the immediacy and visceral excitement can be heard like never before. What we hear now is the raw energy of four lads playing together to a crowd that loved them. This is the closest you can get to being at the Hollywood Bowl at the height of Beatlemania. We hope you enjoy the show…”
Live at the Hollywood Bowl will include a 24-page booklet with an essay by music journalist David Fricke, and will be issued on CD on 9 September and as a gatefold double vinyl LP on 18 November 2016.
Earlier this week we scored a pristine copy of this Beatle book from one of our favourite discount bookstores – Basement Books in central Sydney. In fact it was still sealed in heat-shrink and so it is absolutely a mint copy.
The title of this large, coffee-table style book says exactly what its content is all about: Fab Gear – The Beatles and Fashion, and author Paolo Hewitt (his blog is here) focusses on that topic exclusively.
This book contains a wealth of photographs, like the one above, which are included because they show the variety of fashion over the years, the fine cut, or the design details of what the group were wearing at particular times. Look at those jackets John and Paul are wearing. This photo was taken at the London Palladium in February, 1965. John’s is a particularly stylish, four-button cut, while with Paul it’s the detail of the doubled-up buttons and cuffs, and the buttoned down shirt with no tie which are interesting.
As you browse through Fab Gear Hewitt gives information about where the Beatles purchased their clothing (or where they had it made), and who they knew and followed in the industry. It becomes clear that the Beatles indeed were style gurus very interested in clothing, fashion, and the design of what they wore – both as a group and as individuals. In the photos below Ringo is dressed very much in a Mod style, with his three button suit and button-down polka-dot shirt. John sports a look that Van Morrison would appropriate years later. The pair’s stylish but casual look is in contrast to the smaller, earlier picture where the band is dressed far more formally:From the earliest stages of being a band the Beatles had a keen sense of themselves as being more than just musicians. They were a force for change and what they wore was another way of pushing the boundaries. Hewitt’s book is divided up into five main themes to examine this thesis: the early years and influences from the late1950s in Liverpool and Hamburg; the early 1960s in London and Brian Epstein’s influence on their look and style; the mid-to-late1960s and Swinging London; the Beatles and their affect on hairstyles; and a chapter dedicated to the Beatles’ venture into creating and selling their own fashion designs at the Apple clothing boutique:
In fact this book has one of the best chapters we’ve seen on the ill-fated Apple shop set up to sell Apple clothing and which the Beatles opened on December 7, 1967 at 94 Baker Street in London. It closed its doors just seven months later. Not only do we get the back-story to it’s inception and speedy downfall, we get images of hand-drawn designs, fabric samples and prices:
This clip, from the movie Hot Millions, provides one of the few filmed glimpses inside the Apple shop:
There was also a separate Apple Tailoring shop (at 161 King’s Road) which included an Apple Hair salon in the basement! It is at Apple Tailoring we discover an Australian connection in the form one John Crittle. Crittle was a fashion innovator whose designs the Beatles had been taken with since the Sgt Pepper days. When they wanted to start their own tailoring company they turned to him. He’s pictured below – and if you don’t think you know his work, think again. Crittle designed the suits worn by three of the band (John, Ringo and Paul) as they walked across that famous pedestrian crossing outside the EMI studios on Abbey Road:We are very much enjoying dipping into Fab Gear. There are so many interesting stories and you’ll never look at a Beatle album cover, publicity shot, promotional film, or magazine/newspaper image the same way again. For a quick spin through the history and influence the band had on fashion (and that fashion had on them) it’s an indispensable book. We guarantee you’ll learn something you didn’t know about the Beatles:
There was a big car boot sale just around the corner from us this last weekend, and we were able to find quite a few nice additions to the collection. One vendor just had boxes and boxes of CD’s, 7″ vinyl 45’s and 12″ LP’s on their stall – and so quite a bit of our Saturday morning was spent trawling….
It was time well spent though as it turned up a few gems.
First up was a Australian vinyl single taken from the John Lennon and Yoko Ono album Double Fantasy. ‘Watching the Wheels’ was the third single from this LP (the first two were ‘(Just Like) Starting Over’ and ‘Woman’). We didn’t have a copy of ‘Watching the Wheels” so this was a good find.
Next was another 7″ single we didn’t have – Badfinger’s ‘Come and Get It’ on the Apple label. It dates from 1969 and is a Paul McCartney composition written for the band, and it makes an appearance on the soundtrack for the film The Magic Christian, starring Peter Sellers and Ringo Starr. This is an Australian pressing. There’s a lot of writing on the label – but still…..
Further hunting through the boxes revealed another Apple single – this time from George Harrison. It’s an Australian copy of ‘My Sweet Lord’ b/w ‘Isn’t It A Pity’. In Australia this was a double A side as both titles have green Apple labels:
Our good luck continued in the multiple boxes at this car boot sale. Next out were two singles – a US copy of McCartney’s ‘Coming Up’, and ‘Say Say Say’ with Michael Jackson – both on the Columbia label, then a division of CBS. In the late 70’s/early 80’s McCartney was briefly (six years) on the Columbia label for his releases in America. He’d temporarily turned his back on Capitol Records, enticed by one of the most lucrative recording contracts around at the time, a deal which included as a sweetener the ownership of Frank Music, a CBS owned publishing company consisting (amongst other things) of Frank Loesser’s songs (think of the Broadway musical Guys and Dolls, etc.). Frank Music is now of course folded into McCartney’s highly successful MPL Music Publishing business.
The two singles we found came out on the Parlophone label in Australia, so it’s good to have these US versions:
The final 45 we discovered was Billy J. Kramer’s ‘From a Window’ – which sadly is kind of beat up, but worth having because it is a song from 1964 written specifically for Kramer (and his band the Dakotas) by John Lennon and Paul McCartney:
The last purchase of the day was a bit of a find. It’s Jools Holland’s 2001 CD Small World Big Band, which is an important one to have in the collection because it contains George Harrison singing and playing on his last ever recording. George passed away just two months after this recording. He does a song called ‘Horse to the Water’, co-composed with his son Dhani.
Holland’s CD is sub-titled “….his Rhythm and Blues Orchestra and friends”, that’s because for each track he invites various stars to join him for a track each. These include the likes of Sting; Paul Weller; Dr John; Mark Knopfler; Van Morrison; Steve Winwood; and Eric Clapton, amongst many others. To quote two of the poignant reviewers on Amazon:
“For me, the big reason to buy this CD was the George Harrison contribution, ‘Horse to the Water’. It is a GREAT song, and a brilliant Harrison song at that. George sounds weak, and I am not sure if Clapton has stepped in on some of the guitar parts, but what a brilliant and fun piece of music, worthy to be held in the highest esteem among its author’s ouvre. IT is reason enough to buy the CD.”
And this one:
“I purchased this CD for one reason. I had seen the DVD Concert for George and loved it. Among the best offerings on the DVD was the Sam Brown/Jools Holland rendition of ‘Horse to the Water’ by George. Except for the words, I would never have guessed that it was a Harrison song. It was too R&B. So I was curious to see how he handled it. Well, he does not have the powerhouse voice of Sam Brown, but I was in fact really surprised at how well he did, helped greatly by the superb backup band. I would not have recognised his voice. I am sure his throat cancer was behind that.”
Beatles Blog 