HISTORY WRITES A CANADIAN PAGE IN BEATLEMANIA.
A new Beatles box set called the U.S. Albums shows Canadians got a better deal from the early Beatles than fans across the border. The collection, due out Tuesday, reissues all 13 of the band’s U.S. albums, which often had mixes, track lists and cover art that differed from the U.K. originals.
Its release is tied to the 50th anniversary of the Beatles’ first performance on The Ed Sullivan Show — Feb. 9. 1964. (CBS plans to air a two-hour special on Feb. 9.)
But another date — Feb. 18, 1963 — is a fascinating footnote in Beatles history. It’s the day Love Me Do, the first Beatles single, was released in Canada.
Capitol Records of Canada was blessed with Paul White, a young Brit who headed the label’s new artist and repertoire department in Toronto. White delivered the Beatles to Canadian fans almost a year before the band played the Sullivan show.
White was 27 when he heard Love Me Do, around Christmas in 1962. It was among a batch of singles sent by EMI, Capitol’s parent company in England. The record had been a hit there the previous October. White’s job was to choose international records that may become hits in Canada.
“It was just a simple little song, not a great piece, but there was something joyful about the singing,” said White, who came to Canada from England in 1957.
“I put it out (in February 1963), and I think it sold 170 copies.”
White kept plugging. He released the Beatles’ next two British singles, Please Please Me and From Me To You, but both flopped here. All three singles were played on CPFL in London — the only station in the country to do so.
But White believed in the band. His faith paid off when She Loves You, the fourth Canadian single, came out in late September.
“It went berserk,” White said. She Loves You went to No. 1 on the CHUM Hit Parade in Toronto in late December.
The Beatles played two shows at Carnegie Hall and made two other appearances on the Sullivan show that long-ago February. White was summoned to New York, where the Beatles were under siege at the Plaza Hotel.
“As I went through security to go up to their suite, I saw that the girls had broken half the mirrors in the lobby.”
The lads took a liking to White, joking with him constantly. “I’m from Somerset, so they ribbed me about that in their Liverpool accents.”
The U.S. Albums includes five Capitol albums never before available on CD — A Hard Day’s Night Soundtrack; The Beatles’ Story; an audio commentary of the band’s rise to fame, Yesterday … And Today; Revolver; and Hey Jude.
In the U.S., the company made a hodgepodge of the Beatles’ artistic intentions by reordering the songs and replacing some tracks meant for a particular album with others that weren’t.
The process meant U.S. fans got bowdlerized versions of the first U.K. albums, with fewer songs and shoddy mixes that were worse in stereo.
White was sharp enough to prevent that from happening in Canada.
In November 1963, White released Beatlemania! With The Beatles. Musically, it was a copy of the band’s first U.K. album Please Please Me but with an altered front cover.
White used the arty blackand-white photograph from With The Beatles, their second U.K. album, and bedecked the album cover with quotes from Canadian journalists, including a memorable line from Sandy Gardiner of the Ottawa Journal: “A new disease is sweeping through England … and doctors are powerless to stop it … it’s Beatlemania!”
Piers Hemmingsen, a leading Beatles historian, credits the album with transforming the music industry. “It sold 300,000 copies in Canada, an enormous success.” Before the Beatles, teenagers bought only singles, he said.