The October-November Beatles releases

Paul Murphy says:

Whilst seemingly denounced as unnecessary in many web-quarters, the further release of ‘A Hard Day’s Night’ has to be taken at all its levels, not just the first port of call fan-to-Fab one. Firstly, it will be interesting to see what the song ownership credits are. Following Paul’s settled case, as seen first in his book of lyrics, he, through MPL, now own a larger chunk of the songwriting than previously. The Lennon half of the equation has been somewhat silent on its own pursuit, possibly by the Lennon Estate being so much poorer than Paul’s – Yoko famously not being able to find her share of the purchase price for the catalogue before Michael Jackson stepped in (the outcome of going to bed, playing no concerts, writing no songs that are covered, leaving no outtakes and having only barely recording-cost-covering album sales for the last 9 years of John’s life). It doesn’t hurt Paul, at the very least, to have newly-restimulating releases of old product that he now has a larger share of. (Paradoxically, John of course wrote the bulk of the album).

With no specific major Apple-exclusive item due for release this year – unless ownership has changed, the 1964 Maysles’ footage was a co-ownership, and the Ed Sullivan footage is certainly not owned by Apple – something (not the song) has to come out to bring funds in. One suspects that the re-release of the “US Albums” box set is not disassociated with either of these matters.

Being paid for your genius is not a dirty word, I’m afraid to say. Apple is a large company, with highly-talented and highly-paid employees (insert own comment about the ‘Now And Then’ artwork decision-maker here). Wages, costs, building maintenance, storage, staples and electricity do not stop until a new release comes out. All this perennial talk about ‘cash grab’ – well, who is grabbing it? If you release a product, the retailer has their chunk. What is left goes into Apple, who have had to pay all pre-production costs out of previous income. Apple is a corporation and pays tax on the money that comes in, and from that an amount gets split into four and goes to those bank accounts. Whereupon more tax is paid on it by the recipients.

Apple are, and always have been, very particular and judicious about how they manage their releases since wresting back control – and remember, the golden goose died in 1970, and there are very few eggs left now. A smattering of “With The Beatles” and “Rubber Soul” alternate versions, and the Rooftop Concert. If anyone thinks The Beatles are a cash cow, Apple milk it very prudently. What are Queen more famous for now? Rock music albums or soundtracking adverts? Ditto the ABKCO Stones. The Beatles songs are not licensed to appear on every compilation under the sun, their majesty watered down by being preceded by ‘Bus Stop’ and followed by ‘Bits And Pieces’ (without being unkind to those songs’ own merits). And not all the Beatles’ releases sell in their expected quantities – even backed by Peter Jackson’s “Get Back”, for months Amazon in the UK had the “Let It Be” Super Deluxe CD box set at under £40 (I got me mine, and a spare, for £34.99 each).

Sometimes, a product has to appear for no more reason than to keep putting petrol in the tank. My only eyebrow-furrower is that the ‘A Hard Day’s Night’ release is on white vinyl – I think there is a better candidate, don’t you – instead of black and white vinyl, to theme-match the album cover.

We all want an expanded “Anthology” – likely not to happen until all the Super Deluxe box sets, and accompanying outtakes, are released, to add fresh material to the original CD and film titles without impacting sales-wise on the box sets of the remaining albums – but in the interim, for myself only, I’m satisfied with what is on offer. If you can’t have a feast, at least choose a meal over a famine.

Whilst here, regarding ‘Now And Then’ appearing so grossly misplaced on “1967-1970”, once again I suspect the reason there was far more fiscal than anything else, and in that instance I do take umbrage at it. Written outside of a record contract, and never recorded in a studio (thus garnering it the same exemption status as say the Esher demos and Bowie’s box set home demos), ‘Now And Then’ probably placed more income, pro-rata, than any other Beatles song into their accounts. And what better place to maximise that income than to include it on a mega (and perennial) selling compilation that your company own.