What a mess. For all of his brilliance on Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, Paul McCartney must take much of the blame for the ill-conceived for television movie “Magical Mystery Tour”. McCartney had thought of it while in America in April of 1967. The others agreed to it so they all share it to some degree. He wrote the title tune and recording began April 25th.

After a few month’s break during which the Beatles were apart they reconvened on November 24th 1966 to record “Strawberry Fields Forever” the first song for the as yet untitled new Beatles album. It was among the most complex and difficult to produce songs the group had yet attempted and it took months to complete and mix to everyone’ satisfaction.

Rubber Soul was released on Friday, December 3rd 1965 three short years after The Beatles first entered Abbey Road Studios and met George Martin. It was their fifth album and the final one engineered by Norman Smith who was promoted a few months after Rubber Soul’s release to EMI’s A&R (artist and repertoire) Dept.

Help! was released in August of 1965. The Beatles needed to produce another album for release well before Christmas. But they first were obliged to visit America at the end of the month to once again play The Hollywood Bowl.

They didn’t have much unrecorded material left and little if anything from their stage act upon which to draw. They began recording the Help! follow-up the second week of October, 1965 for an album that needed to be in the stores early December, but instead of a slapdash effort they produced Rubber Soul.

After the unexpected sophistication of “A Hard Day’s Night”, the goofy follow up movie that probably served as The Monkees’ TV show template was disappointing. The 14 song Parlophone Help album was not.

After the out-of-focus Beatles For Sale, George Martin predicted The Beatles would “perk up”. It was more like a raging musical hard-on: in less than one week, beginning a little over a month after the release of Beatles For Sale they recorded and mixed to mono 11 new songs for a movie in which they would star and about which they knew very little.

"Product", "Filler", whatever you want to call it, the appropriately titled Beatles For Sale was a "have to meet the two album a year schedule" interim album due out for the 1964 Christmas season—a hodgepodge return to covers, George really asserting his country and western licks, John feeling his inner Bob Dylan, John and Paul channeling the Everly Brothers, Ringo given a real chance to stretch out in the percussion department and Paul rocking, rolling and screaming on reissue and breaking your heart on one of his achingly beautiful ballads.

Back in 1964 American buyers of the mono "A Hard Day's Night" Soundtrack album (United Artists UAL 3366) got a better deal than did the ones who bought the "stereo" version. While the latter's instrumentals were in true stereo the Beatles songs were mangled by UA engineers into versions that were electronically reprocessed for stereo.

On the other hand the mono buyers got a unique edition of "And I Love Her" where Paul's vocal isn't doubled. Early buyers got copies where "I'll Cry Instead" was listed as "I Cry Instead".

Though the two originals have plenty of "mileage", they don't sound "chewed" and a great deal of high frequency energy remains in the grooves. Nonetheless, this new AAA reissue sounds tonally identical to the original.

It's just far superior in every other way. It's more transparent, more detailed and far cleaner overall—not that this ever was a great recording. In fact, I'd argue that Please Please Me, though primitively recorded, sounds more immediate and "in the studio".