I just learned that Capitol is releasing the Beatles’ The Capitol Albums Vol. 2 on April 11. Like the first set, this one is a four-CD collection with each disc containing both stereo and mono versions of the same album. The albums included are The Early Beatles, Beatles VI, Help! (yes, with all the non-Beatle soundtrack music, in both mono and stereo), and Rubber Soul. I’m a bit disappointed that this stops short of including Yesterday and Today, which is the last of the U.S. albums that really needs this treatment (the American Revolver being just a truncated version of the U.K. original, and Hey Jude/The Beatles Again not fitting the mono/stereo format).
I was wondering what they would do with Volume 3 also. Maybe they’ll do the stereo/mono versions of Yesterday and Today and Revolver along with straight reissues of Hollywood Bowl and Hey Jude/The Beatles Again?
I understand there are some interesting differences in the stereo and mono mixes of The White Album, but I highly doubt they would reissue that in this format.
The White Album really warrants a separate release in mono, as does Sgt Pepper. I don’t think the Beatles want Hollywood Bowl reissued at all.
I lament the dearth of Beatle nerds on this board. If I’d started a thread about Name 100 Characters from My Mother the Car I would have gotten more responses.
Capt. Manzini
Well, I’m here. I couldn’t really add anything to what you had to say. I’ll be buying it when it comes out. That should make about 10 versions of each of their albums that I have now - all of the mono & stereo issues from the US and UK, each set transferred to CD by a different person.
You just know that Capitol is never going to put out the really rare issues of some of these discs. There are two different stereo mixes of “Beatlemania! With The Beatles” - one wide and one narrow. We’ll never get the wide one on CD, officially. Or the Dave Dexter US mix of “Rubber Soul.” There are so few of those in existence, hardly anyone has ever heard it. This iteration was only out for a few weeks before it was recalled and reissued minus Dave Dexter’s mess. And there’s a UK mono “Revolver” known as “Mono Matrix 1” that has some alternate mixes. George Martin heard it, was dissatisfied, and had it pulled. He redid some of the mixes and had it put out again.
Maybe, just maybe, we might get the mono Sgt. Pepper and White Album before we go to the old folks’ home. But any of us who care stopped holding our breath ages ago… because otherwise we’d be ex-Beatles collectors now.
I’m a huge Beatles fan (I even met George Harrison!) but I have what may be a stupid question: why would anyone want to listen to mono versions of their songs? Don’t they sound better in stereo? Are there really some major differences between mono and stereo versions? If so, then I might have to get this boxed set.
Thanks!
The Beatles’ records were mixed for mono. All the work went into the mono version, and then the stereo mixes were dashed off as an afterthought. In the 60s, most people who bought Beatles records owned a mono record player. The stereo albums cost more than the mono ones. Therefore, there are many, many instances of different edits, different parts missing or added, etc., of songs up to The White Album. If you want to hear their records the way they mixed them and intended them to sound, you need the mono mixes, too.
In addition, kids in the US grew up with different-sounding mixes than the ones in Britain. It has taken this long to get official releases on CD of the albums the way they sounded when we were young.
Alright, I’ll check in as a demi-Beatle nerd of sorts (I didn’t buy the Capitol CDs but I do have the American Rubber Soul as an iPod playlist).
I have cassette copies of the white album & Sgt. Pepper from mono versions of old LPs – I think they’re quite interesting to someone who knows a bit about recording techniques (you can hear different arts much cleaere) or just loves minutiae, but I don’t think the casual fan would notice much difference at all (even for “Don’t Pass Me By,” which if I’m not mistaken is noticeably faster and in a higher key than the stereo version).
I have to echo Stephe’s question here. Can the difference between the stereo and mono versions really be so great that they would be of any interest to anyone who isn’t an uberfan? Frankly, I would only put up with a mono version if a good stereo version wasn’t available.
The difference between mono and stereo can be huge - I don’t have fishbicycle’s encylopedic knowledge of Beatle’s tracks, but I own Lewisohn’s day-by-day tracking of their studio work at Abbey Road.
The real question is: how was the stereo mix achieved off of tracks that were recorded to be mono? Many times, a stereo mix adapted from mono is sub-optimal to say the least: different tracks are panned left or right, but you have bleed through from other instruments that simply don’t matter in mono. With stereo you have to doctor the track to eliminate the bleed-thru, compromising the tonal quality of the track you are trying to manipulate.
And don’t get me started on the bass - in my view, a key difference between the Beatles and most other bands of the day is how they mixed the bass in their tracks - it was pushed up front. With mono, doing that is a very different exercise - you create “room” in the mix in a different way than for stereo. I am not a producer, but my drummer is a professional one - and British - and to hear him describe the differences between Beatles’ mono vs. stereo is big.
There is a lot to hear if you take the time to listen for the differences…
The differences are not like night and day. Depending on how well you know the music, you’ll either notice them or not. Like the intro of “I Call Your Name” that has intros from different takes depending on whether you listen to the mono or stereo versions; this affects the number of cowbell hits and when they come in. Or the mono “Thank You Girl” that has extra harmonica bits on the mono mix that came from “edit pieces” that they recorded to insert into the finished track. The stereo mix doesn’t have them. Different guitar solo in “Honey Pie” on the mono mix. The variations are mainly minutiae. But these and other songs are different between mono and stereo issues.
Regarding how to make stereo mixes from recordings envisioned first as mono, it’s fairly involved. In the beginning, they only had two tracks to work with. The group would play the instrumental track on the left track and overdub vocals and handclaps simultaneously on the right track. That’s why their first two albums sound that way in stereo. The thing that most people don’t know is that a lot of Beatles records are spliced together from parts of different takes, most of which broke down at a mistake. What they would do is play the song over and over until they got a good take. Then they’d overdub on top of the good take. If, after all this, there were still items lacking, they’d record edit pieces to insert later. Then, George Martin and Norman Smith would match the levels of all the parts, mix them to mono (not strictly by combining the channels, but achieving different balances between the tracks), and edit the best parts together. This would be done multiple times, each one slighly different. Often, they would like the first part of Remix Mono 6 and the last part of Remix Mono 10, so those would be joined together for the final record.
EMI also wanted a stereo version, because stereo was just taking hold in the UK. Well, due to time constraints or insufficient documentation, or maybe apathy, all that work that went into creating a mono mix was abandoned for the stereo mix. They were pretty much straight transfers. The edit pieces would have been mixed to mono already, and you couldn’t splice those into a stereo mix without it being a very jarring experience. So they omitted them.
After they went to using two 2-track machines to overdub one onto the other while playing live over the result, mixing became more involved. For the methods and intricacies of this kind of production, I recommend “Recording Sessions” by Mark Lewisohn.
Yeah - what fishbicycle said! 
I always thought that song could’ve used more cowbell. 
Ditto. And IMHO, one needn’t even be a Beatle fan to completely concur.
I was told the German remixes were different, such as “You’ve Got To Hide Your Love Away” has an guitar intro.
Nope, the German mixes are the same as the UK ones, with the exception of the “Magical Mystery Tour” album. “MMT” was an EP in Britain, but in the US it came out as an LP rounded out with current single A- and B-sides. For some of them, stereo mixes hadn’t been made yet when the LP was released in the US and Canada. By the time German EMI got around to pressing copies of the US album (1971), stereo mixes had been prepared at Abbey Road, and the German LP had all the songs in true stereo, instead of a few of them in fake stereo.
“You’ve Got To Hide Your Love Away” has always had a one-measure guitar intro.
I should have said an exra measure.
If such a version existed, somebody would own a copy of it. Alas, there is no such animal.