I wonder if he was thinking of the German version of “And I Love Her,” with the two extra repetitions of the guitar riff at the end.
Oh, that’s probably it. That one’s still an anomaly. I haven’t read any explanation for why it exists. There is no mention in Lewisohn of those measures having been edited out in London for every other nation in the world except Germany…
Aw, c’mon, I think we should give it a shot anyway…over here!
Doomed, but I appreciate the effort! 
Don’t know about “nerd”, but I happen to be a huge Beatles fan. I would love to discuss music, movies, parody, just about anything Beatle-related. Unfortunately, I’m not technologically savvy enough to discuss recording techniques.
Just so you know you’re not alone. 
want2know, please feel free to start another Beatles thread! I’ve done it a time or two, and there have been others, but the general consensus was that not many people here care about them much. Usually it deteriorated into those who don’t like the group running down those who do. I guess if you don’t call your thread “Do you like The Beatles?” it might go somewhere and take some interesting turns.
I hear ya, fish, but I would say it falls into a few categories:
- those who love them and know them in detail - you, for instance!
- those who may or may not like/love them, but accept as “fact” that the Beatles are the best/most important/etc rock artists and/or entertainers of the 20th century (acknowledging folks like Elvis, Sinatra, Louis Armstrong, etc.)
- those who enjoy debate and tent to like to assume contrarian positions, so they choose to argue for fun
- those who think they know music and have chosen to “boldly” take a stand against the Beatles (and often end up loving them when they get a little older and actually use their ears, not their immaturity, to listen)
I am not sure why here at the Dope there aren’t as many Beatles threads as, say, Buffy threads, but I suspect it may be because the categories you can fall into are pretty clear. Beatle love isn’t a cult like Buffy - quite the opposite, it is expected, which is one reason some folks choose to be contrarian about them, for the wrong reasons. So I guess, as I work this through, what I am saying is that perhaps the Beatles don’t have the ingredients it normally takes for a topic to get obsessed to death over in Cafe Society - not new, not a cult or outside the established hierarchy of accepted quality - in fact, at the TOP of the hierarchy of accepted quality, etc… - oh, and when we Beatles Geeks latch onto a thread, the discussion gets past what a normal citizen can discuss pretty quickly, near as I can tell.
My $.02
It’s nice that they’re including the US mono “Revolver” in the set. I’ll have to compare it to the test pressing I have of the original master tape from DAT to CD. It has the American engineer’s voice at the beginning of each side, saying “T 2442 Side A / B.” If they’ve No-Noised the new CDs, I’ll be able to tell. I did notice that they’d doctored at least one track on the first set, because on previous issues, Ringo’s bass drum pedal was squeaking. But on the new CD, it had been digitally removed.
Variations on Beatles records is a science. Every recording on every pressing from every country in the world has now been obtained, listened-to, and compared with every other version on every other record, and documented, for example, here. There actually are so many variations in mixes between mono and stereo and from certain countries that it requires a massive website to contain all the data.
To have any hope of ever hearing these different versions, you have to be really dedicated to it. You either need a lot of money and to spend a lot of time in record stores and record conventions and searching the net, or you need to be connected to other collectors. I’ve done both. I started out the first way, now I am part of a large network of collectors.
Having collected Beatles records for 42 years, it’s fair to say I don’t have a want list anymore. I mean, there are all the 45s and EPs from everywhere in the world, and the Japanese red vinyl series and the mail-order only box set and all of that stuff, but that’s just spending thousands of dollars on luxury editions of something you already have in another, less-ritzy format. I’ve settled on having at least one representation of every performance I can find. Studio, live, radio, TV, interviews, you name it!
It’s strange being at the end of Beatles collecting, except for whatever Apple decides to put out, on their own unbearably slow timetable. There is nothing new to be released, just new editions of the old stuff. Some of it has been remixed in 5.1 surround sound in 96/24 format for DVD-A. When they’ll be released is anybody’s guess.
Jeez, we’re still waiting for the remastered DVD of “Let It Be”!
It just struck me now that there’s a mistake in my first sentence above. I should have typed “Rubber Soul” where it says “Revolver.” I apologize.
This is sort of what happens to all the Beatles threads here. I post to them, and they die.
Are they ever going to release the full helter skelter recording section?
Sir, don’t worry about it - we all are convinced we are a threadkiller. I can think of tons of threads I seem to have frozen out. Countless guitar threads where I geek out on some trivia or share a playing technique and get nothin’ - just the nature of a general knowledge type of message board, right? Not everyone is interested in or capable of meeting your specifically-geeky insights into a single topic…
I love the Beatles, but I’m usually not too interested in alternate takes, etc. In most cases, the best version went on the albums.
What I want is for The Beatles to release mp3s. Blasphemy to follow: I’d like to download the gems among their early recordings without having to pay $19 for Please Please Me, etc., and all that schlock filler. But Nooooo! They have to be in a pissing contest with Apple Computers, even though Apple Corps. has been an abject failure from its conception. They might as well sue Gweneth Paltrow and Chris Martin for naming their kid Apple.
Oh, don’t be too apologetic about your geekery, Word. I suspect most people are geeks about one thing or another. I tend to geek out about pulp magazine fiction and old radio shows; the trivial details I could share with you about a pulp magazine hero called Doc Savage or the old Suspense anthology radio series would probably bore you to tears.
When it comes to the current thread, though, I suspect I would be interested in a mono Beatles recording only if:
a) it wasn’t available in stereo at all, and/or
b) the arrangement or performance in the mono recording was substantially different from the stereo version. Details like editing out a squeak in the bass drum pedal wouldn’t interest me enough even to get me to listen, let alone pay serious money for the privilege.
I’m a full-on, hardcore Beatles geek. I didn’t post earlier because I couldn’t think of what needed to be added to Biffy’s informative OP. But I always peek my head in to a Beatles thread, and usually post as well.
I don’t think this is right. At least in the case of I Saw Her Standing There, the instruments were recorded onto track 1, the vocals onto track 2, and then handclaps overdubbed onto a fresh mixdown (Take 10). I’m sure you have the “Please Me Do” set, which preserves the original Take 1 without count-in or handclaps.
Nonsuch, I was trying to give the most generic explanation I could think of without having to quote long passages of Lewisohn to explain the process to non-recording techicians. By the end of 1963 they had added some steps to the procedure, and they continued to refine them. They didn’t stick with one recording method for long.
I’ve got from-the-master-tapes recordings of all the existing takes of everything that’s managed to escape. The earliest material has them playing on L and singing on R simultaneously. As they got better at it, they’d do the backing track on L and overdub singing and whatnot on R, mixing in reverb from the EMI echo chamber. Next, they moved to mixing down the L and R while playing and/or singing live onto the mix, recording on a second machine, which led to bouncing tracks.
They even used overdubbing for their BBC sessions! They’d go in and recut their records at the Beeb specifically for broadcast so they could prove they weren’t playing records. All kinds of these performances are multiple tracks of mono. Record one, play over it on a second machine, even sometimes playing this back and accompanying its mix back onto the first machine!
For me personally, it will be worth the price of the whole set to have the version of Rubber Soul that I grew up with, specifically the version of “I’m Looking Through You” with the false start. The “correct” version has always sounded wrong to me.
Ooh, that’s a good example. I, too prefer that version. I guess there is some use in that.
Consumer Alert: Capitol Albums Volume 2 contains a mastering error. You might want to hold off before buying.
That’s the one thing I want to hear, too. I’ve got literally hundreds of Beatles recordings, with probably every alternate/mono/stereo/demo take, and that’s the single version I’ve never found anywhere.
It’s official: The Beatles catalog is being remastered.