THE BEATLES' SECOND ALBUM

The story about The Beatles`relationship with Capitol Records (their U.S. label) is well known today: First, Capitol refused EMI`s and Brian Epstein`s offer to sign The Beatles to release their first singles and their first album in the U.S. So, Epstein and EMI looked for smaller labels to release The Beatles`music in the U.S. (among them, Vee Jay Records, Swan Records, etc.). It wasn`t until The Beatles`success started in other parts of the world that Capitol was interested in them. So, not wanting to lose more time and the opportunity to earn a lot of money, and also taking advantage of their strongest monetary power, they asked EMI and Epstein to sign The Beatles for Capitol, Capitol then sued Vee Jay Records (a modest record label) to have the rights for all The Beatles`recordings in the U.S., and started to release their own versions of The Beatles`albums in the U.S. which only had 12 songs or less per album (in comparison to 14 per album as in England), releasing one album after the other, using remaining songs from previous albums, singles and their B-sides, to release more Beatles` albums than in the U.K. They also did they own mixings of the songs for their albums!

After EMI released their original U.K. albums on CD, they released their fist four albums only in Mono, so since then the old Fans who wanted to listen to the Stereo mixings of these albums had to listen to the old U.K. LPs, or to buy the U.S versions, which were available until 5 or 6 years ago in the cassette format. I was one of those Fans who thought that, but I discovered in the Web that the mixings were different, so before purchasing those cassettes (which I didn`t buy in the end) I was disappointed by this. One has to buy those 4 U.K. Stereo albums in the used LPs shops!

I really don`t give the same importance to these U.S. albums. IMO, they were more "marketing exercises" done by Capitol (and other labels in the U.S., like Polydor, MGM and Atco with the Tony Sheridan recordings) in the `60s with the goal to earn more dollars from the U. S. Fans (with the exception of the "Magical Mystey Tour" and "Hey Jude" albums which IMO are very good albums). So, I only comment that this "The Beatles` Second Album" is another collection of songs selected from their U.K. albums available then, plus songs from singles and their B- sides and English E.P.s., with different mixings in comparison to the U.K. releases.

If the old American Fans of The Beatles are nostalgical to listen to their first eight Capitol albums, now they can buy them in 2 Boxed Sets in the CD format, called "The Capitol Albums" Vols. 1 and 2.