Music Album Review: 'The Beatles: 1967-1970 (Blue Album)'

Album Cover Design: Tom Wilkes. Photo by: Angus McBean. (C) 1973 Apple Records

On April 2, 1973, Apple Records released two double-LP compilation albums by The Beatles: The Beatles: 1962-1966 and The Beatles: 1967-1970. Known respectively as the Red and Blue Albums (a reference to the colors of the album packaging), the two sets presented 54 of the Fab Four’s best-known songs from their eight-year reign as rock’s premier performing act.

Produced by George Martin and Phil Spector, the Red and Blue Albums were compiled by The Beatles’ (and The Rolling Stones’) infamously sleazy agent Allen Klein in response to the bootleg collection Alpha Omega, which was being sold without permission via television marketing.

Per Klein, Martin, and Spector’s design,  The Red Album covers the first half of The Beatles’ career, featuring 26 songs written and performed by the “lads from Liverpool” between 1962 and 1966. For various reasons – some artistic, some financial – Klein decreed that the Red Album would not include any “covers” by The Beatles, even though they had gained popularity in Britain, Western Europe, and the U.S. with their versions of Meredith Wilson's Till There Was You (a song from the musical The Music Man) and Twist and Shout (which was written by Phil Medley and Bert Berns.) 

When the Blue Album was being put together, Klein, Martin, and Spector thought about including songs written by John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr as solo artists, but the limitations of the recording medium simply did not permit this. As a result, the 28-song set consists of material written exclusively for the band as a group.

• The Beatles: 1967-1970 consists of songs compiled from the following sources:
• Magical Mystery Tour (album)
• Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts’ Club Band (album) 
• Non-album singles
• The Beatles (aka The White Album)
• Abbey Road (album)
• Let It Be  (album)

The songs are arranged in a rough chronological order, but Klein and his creative team mix up tracks from Magical Mystery Tour and Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts’ Club Band randomly, so it’s not a perfectly chronological approach.

The Beatles: Penny Lane

Track Listing

CD 1:

1.      Strawberry Fields Forever

2.      Penny Lane

3.      Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts’Club Band

4.      With a Little Help From My Friends

5.      Lucy In the Sky With Diamonds

6.      A Day In the Life

7.      All You Need is Love

8.      I Am the Walrus

9.      Hello Goodbye

10.  The Fool On the Hill

11.  Magical Mystery Tour

12.  Lady Madonna

13.   Hey Jude

14.  Revolution

CD 2:

1.      Back In the U.S.S.R.

2.      While My Guitar Gently Weeps

3.      Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da

4.      Get Back

5.      Don't Let Me Down

6.      The Ballad of John and Yoko

7.      Old Brown Shoe

8.      Here Comes the Sun

9.      Come Together

10.  Something

11.  Octopus's Garden

12.  Let It Be

13.  Across the Universe

14.  The Long and Winding Road

My Take

The Beatles: Hello, Goodbye

The Beatles changed their song-writing and singing styles sometime after the release of Rubber Soul (1966). The group had gradually moved from singing covers of R&B and rock ‘n’ roll songs by other artists to writing their own songs; early Beatles songs (such as those in the Red Album) tended to be “safe” pop songs with the usual boy-meets-girl, boy-loves-girl, and boy-loses-girl sensibilities which were staples of pop and early rock group set lists. As the Sixties progressed and the world scene became more chaotic – the Vietnam War, Cold War tensions, the growing gap between young and old, conservatives and liberals, and fast-and-furious cultural shifts in the West and elsewhere (epitomized by the phrase “sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll”) – the four “lads from Liverpool” started experimenting with more radical forms of music and crafted edgier, more psychedelic songs.

The Beatles: Hey Jude

I was born several years too late to hear and appreciate The Beatles during their eight-year run as one of rock’s most popular bands. I was only seven when the band announced it was breaking up after the release of Let It Be – an after-the-fact revelation, given that The Beatles had dissolved in September 20, 1969 but kept the news to themselves so that the album’s sales would not be affected. Back then, I lived with my mom and older half-sister in Bogota, Colombia. I didn’t listen to the radio when I was seven, and although my half-sister and cousins that were in their 20s and early 30s had Beatles albums on LP records or cassettes, I didn’t hang out with them.

So, yeah. As I wrote in my review of the Red Album yesterday, “My fascination with the ‘lads from Liverpool’ began in my sophomore year at South Miami High, when a fellow journalism student took the time to write down the lyrics to Paul McCartney's ode to Julian Lennon ("Hey Jude"). In chorus class I learned the lyrics to "Eleanor Rigby," even though all my attempts to sing it as a solo were defeated by my vocal range”

I heard both the Red and Blue Albums – on cassette – when I was in high school. I liked the two recordings quite a bit, which is not surprising because the group had talent in both the creative side as well as the performing one.

However, over time I discovered that I tended to gravitate more toward the songs on The Beatles: 1962-1966 even though some of my favorite songs (Penny Lane, Fool On the Hill, Hello, Goodbye, Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da, and Hey Jude) are in the track list of The Beatles: 1967-1970.  To this day, this pattern in my listening habits still holds true. I love some of the songs on the Blue Album; like some of the others; and while I don’t hate any of the 28 songs on the two CD set, I’m impatient when, say, I Am the Walrus, Get Back, or Come Together get their turn on the playlist.

I don’t press Skip Track when those “edgy” and more psychedelic songs come on. But I don’t exactly jump for joy when I hear them. I’m more of a The Long and Winding Road-Let It Be kind of guy, and I make no apologies for that.

Aside from these aesthetics quibbles, I am glad that Allan Klein – in spite of his sleazy business dealings as manager to the Rolling Stones and The Beatles – had the idea to put out an official compilation album of the band’s hit songs. Sure, both The Beatles: 1962-1966 and The Beatles: 1967-1970 are imperfect and are missing a few key songs in the group’s discography – Give Peace a Chance, while strictly a John Lennon solo effort, would have been a welcome addition to the Blue Album; I Saw Her Standing There is sadly MIA from the Red one – Apple’s response to the bootleg Alpha Omega compilation has been a perennial “must have” recording for 45 years.

I give  The Beatles: 1967-1970 (Blue Album) four of five stars. Most of my rating – the four stars – is based on the musical content. The missing star, though, is because in a cost-saving move, Apple and Capitol Records – the U.S. label that releases Beatles recordings here – decided to use cardboard “digipack” packaging for the 2010 “digitally remastered” reissue instead of the bulkier plastic “jewel box” CD cases of yore.

While such packaging is somewhat less space-consuming, it makes handling the compact discs difficult. I mean, c’mon, people. Since the advent of the compact disc format in the early ‘80s, consumers have been told to avoid touching the underside of the CD, so it doesn’t get smudged or scratched. But with new-packaging albums, it’s impossible to get the compact discs out of their pockets in the album sleeve without touching the delicate non-label side.

In addition to the two discs, The Beatles: 1967-1970 comes with an illustrated booklet with the lyrics to all 28 songs on the double album.