Interesting Variations /// 33 RPM discs
Developed by Serge Pelletier, Piers Hemmingsen and Fred Young
A big part of the information found on this page was taken from Piers's books The Beatles Canadian Discography parts 1 and 2.
NOTE: Most Beatles records were repressed on different labels as time went by or when record companies updated their looks and logos. The changes were usually pretty standard, but it did happen that different variations occured on one same label / record version; sometimes a mistake that was later corrected, sometimes publishing credits that have changed. Either way, those subtil differences can be quite interesting to the collector's eye.
Listing every slight variation would be far too long (and not necessarily relevant), so this list rather focuses on the most interesting ones instead.
Beatlemania!
A very odd variation exists for this album on the black rainbow label. This curiosity is a no brackets RCA label with -2 on one side and -5 on the other (used up old stampers?). The main odd thing about this record is that the last two tracks on side 2 are "unbanded", as there is no visual seperation between the tracks, like every other record, and every other track on this record! If you look closely, there are only 6 visible tracks for 7 actual titles. What happened here is unknown, but very interesting nonetheless! This record was sealed in a thick lose plastic.
Twist And Shout
Here are two jacket variations from early 1964. The earlier version has no dash in the 6054 catalogue number on the top seam and the number is in a slightly smaller font size. This jacket also usually has no Parr's printer's logo at the bottom right hand corner of the front cover. The missing logo on some of these copies is simply due to the fact that the slick was cut a little further to the left; copies with partial or full Parr's logos also exist.
The second version has the dash in the 6054 catalogue number on the top seam and has the Parr's printer's logo on the front cover. The few early copies that featured the orange sticker on the loose wrap and the free Beatles promotional photo inside the jacket use the earlier jackets. All of these copies contain the disc with XEX-455 and XEX-456 with no dashes in the runouts. Many thanks to Gilles Valiquette of Montreal for highlighting these earlier jackets.
The retro rainbow pressing of this album has two different variations; one with the known regular font, and one with a big uppercase title font with serif. One has the large ring like other albums from this series, while the other has the medium Capitol size ring.
Long Tall Sally
Oddly enough, there exists two variations on this elusive Canadian LP. The red target pressing was made by RCA with the usual full pressing groove and with the other different RCA pressing stamper. Some copies came with a mistake cover where the mono back slick is complemented with a stereo front slick.
Another interesting variation has two small asterisks surrounding the "File Uder" info on the top seam. It i not known exactly what these were for but it is believed they might have been used as printers proofs.
A Hard Days Night
3 variations exist for first pressing MONO albums; the regular red label, and then United Artists used blue and black labels when they ran out of red labels due to high demand.
3 variations also exist on the later TAN label. The first one manufactured by United Artists, the second one by MCA Canada and the last one by Capitol Records.
Something New
A weird variation on the orange label (RCA stereo 1st generation from 1972) has a stereo front slick, but a back mono slick. Information at the bottom of the back cover is written over other text. The front slick has the word stereo in a white box and has an unusual printer logo in a blue square. Another variation with similar mistakes have a different front slick where the Modern Graphics logo is not in a blue box. Albums with the blue box logo also exist in sleeves without mistakes.
Beatles 65
An odd pressing on the orange label only features USA albums on the back slick.
Beatles VI
Early stereo issues have the stereo banner printed directly on the front slik, as later copies have the stereo banner in big block letters on top of the front slick.
An odd variation of this album omits the Canadian albums on the back cover. Stereo album on green target label.
Gold Stamped Stereo albums
Some rare reissue LPs have the word STEREO stamped in gold on the record cover instead of having the usual stereo banner at the top. Beatles VI on the green target RCA label has been spotted with this variation, and so was the much rarer Yesterday And Today on the Compo orange label.
Help!
The rare 1967 stereo reissue of the album that features the Parr's logo on the front slick is already a variation in itself because other pressings do not show the logo on the cover. But this pressing actually has a variation as well: original stereo copies mistakenly have the full dot on the top right. Later copies quickly corrected the mistake with the split dot commonly found on stereo albums, therefore copies with both full or split dots exist.
This mistake (a full dot on stereo release) was on all releases until this variation where it was finally corrected for the first time, therefore, all stereo releases prior to this 1967 reissue had a full dot.
Rubber Soul
Two different stereo covers exist for this album (black rainbow label): one where the stereo banner is printed in color directly on the front slick, while later, they printed the stereo banner in black and white on top of the front slick.
Some LPs have "The Beatles" written with the individual names as well, while others have only the individual names. RCA pressed only initial no brackets MONO copies without " The Beatles" on the label. Compo pressed MONO copies with and without " The Beatles" on the no brackets label. Compo mono copies also have the word MONAURAL written on the label. Brackets copies are all Compo and all have "The Beatles". This makes 6 variations on the black rainbow label :
-RCA mono, no brackets without "The Beatles" on the label
-Compo mono, no brackets with "The Beatles" on the label
-Compo mono, no brackets without "The Beatles" on the label
-Compo stereo, no brackets without "The Beatles" on the label
-Compo mono, brackets with "The Beatles" on the label
-Compo stereo, brackets with "The Beatles" on the label
Here is pictured the mono RCA, the mono compo with "The Beatles" and then without, all on the "no brackets" label. Second row has Compo stereo, no brackets without "The Beatles" on the label, Compo mono, brackets with "The Beatles" on the label and finally Compo stereo, brackets with "The Beatles" on the label.
Another odd cover variation for Rubber Soul shows a white STEREO printed directly on the front slick under the Capitol logo. Some are on a stereo front slick with the stereo banner printed at the top (with a brackets rainbow label record) while others have been seen on slicks without the banner at the top (with a green target record)
Yesterday and Today
A first variation of this LP was an odd pressing that can be identified as a paste over. We can see through the front slick, the back slick that was printed and glued there first. It has not yet been identified if it is a mistake pressing or a canadian butcher paste over, but one thing is for sure: it is a very odd variation. For more details, read the article HERE
Another variation for this album is simply the Canadian mono butcher covers that have been made for test proofing by Paul White. No cover has ever been sold to the public and probably never even passed the stage of test proofing, where very few mono butcher covers with the Parr's logo on the front were made.
Stereo front slick have also been made for use by sales reps, they were manufactured by Parrs in Toronto for the Yesterday And Today LP from June of 1966. These of course were never used for the LP in Canada as they were all withdrawn. Only two of these Canadian butcher sales slicks are know to exist. This one has 3 punch holes as it was used in a sales reps binder.
A very curious mistake variation for this album is from the green target and orange labels where they have mistakenly wrote a monophonic catalog number on a stereophonic LP. This mistake was most likely pressed by Columbia for records club purposes; we can see that the typeface used on this label is different from any known RCA or Compo pressing.
This green target record has a usual slick pasted cover with NO banner and a black ‘STEREO’ under the Capitol logo top left and No PARRS logo. The back cover shows US albums including Meet The Beatles, Second Album and The Early Beatles. At the bottom you can read ‘PRINTED IN CANADA’ on the left and ‘COVER PHOTO PRINTED IN CANADA’ on the right. There’s also a new hand-written matrix number with an identifiable scraping between ST-2553- and A.
The other variation of STEREOPHONIC/T-2553, this time on the ORANGE label has the same pressing ring as the previous green one. Two pressings exist for this mistake variation: one with a curious letter "K" over and left of the Capitol logo. This one has a ™ logo on the right of the Capitol name. The second variation has no "K" and instead has the ® logo on the right. These records have the MASTERED BY CAPITOL stamp and an ST-1-2553 matrix number.
The covers are the same as the previous issue with the exception of being printed directly on cardboard and of an added ‘CAPITOL IS A REGISTERED…’ accompanied by Capitol TARGET and EMI box logos at the bottom of the back covers, normally seen with purple label issues.
Source: Gilles Valiquette, Montréal.
Below we see the regular Compo pressing on the left and the mistake pressing on the right. Second row is the first variation with the K, and on the right the variation with no letter K.
Meet The Beatles / Second Album
The first variation of these US format albums are on the black rainbow label and simply consist of the mono / stereo first pressings. This is considered an interesting variation because the MONO copies are extremely hard to find and were possibly only available through the record club!
Another variation, this time unique to Canada, is a version of Meet The Beatles on the purple label. Only copies with the B-Side matrix number written "ST.2047.B." have an odd mistake mix of Don't Bother me, where an extra "Don't" is heard towards the end of the song; other purple label copies have the regular mix.
Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
Early copies featured the title "A little Help From My Friends" instead of "With A Little Help From My Friends" on the label. Later copies corrected the mistake. This variation exists on both mono and stereo pressings, making a total of 4 variations.
Magical Mystery Tour
Some early variations have "No You're not" in text font, while later copies have the phrase written in a hand written typeface.
Another variation or this album is actually quite recent as the remastered CD first pressing had a mistake printed on the label; "includes the Let it Be mini documentary". Later copies corrected the label to the proper title. This mistake also occured in the USA.
The Early Beatles
Two variations of the back cover that were produced within days of each other exist for this album. The new back slick was made to correct the small text below the Capitol Logo; changing from "REGISTERED USER C R (CANADA) LTD" to "REGISTERED USER CAPITOL RECORDS (CANADA) LTD".
White Album
In November 1968, First issues of the album were sold in a canadian-made, un-numbered cover that was slightly smaller in size. Capitol also made their own larger photos (4 of them) and their own poster. Some other copies were sold in an imported US cover that was numbered. Numbered copies were found with both RCA and Compo pressings. NOTE: Canadian copies all had corrected labels for songs like "Bungalow Bill"
Abbey Road
First issues of this album omitted the title "Her Majesty", while later copies corrected the mistake by adding the song title. Here, the original pressing is a RCA pressing while the corrected label was on a Compo record.
3 variations exist on the 2nd generation purple label; on with a cursive font, one with a mistake in the title, stating "Abby Road". and one with straight text. Here are the first two variations.
A variation of the late 70s cover has a differently cropped photo and shows part of a sewer trap in front of Ringo. It has an EverReddy printer's mark on the spine, but no split dot on the top. It also seems to be a Columbia pressing. Some covers show even more of the same sewer trap.
Very Together
There were two cover variations for this album. Initial copies from November of 1969 used a rear slick with no printer’s markings that carries a photograph credit to just “Jean-Patrick Amish”. This credit was then corrected a few weeks later to add two more names of the people who were presumably not photographers but who were probably responsible for the concept of the “snuffed candle”. Once they had seen that their “concept” had been duly executed on a popular Beatles album and that advertisements had been taken out in the music press (eg RPM Music Weekly), they would probably have sought “a mention”. The names that were added to the back of the album’s sleeve as being assigned credit for “Cover Design” were “W. Birkenfeld, C. Risch & Friends”. These were probably employees of Polydor Records either in Europe or Canada. The names were indeed a clue that perhaps they were European.
There are stampings as well as hand-written numbers in the run-out areas of the records. It is probable that the stamped numbers (00 635056 A and 00 635056 B) are from metal parts sent to Canada by Polydor (Europe). The hand-written numbers show the Canadian Polydor catalogue numbering (eg 242.008). It is possible that as many as 10,000 copies of the album were pressed in advance of what Polydor Canada thought would be “large demand”.
A second and later variation of the B side pressing is not machine stamped and has just 242-008-B in larger hand-writing. There is also a large hand-written H in the run-out area, presumably the initial of the person who did the new mastering for this side. This later version of the B-side appears to have been re-mastered - oddly, the band width for the second track on this side (The Saints) is narrower than the previous version, resulting in a wider run-out area for Side B.
This makes 4 variations for this album; two cover variations and two record variations.
Beatles Again / Hey Jude
This album was set to be called "The Beatles Again", but the name was quickly changed to "Hey Jude". Although no cover has been constructed with the first title, labels have! So both RCA and Compo pressed early albums with the wrong title. Later, both plants corrected their labels to the proper title, making 4 different variations of this album on the Apple label.
Let It Be SOAL
There exists 4 different cover variations for this album. The first has white borders around the back pictures and the "Manufactured in Canada" notice at the bottom. The second, No borders with the "manufactured" notice in a very faint, partially disappearing text. A thrid variation has no white borders either, but has a small "manufactured" notice. Finally, th 4th variation has no border and no "manufactured" notice whatsoever. The were sold with RCA and Compo discs.
Let It Be SW
Two different variations exist for this re-issue of the Let It Be Album. One was pressed by RCA while the other seems to be a Columbia pressing.
20 Greatest Hits
Original copies had the timing for Yesterday at 1:04. Later copies corrected the mistake to 2:04. Corrected copies were available very quickly as they were also sold in early covers with the brown sticker.
