Welcome to yet another Beatles Rarity of the Week. This week’s feature was recorded on February 20, 1965, when the Beatles spent their last day at Abbey Road Studios, prior to setting off to make their upcoming film Help! Four rehearsal takes of That Means A Lot, written specifically for the film, were recorded that day, complete with Spanish guitar from George and John playing his Fender Strat. John and George both supplied backing vocals to Paul’s lead. Five hours were dedicated to the session, but unfortunately, even after a remake attempt on March 30, The Beatles were never satisfied with their recording of it. Paul explains in the Beatles Anthology 2 liner notes by saying “We thought we’d give it to somebody who could sing it well”. They ended up giving the song to P.J. Proby, who recorded his version in April 1965, for a July single release. The Beatles version of the song remained in the vault until 1976, when a rough mix was made (announced on the tape with the title Can’t You See). In 1984, a new mix was prepared to be used on the planned EMI Beatles album Sessions (an out-takes compilation), but Sessions, although widely bootlegged since, never saw an official release due to objections by the surviving Beatles. This same 1984 mix was used in 1996 for The Beatles Anthology 2 CD set, despite the way it suffers from a murkiness caused by an overabundance of stereo reverb applied to a mono mix. That’s why I’m happy to share with you a much cleaner and lighter ‘early-eighties’ mix of take 1, created by the late EMI sound engineer John Barrett. John’s work is well known by many Beatles aficionados, and to his credit, while working on this mix, he was fully aware of his terminal condition, and was still able to accomplish an entire series of interesting re-mixes and quality upgrades of Beatles recordings, before his death with cancer in 1984. I have posted a couple of other mixes by John, both here and here, in case you’d like to hear more.

The Beatles

Want to make a suggestion for a future Beatles Rarity of the Week? If so, I will do my best to deliver, so let me hear from you. To browse for ideas, check out this search-able listing of thousands of Beatle-related recordings to choose from. Then let me hear from you here.

Here are some Amazon links to read more on, or purchase, some music related to this post:

1) Anthology 2 – features the mono ‘reverb-heavy’ mix of That Means A Lot from the 1984 Sessions project.

2) Help! (Remastered) – the original Beatles album remastered in 2009.

…and here are more Amazon links for any of your favorite Beatles-related music: The Beatles, John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr.

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