FILTER REISSUES

A vinyl box set of The Beatles’ first six American studio LPs in mono.

By David Fricke.

Back in the USA: The Beatles in 1964 – the unbeatable sound of conquest.

The Beatles

★★★★

1964 US Albums In Mono

APPLE CORPS LTD/UMR. LP

AMERICA AND BRITAIN are two nations separated by salt water, a common language (per George Bernard Shaw) and different Beatlemanias. The UK phenomenon in 1963 remains the gold standard for pop hysteria, a massive rush of love at the speed of light detonated by a handful of singles and an album, Please Please Me, almost half of which was covers from the club sets.

The former colonies were late to the party – EMI’s Yankee arm, Capitol Records, spent that year exercising its right of first refusal – but we caught up fast. And this deluxe, vinyl set of The Beatles’ first six American studio LPs from mono-master tapes in period sleeves (also available separately) – is hardly the full chaos. Add the cash-ins by ’63 licensee Vee-Jay plus the sudden worth of the 1961 Hamburg sessions, and nearly two dozen US albums and 45s were issued over 1964. Capitol’s trade pitch for The Beatles’ Story, a two-LP audio documentary released that November and a bonus in the box, put it bluntly: “The greatest profit package in history.”

But this helter skelter has a story of its own, a weirdly reordered, uniquely illuminating arc of breakthrough at once belying and beholden to Capitol’s mercenary disregard for the Parlophone canon (shortened LPs to save on publishing royalties; made-up platters sequenced with the logic of a roulette wheel). If Please Please Me is the first, giant step of a killer bar band led by two emerging-virtuoso composers, Capitol’s debut, Meet The

Beatles!, is that genius unleashed with visceral finesse: nearly all John Lennon-Paul McCartney originals, largely drawn from the British jump forward, late-’63’s With The Beatles. In this telling, America doesn’t stand a chance – the shotgun entrance of I Want To Hold Your Hand and I Saw Her Standing There; the hard Liverpool stares in Robert Freeman’s iconic Mod-noir cover photo – and George Harrison is a writer from the start (Don’t Bother Me).

In his 2007 book, The Beatles’ Second Album, Dave Marsh makes a convincing case for that April ’64 grab bag of With… remnants and B-sides as “an ungainly, fraudulent mess” capturing “the greatest rock’n’roll band the world has ever seen… with maximum brute force.” Here are the Fabs of Cavern and Star-Club lore, heavy on the Detroit soul – the hip rescue of Devil In Her Heart, then a ’62 obscurity by

The Donays; Lennon and Harrison’s rare lead-vocal exchange in The Miracles’ You Really Got A Hold On Me. McCartney owns the Little Richard bonfire Long Tally Sally (not yet out in the UK) and She Loves You, by then old news in Britain, closes the record like radiant, breaking news. In short, pure party from a band and year like no other.