The Beatles: The Capitol Albums, Volume One

(Capitol)

Last month I reviewed Bruce Spizer's book, The Beatles Are Coming, his document of the initial outbreak of Beatlemania in America. Well, here's the "soundtrack album" to that book:

The Capitol Albums, Volume One is a four CD set presenting the label's first four American Beatles albums, each disc presenting one of the four albums in its complete stereo and mono formats, straight from Capitol's 1964 masters. Each is housed in a miniature cardboard replication of the original cover (even using first-pressing colortones to assure a vintage look), and the discs themselves are designed to look like the original Capitol rainbow labels of the day.

This box set marks the first official CD release of these albums, as since 1987 all Beatles CDs have been modeled after the British catalog. America's track for track licensing fees made it costly in 1964 to issue fourteen track albums, so Capitol instead issued their own eleven or twelve track collections, contents usually the bulk of a particular British album plus singles, which rarely appeared on British albums, or EP tracks. Meet The Beatles! (first released in January 1964) and The Beatles 2nd Album (April 1964) divvy up the British With The Beatles, both padded out with singles and EP sides. Something New (July 1964) grabs mostly from the British A Hard Day's Night (It was United Artists, and not Capitol who released the American soundtrack album, hence its exclusion on this set, but Capitol had permission to subsequently release their own volume of said material.) Finally, Beatles '65 (December 1964) offers eight newbies from that month's UK release Beatles For Sale, plus "I Feel Fine" and "She's A Woman" (the latest 45) and one *A Hard Day's Night* straggler.

But in addition to resequencing, these American albums also sounded noticeably different. Capitol added some (or more than "some" in a few cases) reverb and did some EQ adjusting to richen up the sound for American radio. Some fans prefer these "wetter" versions, others accuse Capitol of vandalism, and both sides often get ridiculously heated about it. Personally, I think it's case for case. I do believe particularly "Devil In Her Heart," "Thank You Girl" and especially "I Feel Fine" benefit from Capitol's handiwork, increasing the intensity. But I've also enjoyed the dryer issues of certain songs: Ringo's hihat attack on "She Loves You," always one of my fave aspects of that hit, gets lost in the shuffle on the fake stereo mix.

It isn't just Capitol's alterations that made some tracks sound different. Occasionally, America received exclusive mixes: For years, only these Capitol releases housed singles and EP cuts like "Thank You Girl," "Komm Gib Mir Diene Hand," "Long Tall Sally," "Matchbox," "I Call Your Name" and "Slow Down" in stereo. And EMI in London prepared separate mixes for America of most of the *A Hard Day's Night* tracks, meaning *Something New* housed a few mix variations, particularly the mono version ("When I Get Home" has a different vocal on one line when EMI isolated different vocal tracks to compensate for two unmatching Lennon phrasings, "I'll Cry Instead" has a verse repetition, and "Tell Me Why," "And I Love Her" and "If I Fell" have single rather than doubled vocals). And the With The Beatles tracks on the mono Meet and 2nd Album are actually the stereo mixes folded into mono, rather than actual mono mixdowns. So with this box set comes the first CD issue of many coveted Beatles oddities.

Taken together, these four albums document the excitement of Beatlemania in 1964 America. Between the hyped-up liner notes that read like 16 Magazine pieces, cover blurbs ("Electrifying big-beat performances!" the cover of 2nd Album proudly boasts) and photos of the band in musical action (unlike any British Beatles front cover), the high energy of that magical year leaps out of the packaging.

I'm ready for Volume 2.

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