The very nice Chained and Perfumed blogsite has posted a trip down memory lane in photographs to mark Paul McCartney’s 70th birthday this week.
Time magazine has released a hardcover special edition book called Paul McCartney: The Legend Rocks On that looks back on his career.
They’ve published an excerpt from the book that tells the story of when Lennon and McCartney first met (plus it contains heaps more links). And there’s a 70- photo collection of images here.
I haven’t done one of these for a while. It’s been over a year in fact. The last Beatle-related “Label Variations” was Part Five – and that was way back in February, 2011.
(You can see Parts One, Two, Three, Four, and Five plus the Beatles “Love” variations here and here. There’s also a comprehensive post on all the extensive variations of the McCartney/Fireman “Electric Arguments” release, the Twin Freaks LP and singles, and McCartney‘s recent “Kisses On The Bottom” CD’s and LP. There is also a post on some George Harrison “All Things Must Pass” label variations).
So it’s now time for another. This time some label variations of the Beatles legendary 1969 release “Abbey Road”, kicking off with the original UK pressing:
Here’s a more recent (1994) UK re-issue. This label is more yellow/green:
Here are some Australian pressings:
The Australian “Abbey Road” front cover is distinguished by the word “Stereo” on the top right-hand side:
Here’s a couple of examples from New Zealand, starting with the original Apple pressing. As you can see the Apple colour on NZ pressings is quite a pale, washed-out green:
Incidentally, these early copies of “Abbey Road” in New Zealand came in covers with the old-fashioned external tab-fold on the rear of the cover:
These first New Zealand copies also come in a black paper inner sleeve.
Here’s a more recent black and silver Parlophone label from New Zealand:
Next an Apple label from Germany:
One made in France by Pathe Marconi:
This label below is the one used by EMI for Asian markets (Hong Kong, South East Asia and Malaysia):
And finally the fairly plain USA label:
I’ve also got a few copies of “Abbey Road” on CD (I really love this album!)
This first one is the original UK pressing:
And here’s the Australian CD, which is quite similar to the UK:
And the EU version of the very impressive 2009 Beatles digital remasters version:
Lastly, a CD that I think is an illegal copy from China. I got a series of these on a trip to Vietnam (you can read some more about this here). The series is called the Beatles “Double Golden Collection”. There are two CD’s in each jewel box and you get one 2009 remastered album on each disc, complete with the bonus mini documentary. Disc One, shown here, has “Abbey Road” (the other in this set has “Let It Be” on the second disc):
If anyone else has some “Abbey Road” labels they’d like to share please send them to beatlesblogger@gmail.com
(For most images above click to see a larger version)
A local community radio station (2MBS-FM) often holds fundraising book, CD and record fairs to raise some much-needed cash in order to keep going.
There’s just been another one and I was able to score a couple of Beatle-related items of interest. I got in on the first day and before things had been picked over too much.
They didn’t have much in the way of vinyl, but there were masses of CD’s and books this time – and as the CD’s were so daunting (so many of them) I headed first to the books as they’d kindly identified a “Music” section. The very first thing I grabbed was this:
It is a hardback copy of Ray Coleman’s 1984 biography (I think initially released in two volumes?) in one, very thick book (640 pages). Its a little bit worn, but in pretty good shape seeing it is a US first edition from 1985. This is published by McGraw Hill, and for $6.00 looked like a good read. I know that Coleman (who died in 1996) had mixed reviews for this work. I didn’t have a copy of this book in the collection. Now I do.
Also in the books section I found this:
Yes – it is a little bit beaten up and well-used – but it’s an original UK paperback edition from 1965 (published by Mayflower Dell). It is a “novelisation” by author Al Hine of the Beatle’s “Help!” movie from the same year. I purchased this little Beatles book because I’d also very recently scored a copy of the “novelisation” of “A Hard Day’s Night” at another record fair. This makes a matching pair…..and also it was just $6.oo. A bargain.
The final find was hidden away in amongst the many CD’s on offer. I’ve already got this Paul McCartney release on LP but not the CD version. It comes with a bonus track – “”Ou Est Le Soleil”:
(click on the image for a larger version)
This is the UK pressing on MPL/Parlophone and comes from 1989. There’s a sticker on the back that says it was sold by the “Compact Disc Den” in the regional city of Cairns in Far North Queensland, Australia. So it has had something of a journey to end up in my collection! But isn’t that often the way?
Happy collecting.
I’ve been a bit slow in telling you about some of the supporting websites and background info around two of the latest Beatle-related releases – Paul McCartney’s “Ram” reissues, and “Yellow Submarine” which is now out on BluRay, DVD and CD.
So, here’s a bit of a catch-up:
(click on the image to go there)
On the Yellow Submarine site there is a wealth of interactive material like photos, games, movie dialogue, sounds and “making of” videos. Well worth a look.
There’s also a range of great things out on the web now about the reissue of Paul McCartney’s “Ram” album:
Paul’s people certainly have been busy in producing supporting web content for “Ram” with not one but two dedicated websites:
(click on the image to go there)
In the Deluxe Box set of “Ram” you also get the 1977 orchestral/instrumental version of “Ram” that Paul put out under the pseudonym of Percy “Thrills” Thrillington:
(click on the image to go there)
There’s also a very interesting and insightful interview with McCartney by Paul Draper from the band Mansun. It’s not only about “Ram” but a wide range of other things. One great example is Paul talking about his early influences as a songwriter:
What I take the influence back to was A Teenage Opera. That was a very early record in the late 60s, by Keith West… it was his only, like, big hit. That was episodic, there was a bit and it went ‘buh-buh-bum’, then it went there, and there, and there [Sir Paul makes some stacking gestures with his hands]. I think that was the first record I heard, and we heard, and we thought ‘that’s interesting’. You can have a song here, then you can cut like a film to another song, and you can even cut the tempo and go slow and so on. That was really the one that was the biggest influence, and then lots of people started doing it. We’d do it a bit, prog-rock did it, Townshend started doing it a bit, The Who opera and all that. I think it was just that one record that made you realise that it didn’t have to be the same tempo or the same key all the way through, you could cut like a film.
You can read Part One here, and Part Two here. There are links to musical examples given throughout.
Finally, one cute little “Ram” publicity item – a “Ewe-Tube Map” – based on the London Underground train network:
(click for a larger version)
Oh, and this kind person has added a “Ram” Deluxe Edition “unboxing” video to YouTube:
When I ducked into a random newsagent shop recently in Surry Hills (in Sydney), I picked up the special Newsweek commemorative edition devoted to fifty years of the Beatles.
I also picked up a copy of this CD:
It was in a small pile of discs I saw in a corner on the floor. The pile was a selection of those free CDs which come attached to the front of some magazines. These discs had obviously become separated from a variety of publications over the last couple of months. The newsagent had held onto them and was now offering them for sale individually at $1.00 each. I don’t think they are supposed to do this – offer the CDs for separate sale….
Anyway, what I found in there was well worth the dollar asking price – it was “Sounds of the Star Club”, the free CD that came on the cover of this Uncut Magazine in March 2012:
The CD is actually a very good 16-track collection of the original versions of some of the songs the Beatles covered in the band’s very early years.
It’s not a bad little CD to have in the collection because it references some of the key musical influences to impact on the Beatles, songs they loved enough to put into their repetoire for live shows, or to record on early albums. This includes original tracks by the likes of Chuck Berry (“Roll Over Beethoven”); Carl Perkins (“Lend Me Your Comb” and “Everybody’s Trying to be My Baby”); Fats Waller (“Your Feet’s Too Big”); Little Richard (“Kansas City/Hey Hey Hey”); Peggy Lee (“Till There Was You”); Gene Vincent (“Be-Bop-A-Lula”); Ray Charles (“Hallelujah I Love Her So”) and Elvis Presley (“I’m Gonna Sit Right Down and Cry Over You”):
(click to see a larger image)
Part Eight in this series looking at “The Beatles With Records” was intended to be the last – but I’ve just been contacted by a reader named Ben Summer (he also has a very cool website) who has done a great job in identifying the record that John Lennon is carrying here in around 1967:
I’d posted this shot in “The Beatles With Records – Part Three” back in August last year. Turns out it’s an LP called “Electronic Music“, that came out in 1966 on Turnabout Records, featuring Walter Carlos among other composers:
Coincidentally, this disc has also been discussed in the last day or so by the community of record collectors at the Steve Hoffman Music Forum, who also correctly identified it as the “Electronic Music” LP. Thanks to everyone for the information.
You can see the other parts in “The Beatles with Records” series here: Parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 , 6, 7 , 8, 10 , 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16 and 17.
When I published a blog about all the different variations of Paul McCartney’s 2008 Fireman project “Electric Arguments” I thought I’d covered off just about everything….
Seems not because I’ve just received this variation which I’d never seen before – it comes in a clear plastic jewel case:
The standard single-disc CD in most major markets (e.g. the US, UK, and Japan) came out in a cardboard digipac cover. For example, here’s the Japanese cover (front and rear):
However, the seller I got the jewel case variation from was from Italy, and so I thought there might be a chance that is was unique to that country. Perhaps it is – but there’s nothing printed in this plastic jewel case version on either the booklet or the tray insert to say “Made in Italy”:
It all looks very generic inside and out and so this version of the packaging may also have turned up in other markets outside Italy. If you know anything about it then let us know too.
The CD itself is pressed in the UK and it is on the One Little Indian label:
Compare this to the original One Little Indian UK version from 2008:
If anyone knows anything more about it please use the comments box below.
Maybe it’s a lower cost version released more recently? I say this because the booklet is just 15 pages of photographs compared to the original release booklets which were very thick by CD booklet standards – they’ve got 46 pages. Here is the 15 page booklet from the jewel case version:
And here’s the cover of the 46 page booklet include in the original digipac editions from 2008:
The jewel case format therefore means that this cover of the booklet is unique. The black square with the album title, etc. and those coloured circles which look like stickers are actually printed onto the paper. On the original US and UK digipacs these were on a large clear plastic sticker attached to the outside of the shrink-wrap around the cardboard cover. You can see that here:
While I was trawling the web for photographs to help illustrate all the extensive variations McCartney produced for this project I came across what looks like one further intriguing packaging variation. It’s this one:
As you can see, it looks like a cardboard sleeve with a kind of folding envelope top where the CD is kept. If anyone also knows about the origins of this one let us know. Maybe it is a limited promo cover, or a prototype that never went into production?
The forthcoming deluxe re-issue of Paul McCartney’s “Ram” [21st May (UK)/ 22nd May (USA/Rest Of World)] will be very different in the way it is packaged compared to the three previous deluxe reissues in the Archive series.
Not one but two press releases out today (one from The Beatles official site, the other from the George Harrison official site) about a new “multi-touch” e-book edition of “Living in the Material World”.
There’s even a fancy trailer to look at:
This all comes hot on the heals of the release in the United States on DVD, BluRay and a Deluxe box set edition (which have all been out in the UK and other parts of the world since October last year) of the Martin Scorsese documentary film of the same name, plus a CD, Vinyl and Digital release of George Harrison previously un-released out-takes called “Early Takes – Volume 1“.
Another screenshot from the “multi-touch” edition.
Very soon I’ll have a copy of the DVD and a copy of the CD to give away to two lucky readers.
My third item from the recent Glebe Record Fair (you can read about the other two here and here) is a unique and interesting Australian-only Beatles release:
To give you a bit of background to this one here’s a quote from the incredibly informative book “An Overview of Australian Beatles Records” by Jaeson Jones: “In February 1973, to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the first Beatles record released in Australia (Please Please Me/Ask Me Why), EMI (Australia) repackaged the two previously issued Greatest Hits compilations into a double LP set with a new gatefold sleeve and distinctive purple labels. The LP was promoted nationally by member stations of the major radio network of Australia, with the front cover featuring a gold sticker on the top left displaying the call sign of the promoting station. The participating radio stations were 2KO, 2UE, 3DB, 4BK, 5AD, 6PR, 7EX and 7HT.
While there was no new content, or new mixes of old content, the labels eschewed the orange hue that characterised contemporary Beatles releases in favour of a more subdued lilac/purple colour; not a particularly earth-shattering variation perhaps, but one that undeniably adds to the unique character of the Australian Beatles labelography.
The set was to be short-lived, however, for a few months later EMI UK announced the impending release of The Beatles 1962-66 (Red) and The Beatles 1967-70 (Blue) double LPs, effectively scuttling sales of this commemorative set, which was quietly deleted before mid-1973.”
Finding this LP in good condition is difficult because the white paper/cardboard used for the cover is very flimsy and very easily torn or scuffed. Most copies you see have significant ring wear. As you can see, mine is marked and not pristine, but overall not too bad for its age. Here’s the rear cover:
It has the gold corner sticker on the front left-hand side indicating it was originally purchased in Sydney, New South Wales, and consequently had publicity support of the participating radio station 2UE at the time:
As you can see on the first front cover image above, it also has the name of the person who owned it…. Linda Chinner – are you still out there?
At the time of this album’s release pre-Apple Beatles LPs were being issued in by EMI Australia on a bright orange Parlophone label that looks like this:
However, the two LPs in this set got an unusual and unique lilac/purple and silver Parlophone label:
This album set gathers together two “best of” previously released Australian LP’s “The Beatles Greatest Hits, Vol.1” and “The Beatles Greatest Hits, Vol.2” and packages them in a gatefold. These next two images are the inside of the gatefold, left side and right side:
These are the original covers for the two albums in this 2 LP set. “The Beatles Greatest Hits Vol. 1” was released in Australia and New Zealand in mono in 1966 and in stereo in 1968; “The Beatles Greatest Hits Vol. 2” was released in both stereo and mono in 1967:
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