The Beatles: The ‘Red’ and ‘Blue’ Albums Reimagined

Paul McCartney spent the better part of 30 years chasing his dream of completing “Now and Then,” a John Lennon demo from the late 1970s that the surviving Beatles attempted to finish for their Anthology project in the 1990s. After Peter Jackson’s crew developed a machine-learning technology during the production of his Get Back documentary, McCartney was finally able to isolate Lennon’s vocal from the piano and noise on the original tape, allowing him to build a lush arrangement around the yearning melody. Once the song was finished, the question arose: Where did this song belong in the extended Beatles universe? 

“Now and Then” finds a home as the new closing song on a significantly revised reissue of 1967-1970, the second of a matched set of greatest-hits collections commonly known as the Red and Blue Albums. Both of the compilations have been remixed by Giles Martin, with certain songs benefiting from the same “de-mixing” technology that enabled the Beatles to complete “Now and Then.” They’ve also been expanded in an attempt to address some common complaints about the original incarnations, such as how 1962-1966 — the Red Album — lacked any songs written by George Harrison and shortchanged Revolver, an album often considered the Beatles’ very best. These deluxe 50th-anniversary editions of 1962-1966 and 1967-1970 are further proof that the records, once considered a footnote, even a cash grab, are an essential part of the Beatles’ legacy and, in turn, an indelible part of the pop/rock lexicon. 

It’s a far cry from how the Red and Blue Albums were viewed upon their release in 1973. Fifty years ago, 1962-1966 and 1967-1970 appeared to indifference from the band themselves — if not some outright hostility. A year after their release, Paul McCartney told Rolling Stone, “I didn’t take an awful lot of interest in them, actually. I still haven’t heard them.” Part of McCartney’s disdain could possibly have been ascribed to the fact that the two comps appeared the same month as his Red Rose Speedway, leaving his new record to battle his old work on the charts. John Lennon told Melody Maker he didn’t have any input on the final track listing, claiming, “They sent me lists and asked for my opinion but I was busy at the time.” 

The Beatles being busy with their own lives and careers in the spring of 1973 is one of the reasons 1962-1966 and 1967-1970 happened: Fixated on the present, they left the past for somebody else. That’s fair. The wounds from the breakup were still fresh, and the group remained embroiled in litigation that would stretch out for another year. The public, though, hungered for a greatest-hits album, something the Beatles didn’t quite have in their catalog. Parlophone rushed out A Collection of Beatles Oldies for the Christmas season of 1966, but it never appeared in America. In the U.S., Capitol was still mopping up odds and ends as late as 1970, when they issued the grab bag Hey Jude, an LP that paired the titular smash with such early hits as “Can’t Buy Me Love.” 

Klein and Steckler were following a blueprint they created with Hot Rocks 1964-1971, the double-LP Rolling Stones compilation Klein ushered into the marketplace in 1971, a year after the Stones had dismissed him. Hot Rocks relied on the group’s big hits but left space for album cuts that provided color and insight, a formula that flourished on the Red and Blue Albums. At times, the sequencing could seem a little lopsided — 1962-1966 closed with nearly half of Rubber Soul, and the double-LP The White Album is skimmed with three tracks — but the blend of hits, non-LP singles and album cuts did capture the essence of the Beatles’ evolution. That narrative was so strong it transcended the sometimes sloppy execution of the records; several tracks weren’t issued in stereo only because the compilation was assembled in a location where stereo masters couldn’t be found. 

The artwork relied on a pair of rhyming photos by Angus McBean, who shot the cover image of the band’s 1963 debut Please Please Me and replicated the pose for Get Back, the scrapped 1969 album that was the first draft of Let It Be. Taken at the start and conclusion of their career, the images provided a swift, haunting illustration of the distance the Beatles traveled in less than a decade which, in turn, helped sell the records: The visible aging in the two photos suggested that there was a story to tell. That hint of a narrative helped carve a place in the public imagination for the Red and Blue Albums, one that gave the compilations a legacy that transcended their origins as a simple repository of hits. The charm of the Red and Blue collections is that they worked as albums, four interlocking sides with their own internal flow. 

1962-1966 and 1967-1970 succeeded beyond anyone’s wildest imagination, competing with McCartney’s Red Rose Speedway for the top of the charts and then sticking around as pop perennials. Furthermore, they confirmed that old 45s could be reconfigured as vibrant LPs. Soon, a deluge of imitators flooded the marketplace. Arriving a year later, the Beach Boys’ Endless Summer was a transparent attempt to ride this wave, condensing a career into a double LP, a move mimicked by Creedence Clearwater Revival’s Chronicle in 1976. During the mid- and late 1970s, Elton John, Alice Cooper, Eagles and Steve Miller — all staples of album-rock radio — each distilled their essence onto greatest-hits records, winding up with compilations that rivaled (and sometimes eclipsed) their proper LPs.