The Beatles

The Beatles first four albums were:

Please Please Me
With The Beatles
A Hard Day's Night
Beatles For Sale

These were all available in stereo in the vinyl versions. The first two had a very simple form of stereo, consisting mainly of all instruments on one channel, and all vocal on the other. Better mixing appeared on the other two.

These CDs are not available in stereo which is a great pity. In particular the CD of Please Please Me sounds very dull, though the original vinyl album was reasonable sound quality and sounded bright and lively.

It is interesting to speculate why they are in mono on the CD. My guess is that it is thought to be somewhat inadequate to use such a simple two-channel stereo. Perhaps it is not thought to be worthy of a quality product. That is not my view. I would much rather have any kind of stereo, because you still have the option of playing it in mono.

Some of the mono CD tracks exist in stereo on compilation CDs.

Until 1988 there were still a number of Beatles tracks which had not yet appeared on CD. These were singles which had not appeared on albums, and the Long Tall Sally EP. In 1988 two new CDs were released simultaneously, Past Masters volumes 1 and 2. The sleeve note says, "If you have the other 13 CDs and these two, you have everything the Beatles commercially issued during their reign". This is a generous and considerate act by the record company.

"The Beatles 1962-1966" also called the Red album had been released on 19th April 1973, together with the Blue album, but added nothing new. However, with the appearance of the CD version in 1993, with all tracks digitally remastered, some extra songs became available in stereo on CD:

All My Loving (from With The Beatles)
Can't Buy Me Love (from A Hard Day's Night)
A Hard Day's Night
And I Love Her (from A Hard Day's Night)
Eight Days a Week (from Beatles for Sale)

In 2000 the singles compilation simply called "1" was released, which had further remastering.

Stereo singles
The early singles were released in mono, but where they appeared on an LP were available in stereo.

She Loves You and From Me to You were not on albums at the time, so not available as stereo album tracks like Please Please Me was. Also, while they appear on Past Masters, the Red album and '1', they are still in mono on all 3 albums. They are obtainable in stereo only by resorting to vinyl, and are on "A Collection of Beatles Oldies".

Beatles Related

Have you got all the Beatles songs?

It is well known that the Beatles, particularly Lennon and McCartney had many of their songs performed and recorded by a large number of other singers. Having a Lennon-McCartney composition was a winning formula and some such songs were number one singles. More surprising is that some songs were recorded by other people, but not released by the Beatles themselves.

Billy J Kramer and the Dakotas released some excellent songs and these must be the next best thing to the Beatles themselves.

Here are all those I know of:

Hello Little Girl was John Lennon's first ever composition, written in 1958.

Billy J Kramer, the Fourmost, and Cilla Black were all managed by Brian Epstein at the time, and their records were produced by George Martin.

Links:

Here is a great Beatles site!

I Am The Beatles - www.iamthebeatles.com

This site in Russia has good concise discographies, lyrics and other information.

http://beatles.murashev.com