Fifty Years of Music • The Beatles Compilation Albums, 1962-1966 and 1967-1970 • Released April, 1973
By Paul Hobbs
The Beatles ended, embroiled in a fierce battle regarding who should take over the management of their affairs. They were bleeding money. They were growing apart. But, they convened once again at EMI studios, later to be officially renamed Abbey Road Studios, to record the album, named for the road on which the studio is located.
John Lennon would later speak, dismissively, about Abbey Road, but was enthusiastic when interviewed by Alan Smith for New Musical Express in 1969. He talked about how much he and Paul were writing individually and that he was going to Paul’s to write with him at the conclusion of the interview — they were working on Abbey Road.
The narrative we got, on the other hand, was immediately redirected by the release of Let It Be, the album and accompanying film. They had been shelved indefinitely, due to the extensive editing needed on the film, and subsequent production of the album being handed over to Phil Spector as the Beatles washed their hands of it. They were released, respectively, as the last Beatle album, and a film of a band in the process of writing and recording that album. It also showed them in the process of falling apart.
The album is considered by many Beatle fans to be the weakest in their canon, and the film shows them to be, constantly, at odds with one another. It’s presented as the Beatles at the end of the line. Very depressing! And then they were gone.
I and my fellow Beatle fans were shocked and saddened. We carried on loyally following the solo careers of John, Paul, George, and Ringo, but it would never be the same. Three years crept by. It seemed like 30. And then…
The Beatles Red (1962-1966) and Blue (1967-1970) albums were released simultaneously — on April 2nd, here, and April 19th in England — in 1973. All the fanfare of this new collection of old Beatle songs, and not-as-old Beatle songs, reawakened the passion of Beatle fans everywhere. It had been three years, man! They were thirsting for more Beatles. It didn’t matter that true Beatle fans had most of this stuff in their record collections already. The two albums sold like hotcakes.
This release heralded the new trend of repackaging songs in various forms. They had the quintessential Red and Blue, Rock and Roll, Love Songs, Past Masters (Volumes 1 and 2). The album featuring all their singles that reached number one, 1, not only sold well, but catapulted the band back to the top of the charts when it was released in November of 2000.
They even repackaged the first eight Beatle albums released by Capitol in the 60s as two, separate boxed sets that also sold astoundingly well. These were the albums that Dave Dexter, the A&R man for Capitol Records, whose job it was to facilitate the integration of British acts on American radio, had assembled. EMI, who owned a 97% share of Capitol, sent all The Beatles’ singles to him, all of which he passed on before, according to some sources, he was directed to accept I Want To Hold Your Hand. He was responsible for borrowing tracks from one album to add to another, and for brazenly adding reverb to tracks that George Martin and The Beatles had painstakingly mixed to perfection before Dave got his hands on them. Sorry, I digress.
The Beatles were further reimagined, if you will, with the highly anticipated film Get Back. Here they were shown to ultimately love each other, some of the time, and on one occasion, George and John, are seen expressing an openness to work on side projects and reconvene for Beatle albums. Oh, what could have been!
At any rate, the record companies, and The Beatles are still raking it in. Those Beatles: the gift that keeps on giving.
