tracks on LP: Strawberry Fields Forever | Penny Lane | Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band | With A Little Help From My Friends | Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds | A Day In The Life | All You Need Is Love | I Am The Walrus | Hello Goodbye | The Fool On The Hill | Magical Mystery Tour | Lady Madonna | Hey Jude | Revolution | Back In The U.S.S.R. | While My Guitar Gently Weeps | Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da | Get Back | Don’t Let Me Down | The Ballad Of John And Yoko | Old Brown Shoe | Here Comes The Sun | Come Together | Something | Octopus’s Garden | Let It Be | Across The Universe | The Long And Winding Road
Record label: Apple PCSP 718
Released: 20/04/73
Purchased: 10/07/82
1967–1970 (also known as the Blue Album) is a compilation album of songs by the English rock band the Beatles, spanning the years indicated in the title. A double LP, it was released with 1962–1966 (the “Red Album”) in April 1973. 1967–1970 topped the Billboard albums chart in the United States and peaked at number 2 on the UK Albums Chart.
The album was instigated by Apple Records manager Allen Klein during his final months before being dismissed from that position. As with 1962–1966, the compilation was created by Apple and EMI/Capitol Records in response to a bootleg collection titled Alpha Omega, which had been sold on television the previous year. Print advertising for the two records made a point of declaring them “the only authorized collection of the Beatles”.
For the group’s 1963 debut LP Please Please Me, photographer Angus McBean took the distinctive colour photograph of the group looking down over the stairwell inside EMI House (EMI’s London headquarters in Manchester Square, demolished in 1995).
In 1969, the Beatles asked McBean to recreate this shot. Although a photograph from the 1969 photo shoot was originally intended for the then-planned Get Back album, it was not used when that project saw eventual release in 1970 as Let It Be. Instead, another photograph from the 1969 shoot, along with an unused photograph from the 1963 photo shoot, was used for both this LP and 1962–1966.
The inner gatefold photo for both LPs has been attributed to both Stephen Goldblatt and Don McCullin, and is from the “Mad Day Out” photo session in London on Sunday 28 July 1968.
Unlike the 1962–1966 collection, the Blue Album was largely the same in the U.S. and the UK, although there were some variations.
The U.S. edition had “Strawberry Fields Forever” in its original 1966 stereo mix, while “Penny Lane” and “Hello, Goodbye” were presented in mono, and “I Am The Walrus” with a four-beat electric piano introduction; the UK version had the more common six-beat beginning.
The albums had several other variants and anomalies. “Get Back” was described as the album version in the U.S. liner notes, although it was in fact the single version. In both countries, “Hey Jude” was around nine seconds shorter than it had been on the original single.
The original vinyl version faded in during the crowd noise at the beginning of “A Day In The Life”. The fade in was different on both the UK and U.S. versions.
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