I always liked the songs on the Yellow Submarine album, but never have been fan of the redundancy of the two tracks that were already released on *official* albums by that time though: "All You Need Is Love" being on the great US Magical Mystery Tour, and "Yellow Submarine" on Revolver. It feels half-baked, and a bit strange in the whole Fab discography, due also to the addition of the George Martin orchestral tracks. There's a great Beatles album hidden somewhere in 1968 that could use most of the stray-tracks from that time. The bridge between the psychedelic Mystery Tour and the raw whiteness of the Great White Record.
To create that bridge, let's take the CAPITOL route and combine the original planned Yellow Submarine EP, with the non-album singles from that time, as it was done for the 67 singles and EP.
An EP you say?
The songs appearing in the Yellow Sub'movie were planned to come out in march 1969 in the form of an EP. The Beatles nixed the idea to release the LP we know today. It was supposed to go like this:
SIDE A
01. Only A Northern Song
02. Hey Bulldog
03. Across The Universe
SIDE B
01. All Together Now
02. It's All Too Much
A mix of outtakes from 1967 ("Northern Song" from Pepper, "All Together Now" and "Too Much" from Mystery Tour/All You Need Is Love) and new tracks from 1968 recorded before the trip to India. Interesting but it could flow better than that.
We are left with songs recorded in 1967 and 1968 not used on an official LP at the time: "Lady Madonna" and "Across The Universe" (recorded during the "Hey Bulldog" sessions in 68), "The Inner Light" (recorded by George Harrison in Bombay during the sessions for his Wonderwall Music LP) and the "Hey Jude" / "Revolution" single, recorded during the white-sessions and released in August 1968, 3 months before the White hit the shelves. I'll do some minor cheating and consider "You Know My Name" as a great contender to the set; it was recorded in 1967 but not completed until Lennon and McCartney added vocals in April 1969. Nonetheless, it sounds to me like it could really belong in here.
So here is my Yellow Submarine LP re-sequenstruction:
SIDE A - Songs and music from the animated film Yellow Submarine (20:31)
01. Hey Bulldog
02. Only A Northern Song
03. All Together Now
04. Across The Universe
05. It's All Too Much
SIDE B - ...plus these other selections (19:55)
01. Lady Madonna
02. The Inner Light
03. Revolution
04. You Know My Name (Look Up The Number)
05. Hey Jude
I used the 2009 Mono masters for most of the tracks, except for "It's All Too Much" using the RM1 unedited 8 minutes version. For the stereo versions, I used the 2009 masters, the 1999 stereo remix for "Only A Northern Song", and the complete mix of "You Know My Name" (an hybrid between the original and the Anthology version). Enjoy !
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