Welcome, once again, to The Beatles Rarity Of The Week. In the summer of 1984, long before there was any concept of The Beatles Anthology, EMI began putting together a new Beatles album as a secret project. The album was appropriately titled Sessions and would contain alternate takes of some known songs, as well as a few surprise out-takes, that had been relegated to the vault up to that point. In order to keep word from getting out, it was assigned the code name “Mary Jane”, after the song “What’s The New Mary Jane”, that was to make it’s debut with this record. It was slated for release on February 22, 1985, and long-time Beatles friend and former sound engineer Geoff Emerick was brought in to create the necessary edits and mixes to include on the album. Within a month of the release date, however, the record was abruptly taken off of the schedule, presumably because the surviving Beatles were not happy with the content. Although the official version never came out, bootleggers created their own copies of Sessions. Eventually all tracks but a very short edit of the fan club holiday Christmas song “Christmas Time (Is Here Again)”, were released on the Beatles Anthology CDs. Get the whole story
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Category Archives: BROW
Beatles Rarity Of The Week – Think For Yourself (‘Dexterized’ mix)
For this week’s BROW, I first want to talk about a guy who was a Capitol Records A&R executive in the 1960′s named Dave Dexter. Capitol Records was actually owned by the U.K.-based company, EMI, that were handling the distribution of Beatles records in Britain through their Parlophone subsidiary. When EMI sent “Please Please Me” to Capitol for consideration as a U.S. single release, it was Dave who turned it down, citing he didn’t think it had what it took to be a marketable piece of music for the American audience. Dave, being in his forties at the time, had grown up with jazz and big band music, and apparently was not totally tuned in to picking out the best in rock and roll. Dave also declined the next couple of Beatle-offerings from EMI too: “From Me To You” and “She Loves You”. At this point, Beatles producer George Martin was infuriated. The singles did get a U.S. release anyway through either Vee Jay Records or Swan Records, but with very little promotional efforts and no backing from a major label, there was no interest generated for The Beatles in America. Fortunately Beatles manager Brian Epstein was able to persuade Capitol Records president, Alan Livingston, to play a few sample Beatles singles himself, including the new “I Want To Hold Your Hand” record, and that was all it took. Capitol agreed to begin distributing The Beatles with major promotional backing by the end of 1963. Get the whole story
Beatles Rarity Of The Week – Take This Hammer Medley, 1969
Welcome back for another edition of The Beatles Rarity Of The Week. After the filming of their surprise concert on the roof of Apple during the cold afternoon of January 30, 1969, The Beatles thought they had enough footage for their Let It Be documentary film. Well, almost anyway. There were still a few songs not appropriate for the rooftop show that they knew should be covered in the film with finalized versions. Those three numbers were “Two Of Us”, “The Long And Winding Road” and “Let It Be”.
So on the following day, The Beatles and Billy Preston returned to the Apple basement to perform these songs for the camera until they had releasable takes. “Two Of Us” was worked on first and knocked off fairly quickly. The other two required a bit more time. The final results of these recordings are seen in the Let It Be documentary just before the rooftop show which is used to wrap up the film.
This week’s BROW comes from a warm-up rehearsal from this January 31st session, recorded just before getting serious with the initial takes of “Two Of Us” were made. Get the whole story
Beatles Rarity Of The Week – Every Man Has A Woman Who Loves Him (duet version)
Welcome to The Beatles Rarity Of The Week. This time around I’m having a look at an often overlooked gem from John Lennon & Yoko Ono’s Double Fantasy album. “Every Man Has A Woman Who Loves Him” was written and sung on the album by Yoko with background vocals throughout by John. It was recorded in sessions that took place at New York City’s Hit Factory studio during August of 1980, just a few months before John was taken from us. Additional material from these sessions that was not finalized for the Double Fantasy album was released in January 1984 on the album Milk And Honey. In October of 1984, a single was released in the U.K. with a new rendition of “Every Man Has A Woman Who Loves Him.” It is, in actuality, the original version with Yoko’s lead vocal mixed out and John’s backing vocal brought up in the mix to make him the lead singer. The single’s B-side was another song composed by Yoko titled “It’s Alright” and is sung by John and Yoko’s son Sean. Both sides of this single also appear on a compilation tribute album to Yoko titled Every Man Has A Woman. This album contains covers of Yoko’s music by other artists, such as Eddie Money, Harry Nilsson, Elvis Costello and Roseanne Cash, as well as John and Sean, and was released to commemorate Yoko’s 50th birthday. Get the whole story
Beatles Rarity Of The Week – “Good News” (extra from ‘Vertical Man’ sessions)
Ringo Starr
Welcome to the Beatles Rarity of the Week. With Ringo Starr’s new album Ringo 2012 hot off the presses, I thought it would be a good week to scrounge up a Ringo rarity. Has it really been 50 years since he first went on a record?!
Additionally, you can consider this a follow-up to an earlier article I made, back in April 2011, concerning the BBE disc (Best Buy Exclusive) that accompanied the first few copies of Ringo’s 1998 Vertical Man CD when bought from Best Buy (you can find that post here, if you like, but I’ll give the necessary details here too). Get the whole story
Beatles Rarity of The Week – “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” (earliest demo)
I’m hoping most of those reading this have had the opportunity to check out Martin Scorsese’s recent biographical documentary George Harrison: Living In The Material World by now. Back in October it made it’s debut in cinemas across the U.K. and was also released on home video. In the U.S., it made it’s first appearance on HBO, with the promise posted on GeorgeHarrison.com of a home video release in the Spring. The 3 1/2 hour feature is divided into two parts with the first part focusing on George’s “Beatle-years” and the second part mainly focusing on the time after The Beatles, up to George’s death in 2001. However, part two actually begins with a 1968 acoustic demo of George’s “While My Guitar Gently Weeps”. Since this demo is only presented as a 45 second edit containing one verse, and not available on any official releases anywhere else, I thought some of you out there might like to hear it in it’s entirety.
This demo of George’s White Album classic is the earliest known recorded account of the song. It was recorded in late May 1968, when The Beatles had recently returned from their time learning about Transcendental Meditation with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, in Rishikesh, India. Since the band had written some 35 new songs while on the trip, they were eager to record some demos and make plans for the next album. They had decided to convene at George’s bungalow (named Kinfauns) in Esher Surrey, U.K. to do just that. Get the whole story
I'm Happy Nat and I'm glad you dropped in! Feel free to listen to the latest BROW (Beatles Rarity Of The Week), watch the latest VOW (Beatles Video of the Week), and join the discussion by leaving comments or 
