Pop … crack … whisper … hiss … hiss … hiss “Hey … hey … hey … hey” BANG !! “Jude, don’t get it wrong. Take a sad song …” Some of you may have no idea where I’m going with this awkward onomatopoeia intro. But for many, you know exactly what these sounds are from yesterday. So before we continue, let’s take our readers of the digital generation through a play-by-play of exactly what was actually happening within the first 20 words of this article.
Long Island, New York 1982:
I sat Indian-style in my parents’ living room and went through a cardboard box of Coka-kola loaded with a vertical pile of “Beatlely” goodness. I’m talking about records. Not that of a Guinness book entry or filed tax document, but vinyl LP recordings. Long representation. These are what George Harrison called a “33 and a 1/3” and Aerosmith praised as his “great 10-inch record” … that’s it. They were ribbed, matted and black. Each was equipped with a perfect target where the paper label was glued to the lacquer. This record I had had an orange label with bold tan text that said “Capitol.” This color combination was indicative of later Capitol editions of the Beatles recordings. I was part of the first post-Beatles generation, and by the mid-to-late 1970s Capitol’s release of Beatles records was already in double digits when it came to lot numbers. He only had two fabulous “first edition” albums. These beauties had Capitol’s signature jet black background, silver text, and a rainbow-colored magic circle on the outer perimeter of the label. You’d think these gems would have been locked up.
No. Although they were under something … my butt. When I was a kid, I had the strange habit of sitting on the stack of unused records while listening to one. This particular record that he had pulled out of the inner sleeve of the album cover was titled Hey Jude. I handled it the way we all handle records back then. It was suspended between the palms of my hands; like how one would say “he’s that big” while using his hands as a visual aid. I walked the record to the phonograph record player and placed it on top of the gummy pancake … B-side up. While the cylindrical record was spinning at 33.33333 revolutions per minute, I lowered the needle arm to the start groove and sat back to the comforting sounds of: Pop … crack … whisp … hiss .. whistle … hiss “Hey … hey … hey … hey.” Wow, the album was already skipping. It was time to get up and hit the player’s deck.
POP !!
“Jude, don’t get it wrong. Take a sad song and make it better.” There we are.
What you just read was a daily activity in the early days of this Beatles fanatic. That was in 1982. For now, let’s jump the needle 28 years and delve into an unannounced rock history lesson. For you younger Beatles fans, you may still be perusing the old outdated words that make up my vivid memory and wondering about this or that. Although the biggest question mark you may have drawn is, “What the heck is the Hey Jude album?” Yes, I grew up in the great record age, the intense album art with its hidden messages in the style of Zelda and Stereo Hi-Fidelity. However, I also sadly grew up in an era of the great continental divide between Parlophone in the UK and Capitol in the USA. As strange as the Hey Jude album may sound to you, it is as strange as Beatles For Sale was to me. Let’s face it, we are all creatures of habit and we are comforted by how we grew up. My mother’s meatloaf was awful compared to my wife’s creation of the classic American dish, but I still miss it. It also means that the comfort put on the A Hard Day’s Night album was full of instrumental tracks, that “Help!” It opened with a James Bond intro, and my “Revolver” was 3 songs short of 14 tracks. The latter is a product of the release of “Yesterday … and Today” 2 months earlier so that the money-hungry Capitol could sell 27 minutes of “new” music to an unsuspecting American audience.
But when I was 8 years old, I didn’t know, nor would I have cared, that the 1970 album “Hey Jude” consisted of Allen Klein’s hand-picked songs from 1964, 1965, 1966, 1968 and 1969; blasphemy for any Beatles purist. All I knew was that this album was full of great music. How could anyone not get excited when you look at the album lineup? While I didn’t care then, it sure does matter now. I can’t stand the fact that I grew up with albums where the Beatles themselves had no idea what the album titles were or the songs that made them up. The American albums that I loved so much were a complete mystery to my heroes and something they loathed. Hear John Lennon perform “Baby’s In Black” at Shea Stadium’s first show. He goes on wrongly saying with obvious passive aggression that he’s “off the Beatles Six or something … I don’t know. I don’t have it.” Of course, “we all” know it was released on “Beatles ’65”, even if John didn’t. The Beatles hated not having control over their American releases. John in particular was concerned about this.
“We used to say, ‘Why can’t we put 14 [songs] in America you know Because we would sequence the albums how we thought they should sound and we would also work a lot on the sequencing. And we hardly care what happened in the United States because it was always different, they didn’t let us get 14, they said there was some rule or something against it. Well, whatever it is, you know? And so we hardly cared what happened to the albums in America until we started coming more and we realized that they had thrown out takes and gossip at the beginning, which used to drive us crazy. “
This was the alteration, or the slaughter that some might say, that Capitol Records would make of the Beatles’ established UK albums for the US market. It wasn’t until the advent of compact discs that fans in the United States made things clear. In 1987 the entire British catalog, and only the British one, was released in the new digital media that were changing the way we listened to music. This included the 12 studio albums the way God intended them to be, and two A- and B-side collections. For budding fans of the mid-’80s, it was almost a guarantee that they would get off on the right foot. Yet for me and many others, we were stranded like countless zombies sifting through the debris of Capitol Records greed. Where was the second album? What about The Beatles? And why the heck was “Drive My Car” on Rubber Soul? What had they done? It was as if they took the entire pre-1967 library, tossed it into the air, and let the songs fall where they could. Little did most of us know, but Parlophone had done us all a favor and FINALLY put the “Yanks” of us the way it really was, and always should have been. Yes, this new technology that used too much vinyl out of town provided the best Beatles history lesson of all. So here we are, some 23 years after those iridescent 120mm reflective plastic records gulped down the entire Beatles catalog and returned it to us in the correct and intended order. Except now, they themselves have been practically eradicated by the latest “electronic noise” in the form of digital music and its many methods of transmission. What used to be in 4 soda boxes can now be stored in something that is half the size of a Pop-Tart. While the advancement of technology is frustrating for those getting used to it in a certain way, it does do something significant for a last century act like the Beatles. Introduces them to the next generation of fans by using their medium of choice.
The choice among these fans is the iPod; a music device that has allowed them to carry 3,500 songs in their hip pockets. On November 16, 2010, Apple Computers, with its ever-changing iPod, announced that it would finally release the entire Beatles catalog for download through its iTunes store. Once again, it’s time for “Meet the Beatles.” There is no doubt that this move will see a positive rise among the iconic group’s young fan base and ensure that the Beatles remain in the public eye. Unfortunately that’s where I feel the positives will end. My biggest concern is the possibility of fans losing understanding and appreciating the band’s full albums as a complete work of art. As we well know, the miracle of iTunes is all about logging in and selecting songs out of familiarity with the title and likeness. Someone listens to Come Together on the radio, logs into iTunes, and downloads it. What this kind of music trade does is leave the other 16 songs that make up the incomparable “Abbey Road” in its 99-cent wake. When I was a kid, if I wanted to Come Together I had to bring something, Mean Mr. Mustard and his lesbian sister, Pam. Although I was raised on the “wrong” records, they were still albums, albeit compiled randomly. And while the decadent CD era legitimately presented the Beatles’ music in neat and organized song packs; This latest technology can crush those 23 years of Beatle album righteousness for this next generation. While the Beatles may have fallen for the iTunes sauce train, there are some big names that still refuse. Most of them share and defend the terrain of my aforementioned concern. Take the hard-hitting Australian classics, “AC / DC”. When asked “why”? Here’s what lead guitarist and founding member Angus Young said.
“We don’t make singles, we make albums,” says Angus. “If we were on iTunes, we know that a certain percentage of people would only download two or three songs from the album, and we don’t think that represents us musically.”
Even the exhausted country Garth Brooks is concerned about the integrity of the album. “Until we get variable prices, until we get only downloaded albums, iTunes is not a real retailer of my stuff, and you won’t see my stuff …” Brooks said.
So where does this leave us Beatles fans now that the mighty have fallen? I myself accept the association with Apple and, well, Apple has agreed. I think such a move is almost inevitable and maybe even professional suicide by some acts. However, no amount of payola can excuse the importance of the album. This will have to be cultivated and hammered down to iTune’s fangs. It will be incumbent on longtime fans, like myself, my mentor brother and best friend, not only to nurture and nurture these Beatle saplings, but also to ensure that they will fully bloom when they mature armed with the full understanding that indeed. , the tree is made up of its individual branches. The promise of this vibrant plumage lies solely in their appreciation of full album work and not in the complicated compilation of “playlists” created while plucking ripe fruit from Apple’s superstore. Capitol already did this to us by cramming us with singles and wrong collections and we all know how bare it left the pure orchard of the Beatles Album. Unlike Capitol listeners, iTunes users will have a choice. Unfortunately, it is the luxury of this choice that can be the bane of the holy album.