“The Beatles albums we know today on vinyl and CD aren’t the ones that were available in the 60s, 70s, or 80s.”
How so?
Help was a movie soundtrack with one George Martin instrumental tracks interspersed. Same with Hard Day’s Night. same with Yellow Submarine.
England didn’t have a Magical Mystery Tour LP. It was an ep and the other songs were non-album singles.
England didn’t have Again The Beatles either. Thus we have 2 volumes of Past Masters collecting up singles and the US only LP.
Capitol Records put different tracks and fewer tracks on the US album releases than did Parlaphone in the UK which always had 14 tracks.
It was Capitol’s way of squeezing out more albums/more $$$s from “the boys”.
It was only with “Sgt Pepper” that the US and UK albums matched.
http://www.beatlesbible.com/discography/united-states-of-america/
http://www.beatlesbible.com/discography/united-kingdom/
All of the re-masterings (including the 24-bit Hi-Rez FLAC files) are based on the original UK versions.
Also, it was with “Pepper” that Paul’s bass was finally potted up in the mixes and his melodic, tuneful bass lines were finally heard. He was always an underrated bassist but eventually his prowess became more widely admired.
Paul’s bass playing style led me to appreciate my fav bassist - the late, great Jaco Pastorius (”Weather Report”, et al) who had a similar melodic bass style.
How so?
For a start the original 60’s Beatles songs were mono not stereo.
IIRC the stereo versions were created later by audio trickery...:^)