Boy, do I ever remember the night the Beatles were on Ed Sullivan. My Father would not allow us to watch. So, I walked the block and heard the show booming from every window. The street was completely empty, no cars, no kids outside, no pedestrians. You could feel it in the air that something big was happening.
I too remember it. Yes, there was still tremendous opposition to rock music. My parents listened to two radio stations in New York City that played NO rock at all. I only got to hear pop and r&b at the houses of friends or on the bus during school trips.
I was 11 years old in 1964. My mom, an opera and symphony orchestra music lover, one day brought my one year younger brother and me a pop record by Bobby Rydell. She didn't know if we'd be interested or not. My brother was interested, but I played it over and over so much that mom moved the record player upstairs! Then she brought home "Meet The Beatles". This album literally changed my life! The music had SUCH an exciting and enthusiastic sound and delivery! Beatlemania was so exciting! I began miming along with the album with a Roy Rogers plastic-stringed guitar in front of a large mirror, holding it left-handed because that was the way my favorite Beatle, Paul, held his guitar. My parents had divorced when I was five, but one day my visiting dad caught me "performing" in front of the mirror and said, "You're right-handed! If you're gonna play a guitar, you'd better learn to hold it the other way 'round!" My mom, seeing I was serious about my love of music, bought me a cheap Sears box guitar, and I spent every day after school and weekends sitting in front of the stereo learning the bass parts, note for note, on that box guitar. Next Christmas, my dad bought me a red Hagstrom Kent model bass and a Magnatone Estey amplifier that my brother, who got a 6-string guitar, and I could both plug into. I began performing with a local band, called "The Ramrods" (LOL!) when I was 13 years old, playing "Top 40" covers. We had our own teen club, made a 45 record, were once on a local "Bandstand" type TV show hosted by George Clooney's father, Nick; hooked up with a local AM radio DJ (Bob White, WSAI-AM 1360 aka John Patrick Teiken) for some gigs, and played all around our area for a few years. I'll be 70 years old this year, and I've been in and out of bands all my life, all because of The Beatles. The Meet The Beatles album started a lifelong love of music and performance with local bands for me, and many famous musicians, when asked, also trace their musical heritage back to hearing and seeing The Beatles. For me and countless others in the U.S., it all started with the Meet The Beatles album!
@@stephencooke4569 I'm from Northern Kentucky, just across the Ohio River from Cincy. Not sure why, but I never tuned in to that sitcom, though the clips I've seen of it and references to it all seem to be very funny!
I was hooked on the Beatles from about the time I learned to walk. At that age I decided I would be Ringo..then got a little older and realized I couldn't actually BE him..but I could be like him. My uncle had a Pearl drum kit..and by the age of 4 I was a practicing little drummer. I spent 35 years making a decent living playing music.. that's all because of those lads from Liverpool. A dream came true at a Ringo All star show. Ringo walked over and told me he liked my shirt. I almost fell over. (It was a tank top from his first All star tour.. that's one of my Beatle's moments)
At the time of release in the U.S, most people only had mono record players. I first heard the song on a car radio (AM) in a 1951 Ford. ROCK music made a quantum leap that day.
My grandmother bought this album for my mom the week it was released (my grandmother loved the Beatles too, she was a hip lady). It was this album that 10 year old me stumbled across in 1989. I was hooked, I listened to that album over and over and over before slowly making my way thru the rest of the catalog. Sadly the cover was destroyed in a flood a few years back. Even though the record was salvaged and still plays, I'm still heartbroken over having lost that cover specifically. Thank you for the wonderful trip down memory lane!
I had a whole collection destroyed through a freak pipe burst. Not only Beatles were lost but a vast collection of Sinatra and SO many others from different genres. So I feel your pain.
In Feb 1964 our family lived in Woodland Hills, a suburb of Los Angeles. I was not quite 5 years old and had a friend (Dwight) who was my age and lived around the corner. My older sisters (14 and 10 at the time) would often babysit us when our parents went out. Dwight's Father worked for Capital Records. He received an early release of Meet The Beatles in January. He gave a copy to my sisters. They played it 24/7. My sisters went bonkers over the Fabs. That album sadly is long gone, but its impact never truly faded. Great video Andrew. Cheers, RNB
As a Brit, I always looked down on the US albums as not the real thing. But then I picked up a copy of The Beatles' Second last year and was struck by how great it sounded to hear those tracks in that order with those mixes - and now you've made a great case for seeking out a copy of this one. Thanks as ever!
I'm from the UK too and a few years ago I inadvertently picked up a 2nd hand copy of the 2014 US Albums series of Rubber Soul. It has the album in mono and stereo on one CD, so as I despise the stereo mixes, I though I'd get it. However, when I got home I realised that certain tracks were missing, so I wiki'd it and discovered the world of the US albums, lol. I ended up getting Help, Yesterday and Today and Revolver in their US formats primarily cos it's the only way you can get these tracks in proper mono in the UK without having to buy the huge box set. Help is the actual soundtrack, with instrumental stuff, gatefold sleeve, very nice. Yesterday & Today is a great album in it's own right, great track list. Revolver... many people dislike the US revolver because of the omission of I'm Only Sleeping, And your Bird Can Sing and Dr. Robert (which are on Y&T), but I like the US version too. I've still made my own CD's of Rubber Soul & Revolver with the correct track order. I've been trying to get the 2014 US version of "Meet the Beatles" for a while now.
Growing up with these original Capitol albums, I know personally the effect they had on me, my friends, my school, country and the world. Meet The Beatles is one of the greatest LPs ever made. Period. Still spinning it 60 years later. In mono.
This album is so iconic for me, and really set me on the road to becoming a musician, and later producer and music-publisher. College friends of my parents came back from a trip to England in 1964, and witnessing Beatlemania first-hand, bought a copy of "With The Beatles" and brought it back to Boston, MA, USA. They then brought it to a dinner party my parents threw, which essentially turned into a listening-party. My father was classically trained in piano and composition, and years later told me that he remembered that night, and his feeling that the world had changed...for the better. He'd grown up on 50's rock-n-roll, but these guys from England were doing something different. In 1970, when i was 6, I got my first record player, an early, affordable stereo setup, and among some folk records by acts like The Weavers and The Kingston Trio, and a handful of kids' albums...the copy of "Meet The Beatles" that my mom had run out to purchase when it became available, also wound up in my little "starter collection." I listened to those records going to sleep every night. That album was a real "friend" of mine, and has never let me down.
I was 7 when The Beatles were on Ed Sullivan. I watched it with my Dad. The controversy over their hair was a really big deal with the adults. It's hard to relay how much that one thing impacted society at the time. All I knew was they were cool! I had Beatle Boots by the end of the week, and was combing my hair down in the front. I've been a fan ever since.
Really neat you mentioning the direction of combing hair. Franklin Wilkie, the bassist who stepped into Tommy Caldwell's spot in the Marshall Tucker Band (at Toy Caldwell's request, after Tommy died) lives in my hometown and is a good acquaintance of mine. He once told me that same thing in a conversation about the weekend that the Beatles played on E.S. Show for the first time. He said "..all the boys went home from school the Friday of that weekend with their hair combed back, and when we all came back to school the following Monday, we all had combed our hair forward..."
@3:40 - Canadian album released before USA ... that explains why I see so many of that album in the states .. I think quite a few were directly imported into USA due to that.
I remember hearing this album a couple of weeks before they were on Ed Sullivan. One of my sisters came home from her after school job with the album under her arm. "Look what I just bought!" Two of my sisters and I played it over and over again the first night the album was in the house - I think we listened to it three times in a row. The three of us would frequently listen to music together - usually just a bunch of singles, but even on the odd time we'd play an album, we never would play one more than once in an evening - but that night we did. I hadn't heard any rock and roll on the radio in ages (it was all crooners and pop singers on the radio - novelty songs - Little Richard was doing "By the Light of the Silvery Moon" and stuff like that) - so "I Want to Hold Your Hand" / "I Saw Her Standing There" sounded pretty rocky for the time. It sounded great on the car radio - always my measure if a single was going to be a hit or not. That particular single jumped out of the speakers and would compel you to turn up the volume. We liked the single quite a lot - but the album - that blew away every expectation we had. We needed repeated listens because we didn't know what we'd just heard! First off, albums back then were usually pretty awful affairs - a bunch of lame material, cranked out watching the clock, with one or two hits with the B-sides, and a bunch of same-sounding filler. But not this time. We loved the single, so thought the album might be pretty good - but we weren't prepared. We were really impressed with their harmonies - they reminded me of the Everly Brothers - and the fact that they wrote almost all the songs and played nearly all the instruments - nobody else did that; we were impressed by the variety of music on the album. Even the guitars on "Till There Was You" seemed musical and different (my mom even liked that one!). The Beatles hit with people on so many levels simultaneously - and that's the only verbal description I can give of their impact on people at the time. They were different from everything else on the radio at the time, and for a few months in 1964, nobody else could get played! Their effect was seismic.
Great story mate. What did you think of the subsequent Beatles output? The first LP I ever got when I was 10 was Abbey Road because my big cousins played it all the time!
@@alexcampbell3032 Like almost everyone, I anticipated every album they ever made and pounced on them as they came out, and proceeded to play them into the ground until I could sing all the parts (except I could never do Paul doing Little Richard....never could manage that.) When "Meet the Beatles" came out, I was 11 - so I can relate.
Another great video Andrew. Well done. One minor point - and Paul White would be cross with me if I didn't point this out to your followers. A December 2, 1963 release date for Canada's Beatlemania! Lp is often cited (incorrectly), but that is not the actual release date for the first Beatles Canada LP. Dec 2/63 was actually Capitol of Canada's "vault date" .. that was the date the EMI master tape was returned to Capitol's tape vault from the mastering company, RCA Victor. The Lp was officially released in Canada, and available in record shops, one week before, on Monday, November 25, 1963. This release date was just one business day after the UK Parlophone release date for With The Beatles. In the 1990s, I visited the EMI tape vault in Mississauga, Ontario, Canada and I carefully checked the tape vault logs versus the release dates. Capitol's Meet The Beatles finally got a Canadian release in Canada in 1967, and it was initially sold through the Capitol of Canada record club in both mono and stereo editions.
This was literally how I met the Beatles. And I met them as a second generation fan. I was in fourth grade. My family moved into our new home, and someone had left behind a copy of meet the Beatles. I instantly fell in love with the album. I played it over and over again. it is ironic that I was introduced to the Beatles by the same album most Americans were. Just 10 or 12 years later. Had the same effect on me.
As a child I remember one of my older brothers Vee-Jay pressing of '' Introducing The Beatles '' playing on his Panasonic home stereo. I believe that started his hobby of purchasing vinyl almost every week , thus accumulating his collection to more than 2000 mostly Rock vinyl records and later in the 1980's another collection of CD's. I also remember my oldest brother blasting his The Beatles '' Second Album '' on his very heavy Zenith foldable luggage style record player . It seems like if it was just yesterday but that was many many moons ago. As for me , back in 1988 I managed to purchase The Beatles blue box set in vinyl which I immediately equalized to my taste and DOLBY recorded all the albums to TDK metal bias cassettes. 35 years later those cassettes still sound as vibrant and clear as they did for the very first time.
My sister born in 1950 was a Beatle maniac. And I (born 56) got to hear all the 45s and albums. It was an incredible impact on our lives. The moptops replaced the crewcuts and slick backed Elvis styles. The guitars and 3part vocals and inventive songs wowed us and made a lot of other music dull. The fab four raised the bar of pop music to new heights. Everyone tried and failed to keep up to them but it brought out the best in the Beach Boys, Animals, Kinks and Rolling Stones
I appreciate that you say "I feel...", or "I think..." when discussing recordings. Too many on the internet present their opinions as facts. Every piece of music touches each person in an individual way, and a track that one person always skips is someone else's favorite.
I like that too. It’s always Andrews own perspective and always asks.. what do you think ? Leave a comment. He’s certainly a Professional when it comes to his posts and he’s done his research.
It always warms my Canuck heart to see props given to Paul White and Capitol Canada. I've been a Beatles fan for 40 years, and yet never had a vinyl copy of Meet the Beatles since I had hand-me-down copies of the Canadian LPs, Twist & Shout, Beatlemania With the Beatles and Long Tall Sally (and I was more interested in the middle-to-late Beatles era anyway). But even after Meet the Beatles was issued in Canada, Beatlemania With the Beatles remained in print here until the early 1980s, and I didn't have a copy of MtB until that first box set with the U.S. albums on it, and playing it, it wasn't hard to imagine the impact that it had on American teens. Thanks for the insight into how the track rearrangement makes it a stronger album in many ways, although I still bristle at the policy of cutting songs and making new albums out of whole cloth with the leftovers. At least the Kinks didn't have to suffer that indignity after their first couple of albums, and they remained intact from Kontroversy onward.
Ironically before you communicated the intention to address the 'Meet The Beatles ', I played it in its entirety for the first time in decades. I'd forgotten how fun it was to hear. Just yesterday, my Brother and I compared all the White Albums and concluded the Dutch was the best. Then for fun I played him the full stereo version 'I Want to Hold Your Hand' mixed in Australia. It's on the Beatles Number One album. It's rather an unique master. It was a delight to listen to it again!
My jaw dropped to the floor when I first heard IWTHYH on Past Masters. No reverb. You can actually hear the guitars clearly. I was raised in the L.A. area so Capital we’re the only versions I heard until the 70’s. I now feel we were ripped off
I felt Capitol ripped us off when I got my imported from England copy of The Beatles Collection box set of original Beatle LPs. I later augmented it with the German Magical Mystery Tour LP and, of course, the Past Masters 2 LP set.
CBS really cross promoted Beatlemania heavily. They produced a Beatles tribute band, The Ladybugs from the three Petticoat Junction girls and Sally James aka Shelia Kuehl (Zelda on Dobie Gillis (Velma)). They appeared on Ed Sullivan as an act a month after the Beatles in March 1964, then on an episode of Petticoat a couple nights later singing "I Saw 'Him' Standing There". CBS really promoted the Beatles heavily and to both kids and parents. They went with the Bye Bye Birdie angle in screaming crowds and parents coming around, TV having learned a lesson with Elvis to soft peddle Beatlemania so as to avoid early controversy. Capitol, as you said, included a few Hit Parade and mellow tunes for them so the parents would not protest. Petticoat Junction was full of "good girls" so if they were OK then it must be OK. This might be the first TV spin-off BeatleBand leading up to The Mosquitos, The Honeybees and finally The Monkees.
There’s something that most Radio listeners of the time (and even most of the streaming listeners of today) don’t know anything about. I can’t really explain it here. It would take an entire article to explain how it does what it does. It’s a thing called “Audio Processing”. Put very simply, the signal is sent through a dedicated device that compresses and limits the audio levels, and it’s what made a song seem to LEAP out of the radio back in the day (if it was adjusted correctly by the station’s Chief Engineer). Many were the times, before I’d made the Radio business my living, that I’d buy a record (album or single) and it just didn’t “pop” the way it did when heard on the radio. The actual record on my turntable seemed lifeless by comparison. This was especially true of rock and roll records, The Beatles included. But once the same records were put through an Audio Processor, which would compress and limit the different frequency bands separately, then put each channel’s high, midrange and low frequencies back together, that a song would have the much more lively sound it had on the radio. The Beatles’ songs mentioned in this video are where I first noticed this phenomenon. If you’ve ever noticed this, you now know a little about why.
You are so correct to say it hit on an emotional level! It did on a creative level too. It was NEW! In sound and energy. We kids in the US were knocked out! Great show again Andrew!! See ya next time!👍🎶💚!
I bought this album by myself when I was 7 years old in the Bronx, New York - I can still remember how exciting it was ! ! In the early 60s I got only the mono releases as we had only a mono system at the time. When "Yesterday... And Today" came out it was only released in stereo, and it was odd playing it on our mono system :-(! I wish I could´ve gotten an original buther cover, but I didn´t find out about it until 1982. But I did get the sticker of it in the Capitol CD box set :-)! I really enjoy your videos, to be able to discover so many things about The Beatles I had never known. The group is still so special to me - brings back so many great memories of my childhood ! ! Next year I'll be able to celebrate 60 years of following the group :-)!
Great video! I got my first copy of Meet The Beatles in 1979 when I was 10 years old. A school friend's mom gave it to me because she thought it was cute that a 10-year-old in 1979 could be so obsessed with the Beatles! It was a first pressing, the same copy she had had since 1964. I was over the moon when she said I could take it home and keep it. To me it was a priceless treasure from another era, to her as an adult I suppose it was just a fifteen-year-old album that she didn't mind giving away. I'll never forget taking it home and playing it over and over, flipping from side one to side two and back again countless times. It's still my favorite record, and my pick for most exciting album of all time. A perfect crystallization of the euphoria of Beatlemania, and a perfect way for America to meet the Beatles.
There was also a way to tell which coast the record itself came from by the numeral one on the label. One had just a "stick" while the other had a left sided "flag" on the top of the "stick". Mine is an east coast copy with the brown lettering on the front cover and the "stick" number one on the label.
My parents bought me a cheap portable cassette player for Christmas 1975. At twelve years of age I hadn’t yet developed any musical preferences, so it took a little coaxing from my best friend to convince me to buy my first Beatles record. Totally unfamiliar with Beatles music I went to the record store and after looking through the Beatles bin decided to start with their first album. Not having my own record player, I bought the cassette version of Meet The Beatles. I rode my bike home and popped the tape in my player and was greeted with I Want To Hold Your Hand and I Saw Her Standing There. I was immediately hooked! Even though the music was playing through a small three inch speaker, the music was infectious and exciting. Meet The Beatles was my introduction to the Beatles and began a life long passion. Forty-seven years and hundreds of LP’s and 45’s later I am still a huge Beatles fan and never tire of listening to their music.
In Britain we missed the single moment (Ed Sullivan) and single release (Meet The Beatles) that the Americans benefitted from. Meet The Beatles seems to crystallise all that excitement. Sunday Night at the London Palladium was important, but it felt like Britain had a building excitement over repeated releases rather than one big bang. Great video again, Andrew.
Thank you. You certainly covered all aspects of this record. As a listener who was an impressionable 12 years old when the album first appeared, I attest to the powerful impact it had on me and many of my friends at the time. Keep up the good work.
I guess we're very very close in age. I actually preferred the musical style of the DC5, Gerry & The Pacemakers and Peter & Gordon, but none of the other British bands recorded LPs as outstanding as The Beatles.
@@GeraldM_inNC I liked some of the other Britsh groups like Moody Blues, Eric Clapton but my musical horizons really expanded with Frank Zappa, Led Zepplin (first album only), Jimi Hendrix, etc.
Emotional level is exactly the right term to describe the impact Meet The Beatles had on me. I had the mono version and played it to worn. I would say it kicked-off a cultural change here in the States one that had been brewing for a year or so in music. It makes me shake my head that Beatles records ended-up with Vee Jay and Swan. Capitol treated Sinatra pretty shabby as well. Great video.
@@phillipanderson7398 No, I mean Capitol in this case. I understand his Columbia experience but I’ve read a number accounts of his not feeling supported by Capitol which ultimately led to him establishing Reprise. Frank even re-recorded many of his popular Capitol recordings on Reprise so the Capitol songs would not be played on radio. The story of ‘There’s A Flaw In My Flue’ here’s an account from a 1990 New York Times magazine article: “Frank liked the question and said he'd heard the song on Bing Crosby's Kraft Music Hall radio show, a segment called ''The Flop Parade,'' and he thought it was funny; what's more Bing had never recorded it. So Frank - who felt that the executives at his record company never really listened to his songs - wanted to make that point; and he asked Nelson Riddle to orchestrate ''Flue'' for an opening slot in an upcoming record. ''When they played it,'' Frank said, ''one of the record company guys says to me, 'What is this?' and I said, 'It's a love song.' I said, 'There's a flaw in my flue, beautiful.' '' And so it flawlessly became, and Frank made his point doubly, with a leg pull that stands as a comic gem.” And the Capitol execs released it. Great recordings aside Frank apparently didn’t feel supported at Capitol. Even after he left Capitol released budget albums of his older recordings. In the early 2000’s they were still at it releasing the horrendous ‘Entertainer Of The Century’ CD’s of his albums, with the stereo masters (instead of the preferred mono masters which are superior) and lots of added reverb. If you want to hear good quality Capitol album CD’s get the out of print UK box set with excellent mono versions of his early albums and pretty good stereo remasters of the later albums.
That was one terrific dissertation on the album. Well done! I bought it as a 14 year old in 1964 and never looked back thereafter. Talk about fabulous music memories ‼️
I still have the mono copy I brought in February 1964 (9 years 1 month old) after seeing them on Ed Sullivan. Has the number "5" on the lower-left, backside. I was mad during the Sullivan performance because the screaming girls interfered with my listening. My parents did not like the record but they never chastised me for playing it. No longer playable but I won't part with it. It is on the wall in my "Inner Sanctum". My record collection is an audio version of a photo album.
Interesting factoid - Meet The Beatles was not introduced in Canada until February 1967, after it was decided to standardize the catalogue with the US version. Beatlemania! had already been deleted from the Canadian Catalogue. However, it was brought back in 1971, meaning both albums would be available in the catalogue until they stopped pressing Beatles vinyl in 1987.
If this channel has taught me something, that is: Dave Dexter Jr. = Bad 😠 Harry Moss = Good 😊 An overlooked pair of villain and hero in the Beatles canon. On a side note. This was the first Beatles piece of vinyl I got. In november 2010 I bought a 1970 mexican edition (because I live in Mexico) of this album when I was just getting in to the beatlemania. It was a very worn record and not in the best condition but for me it was like a milestone in my life as a beatles fan and the beginning of 13+ years collecting records.
Then there's Dick Rowe of Decca Records, who refused to sign The Beatles to a contract because he believed that guitar bands were soon going to go extinct. No doubt that was wishful thinking on his part. Imagine how many millions of pounds his stupidity cost Decca!
Please take the fork outta Meet the Beatles. For the first time and every time afterward I was jolted to my soul whenever I heard "I Want to Hold Your Hand." It was a shiny, happy sound I had never experienced in my sleepwalking teenage life. The vocals, the beat, the guitars and the handclaps have stunned me for well over half a century. The tune began to divide me from all the generations but my own. Famous conservative William F. Buckley, Jr had a different opinion: "The Beatles are not merely awful. They are so unbelievably horrible, so appallingly unmusical, so dogmatically insensitive to the magic of the art, that they qualify as crowned heads of anti-music." God bless the commenters on this great video. You knew what it was all those years ago. We will always be ONE....
Thanks for another great video, Andrew! My older siblings had "Meet The Beatles," "Something New," "Early Beatles," and "Yesterday and Today," and I played those all the time when I was a kid. I can tell you that your theory about the "parent-pleasing" track listing held true, at least in my house: I remember my parents and grandparents saying "Oh, isn't that nice?" when "Til There Was You" came on. When I started buying albums, I decided to go in Capitol-chronological order, starting with "Meet The Beatles" which came on an Apple label in the 1970s. That album always held a special place in my musical development, and when the CDs were released in 2004 it was like the return of a favorite book or movie. I eventually ran across a terrible bootleg of "Introducing" in the 1980s, and it just didn't compare to "Meet." Thanks again!
Thank you and GREAT JOB ! I’ve been confused why I remembered owning and listening to ( daily ) my album titled Meet the Beatles . So many references are With the Beatles . I live in Los Angeles , so now I understand . As a 8-9 year old girl I heard melodies and Harmonies for the first time, and feel in love with the Beatles and with MUSIC ! I still have a bad case of Beatle Mania that I cherish every day ! I cried when Now and Then hit #1!!! XXXOOO To ALL the FANS , we are all FAB ! Meat Free Mondays ! Judy
Another great video! However, I will add that the early west coast copies have the brown Beatles font, and olive green seems to be late 64- early 65. I have the earliest stereo issue west coast pressing with the brown font on the cover. Also, the cassette of Meet The Beatles stayed in print until at least 1995. I was working in a record store at the time and the cassette remained a steady seller.
I bought Meet the Beatles with my own money at 6 years old in Feb 1965. It was not long after that my mother got me my first acoustic guitar from Montgomery Wards. She taught me my first 3 chords and I was hooked for life. I think it was another 3 or 4 years before I bought my 2nd album, "Are You Experienced" by Jimi Hendrix. I got my first electric guitar with S&H Greenstamps.
Back in 1981 I was at some sort of a thrift store in Brooklyn NY and they had a record section. I came across a mono copy of "Meet the Beatles" with the black label and color band. Also a mono copy of "Beatles 65", same label and a mono copy of "A Hard Day's Night" with the black United Artist label.
Just found the Scranton pressing in my albums. When my grandmother passed I went thru her cabinet stereo and found the album. I remember asking her back in the 80’s if she remembered buying it. She said no!
I became a Beatles fan at age 14, when the CDs were coming out in 1987. So I’m from that second generation of US fans that grew up with the standardized UK catalog. I sort of looked at the US catalog with disdain. But in the years since, I appreciate just how great this record is and how impactful it was. Meet the Beatles and the US Rubber Soul are records I turn to often.
Yet another wonderful, well researched presentation! I have a 1970s Japan Apple reissue LP of Meet the Beatles which has all their previous UK singles in genuine stereo (except for "She Loves You" & "Love me Do" which are mono) with the red Beatles! & Obi on the cover but no color vinyl. This particular configuration of the LP really generates a lot of fun and positive energy.
Great summary! - my older sister bought this album right after it came out in early '64, and after a few spins she let me, just three and a half, play it TO DEATH on my little portable record player. I was hooked on the Beatles for life, and still own the beat-up copy, which crackles and pops all the way through from all those times with the harsh needle (and operator)! A minor note - our copy was purchased in the San Francisco area, with the "6" on the lower right corner indicating the LA plant source, as you point out, BUT the "BEATLES" lettering is tan, not dark green. I believe that dark green color came out on later copies of the album.
Thanks Andrew! This was my very first Beatles album that was given to me. I actually still have that same copy and it is not going anywhere, it has tremendous sentimental value. I absolutely love this album. I may be a 3rd gen Beatles fan but it has a lot of nostalgia. Thanks again. I think I'm going to go put this album on.
My uncle gave his copy of Meet The Beatles in 1976, along with the Hey Jude LP. Once I heard the opening notes of I Want To Hold Your Hand... I was hooked! What an AWESOME album and is one of the important and historic albums of the 20th century. Highlighting all original songs but one, it's so strong and doesn't sound cheap.
I can still remember how exotic the UK With the Beatles looked to me as a kid when I encountered it for the first time. Like a lot of Beatles fans in the US, in the early 70s, I grew up with the Capital LPs and was completely unaware of the UK versions. That changed one day when a local record store started featuring an "import" section for their Beatles records. Flipping through I was completely taken with the sleek and simple look of "With the Beatles", especially when compared to Capital's Meet the Beatles. On that day I purchased "With the Beatles" with the money I had been given as an Easter present. I think it must've been around 1972 or so. So, while I agree with your assessment of "Meet the Beatles" as having a more commercially vibrant packaging, it's the sleek, understated, and IMHO more artistically pleasing B&W "With the Beatles" that gets my vote.
I was in 6th grade 1964 went to a boy girl party and one of the girls put on meet the Beatles on the record player I was amazed how good the songs were even the ones I never heard at that time. Most albums of that time had one or two good songs
Not being an American I was not aware of this US capitol record "Meet the Beatles" or any of the others they issued for the US market. It wasn't until I read that superb book "The Beatles forever" by Nicholas Schaffner in the late 70s did I know about these US versions. Even to this day there are probably millions of Beatles fans who still haven't heard of "Meet the Beatles" if your not American!
Your insight into the special nature of this early Beatles album is spot on! After a lifetime of loving the Beatles, last year, I re-discovered the joy and energy of this album, and proceeded to listen to it. No less than 250 times in a space of less than six months. That is, I could not tired of it. Well, actually, it was with the Beatles that I was listening to which I guess is close enough! I love the covers and please Mr. postman is my absolute favorite.
I'm an American who was kid in the late-70s/early-80s but was somehow able to grow up on the UK releases due to some crazy anomaly of a small town yard sale. When I first saw the US versions I was astonished and disgusted (particularly by Revolver). But The Beatles are still The Beatles even when they're missing songs and getting drowned in reverb.
10:40 Fun fact, since in Chile With The Beatles was released first in 1964, Please Please Me when released later that year and the band still being a brand new group it was named "Otro de Los Beatles" (Another One From The Beatles) with a similar cover style with black and white pictures. The tracklist of all the albums were the same of the UK versions, only the first 4 having original names, the most remarkable was Beatles for Sale renamed as "Los Beatles Cantan para Usted" (The Beatles Sings for You). The only two original Capitol albums released here were the The Beatles Story and Hey Jude, but renamed as "Compatible" when released on cassette, because being one of the first Beatles albums released on stereo here, when it cmae out on vinyl neither the cover or the disc labels had the album name printed on them, however the cover only said "Mono-Stereo Compatible".
This was the second vinyl album I bought when i was starting to collect vinyl records! I got it back in 2013 when I was 14, and it is one of my most cherished albums. I have listened to it for 10 years, and it never gets old!
Wow. I came here from the link on the With The Beatles video. I had no idea there would be so many surprises and facts I was unaware of. Really great work here on a subject that seems to have a never-ending wellspring of info.
I remember my mother letting me stay up to watch Ed Sullivan on Sunday February 9, 1964, I was 8 years old. In my mind, things got off to a slow start with “All My Loving”, followed by “Till There was You”. Things got more interesting with “She Loves You” and by the second segment of “ I Saw her Standing There” and finishing with “ I want To Hold Your Hand” I was hooked. For the next two Sundays I was glued to the TV at 8pm. Thanks to my Mom lighting the fuse I became a lifelong Beatles fan. She remembered what she felt like when she saw Elvis Presley on Ed Sullivan and she made sure I didn’t miss out. She went and bought “Meet The Beatles” for us the next day and let me have possession of that album to start my collection. It wasn’t long before “Introducing The Beatles” was added to our collection. I can’t remember if they were Mono or Stereo versions. It didn’t matter as they were played on a cheap record player with a nail instead of a needle. Another Capitol Records triumph.
I grew up with the UK releases. But I’m not one to dismiss the US albums. To me they are novel and a great way to listen to the songs we love in a different context. Reverb included.
I played to death the British version of "Help", that had the songs from the movie on one side and unreleased Beatle material on the other side. I played it only a zillion times. The American version was simply the movie soundtrack, and I had no interest in hearing the movie background material.
This was truly the first LP that I got introduced to by my aunt. She was a young woman in 1964 when she bought an original olive mono vinyl copy. When I went to visit her as a kid around 1980, I was fascinated by not only the cover but the print copy itself. I read it and re-read it every chance I had. By the time I got to play it, it had been "well loved" but no matter, I truly enjoyed every track. I believe I even made a cassette copy which I promptly wore out. 🤣As you said, it was not about the quality but the music itself. I will always have those fond memories.
Meet The Beatles and Beatles 65 are incredibly nostalgic albums of my life. They are the only Beatles albums I remember listening to before getting myself a copy of Beatles 1 on CD in 2009 and becoming a Beatles fan for life. I was born in 1996, so I’m very late to the game, but my Dad was born February 9th 1960 and remembers seeing The Beatles Ed Sullivan on tv on his 4th Birthday. My grandfather(who passed away nearly a year ago) had Beatles 65 on vinyl back in the day(not that he was a big fan of groups like Beatles and others, but he was really into Elvis, Carl Perkins, Chuck Berry, Johnny Cash, etc…), and the record itself somehow still managed to stay in his possession when I was going through his old records many years back. My Dad worked for a bit in the family cement business, the company truck had a cassette player, I remember my dad playing Meet The Beatles and Beatles 65 on cassette when I was younger. I can still remember hearing I Want To Hold Your Hand, I Saw Her Standing There, and I Wanna Be Your Man in slightly higher pitch from the player and looking at the cassette cover(like the one in this video). I have those 2 same cassettes from my dad in my collection today and they still play good. My Dad is a Rock and Metal guy, but when it comes to The Beatles he easily prefers tracks from their early career(UK releases Please Please Me to Rubber Soul). He can never get into the later stuff no matter how much I tried, even the rocking stuff from The White Album, Abbey Road, and Let It Be. lol
Thanks so much for doing a video on this record Andrew! This was the first Beatles album (and first album period) that I owned. It was my 11th birthday present in July 1982 and I played it on my mom’s old suitcase record player and just played it endlessly. I didn’t skip over anything. I needed to buy another copy a few years later because I played it so much. This was and is an exciting listening experience. The liner notes on the back are a little corny but I suppose that was standard for the day. Nice to hear a little history on Vee Jay records. Bruce Spizer’s book on Vee Jay from 1998 is such a great source on the subject. Thanks again!
The Ed Sullivan appearance and Meet The Beatles were life changing experiences for me. Things would never be the same after that. I grew up with the Capitol records, and though I won't listen to them now, I think Meet The Beatles was a good intro at the time. Finding the UK lps for the first time in 1970 was the next major revelation. As with all the butcher job Capitol records now, Meet... seems anachronistic. I totally agree with your assessment of the energy on the earlier Beatles albums. It's something that's far too often overlooked. The energy on Please Please Me , and the next few albums is so lacking on the post MMT albums. Thanks for another fine video, Andrew,
I noticed that when "Meet The Beatles" reached Number One on the charts, after the first Ed Sullivan appearance, that "Introducing The Beatles", by VeeJay, was Number Three, following "The Singing Nun". I remember all of these records, being thirteen at the time.
An Americanized Beatle album that worked on so many levels not all U.S. releases did.although imo Rubber Soul was sequenced perfectly gave it a folkier feel and flow. The UK release is great too but to my ears US wins on that one
Great Video Andrew! I have 1978 repressing of Meet The Beatles on the purple Captiol label. Form Mono I have the 1964 rainbow Captiol I was a 2nd generation Beatles fan 1974 but as a kid everyone I knew loved the Beatles!!
I just want to give a shout out to Capitol Records’ “The Beatles Songbook” by the Hollyridge Strings which came out on the rainbow label sometime just after “Meet The Beatles”, it sounds really nice, even for what it is.
The Vee-Jay records were always a mystery to me, thanks for clearing that up. I have a near mint copy of the Los Angeles pressing of Meet the Beatles with the original inner sleeve that I absolutely cherish. I used to buy these for a buck back in the day and give them to my friends and grand nephews. I love this album for the joy that these songs bring and the fond memories of that exciting and transformational time. Excellent video.
I was also seven. Recall the night clearly. The hair, suits, and Cuban heel boots were dynamite, a favorite expression at the time, or boss, and the music just blew everyone away. My jazz pianist father made no comment, nor did he when one day I asked him why he didn’t or couldn’t play like the Beatles. He just sat at the piano and played every song without hesitation, then walked away. Thus began my schizophrenic relationship with music.
I was born in October 1963 and am the youngest of 10 kids. My older sibs all became Beatles fans when they played on the Ed Sullivan Show, February 9th, 1964. So, I grew up in a Beatlemania household. By the time I was around 6 years old, I started listening to my sibs Beatle albums, and becoming fascinated with them and music in general (a life-long passion). Meet The Beatles was my first Beatle "bonding" experience, and it really kicked in when I "discovered" girls (!!) around 1971. Tracks like "This Boy" and "If I Fell" (from the "Something New" album) were the soundtrack music of my ardor (passion, indeed). So I used to sit in the living room, in Dad's big leather chair (next to the stereo and bookcase) and listen to them for hours. I would read the liner notes and gaze upon my heroes! John Lennon was my first hero, but I loved all of them. I credit Ringo as my inspiration for becoming a drummer -- along with my brother Rick (coincidentally, the two Richards led me to drumming) -- and songs like their version of "Slow Down" just about made me want to climb the walls with excitement! God, that song is a barn-burner! Meet the Beatles launched my love of music, drumming, and art (I am a writer also). By the way, the Capitol album "The Beatles' Story" was also very instrumental in my early fandom. Just hearing the sound of the screaming Beatles fans -- in the first 3 minutes of the album -- blew my mind. Also, the interview with the two female fans, there in the early part of side 1, really made it real. I was just really interested in what was going on, because I was so young at this point and did not know much about the world or anything -- but I knew the Beatles rocked! Awesome album. Also, you should check out The Smithereens tribute album to Meet The Beatles, called "Meet The Smithereens"! They play all the songs from the album, on vintage instruments/equipment and it is amazing! I love that tribute album and that band! Great stuff!
Thanks for this video, and your insight on "Meet the Beatles" place in the Beatles' discography. I think for a long time, it has been a trope that the Capitol albums are substandard and that the UK releases are superior. I appreciate that you dispel that to a degree; I think a thoughtful discussion such as yours provides food for thought. I was too young for the Beatles U.S. debut (I was born in 1960) but I clearly remember hearing their records on the radio when I was about 5 years old. I bought "Meet the Beatles" in 1972 or 1973 with my paper route money. I still have that record; my copy is on Apple Records. I played it to death as a teenager, on less-than-audiophile-quality equipment, but it still sounds okay, and the cardboard sleeve has obvious ring wear and is scotch-taped along the spine ---- it's a record that has no value to anyone but me.
Andrew, great information as always. Love this album. I believe it is the one US release that improves on it's UK counterpart. I feel that similar to Magical Mystery Tour, Meet the Beatles should be the standard second album in the collection.
After we saw The Beatles on the Sullivan Show, my mother bought me the Swan She Loves You single, and the mono Capitol Meet The Beatles album (East Coast pressing). My favorite tracks became Don’t Bother Me and I Wanna Be Your Man. My father got a 45 of I Want To Hold Your Hand, played by Arthur Fiedler and the Boston Pops! He would introduce it for classical music-loving visitors as “Symphony in B”.
I was in 4th grade on February 9, 1964 when I saw The Beatles on Ed Sullivan. The next day on the school bus, all the girls were buzzing about The Beatles. MR Stickermania
Thank you for the background information, especially the VJ issue. Also intrigued by the effect of Capitol having cut out all the covers except one from Meet the Beatles. I still have my copies of them as well as all the other Beatles albums. When Meet the Beatles was released, a friend and I went to a neighborhood record store to look at it. We were astounded by the photograph, the likes of which we'd never seen before. I wasn't able to buy it until February 29, 1964, when my great aunt sent me a birthday check. I scandalized my mother by rushing downtown with my hair in curlers to buy it.
Great video! This album was introduced to me by my older sisters in 1964 (I'm three years older than this LP!) so it has a special place in my heart. I found out a few new bits of information that I didn't know before, thank you for doing this.
@@Parlogram Not sure if you have done a deep dive on Hard Day's Night album but would love to see that. I think HDN was their first "great" album (not to diminish how good Meet the Beatles was of course).
The 2014 CD, even though it uses the UK remasters, still sounds really good. The mono tracks have a bit more ‘oomph’ than they do on the mono box. I don’t think “I Want to Hold Your Hand” and “This Boy” have ever sounded better on CD. Plus, the packaging is dead-on accurate. The covers even tend to split at the top just like the originals.
New Jersey band, The Smithereens, often played Beatles tunes for encores. It was suggested at one point that they should do an album of Beatles covers. In 2006, 7 years after their last original album (with no interest by labels in producing a new album), lead singer Pat DiNizio, after reading an article about the historical impact t of MTB, considered a faithful remake of the MTB album, and approached Koch records, who gave them an enthusiastic “yes”. The album was recorded in 5 days (“the second took even longer…”), and was a massive success, leading to more projects : “B-Sides The Beatles”, covering the b-sides of 1964 Beatlemania including Capitol, Vee-Jay, MGM Sheridan singles, and “Some Other Guy” for good measure in 2008 (**drummer Andy White reprised his role on “P.S. I Love You”), followed by a recreation of the Tollie “Love Me Do” single in 2010, and last (to date), a simulation of the Washington D.C. show in 2014 for digital release. These guys know their stuff, and knocked it out of the park every time.
In our country, we follow the UK discography (at least in the albums, we have album tracks released as singles here though), so initially I don't have any idea how important the US discographies are. As I got older I was able to get decent copies of the US albums and in my opinion, leaves me scratching my head because the sound quality is not up to RIAA standards of some tracks. Still I can only imagine how the teenagers of the USA 60s embraced this album.
This album is all we knew here in the states. The album had a sound that in my opinion, is unmatched by any other release. The mono version sound OK, but not like the stereo in the compression that hits the listener as soon as the needle drops onto the record. Yes, some of the Duophonic mixes sound crowded and a bit noisy, but compared to the actual stereo mix (which I had not heard until the 1980's,) I still prefer the mixes on the original album. The stereo mix of I want to hold your hand sounds lifeless and assembled in a haphazard way. The best sounding mix of that song is the Capitol 45 that was re-released in the 1980's with the picture sleeve. It's punchy and it has the right amount of compression IMO. When the 4 CD box set of the Capitol albums was relerased in 2004, I was in total bliss. The mastering engineer did not try to change anything regarding the mixes. It was done in a tasteful manner with only slight EQ and level adjustments. I once read that the mastering team of Ted Jensen and company actually had LP copies of the album in which they used in order to not get carried away with tinkering and only made them better as a result. Still, that box set is my go to source for the best Beatles 1964 American experience. I truly like those CD's and have made comparison to the 2009 box set, only to realize that the 2009 set was processed and tinkered with to a point that they lost their original concept. The 2009 stereo mixes of the first two albums have been brought more to the center of the stereo picture by means of panning, and if that alone is not a show stopper to some, it certainly is for me. After all of the hype prior to the release of the 2009 stereo box set, wondered what all the hype was about. The CD's were lifeless, dull and were not worth the purchase. On the other hand, the Capitol Albums boxes mastered by Ted Jensen were full of life with plenty of sizzle and compression worthy of replacing the vinyl counterparts forever. The very last vinyl pressing of Meet The Beatles, sounded amazing. I recommend to anyone looking to own a good sounding copy of any Capitol album to go with the very last pressing from right before they were deleted. In fact, some of those last pressings are pressed on super high quality vinyl allowing you to see light through the vinyl when held up to a light source. Reminds me of the MOFI albums of the 80's.
Boy, do I ever remember the night the Beatles were on Ed Sullivan. My Father would not allow us to watch. So, I walked the block and heard the show booming from every window. The street was completely empty, no cars, no kids outside, no pedestrians. You could feel it in the air that something big was happening.
Great story, Neil!
I too remember it. Yes, there was still tremendous opposition to rock music. My parents listened to two radio stations in New York City that played NO rock at all. I only got to hear pop and r&b at the houses of friends or on the bus during school trips.
Saw it on a Magnavox console my dad got from a pawn shop😎
I’ll never forget that night!! My life changed. And it’s never been the same. Beatles 4Ever!
I was 11 years old in 1964. My mom, an opera and symphony orchestra music lover, one day brought my one year younger brother and me a pop record by Bobby Rydell. She didn't know if we'd be interested or not. My brother was interested, but I played it over and over so much that mom moved the record player upstairs!
Then she brought home "Meet The Beatles". This album literally changed my life! The music had SUCH an exciting and enthusiastic sound and delivery! Beatlemania was so exciting! I began miming along with the album with a Roy Rogers plastic-stringed guitar in front of a large mirror, holding it left-handed because that was the way my favorite Beatle, Paul, held his guitar. My parents had divorced when I was five, but one day my visiting dad caught me "performing" in front of the mirror and said, "You're right-handed! If you're gonna play a guitar, you'd better learn to hold it the other way 'round!"
My mom, seeing I was serious about my love of music, bought me a cheap Sears box guitar, and I spent every day after school and weekends sitting in front of the stereo learning the bass parts, note for note, on that box guitar. Next Christmas, my dad bought me a red Hagstrom Kent model bass and a Magnatone Estey amplifier that my brother, who got a 6-string guitar, and I could both plug into. I began performing with a local band, called "The Ramrods" (LOL!) when I was 13 years old, playing "Top 40" covers. We had our own teen club, made a 45 record, were once on a local "Bandstand" type TV show hosted by George Clooney's father, Nick; hooked up with a local AM radio DJ (Bob White, WSAI-AM 1360 aka John Patrick Teiken) for some gigs, and played all around our area for a few years. I'll be 70 years old this year, and I've been in and out of bands all my life, all because of The Beatles.
The Meet The Beatles album started a lifelong love of music and performance with local bands for me, and many famous musicians, when asked, also trace their musical heritage back to hearing and seeing The Beatles. For me and countless others in the U.S., it all started with the Meet The Beatles album!
Great story, Frank. Thanks for watching!
I've gotta ask Frank, as a young Ohio man, were you a fan of WKRP In Cincinnati?
@@stephencooke4569 I'm from Northern Kentucky, just across the Ohio River from Cincy. Not sure why, but I never tuned in to that sitcom, though the clips I've seen of it and references to it all seem to be very funny!
Totally get that... I was just 14.
I was hooked on the Beatles from about the time I learned to walk. At that age I decided I would be Ringo..then got a little older and realized I couldn't actually BE him..but I could be like him. My uncle had a Pearl drum kit..and by the age of 4 I was a practicing little drummer. I spent 35 years making a decent living playing music.. that's all because of those lads from Liverpool. A dream came true at a Ringo All star show. Ringo walked over and told me he liked my shirt. I almost fell over. (It was a tank top from his first All star tour.. that's one of my Beatle's moments)
At the time of release in the U.S, most people only had mono record players. I first heard the song on a car radio (AM) in a 1951 Ford. ROCK music made a quantum leap that day.
My grandmother bought this album for my mom the week it was released (my grandmother loved the Beatles too, she was a hip lady). It was this album that 10 year old me stumbled across in 1989. I was hooked, I listened to that album over and over and over before slowly making my way thru the rest of the catalog. Sadly the cover was destroyed in a flood a few years back. Even though the record was salvaged and still plays, I'm still heartbroken over having lost that cover specifically. Thank you for the wonderful trip down memory lane!
Sad times, Seth but thanks for watching.
I had a whole collection destroyed through a freak pipe burst. Not only Beatles were lost but a vast collection of Sinatra and SO many others from different genres. So I feel your pain.
@@Bigbadwhitecracker So sorry!
In Feb 1964 our family lived in Woodland Hills, a suburb of Los Angeles. I was not quite 5 years old and had a friend (Dwight) who was my age and lived around the corner. My older sisters (14 and 10 at the time) would often babysit us when our parents went out. Dwight's Father worked for Capital Records. He received an early release of Meet The Beatles in January. He gave a copy to my sisters. They played it 24/7. My sisters went bonkers over the Fabs. That album sadly is long gone, but its impact never truly faded. Great video Andrew. Cheers, RNB
Great story, Rick!
I still have my original Meet The Beatles album that I bought back in Jan. of '64. What an experience it was being stricken with Beatlemania.
As a Brit, I always looked down on the US albums as not the real thing. But then I picked up a copy of The Beatles' Second last year and was struck by how great it sounded to hear those tracks in that order with those mixes - and now you've made a great case for seeking out a copy of this one. Thanks as ever!
When I was 4 or 5 my mom had the second album and Beatles 65 and Beatles VI so had this drilled into my brain.
Greetings from Denver Colorado. The Beatles Second LP is a straight up rocker. John sings a majority of the tracks.
Greetings from Denver Colorado. The Beatles Second LP is a straight up rocker. John sings a majority of the tracks.
I'm from the UK too and a few years ago I inadvertently picked up a 2nd hand copy of the 2014 US Albums series of Rubber Soul. It has the album in mono and stereo on one CD, so as I despise the stereo mixes, I though I'd get it. However, when I got home I realised that certain tracks were missing, so I wiki'd it and discovered the world of the US albums, lol. I ended up getting Help, Yesterday and Today and Revolver in their US formats primarily cos it's the only way you can get these tracks in proper mono in the UK without having to buy the huge box set. Help is the actual soundtrack, with instrumental stuff, gatefold sleeve, very nice. Yesterday & Today is a great album in it's own right, great track list. Revolver... many people dislike the US revolver because of the omission of I'm Only Sleeping, And your Bird Can Sing and Dr. Robert (which are on Y&T), but I like the US version too. I've still made my own CD's of Rubber Soul & Revolver with the correct track order. I've been trying to get the 2014 US version of "Meet the Beatles" for a while now.
@@georgewilliams4258 I have both those US albums still I bought as a kid in Colorado when they came out.
Growing up with these original Capitol albums, I know personally the effect they had on me, my friends, my school, country and the world. Meet The Beatles is one of the greatest LPs ever made. Period. Still spinning it 60 years later. In mono.
This album is so iconic for me, and really set me on the road to becoming a musician, and later producer and music-publisher. College friends of my parents came back from a trip to England in 1964, and witnessing Beatlemania first-hand, bought a copy of "With The Beatles" and brought it back to Boston, MA, USA. They then brought it to a dinner party my parents threw, which essentially turned into a listening-party. My father was classically trained in piano and composition, and years later told me that he remembered that night, and his feeling that the world had changed...for the better. He'd grown up on 50's rock-n-roll, but these guys from England were doing something different. In 1970, when i was 6, I got my first record player, an early, affordable stereo setup, and among some folk records by acts like The Weavers and The Kingston Trio, and a handful of kids' albums...the copy of "Meet The Beatles" that my mom had run out to purchase when it became available, also wound up in my little "starter collection." I listened to those records going to sleep every night. That album was a real "friend" of mine, and has never let me down.
I was 7 when The Beatles were on Ed Sullivan. I watched it with my Dad. The controversy over their hair was a really big deal with the adults. It's hard to relay how much that one thing impacted society at the time. All I knew was they were cool! I had Beatle Boots by the end of the week, and was combing my hair down in the front. I've been a fan ever since.
The hair, the suits, and boots -- all very cool and original.
Yes I remember that day I was just a couple years older. Still a huge fan.
I was also seven at the time. That night changed me forever and has a lot to do with who I am today.
You had Beatle boots too did you get any shit at school along with big Bell bottoms
Really neat you mentioning the direction of combing hair.
Franklin Wilkie, the bassist who stepped into Tommy Caldwell's spot in the Marshall Tucker Band (at Toy Caldwell's request, after Tommy died) lives in my hometown and is a good acquaintance of mine. He once told me that same thing in a conversation about the weekend that the Beatles played on E.S. Show for the first time.
He said "..all the boys went home from school the Friday of that weekend with their hair combed back, and when we all came back to school the following Monday, we all had combed our hair forward..."
@3:40 - Canadian album released before USA ... that explains why I see so many of that album in the states .. I think quite a few were directly imported into USA due to that.
I remember hearing this album a couple of weeks before they were on Ed Sullivan.
One of my sisters came home from her after school job with the album under her arm. "Look what I just bought!" Two of my sisters and I played it over and over again the first night the album was in the house - I think we listened to it three times in a row.
The three of us would frequently listen to music together - usually just a bunch of singles, but even on the odd time we'd play an album, we never would play one more than once in an evening - but that night we did. I hadn't heard any rock and roll on the radio in ages (it was all crooners and pop singers on the radio - novelty songs - Little Richard was doing "By the Light of the Silvery Moon" and stuff like that) - so "I Want to Hold Your Hand" / "I Saw Her Standing There" sounded pretty rocky for the time. It sounded great on the car radio - always my measure if a single was going to be a hit or not. That particular single jumped out of the speakers and would compel you to turn up the volume. We liked the single quite a lot - but the album - that blew away every expectation we had. We needed repeated listens because we didn't know what we'd just heard!
First off, albums back then were usually pretty awful affairs - a bunch of lame material, cranked out watching the clock, with one or two hits with the B-sides, and a bunch of same-sounding filler. But not this time. We loved the single, so thought the album might be pretty good - but we weren't prepared.
We were really impressed with their harmonies - they reminded me of the Everly Brothers - and the fact that they wrote almost all the songs and played nearly all the instruments - nobody else did that; we were impressed by the variety of music on the album. Even the guitars on "Till There Was You" seemed musical and different (my mom even liked that one!). The Beatles hit with people on so many levels simultaneously - and that's the only verbal description I can give of their impact on people at the time. They were different from everything else on the radio at the time, and for a few months in 1964, nobody else could get played! Their effect was seismic.
Great post, Neil.
Great story mate. What did you think of the subsequent Beatles output?
The first LP I ever got when I was 10 was Abbey Road because my big cousins played it all the time!
@@alexcampbell3032 Like almost everyone, I anticipated every album they ever made and pounced on them as they came out, and proceeded to play them into the ground until I could sing all the parts (except I could never do Paul doing Little Richard....never could manage that.) When "Meet the Beatles" came out, I was 11 - so I can relate.
Another great video Andrew. Well done. One minor point - and Paul White would be cross with me if I didn't point this out to your followers. A December 2, 1963 release date for Canada's Beatlemania! Lp is often cited (incorrectly), but that is not the actual release date for the first Beatles Canada LP. Dec 2/63 was actually Capitol of Canada's "vault date" .. that was the date the EMI master tape was returned to Capitol's tape vault from the mastering company, RCA Victor. The Lp was officially released in Canada, and available in record shops, one week before, on Monday, November 25, 1963. This release date was just one business day after the UK Parlophone release date for With The Beatles. In the 1990s, I visited the EMI tape vault in Mississauga, Ontario, Canada and I carefully checked the tape vault logs versus the release dates. Capitol's Meet The Beatles finally got a Canadian release in Canada in 1967, and it was initially sold through the Capitol of Canada record club in both mono and stereo editions.
Thanks for watching Piers and I appreciate the correction.
This was literally how I met the Beatles. And I met them as a second generation fan. I was in fourth grade. My family moved into our new home, and someone had left behind a copy of meet the Beatles. I instantly fell in love with the album. I played it over and over again. it is ironic that I was introduced to the Beatles by the same album most Americans were. Just 10 or 12 years later. Had the same effect on me.
You actually met The Beatles?
As a child I remember one of my older brothers Vee-Jay pressing of '' Introducing The Beatles '' playing on his Panasonic home stereo. I believe that started his hobby of purchasing vinyl almost every week , thus accumulating his collection to more than 2000 mostly Rock vinyl records and later in the 1980's another collection of CD's. I also remember my oldest brother blasting his The Beatles '' Second Album '' on his very heavy Zenith foldable luggage style record player . It seems like if it was just yesterday but that was many many moons ago. As for me , back in 1988 I managed to purchase The Beatles blue box set in vinyl which I immediately equalized to my taste and DOLBY recorded all the albums to TDK metal bias cassettes. 35 years later those cassettes still sound as vibrant and clear as they did for the very first time.
My sister born in 1950 was a Beatle maniac. And I (born 56) got to hear all the 45s and albums. It was an incredible impact on our lives. The moptops replaced the crewcuts and slick backed Elvis styles. The guitars and 3part vocals and inventive songs wowed us and made a lot of other music dull. The fab four raised the bar of pop music to new heights. Everyone tried and failed to keep up to them but it brought out the best in the Beach Boys, Animals, Kinks and Rolling Stones
I have a original version from 1964. It is one of my most prized records. No scratches too.
I appreciate that you say "I feel...", or "I think..." when discussing recordings. Too many on the internet present their opinions as facts. Every piece of music touches each person in an individual way, and a track that one person always skips is someone else's favorite.
I like that too.
It’s always Andrews own perspective and always asks.. what do you think ? Leave a comment. He’s certainly a Professional when it comes to his posts and he’s done his research.
It always warms my Canuck heart to see props given to Paul White and Capitol Canada. I've been a Beatles fan for 40 years, and yet never had a vinyl copy of Meet the Beatles since I had hand-me-down copies of the Canadian LPs, Twist & Shout, Beatlemania With the Beatles and Long Tall Sally (and I was more interested in the middle-to-late Beatles era anyway). But even after Meet the Beatles was issued in Canada, Beatlemania With the Beatles remained in print here until the early 1980s, and I didn't have a copy of MtB until that first box set with the U.S. albums on it, and playing it, it wasn't hard to imagine the impact that it had on American teens. Thanks for the insight into how the track rearrangement makes it a stronger album in many ways, although I still bristle at the policy of cutting songs and making new albums out of whole cloth with the leftovers. At least the Kinks didn't have to suffer that indignity after their first couple of albums, and they remained intact from Kontroversy onward.
Ironically before you communicated the intention to address the 'Meet The Beatles ', I played it in its entirety for the first time in decades. I'd forgotten how fun it was to hear.
Just yesterday, my Brother and I compared all the White Albums and concluded the Dutch was the best. Then for fun I played him the full stereo version 'I Want to Hold Your Hand' mixed in Australia. It's on the Beatles Number One album. It's rather an unique master.
It was a delight to listen to it again!
My jaw dropped to the floor when I first heard IWTHYH on Past Masters. No reverb. You can actually hear the guitars clearly. I was raised in the L.A. area so Capital we’re the only versions I heard until the 70’s. I now feel we were ripped off
I felt Capitol ripped us off when I got my imported from England copy of The Beatles Collection box set of original Beatle LPs. I later augmented it with the German Magical Mystery Tour LP and, of course, the Past Masters 2 LP set.
Fantastic presentation. Thanks so much.
Thanks Dean. Glad you enjoyed it!
CBS really cross promoted Beatlemania heavily. They produced a Beatles tribute band, The Ladybugs from the three Petticoat Junction girls and Sally James aka Shelia Kuehl (Zelda on Dobie Gillis (Velma)). They appeared on Ed Sullivan as an act a month after the Beatles in March 1964, then on an episode of Petticoat a couple nights later singing "I Saw 'Him' Standing There".
CBS really promoted the Beatles heavily and to both kids and parents. They went with the Bye Bye Birdie angle in screaming crowds and parents coming around, TV having learned a lesson with Elvis to soft peddle Beatlemania so as to avoid early controversy. Capitol, as you said, included a few Hit Parade and mellow tunes for them so the parents would not protest.
Petticoat Junction was full of "good girls" so if they were OK then it must be OK.
This might be the first TV spin-off BeatleBand leading up to The Mosquitos, The Honeybees and finally The Monkees.
There’s something that most Radio listeners of the time (and even most of the streaming listeners of today) don’t know anything about. I can’t really explain it here. It would take an entire article to explain how it does what it does. It’s a thing called “Audio Processing”. Put very simply, the signal is sent through a dedicated device that compresses and limits the audio levels, and it’s what made a song seem to LEAP out of the radio back in the day (if it was adjusted correctly by the station’s Chief Engineer). Many were the times, before I’d made the Radio business my living, that I’d buy a record (album or single) and it just didn’t “pop” the way it did when heard on the radio. The actual record on my turntable seemed lifeless by comparison. This was especially true of rock and roll records, The Beatles included. But once the same records were put through an Audio Processor, which would compress and limit the different frequency bands separately, then put each channel’s high, midrange and low frequencies back together, that a song would have the much more lively sound it had on the radio. The Beatles’ songs mentioned in this video are where I first noticed this phenomenon. If you’ve ever noticed this, you now know a little about why.
You are so correct to say it hit on an emotional level! It did on a creative level too. It was NEW! In sound and energy. We kids in the US were knocked out!
Great show again Andrew!!
See ya next time!👍🎶💚!
Thanks Brian. Glad you enjoyed it!
I bought this album by myself when I was 7 years old in the Bronx, New York - I can still remember how exciting it was ! ! In the early 60s I got only the mono releases as we had only a mono system at the time. When "Yesterday... And Today" came out it was only released in stereo, and it was odd playing it on our mono system :-(! I wish I could´ve gotten an original buther cover, but I didn´t find out about it until 1982. But I did get the sticker of it in the Capitol CD box set :-)!
I really enjoy your videos, to be able to discover so many things about The Beatles I had never known. The group is still so special to me - brings back so many great memories of my childhood ! ! Next year I'll be able to celebrate 60 years of following the group :-)!
Thanks for sharing your memories, Bernard. I'm glad you're enjoying the videos!
Great video! I got my first copy of Meet The Beatles in 1979 when I was 10 years old. A school friend's mom gave it to me because she thought it was cute that a 10-year-old in 1979 could be so obsessed with the Beatles! It was a first pressing, the same copy she had had since 1964. I was over the moon when she said I could take it home and keep it. To me it was a priceless treasure from another era, to her as an adult I suppose it was just a fifteen-year-old album that she didn't mind giving away.
I'll never forget taking it home and playing it over and over, flipping from side one to side two and back again countless times. It's still my favorite record, and my pick for most exciting album of all time. A perfect crystallization of the euphoria of Beatlemania, and a perfect way for America to meet the Beatles.
Good thing it was 1979 and not 198
1 or you may not have been so lucky to get that album
There was also a way to tell which coast the record itself came from by the numeral one on the label. One had just a "stick" while the other had a left sided "flag" on the top of the "stick". Mine is an east coast copy with the brown lettering on the front cover and the "stick" number one on the label.
My parents bought me a cheap portable cassette player for Christmas 1975. At twelve years of age I hadn’t yet developed any musical preferences, so it took a little coaxing from my best friend to convince me to buy my first Beatles record. Totally unfamiliar with Beatles music I went to the record store and after looking through the Beatles bin decided to start with their first album. Not having my own record player, I bought the cassette version of Meet The Beatles. I rode my bike home and popped the tape in my player and was greeted with I Want To Hold Your Hand and I Saw Her Standing There. I was immediately hooked! Even though the music was playing through a small three inch speaker, the music was infectious and exciting. Meet The Beatles was my introduction to the Beatles and began a life long passion. Forty-seven years and hundreds of LP’s and 45’s later I am still a huge Beatles fan and never tire of listening to their music.
Great story!
In Britain we missed the single moment (Ed Sullivan) and single release (Meet The Beatles) that the Americans benefitted from. Meet The Beatles seems to crystallise all that excitement. Sunday Night at the London Palladium was important, but it felt like Britain had a building excitement over repeated releases rather than one big bang.
Great video again, Andrew.
Thanks Matt!
Thank you. You certainly covered all aspects of this record. As a listener who was an impressionable 12 years old when the album first appeared, I attest to the powerful impact it had on me and many of my friends at the time. Keep up the good work.
Thanks for watching, Richard.
I guess we're very very close in age. I actually preferred the musical style of the DC5, Gerry & The Pacemakers and Peter & Gordon, but none of the other British bands recorded LPs as outstanding as The Beatles.
@@GeraldM_inNC I liked some of the other Britsh groups like Moody Blues, Eric Clapton but my musical horizons really expanded with Frank Zappa, Led Zepplin (first album only), Jimi Hendrix, etc.
Emotional level is exactly the right term to describe the impact Meet The Beatles had on me. I had the mono version and played it to worn. I would say it kicked-off a cultural change here in the States one that had been brewing for a year or so in music. It makes me shake my head that Beatles records ended-up with Vee Jay and Swan. Capitol treated Sinatra pretty shabby as well. Great video.
@@phillipanderson7398 No, I mean Capitol in this case. I understand his Columbia experience but I’ve read a number accounts of his not feeling supported by Capitol which ultimately led to him establishing Reprise. Frank even re-recorded many of his popular Capitol recordings on Reprise so the Capitol songs would not be played on radio. The story of ‘There’s A Flaw In My Flue’ here’s an account from a 1990 New York Times magazine article:
“Frank liked the question and said he'd heard the song on Bing Crosby's Kraft Music Hall radio show, a segment called ''The Flop Parade,'' and he thought it was funny; what's more Bing had never recorded it. So Frank - who felt that the executives at his record company never really listened to his songs - wanted to make that point; and he asked Nelson Riddle to orchestrate ''Flue'' for an opening slot in an upcoming record. ''When they played it,'' Frank said, ''one of the record company guys says to me, 'What is this?' and I said, 'It's a love song.' I said, 'There's a flaw in my flue, beautiful.' '' And so it flawlessly became, and Frank made his point doubly, with a leg pull that stands as a comic gem.” And the Capitol execs released it.
Great recordings aside Frank apparently didn’t feel supported at Capitol. Even after he left Capitol released budget albums of his older recordings. In the early 2000’s they were still at it releasing the horrendous ‘Entertainer Of The Century’ CD’s of his albums, with the stereo masters (instead of the preferred mono masters which are superior) and lots of added reverb. If you want to hear good quality Capitol album CD’s get the out of print UK box set with excellent mono versions of his early albums and pretty good stereo remasters of the later albums.
That was one terrific dissertation on the album. Well done! I bought it as a 14 year old in 1964 and never looked back thereafter. Talk about fabulous music memories ‼️
Yeah, me too. Week of release. In mono. I was 14.
I still have the mono copy I brought in February 1964 (9 years 1 month old) after seeing them on Ed Sullivan. Has the number "5" on the lower-left, backside. I was mad during the Sullivan performance because the screaming girls interfered with my listening. My parents did not like the record but they never chastised me for playing it. No longer playable but I won't part with it. It is on the wall in my "Inner Sanctum". My record collection is an audio version of a photo album.
It's hard to describe today how exciting it was in 64 when this album was released Beatlemania had begun and the world was never the same
You had to be there. And I'm glad I was.
Interesting factoid - Meet The Beatles was not introduced in Canada until February 1967, after it was decided to standardize the catalogue with the US version. Beatlemania! had already been deleted from the Canadian Catalogue. However, it was brought back in 1971, meaning both albums would be available in the catalogue until they stopped pressing Beatles vinyl in 1987.
Have you done an episode on Beatles laser discs? I just got a batch of them today. Never knew they had been released in that format.
If this channel has taught me something, that is:
Dave Dexter Jr. = Bad 😠
Harry Moss = Good 😊
An overlooked pair of villain and hero in the Beatles canon.
On a side note. This was the first Beatles piece of vinyl I got. In november 2010 I bought a 1970 mexican edition (because I live in Mexico) of this album when I was just getting in to the beatlemania. It was a very worn record and not in the best condition but for me it was like a milestone in my life as a beatles fan and the beginning of 13+ years collecting records.
Then there's Dick Rowe of Decca Records, who refused to sign The Beatles to a contract because he believed that guitar bands were soon going to go extinct. No doubt that was wishful thinking on his part. Imagine how many millions of pounds his stupidity cost Decca!
On the other hand, Dick saved his career by signing The Rolling Stones!
Please take the fork outta Meet the Beatles.
For the first time and every time afterward I was jolted to my soul whenever I heard "I Want to Hold Your Hand."
It was a shiny, happy sound I had never experienced in my sleepwalking teenage life.
The vocals, the beat, the guitars and the handclaps have stunned me for well over half a century.
The tune began to divide me from all the generations but my own.
Famous conservative William F. Buckley, Jr had a different opinion:
"The Beatles are not merely awful. They are so unbelievably horrible, so appallingly unmusical, so dogmatically insensitive to the magic of the art, that they qualify as crowned heads of anti-music."
God bless the commenters on this great video. You knew what it was all those years ago.
We will always be ONE....
Excellent production and presentation as always. Brilliant job, Andrew.
Many thanks!
I still have my mom's original US "Meet the Beatles" on vinyl. I listen to it because of the Beatles but also to remember my mom. Great video.
Thanks Rene. Glad you enjoyed it!
Thanks for another great video, Andrew! My older siblings had "Meet The Beatles," "Something New," "Early Beatles," and "Yesterday and Today," and I played those all the time when I was a kid. I can tell you that your theory about the "parent-pleasing" track listing held true, at least in my house: I remember my parents and grandparents saying "Oh, isn't that nice?" when "Til There Was You" came on. When I started buying albums, I decided to go in Capitol-chronological order, starting with "Meet The Beatles" which came on an Apple label in the 1970s. That album always held a special place in my musical development, and when the CDs were released in 2004 it was like the return of a favorite book or movie. I eventually ran across a terrible bootleg of "Introducing" in the 1980s, and it just didn't compare to "Meet." Thanks again!
Thanks Joseph. Great story!
“I Saw Her Standing There” is true stereo
Thanks Frederick. Glad you enjoyed it!
The first album I ever bought. To say it changed my life is an understatement. It instantly made me a Beatlenut and created a music junkie.
Thank you and GREAT JOB ! I’ve been confused why I remembered owning and listening to ( daily ) my album titled Meet the Beatles . So many references are With the Beatles . I live in Los Angeles , so now I understand . As a 8-9 year old girl I heard melodies and Harmonies for the first time, and feel in love with the Beatles and with MUSIC ! I still have a bad case of Beatle Mania that I cherish every day ! I cried when Now and Then hit #1!!! XXXOOO To ALL the FANS , we are all FAB ! Meat Free Mondays ! Judy
Thanks for watching, Judy! Glad you enjoyed it.
Another great video! However, I will add that the early west coast copies have the brown Beatles font, and olive green seems to be late 64- early 65. I have the earliest stereo issue west coast pressing with the brown font on the cover. Also, the cassette of Meet The Beatles stayed in print until at least 1995. I was working in a record store at the time and the cassette remained a steady seller.
I bought Meet the Beatles with my own money at 6 years old in Feb 1965. It was not long after that my mother got me my first acoustic guitar from Montgomery Wards. She taught me my first 3 chords and I was hooked for life. I think it was another 3 or 4 years before I bought my 2nd album, "Are You Experienced" by Jimi Hendrix. I got my first electric guitar with S&H Greenstamps.
Great memories, Mike!
Back in 1981 I was at some sort of a thrift store in Brooklyn NY and they had a record section. I came across a mono copy of
"Meet the Beatles" with the black label and color band. Also a mono copy of "Beatles 65", same label and a mono copy of "A Hard Day's Night" with the black United Artist label.
Found a mono somewhere in NM, one of my favorite finds.
Just found the Scranton pressing in my albums. When my grandmother passed I went thru her cabinet stereo and found the album. I remember asking her back in the 80’s if she remembered buying it. She said no!
I became a Beatles fan at age 14, when the CDs were coming out in 1987. So I’m from that second generation of US fans that grew up with the standardized UK catalog. I sort of looked at the US catalog with disdain. But in the years since, I appreciate just how great this record is and how impactful it was. Meet the Beatles and the US Rubber Soul are records I turn to often.
Yet another wonderful, well researched presentation! I have a 1970s Japan Apple reissue LP of Meet the Beatles which has all their previous UK singles in genuine stereo (except for "She Loves You" & "Love me Do" which are mono) with the red Beatles! & Obi on the cover but no color vinyl. This particular configuration of the LP really generates a lot of fun and positive energy.
Great summary! - my older sister bought this album right after it came out in early '64, and after a few spins she let me, just three and a half, play it TO DEATH on my little portable record player. I was hooked on the Beatles for life, and still own the beat-up copy, which crackles and pops all the way through from all those times with the harsh needle (and operator)! A minor note - our copy was purchased in the San Francisco area, with the "6" on the lower right corner indicating the LA plant source, as you point out, BUT the "BEATLES" lettering is tan, not dark green. I believe that dark green color came out on later copies of the album.
Thanks Andrew! This was my very first Beatles album that was given to me. I actually still have that same copy and it is not going anywhere, it has tremendous sentimental value. I absolutely love this album. I may be a 3rd gen Beatles fan but it has a lot of nostalgia. Thanks again. I think I'm going to go put this album on.
Glad you enjoyed it, Brian
My uncle gave his copy of Meet The Beatles in 1976, along with the Hey Jude LP. Once I heard the opening notes of I Want To Hold Your Hand... I was hooked! What an AWESOME album and is one of the important and historic albums of the 20th century. Highlighting all original songs but one, it's so strong and doesn't sound cheap.
I can still remember how exotic the UK With the Beatles looked to me as a kid when I encountered it for the first time. Like a lot of Beatles fans in the US, in the early 70s, I grew up with the Capital LPs and was completely unaware of the UK versions. That changed one day when a local record store started featuring an "import" section for their Beatles records. Flipping through I was completely taken with the sleek and simple look of "With the Beatles", especially when compared to Capital's Meet the Beatles. On that day I purchased "With the Beatles" with the money I had been given as an Easter present. I think it must've been around 1972 or so. So, while I agree with your assessment of "Meet the Beatles" as having a more commercially vibrant packaging, it's the sleek, understated, and IMHO more artistically pleasing B&W "With the Beatles" that gets my vote.
I was in 6th grade 1964 went to a boy girl party and one of the girls put on meet the Beatles on the record player I was amazed how good the songs were even the ones I never heard at that time. Most albums of that time had one or two good songs
Meet The Beatles is the Greatest Rock and Roll Album of all time 😊
Fun one, Andrew. Hope you give The Beatles' Second Album the same treatment. I confess that I'm fond of the duophonic "She Loves You" on it.
Outstanding job, Andrew! Wonderful subject and wonderful presentation by you. 👏👏👏
Thank you kindly, Anthony!
@@Parlogram You're welcome, Andrew!
Not being an American I was not aware of this US capitol record "Meet the Beatles" or any of the others they issued for the US market. It wasn't until I read that superb book "The Beatles forever" by Nicholas Schaffner in the late 70s did I know about these US versions. Even to this day there are probably millions of Beatles fans who still haven't heard of "Meet the Beatles" if your not American!
Your insight into the special nature of this early Beatles album is spot on!
After a lifetime of loving the Beatles, last year, I re-discovered the joy and energy of this album, and proceeded to listen to it. No less than 250 times in a space of less than six months. That is, I could not tired of it.
Well, actually, it was with the Beatles that I was listening to which I guess is close enough! I love the covers and please Mr. postman is my absolute favorite.
Just snagged a copy (in MONO) last week.
I'm an American who was kid in the late-70s/early-80s but was somehow able to grow up on the UK releases due to some crazy anomaly of a small town yard sale. When I first saw the US versions I was astonished and disgusted (particularly by Revolver). But The Beatles are still The Beatles even when they're missing songs and getting drowned in reverb.
An absolute milestone in my life as an adolescent, I was fourteen years of age and nothing would ever be the same again!!!!!
I was 10 and you are right.
10:40 Fun fact, since in Chile With The Beatles was released first in 1964, Please Please Me when released later that year and the band still being a brand new group it was named "Otro de Los Beatles" (Another One From The Beatles) with a similar cover style with black and white pictures.
The tracklist of all the albums were the same of the UK versions, only the first 4 having original names, the most remarkable was Beatles for Sale renamed as "Los Beatles Cantan para Usted" (The Beatles Sings for You).
The only two original Capitol albums released here were the The Beatles Story and Hey Jude, but renamed as "Compatible" when released on cassette, because being one of the first Beatles albums released on stereo here, when it cmae out on vinyl neither the cover or the disc labels had the album name printed on them, however the cover only said "Mono-Stereo Compatible".
This was the second vinyl album I bought when i was starting to collect vinyl records! I got it back in 2013 when I was 14, and it is one of my most cherished albums. I have listened to it for 10 years, and it never gets old!
Wow. I came here from the link on the With The Beatles video. I had no idea there would be so many surprises and facts I was unaware of. Really great work here on a subject that seems to have a never-ending wellspring of info.
Glad you enjoyed it!
I remember my mother letting me stay up to watch Ed Sullivan on Sunday February 9, 1964, I was 8 years old. In my mind, things got off to a slow start with “All My Loving”, followed by “Till There was You”. Things got more interesting with “She Loves You” and by the second segment of “ I Saw her Standing There” and finishing with “ I want To Hold Your Hand” I was hooked. For the next two Sundays I was glued to the TV at 8pm. Thanks to my Mom lighting the fuse I became a lifelong Beatles fan. She remembered what she felt like when she saw Elvis Presley on Ed Sullivan and she made sure I didn’t miss out. She went and bought “Meet The Beatles” for us the next day and let me have possession of that album to start my collection. It wasn’t long before “Introducing The Beatles” was added to our collection. I can’t remember if they were Mono or Stereo versions. It didn’t matter as they were played on a cheap record player with a nail instead of a needle. Another Capitol Records triumph.
Great memories! Thanks for sharing them.
I grew up with the UK releases. But I’m not one to dismiss the US albums. To me they are novel and a great way to listen to the songs we love in a different context. Reverb included.
I played to death the British version of "Help", that had the songs from the movie on one side and unreleased Beatle material on the other side. I played it only a zillion times. The American version was simply the movie soundtrack, and I had no interest in hearing the movie background material.
This was truly the first LP that I got introduced to by my aunt. She was a young woman in 1964 when she bought an original olive mono vinyl copy. When I went to visit her as a kid around 1980, I was fascinated by not only the cover but the print copy itself. I read it and re-read it every chance I had. By the time I got to play it, it had been "well loved" but no matter, I truly enjoyed every track. I believe I even made a cassette copy which I promptly wore out. 🤣As you said, it was not about the quality but the music itself. I will always have those fond memories.
Great story! Thanks for sharing!
Meet The Beatles and Beatles 65 are incredibly nostalgic albums of my life. They are the only Beatles albums I remember listening to before getting myself a copy of Beatles 1 on CD in 2009 and becoming a Beatles fan for life.
I was born in 1996, so I’m very late to the game, but my Dad was born February 9th 1960 and remembers seeing The Beatles Ed Sullivan on tv on his 4th Birthday. My grandfather(who passed away nearly a year ago) had Beatles 65 on vinyl back in the day(not that he was a big fan of groups like Beatles and others, but he was really into Elvis, Carl Perkins, Chuck Berry, Johnny Cash, etc…), and the record itself somehow still managed to stay in his possession when I was going through his old records many years back. My Dad worked for a bit in the family cement business, the company truck had a cassette player, I remember my dad playing Meet The Beatles and Beatles 65 on cassette when I was younger. I can still remember hearing I Want To Hold Your Hand, I Saw Her Standing There, and I Wanna Be Your Man in slightly higher pitch from the player and looking at the cassette cover(like the one in this video). I have those 2 same cassettes from my dad in my collection today and they still play good.
My Dad is a Rock and Metal guy, but when it comes to The Beatles he easily prefers tracks from their early career(UK releases Please Please Me to Rubber Soul). He can never get into the later stuff no matter how much I tried, even the rocking stuff from The White Album, Abbey Road, and Let It Be. lol
Thanks for posting, Donald!
Thanks so much for doing a video on this record Andrew! This was the first Beatles album (and first album period) that I owned. It was my 11th birthday present in July 1982 and I played it on my mom’s old suitcase record player and just played it endlessly. I didn’t skip over anything. I needed to buy another copy a few years later because I played it so much. This was and is an exciting listening experience. The liner notes on the back are a little corny but I suppose that was standard for the day. Nice to hear a little history on Vee Jay records. Bruce Spizer’s book on Vee Jay from 1998 is such a great source on the subject. Thanks again!
A pleasure, Bill. Glad you enjoyed it!
Best Beatle youtube channel..or any channel period!
Thanks David!
The Ed Sullivan appearance and Meet The Beatles were life changing experiences for me. Things would never be the same after that. I grew up with the Capitol records, and though I won't listen to them now, I think Meet The Beatles was a good intro at the time. Finding the UK lps for the first time in 1970 was the next major revelation. As with all the butcher job Capitol records now, Meet... seems anachronistic. I totally agree with your assessment of the energy on the earlier Beatles albums. It's something that's far too often overlooked. The energy on Please Please Me , and the next few albums is so lacking on the post MMT albums. Thanks for another fine video, Andrew,
Cheers David!
I purchased this the day after the Ed Sullivan Show...my favorite Beatles album!!!
Great video, Andrew! I feel happy every time you show a brazilian version of the beatles' albums! It's really nice, indeed! Thanks Andrew!
My pleasure, Carlos. Glad you enjoyed it!
I noticed that when "Meet The Beatles" reached Number One on the charts, after the first Ed Sullivan appearance, that "Introducing The Beatles", by VeeJay, was Number Three, following "The Singing Nun". I remember all of these records, being thirteen at the time.
An Americanized Beatle album that worked on so many levels not all U.S. releases did.although imo Rubber Soul was sequenced perfectly gave it a folkier feel and flow. The UK release is great too but to my ears US wins on that one
Great content!
Thanks Daryl!
I watched this video for the second time and, for me,it's getting better all the time. Thank you, Andrew!
Glad you enjoyed it, Carlos!
Great Video Andrew! I have 1978 repressing of Meet The Beatles on the purple Captiol label. Form Mono I have the 1964 rainbow Captiol I was a 2nd generation Beatles fan 1974 but as a kid everyone I knew loved the Beatles!!
I just want to give a shout out to Capitol Records’ “The Beatles Songbook” by the Hollyridge Strings which came out on the rainbow label sometime just after “Meet The Beatles”, it sounds really nice, even for what it is.
The Vee-Jay records were always a mystery to me, thanks for clearing that up. I have a near mint copy of the Los Angeles pressing of Meet the Beatles with the original inner sleeve that I absolutely cherish. I used to buy these for a buck back in the day and give them to my friends and grand nephews. I love this album for the joy that these songs bring and the fond memories of that exciting and transformational time. Excellent video.
Thanks Kaz, glad you enjoyed it!
Parlogram, is surely the chief reference show for the "Fab Four". Entertaining and high quality of analysis and nice narration. Phil.
Thank you, Phil!
I was also seven. Recall the night clearly. The hair, suits, and Cuban heel boots were dynamite, a favorite expression at the time, or boss, and the music just blew everyone away. My jazz pianist father made no comment, nor did he when one day I asked him why he didn’t or couldn’t play like the Beatles. He just sat at the piano and played every song without hesitation, then walked away. Thus began my schizophrenic relationship with music.
Great story! Thanks for sharing.
💕
Hi I'm Tiffany From Jersey City NJ
You have a great amazing video 💕
I was born in October 1963 and am the youngest of 10 kids. My older sibs all became Beatles fans when they played on the Ed Sullivan Show, February 9th, 1964. So, I grew up in a Beatlemania household. By the time I was around 6 years old, I started listening to my sibs Beatle albums, and becoming fascinated with them and music in general (a life-long passion). Meet The Beatles was my first Beatle "bonding" experience, and it really kicked in when I "discovered" girls (!!) around 1971. Tracks like "This Boy" and "If I Fell" (from the "Something New" album) were the soundtrack music of my ardor (passion, indeed). So I used to sit in the living room, in Dad's big leather chair (next to the stereo and bookcase) and listen to them for hours. I would read the liner notes and gaze upon my heroes! John Lennon was my first hero, but I loved all of them. I credit Ringo as my inspiration for becoming a drummer -- along with my brother Rick (coincidentally, the two Richards led me to drumming) -- and songs like their version of "Slow Down" just about made me want to climb the walls with excitement! God, that song is a barn-burner! Meet the Beatles launched my love of music, drumming, and art (I am a writer also). By the way, the Capitol album "The Beatles' Story" was also very instrumental in my early fandom. Just hearing the sound of the screaming Beatles fans -- in the first 3 minutes of the album -- blew my mind. Also, the interview with the two female fans, there in the early part of side 1, really made it real. I was just really interested in what was going on, because I was so young at this point and did not know much about the world or anything -- but I knew the Beatles rocked! Awesome album. Also, you should check out The Smithereens tribute album to Meet The Beatles, called "Meet The Smithereens"! They play all the songs from the album, on vintage instruments/equipment and it is amazing! I love that tribute album and that band! Great stuff!
Thanks for sharing your story, Michael!
Thanks for this video, and your insight on "Meet the Beatles" place in the Beatles' discography. I think for a long time, it has been a trope that the Capitol albums are substandard and that the UK releases are superior. I appreciate that you dispel that to a degree; I think a thoughtful discussion such as yours provides food for thought. I was too young for the Beatles U.S. debut (I was born in 1960) but I clearly remember hearing their records on the radio when I was about 5 years old. I bought "Meet the Beatles" in 1972 or 1973 with my paper route money. I still have that record; my copy is on Apple Records. I played it to death as a teenager, on less-than-audiophile-quality equipment, but it still sounds okay, and the cardboard sleeve has obvious ring wear and is scotch-taped along the spine ---- it's a record that has no value to anyone but me.
Andrew, great information as always. Love this album. I believe it is the one US release that improves on it's UK counterpart. I feel that similar to Magical Mystery Tour, Meet the Beatles should be the standard second album in the collection.
After we saw The Beatles on the Sullivan Show, my mother bought me the Swan She Loves You single, and the mono Capitol Meet The Beatles album (East Coast pressing). My favorite tracks became Don’t Bother Me and I Wanna Be Your Man. My father got a 45 of I Want To Hold Your Hand, played by Arthur Fiedler and the Boston Pops! He would introduce it for classical music-loving visitors as “Symphony in B”.
I was in 4th grade on February 9, 1964 when I saw The Beatles on Ed Sullivan. The next day on the school bus, all the girls were buzzing about The Beatles. MR Stickermania
Great story, Mark. Thanks for watching!
@@Parlogram Andrew, check out my ‘MR Stickermania’ RUclips Beatles channel. Thanks Frank
That was the first album I ever bought. It was about 1972, I was 11, and I was hooked.
Thank you for the background information, especially the VJ issue. Also intrigued by the effect of Capitol having cut out all the covers except one from Meet the Beatles. I still have my copies of them as well as all the other Beatles albums. When Meet the Beatles was released, a friend and I went to a neighborhood record store to look at it. We were astounded by the photograph, the likes of which we'd never seen before. I wasn't able to buy it until February 29, 1964, when my great aunt sent me a birthday check. I scandalized my mother by rushing downtown with my hair in curlers to buy it.
Great story, Kira. Thanks for watching.
This album was a masterpiece! Great video, thanks for sharing.
Glad you enjoyed it, Ronald!
Great video! This album was introduced to me by my older sisters in 1964 (I'm three years older than this LP!) so it has a special place in my heart. I found out a few new bits of information that I didn't know before, thank you for doing this.
Thank you for watching, James!
Wow, great video! Thanks!
Thanks Tony. Glad you liked it!
@@Parlogram Not sure if you have done a deep dive on Hard Day's Night album but would love to see that. I think HDN was their first "great" album (not to diminish how good Meet the Beatles was of course).
The 2014 CD, even though it uses the UK remasters, still sounds really good. The mono tracks have a bit more ‘oomph’ than they do on the mono box. I don’t think “I Want to Hold Your Hand” and “This Boy” have ever sounded better on CD. Plus, the packaging is dead-on accurate. The covers even tend to split at the top just like the originals.
I agree on the sound of the 2014 cd, Kale. The mono on the '14 cd punchier and brighter than the 2009 counterpart tracks.
New Jersey band, The Smithereens, often played Beatles tunes for encores. It was suggested at one point that they should do an album of Beatles covers. In 2006, 7 years after their last original album (with no interest by labels in producing a new album), lead singer Pat DiNizio, after reading an article about the historical impact t of MTB, considered a faithful remake of the MTB album, and approached Koch records, who gave them an enthusiastic “yes”.
The album was recorded in 5 days (“the second took even longer…”), and was a massive success, leading to more projects : “B-Sides The Beatles”, covering the b-sides of 1964 Beatlemania including Capitol, Vee-Jay, MGM Sheridan singles, and “Some Other Guy” for good measure in 2008 (**drummer Andy White reprised his role on “P.S. I Love You”), followed by a recreation of the Tollie “Love Me Do” single in 2010, and last (to date), a simulation of the Washington D.C. show in 2014 for digital release. These guys know their stuff, and knocked it out of the park every time.
In our country, we follow the UK discography (at least in the albums, we have album tracks released as singles here though), so initially I don't have any idea how important the US discographies are. As I got older I was able to get decent copies of the US albums and in my opinion, leaves me scratching my head because the sound quality is not up to RIAA standards of some tracks. Still I can only imagine how the teenagers of the USA 60s embraced this album.
This album is all we knew here in the states. The album had a sound that in my opinion, is unmatched by any other release. The mono version sound OK, but not like the stereo in the compression that hits the listener as soon as the needle drops onto the record. Yes, some of the Duophonic mixes sound crowded and a bit noisy, but compared to the actual stereo mix (which I had not heard until the 1980's,) I still prefer the mixes on the original album. The stereo mix of I want to hold your hand sounds lifeless and assembled in a haphazard way. The best sounding mix of that song is the Capitol 45 that was re-released in the 1980's with the picture sleeve. It's punchy and it has the right amount of compression IMO. When the 4 CD box set of the Capitol albums was relerased in 2004, I was in total bliss. The mastering engineer did not try to change anything regarding the mixes. It was done in a tasteful manner with only slight EQ and level adjustments. I once read that the mastering team of Ted Jensen and company actually had LP copies of the album in which they used in order to not get carried away with tinkering and only made them better as a result. Still, that box set is my go to source for the best Beatles 1964 American experience. I truly like those CD's and have made comparison to the 2009 box set, only to realize that the 2009 set was processed and tinkered with to a point that they lost their original concept. The 2009 stereo mixes of the first two albums have been brought more to the center of the stereo picture by means of panning, and if that alone is not a show stopper to some, it certainly is for me. After all of the hype prior to the release of the 2009 stereo box set, wondered what all the hype was about. The CD's were lifeless, dull and were not worth the purchase. On the other hand, the Capitol Albums boxes mastered by Ted Jensen were full of life with plenty of sizzle and compression worthy of replacing the vinyl counterparts forever. The very last vinyl pressing of Meet The Beatles, sounded amazing. I recommend to anyone looking to own a good sounding copy of any Capitol album to go with the very last pressing from right before they were deleted. In fact, some of those last pressings are pressed on super high quality vinyl allowing you to see light through the vinyl when held up to a light source. Reminds me of the MOFI albums of the 80's.