Groovin’ On Beatles Oddities
March 29th, 2008
This is a picture of The Beatles that I bet you haven’t seen. It’s the original concept for what became the infamous butcher cover for the initial pressings of the US LP “Yesterday and Today.” The idea was to give the impression that the woman was being disemboweled. Pleasant, eh?
The Beatles hated the way Capitol in America put out their records, and they felt their material was being butchered. Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Heart’s Club Band was the first LP that was released exactly as it was in the UK. Well, almost. It was missing the inner groove at the end of side 2. This is how it sounded.
This is how it sounded in the UK, assuming you had a manual record player that left the tone arm down.
Note the superior sound quality of the British pressing. Listen carefully at 28 seconds and you’ll hear Ringo’s shoe squeak; however, at the end, the full three seconds of the inner groove don’t play. The CD release of Pepper has it played in a loop, but this single-play recording is from an LP.
Rubber Soul records being inserted into sleeves, England 1965
One of the best known Beatles song anomalies is the false start to “I’m Looking Through You” on Rubber Soul that is missing on the UK version. But instead of that, I’ll offer the rarely heard hi-hat intro to “All My Loving.”
And finally, here’s the end of “Penny Lane” as it was originally heard on the radio in America and Canada. The horn will either sound strange to you or, if you’re old enough, it will be something very distant, yet familiar.
6 Comments Add your own
1. jeanie beanie | March 30th, 2008 at 3:23 pm
Where do I start? That original “sausage without bangers” shot is news to me. None of the boyz look to happy about it; Ringo looks about ready to hurl. I have Sgt. Peppers on CD, and I get the gibberish repeated three times, without the laughter. To me it sounds like John saying, “Never could see any other way,” but that’s just my brain trying to make sense out of it. I also remember reading that BEFORE that, he had included a few seconds of a very high tone only dogs could hear, but Gracie never seems to react to it.
What’s with the matronly women packaging the records? Anyway, they seem to be enjoying themselves: pensioners getting an extra pound note or two for their trouble, and perhaps a free copy of the record for the grandkids!
2. DOuG pRATt | March 30th, 2008 at 10:27 pm
I assume those women were the assembly line workers putting in their regular hours at EMI. I love this photo. It positively teems with humanity.
3. jeanie beanie | March 31st, 2008 at 12:51 pm
It’s obvious they love their job. Who wouldn’t? The only assembly line work I did was at Bowmar. You know what? I LOVED that job! There was a truly a sense of camaraderie there.
4. jeanie beanie | April 5th, 2008 at 8:29 am
Wait! Do I remember that Leslie had a “peel-over” of “Yesterday and Today?” Check this out:
http://www.eskimo.com/~bpentium/dontpeel.html
5. jeanie beanie | April 5th, 2008 at 8:35 am
Oh, I forgot to thank you for the rare radio demo of “Penny Lane!” Every time I hear the usual version, I have to whistle that original ending.
6. DOuG pRATt | April 5th, 2008 at 1:06 pm
I have no recollection of Leslie having one of the infamous butcher cover copies of Yesterday and Today. I’m pretty sure I looked over her copy and it wasn’t one of the paste-over jobs.
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