Album covers: Oldies
A COLLECTION OF BEATLES OLDIES… BUT GOLDIES
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| A Collection of Beatles Oldies – David Christian |
In late 1966, George Martin informed E.M.I. that there would be no new Beatles record in time for Christmas. This left the chance for the first Beatles “Greatest Hits” collection. It contained eight tracks not previously available on L.P. One track, ‘Bad Boy’ had previously been unreleased in the U.K, making it an essential purchase for the completist.
The front cover artwork was by David Christian, in very 60’s flower power style.
For the rear cover a colour photograph by Robert Whitaker was chosen. It was taken on June 30, while on tour in Japan. Before the first show in the Nippon Budokan Hall they started an oil and watercolors painting on a large paper.
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| A Collection of Beatles Oldies back cover – Robert Whitaker |
Bob Whitaker witnessed how, after the concert, the four of them continued working on the painting while listening to acetates of Revolver and smoking some pot. A different picture from the same evening is reprinted in ‘The Beatles Anthology’ book.
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| The Beatles are painting in Japan – Robert Whitaker |
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| The finished painting was called “Images of a woman” |
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| In Japan, they realised that the photo was in reverse, so they reversed it back. |
This article was written by Patrick Roefflaer and you can find it in it’s older incarnation here.
Captions by me
Sources:
Books: ‘Yesterday’ by Robert Freeman, The Beatles Anthology book, ‘Many Years From Now’ by Miles, ‘In My Life’ by Pete Shotton, ‘The complete EMI Recording Sessions’ by Mark Lewisohn and ‘The Beatles London’ by Mark Lewisohn and Peter Schreuder. And countless websites.
In the GDR the Album was published in 1974
I would love 'Oldies' to be officially issued on CD; especially as it was essentially the first Beatles compilation. The producers would have to make it louder, as the volume of this album has always been noticeably quite low. I anticipate that they would probably use the 2009 Re-masters – and hope that these would include the 1965 Help and Rubber Soul stereo mixes (for historical accuracy). Just the cover alone is 'fab'… as is much of the music on it!