Meeting the Beatles, Yet Again

Back in the 1960s, my father was forever putting off the decision to buy our first color TV. He wanted to wait until they got it right. Perhaps I should have followed the same strategy with the Beatles.

Was I jumping the gun in 1964 when I bought my first copy of “Meet the Beatles”? I thought I was doing the right thing. After all, it said it right there on the album jacket: “This monophonic microgroove recording is playable on monophonic and stereo phonographs. It cannot become obsolete. It will continue to be a source of outstanding sound production, providing the finest monophonic performance from any phonograph.”

OK, I was barely 13 at the time, but it sounded like Capitol Records was offering me a pretty ironclad guarantee. For several years, I continued to buy “monophonic” Beatles’ albums as soon as they arrived in stores. These were thick slabs of vinyl that my sister and I played over and over. We didn’t worry too much about the “sound production”; we were too busy singing along.

Eventually, these mono versions were so badly marred by pops and scratches that I bought them all over again—in “new improved full dimensional stereo” that was guaranteed to sound “better than stereo has ever sounded before!” Pretty impressive.

This time Capitol Records promised “new ‘presence’ in the vocal passages; new ‘impact’ in the percussion; new ‘transparency’ in the strings and reeds; new ‘bite’ to the brass.” And guess what? The records sounded like crap. Even the vinyl was floppy and cheap.

Then in 1982 along came the compact disc. The packaging now promised “the best possible sound reproduction—on a small, convenient sound-carrier unit.” The hype from the music biz was more specific: Because these recordings were digital they would sound exactly like the original masters with no degradation in sound. We would hear the Beatles as never before! And the discs themselves could never be damaged and would never become obsolete—or so we were told.  

Ah, but there was a catch. These CDs were configured with the original British track listings, which on the early Beatles’ recordings were often quite different from the U.S. versions I had grown up with. So, in 2004, Capitol went back to the well and put out the first eight albums all over again, compiled this time “from the original U.S. master tapes.” Oh and by the way, we would hear the Beatles as never before!

Meanwhile, many of those very same songs had been repackaged into seemingly essential CD compilations. First there was “Past Masters,” which arrived in two volumes in 1988. “The Beatles/1962-1966” and “1967-1970,” which screamed “digitally re-mastered for CD,” hit stores in 1993. And the highly publicized “Anthology” came out in 1996.

And now, in 2009, the Beatles are back with yet another round of new, improved, re-mastered discs. No doubt, these are the ones that REALLY will never become obsolete.

Did Capitol records finally get it right this time? I think I’ll wait and see.

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