No. 167: We Are All Together

We Are All Together, September 2012

This is a happy Beatles picture.
That's why I chose it.  Nice smiles, arms around, thumbs up. Friends. Cool threads.
Celebrating completion of "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band."
May 19, 1967, original photo by John Pratt.

The guy who bought this has loads of Beatles stuff!

"Excellent work, Tom. As a teen, my bedroom wall was adorned with a poster of an alternate photo from this event (which was the Sgt. Pepper release party at Brian Epstein's house, May 1967). I always enjoy seeing images from the 1966-67 era of the Beatles."

My parents liked The Beatles up to the "Hello Goodbye" period, and "Magical Mystery Tour." At that point the Fab Four suddenly were "on dope" and dressed weird.
I listened to the full Beatles catalog, front to back, while drawing We Are All Together. Their progression was short and remarkable, musically and lyrically.
I liked them better "on dope" and weird, loud and hairy.

We had, in the 1960s, a Westinghouse portable record player that I was eventually allowed to haul upstairs from the rec room. There was an "on" knob, a "tone" knob, and three speeds (78, 33 1/3 and 45 rpm). I put it square in the center of my bedroom floor, where I could sit in front of it and spin "Hello Goodbye" backed with "Penny Lane" and many more. There was a big spindle for the 45s, or singles (big hole) -- and I could stack 'em five high then watch 'em drop.

The Westinghouse mono unit (one speaker) was wrapped in tan and brown vinyl and was full of tubes. It took a while to warm up and smelled funny but worked swell until the tubes died and the music stopped. It was replaced by a solid state Arvin stereo with fold-out speakers but it was never the same.
Initially those Beatles 45s on Capitol Records in the USA had a bright yellow and orange swirl that folded into itself as the record spun. It was cool to look at. Those old Capitol LPs, with 10 or 12 songs, were fun to watch too: A rainbow of colors on the rim fading in and out for infinity.
I loved being a Beatles boy.

Apples. And a rainbow.

In 1968 the look of those records changed, as The Beatles themselves changed: heavier, more serious, jaded and maybe a little mean. A fat green apple replaced the happy swirls and rainbows, almost daring young minds to take a psychedelic bite -- Dorothy-like.
Apple Records was founded that year, part of some grand trip to change music, film and fashion.
Apparently the Apple Corps. logo evolved from a painting Paul McCartney had acquired. René François Ghislain Magritte (1898 -1967) was a Belgian surrealist artist.. He painted the fruit realistically and then denied it was an apple -- only an image of an apple.
Apple album and single labels displayed a bright green Granny Smith apple on the A-side. The B-side was sliced open, to the core.
It was genius, and it remains beautiful.

A red apple. Bad news.

That's when my record collecting bug began.
The first Beatles Apple album proper was "The White Album" (SWBO-101) but the Apple Films logo had appeared in a different incarnation on the inner booklet of "Magical Mystery Tour" in 1967.
The first single was "Hey Jude" backed with "Revolution" in 1968 -- not from "The White Album" but from the same period. I was 7 years old.
My God, "Hey Jude" is still one long song. And "Revolution" still gives me a headache.
Bunches more little Apples followed. "The Ballad of John & Yoko." "My Sweet Lord" by George Harrison (the flip side was also a green apple, not sliced: "Isn't It A Pity."). "Day After Day" by Badfinger.

It was like a magic factory.
(Actually FOUR factories: Scranton, PA, Los Angeles, CA, Jacksonville, IL and Winchester, VA.)
On the U.S. issue of the "Let It Be" album, the Apple was red. Being the soundtrack to the United Artists movie of the same name, it was manufactured and distributed by United Artists Records, not Capitol. We learned in our adult years that the red apple wasn't really to mark the difference -- but to signify that "Let It Be" was the end, and was a bloody mess.
I remember that my mom took me to Woolworth's in the Austin Village Plaza in Warren, Ohio in the rain at night to get that record. I opened it up in the car and saw the red apple and the booklet full of Beatles leaning over all sorts of studio hardware.
"This is a New Phase Beatles album," the sleeve note proclaimed.
It was a lie. The Beatles were done. 

 
Producer Phil Spector had been drafted to take piles of not-so-great music and cobble together a just-OK record. John Lennon said: "He took the shittiest pile of shit and made something of it." It was 1970 and I was 9 years old.
("Let It Be" was released last but "Abbey Road" (1969) was actually the final studio effort, and it is magnificent.)
The Fab Four apart, however, and their arty pals were soon everywhere.
I took John Lennon's "Instant Karma" 45 to Emerson Elementary show and tell in the first grade. Everyone dug "we all shine on, like the moon, the stars and the sun." Even the teacher was into it -- Miss Bette Steele, who was kinda young, kinda wow.

Soon Apples were in every record store, back when there were record stores. The Beatles, also being businessmen (though not necessarily good ones), re-released all of those old Capitol swirl 45s and rainbow label LPs on their own Apple imprint. Some of the glossy black sleeves said "The Beatles on Apple" but most just proclaimed "Apple."
There also are many logo variations that drive collectors goofy, namely involving the factory, the printing, the manufacturing line and its placement on the label:
West Coast, "Mfd. by Apple." "Apple label with Capitol logo," West Coast.
East Coast, "Mfd. by Apple." "Mfd. by Apple" on B-Side, East Coast. "Apple label with Capitol logo," East Coast.
"Mfd. by Apple" on A-Side, Jacksonville pressing. "Apple label with Capitol logo," Jacksonville pressing.
"Mfd. by Apple" on A-Side only, Winchester pressing.

John's custom Apple.

Light green, dark green, dull green, shiny green. A few blue ones from Ringo.
It gets even more maddening when you consider all of the EMI Records variations in Europe.
A pal of mine makes a science of Beatles collecting. He has a Beatles room and it's awesome. And he pays in cash, thank you.
The very last Apple single was George Harrison's "This Guitar (Can't Keep From Crying)" in 1975, and it tanked. I was 14.
The very last LP was Ringo Starr's greatest hits, "Blast From Your Past" in 1975. It featured the return of the red Apple label, by now mired in financial disaster. More blood. Another goodbye.

Blood red.

The bright green apple returned for Beatles compact disc releases in the 1990s, following initial CD releases on Capitol or Parlophone.
There's a hole in the middle of an Apple Corps./Capitol-EMI CD, too. But like the Arvin solid state stereo that replaced the Westinghouse record player, it's not the same.

The illustration is SOLD.

To inquire about buying Beatles vinyl and other artists' LPs, contact hankbonesman@embarqmail.com