Beatles

So much has been said and written about the Beatles – and their story is so mythic in its sweep – that it's difficult to summarize their career without restating clichés that have already been digested by tens of millions of rock fans. To start with the obvious, they were the greatest and most influential act of the rock era, and they introduced more innovations into popular music than any other group of their time. Moreover, they were among the few artists of any discipline who were simultaneously the best at what they did and the most popular at what they did. Relentlessly imaginative and experimental, the Beatles grabbed hold of the international mass consciousness in 1964 and didn't let go for the next six years, always staying ahead of the pack in terms of creativity and never losing the ability to communicate their increasingly sophisticated ideas to a mass audience. Their supremacy as rock icons remains unchallenged to this day, decades after their breakup in 1970. It's hard to convey the scope of the Beatles' achievements in a mere paragraph or two.

These albums were cut for vinyl from the original master tapes using a completely analog signal path and with constant reference to first generation pressings of the original albums. They were made using a Studer A80 master recorder with analog preview & program paths, and a Neumann VMS70 cutting lathe originally installed in Capitol Studios in 1971. This specific all-analog cutting technique allows faithful representation of the full musical range and dynamics present on the original tapes.

On February 7, 1964, The Beatles arrived at New York’s John F. Kennedy Airport, greeted by scores of screaming, swooning fans who rushed the gate to catch a glimpse of John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr as they took their first steps on American soil. Two nights later, on Sunday, February 9, 73 million viewers in the U.S. and millions more in Canada tuned in to CBS to watch The Beatles make their American television debut on ‘The Ed Sullivan Show.’ In what remains one of the world’s top-viewed television events of all time, The Beatles performed five songs on the live broadcast and ‘Beatlemania,’ already in full, feverish bloom in The Beatles’ native U.K., was unleashed with blissful fervor across America and around the world. The British Invasion had begun. The new 13 CD box set THE U.S. ALBUMS commemorates the 50th anniversary of these history-making events, spanning 1964’s MEET THE BEATLES! to 1970’s HEY JUDE.

By the end of 1963, the Beatles had probably gone as far as they had dared to dream in establishing the widest possible audience for their music in Britain. When America beckoned, at the dawn of 1964, they were ready and primed to embrace stardom on an unseen scale. Capitol scheduled I Want To Hold Your Hand for US release on 26 December 1963, backed by a $30,000 national marketing campaign - $250,000 in today’s money. Five million fliers and windscreen stickers proclaiming “The Beatles Are Coming!” above a Capitol logo adorned with a Beatle wig, were pasted anywhere they might be seen. Point-of-sale displays were placed in record stores. A four-page Capitol promo pamphlet sent to the trade focused on the Beatles as a cultural phenomenon, placing inordinate emphasis on their haircuts. If anything sold the Beatles to America, even before their music had been widely heard, it was their hair, an identifying motif that became the talk of the nation. Capitol spent $30,000 publicising a haircut!, but their investment paid off, when on 4 April, Billboard’s Hot 100 showed the Beatles at #1 (with She Loves You), 2, 3, 4, 5, 31, 41, 46, 58, 65, 68 and 79, setting the seal on a full-blown cultural phenomenon.

The Beatles Emerging from Liverpool, England in 1960, the Beatles were a seminal British group that evolved from rock/pop origins into pioneers of musical experimentation.