Australian "With the Beatles" and "For Sale" covers
EgwEimi
Can anyone independently confirm the identity of the
man at EMI-Australia who designed the unique
Australian Beatles album covers? My source indicates
that Andrew Bokor was the designer.
Frank
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Rango
> Can anyone independently confirm the identity of the
> man at EMI-Australia who designed the unique
> Australian Beatles album covers?
What do they look like? What's so unique?
Matthew Kirkcaldie
title with their four heads cut out and floating around it. The heads
aren't the same as the ones in the photo on the UK cover, which is
pretty beautiful I reckon. My folks have a copy of the Australian one.
MK.
brilton
Under". The Beatles are at an EMI reception at the Southern Cross hotel in
Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. The then Victorian manager of EMI Cliff Baxter
recalls
"My most vivid memory of it, apart from having to forcibly move people around
the room and away from the smothered Beatles, was John Lennon in an absolutely
livid fit of anger because EMI here had designed a different cover for the
'With The Beatles' album. I had to keep explaining that it was done at the
Sydney headquarters and had nothing to do with me at all."
Another EMI man, Kevin Ritchie, says
"I thought I was doing the right thing giving them copies of their new album,
but it just started the tirade again. I was dismissed by John on the spot and
he was going to contact the Chairman in London and have me fired and the whole
of the Australian company was going to be sacked. I copped it because I was the
only one accessible to them. Everyone at EMI was hiding behind closed doors,
thinking 'oh dear here's the biggest thing ever to come out of the company and
we've done the wrong thing by them". As soon as it passed John had forgotten it
and everything went along smoothly again."
Bill Robinson, the then A&R manager, explains why the change occurred.
"We would have gladly used the English cover if we had been able to. You see in
those days there was no such thing as importing film negatives for covers, the
unions wouldn't allow it. We had to reshoot everything from the overseas covers
that we were sent. But the 'With The Beatles' jacket was very shadow and soft
and our printers - all we had was letterpress printers then - made a complete
botch of it, so we had to make up a new jacket with nice new clear, sharp
photographs. We tried to explain all of this to the Beatles but I'm sure they
didn't believe us".
Nevertheless, EMI Australia still used the English 'With The Beatles' artwork
twice for EP release covers, first in a straight two-tone reduction for the EP
"The Beatles No 1", and then (funnily enough) quite perfectly tonally
reproduced a la the UK version - in spite of any union ban - for the EP "All My
Loving". They also shrunk the Australian album cover for a cover for a further
EP named, quite imaginatively, 'With The Beatles'.
EMI Australia subsequently went their own way for the cover of 'Beatles For
Sale' as well.
The Australian 'With The Beatles' cover can be seen here amongst other places
http://www.geocities.com/SunsetStrip/Mezzanine/4889/albuma.html
The strange thing out of all of this that I don't understand is that the cover
of their first album 'Please Please Me' - and I have an early pressing of it
that I'm looking at here - looks perfectly clear and sharp, and it's in colour
too.