The Beatles in Mono

For the 1982 boxed set, see The Beatles Mono Collection.
The Beatles in Mono
Box set by The Beatles
Released 9 September 2009
Recorded 11 September 1962–4 January 1970 at EMI, Trident, Olympic, Apple, Chappell, De Lane Lea and Regent Sound studios, London; Pathé Marconi Studio, Paris; EMI Studios, Bombay
Genre Rock
Label Apple, EMI
Producer George Martin
Simon Gibson, Paul Hicks, Sean Magee, Guy Massey, Sam Okell, Steve Rooke, Allan Rouse (remaster engineers)
The Beatles chronology
The Beatles (The Original Studio Recordings)
(2009)		 The Beatles in Mono
(2009)		 Tomorrow Never Knows
(2012)
Professional ratings
Review scores
SourceRating
AllMusic[1]
The Austin Chronicle[2]
Classic Rock9/10[3]
The Guardian[4]
Pitchfork Media10/10[5]
Uncut9/10[6]

The Beatles in Mono is a boxed set compilation comprising the remastered monaural recordings by the Beatles. The set was released on compact disc on 9 September 2009, the same day the remastered stereo recordings and companion The Beatles (The Original Studio Recordings) were also released, along with The Beatles: Rock Band video game. The remastering project for both mono and stereo versions was led by EMI senior studio engineers Allan Rouse and Guy Massey.[7]

The boxed set was released on 180-gram heavyweight vinyl on 8 September 2014, mastered directly from the original analog tapes and not the digital masters used for the CD release.[8]

Intention

The Beatles in Mono was released to reflect the fact that most of the Beatles' catalogue was originally mixed and released in the monophonic format. Stereo recordings were a fairly new concept for pop music in the 1960s and did not become standard until late in that decade. This explains why the Beatles' initial album releases were mixed for mono. By the late sixties, however, stereo recording for pop music was becoming more popular and, thus, the new standard. Therefore, the last few Beatles albums—Yellow Submarine, Abbey Road, and Let It Be—were mixed and released only in stereo. Many feel that the mono mixes reflect the true intention of the band. For example, in the case of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, all the mono mixes were done together with the Beatles themselves, throughout the recording of the album, whereas the stereo mixes were done in only six days by Abbey Road personnel George Martin, Geoff Emerick and Richard Lush after the album had been finished, with none of the Beatles attending.[9] George Harrison commented:

At that time [...] the console was about this big with four faders on it. And there was one speaker right in the middle [...] and that was it. When they invented stereo, I remember thinking 'Why? What do you want two speakers for?', because it ruined the sound from our point of view. You know, we had everything coming out of one speaker; now it had to come out of two speakers. It sounded like ... very ... naked.[10]

Limited edition

Amazon.com advertised the set as a limited edition item in the United States, and less than a month prior to the set's release announced the site had sold out of units.[11][12] Less than two weeks before 9 September, many other online retailers announced the selling out of units from their inventories, including the Canadian Amazon.ca site.[13]

EMI announced on 3 September that more mono boxed sets were to be pressed due to high demand from online pre-orders.[14] It is still to remain a "limited edition", but since it has already been certified platinum by the RIAA, it was not limited to 10,000 copies as originally stated. As of December 2016, both the CD and vinyl sets are still readily available.

Five years after the initial CD release, mono editions of each of the albums are available individually in the vinyl format, though the mono editions for CD are still only available in the box set. The American albums up to Revolver can be had on CD in mono paired with the original stereo mixes; this is the only other way to acquire the mono mixes on CD.

Disc listing

The thirteen-disc (fourteen on LP) collection contains the remastered mono versions of every Beatles album released in true mono. The original 1965 stereo mixes of Help! and Rubber Soul are included on the CD version as bonuses on their respective albums. (In 1986 both albums had been remixed by George Martin for their CD release in 1987.) The box contains a new two-disc compilation album titled Mono Masters, which compiles all the mono mixes of singles, B-sides and EP tracks that did not originally appear on any of the UK albums or Magical Mystery Tour.

The albums Yellow Submarine, Abbey Road, and Let It Be are not included in this set, as no true mono mixes of these albums were issued. The same holds true for the songs "The Ballad of John and Yoko", "Old Brown Shoe", and the single mix of "Let It Be", which were also omitted. A mono version of the Yellow Submarine album was released in the UK, but it was simply a fold-down (two stereo channels combined into one channel) from the stereo mix, not a unique, separate mono mix. Abbey Road and Let It Be were issued in the UK in mono on reel-to-reel tape and on LP in Brazil and other countries, but again, only as fold-downs from the respective stereo versions.

The previously unavailable true mono mixes of the four new Beatles songs released on the Yellow Submarine album ("Only a Northern Song", "All Together Now", "Hey Bulldog", and "It's All Too Much"), originally intended for a separate, but ultimately scrapped mono EP which would have also included a mono mix of "Across the Universe", are included on the Mono Masters compilation.

Also omitted from this set, but included in the stereo box set, is a DVD containing the mini-documentaries included with the stereo remasters of the different albums.

The White Album was originally released in mono and stereo in the UK and several other countries, but in the United States, it was only released in stereo. However, the mono mixes of "Don't Pass Me By" and "Helter Skelter" had been previously issued in the US in 1980 on the Capitol Records Rarities compilation album.

All CDs replicate their original album labels as first released, from the various Parlophone Records label variations, to the Capitol Records label (for Magical Mystery Tour) and the UK Apple Records side A and B labels for discs 1 and 2 respectively for The Beatles. For Mono Masters, disc 1 uses a mid-1960s Parlophone label design and disc 2 uses the unsliced Apple label design.

The set also includes a 44-page booklet which includes an essay on the important role that the mono mixes played in the Beatles' recording career, plus a track-by-track listing of the recordings.

Chart performance

The set debuted at number 40 on Billboard's Top 200 chart and the magazine reported that 12,000 copies were sold in its first week of release.[15][16] In Japan, it debuted at number 10, selling over 20,000 copies in its first week on the Oricon album charts.[17] The set was certified platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America in April 2010.[18]

References

  1. ↑ The Beatles in Mono at AllMusic
  2. ↑ Hernandez, Raoul (2 October 2009). "Review: The Beatles, The Beatles in Mono". The Austin Chronicle. Retrieved 19 November 2014.
  3. ↑ Stubbs, David (October 2014). "The Beatles: The Beatles Mono Vinyl Box Set". Classic Rock. p. 97.
  4. ↑ Petridis, Alexis (4 September 2009). "The Beatles: The Beatles in Mono – CD Review". The Guardian. London.
  5. ↑ The Beatles: Stereo Box / In Mono | Album Reviews | Pitchfork
  6. ↑ Robinson, John (October 2014). "The Beatles – The Beatles in Mono". Uncut. Retrieved 19 November 2014.
  7. ↑ Lewis, Anthony (30 August 2009). "Meet (and be) the Beatles". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 28 August 2009.
  8. ↑ Caro, Mark (30 September 2014). "Going Mono a Mano with the Beatles", Chicago Tribune. Retrieved 1 October 2014.
  9. ↑ Lewisohn, Mark: The Beatles Recording Sessions. The Hamlyn Publishing Group Ltd., London 1988, ISBN 0-600-55798-7. P. 108.
  10. ↑ The Beatles Anthology. Bonus-DVD, Take "Back at Abbey Road, May 1995."
  11. ↑ "Amazon.com: The Beatles Mono Box Set (LIMITED): The Beatles: Music". Amazon.com. Retrieved 11 July 2009.
  12. ↑ Haber, Dave (17 August 2009). "Beatles Remastered Mono Box sold out at Amazon US". Retrieved 28 August 2009.
  13. ↑ Haber, Dave (26 August 2009). "Update: Beatles Mono Box sold-out at more retailers now". Retrieved 28 August 2009.
  14. ↑ Morris, Christopher (3 September 2009). "EMI to press more 'Beatles in Mono'". Variety. Retrieved 5 September 2009.
  15. ↑ "Billboard 200". Billboard. Retrieved 17 September 2009.
  16. ↑ Goodman, Dean & Mohammad Zargham (16 September 2009). "The Beatles Turn US Charts Back to 1960s". Reuters. Retrieved 17 September 2009.
  17. ↑ "Oricon Weekly Album Charts for the third week of September 2009". Oricon (in Japanese). Retrieved 1 October 2009.
  18. ↑ "RIAA G&P certification count for April 2010". Retrieved 14 September 2010.

External links

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