GET BACK TO THE HOLY GRAIL
Last September, Stacey’s auction house in Rayleigh, Essex, offered a unique item for sale. It was listed as, “A rare front and back printer’s proof sleeve for The Beatles’ unissued LP Get Back from Trade Platemaking Services, Camberwell.” The lot attracted plenty of online interest among Beatles collectors around the world, though most took a peek at the pictures and apparently just thought they were proofs for one of the many bootlegs of the ’69 Beatles sessions that have been doing the rounds on vinyl for years. Therefore bidding was lukewarm and when the hammer fell, the proofs were sold for £300 to Damian Jones of Pop Classics.
The two proofs – around 12” square – were put up for sale by Laurence Goldman and their provenance is impeccable as he had helped produce them at the time when working for Trade Platemaking Services. “If you look on a lot of the flip back sleeves made by Garrod & Lofthouse you will see the initials TPS on that little bit where they stick the front and back together,” Goldman told me. “You will also see other names like LL, Linear Litho, and PL, Planet Litho, as we did not do everything.”
Those who collect Beatles albums will be familiar with the name of Garrod & Lofthouse as well as EJ Day or MacNeill press, who produced most of the sleeves printed in the UK. Companies such as TPS, LL and PL were the highly skilled specialists who played the crucial role in taking original artwork, photographs, design element, typography and sleeve notes and creating the metal plates that were used to make those sleeves. “All Garrod & Lofthouse and EJ Day did was take our plates and print the sleeves with ink on card,” states Goldman.
Goldman started working for TPS in 1969. At that time it was one of the leading companies in the field and did a lot of work for EMI and Decca and their subsidiary labels. One of Goldman’s skills was receiving original films of album covers sent over by US labels and then “taking out their names and logos and dropping in things like EMI or Motown as a lot of stuff that came over from the US had to be converted to the English version”. As Goldman worked on film (photo negatives) this was intricate, painstaking work that included removing other information like US addresses and adding catalogue numbers before a new version was ready to made into a printing plate.
TPS would create the all-important printing plates, which was specialist work that printers of the day could not do. Artwork would be photographed and then a special enlarger would separate the four-colour picture into four separate films – yellow, cyan, magenta and black. Thus it took these four films to make up the full colour picture. They would then be placed exactly on top of one another to register the four colours to produce the template from which the printing plate would be made.
When Goldman first started working at TPS he was told that every time The Beatles did a new sleeve, Paul McCartney would pop down to their offices in Camberwell to take a look at the proofs. “He did come in but I missed him,” laughs Goldman, though he did put together the master plate for Abbey Road, “which I was always proud of.”
Goldman was also involved in the aborted Get Back LP cover. “When a new Beatles sleeve came in it was a big thing,” he recalls. “You made the plate from the films and the lettering would be put in with another mask and then the plates would be made and you would get the four colour plates. In the case of that sleeve it would then be proofed on a flatbed printing press.”
The Beatles were such significant artists that TPS would do 40 proofs; for most other bands, they’d produce 12. According to Goldman, when it came to Get Back there were more than 40 copies made, “because it was a good picture and we were music fans. It would not be exactly 40, there might be around 50 or 52 and one or two of us would take them home because it was the new Beatles LP, not thinking that they were going to reject it. The sleeve looked like a good idea with them with all that hair in the EMI building looking down.”
The abandoned Get Back is a veritable minefield. The design idea was to recreate the famous picture on the front of The Beatles’ debut LP Please Please Me from 1963 with the band looking down from a balcony at EMI. Photographer Angus McBean, who took the original image, snapped The Beatles peering down at him again in Manchester Square.
Though this image was later used on The Beatles 1967/70 2LP issued in 1973, many Beatles collectors have also seen it on the front of the abandoned Get Back LP from bootlegs, many of which were supposedly created from a version of the sleeve owned by The Beatles friend and associate Mal Evans.
While the cover is well known, one of the crucial things missing was an exact track listing. That is why there are different versions of the LP cover with different lettering on the front stating, for example, “Don’t Let Me Down and 9 Other Tracks” or “With Let It Be and 11 Other Songs”.
There were a number of different running orders based on the cull made by engineer Glyn Johns and the band themselves. Evans himself gave a running order in the July edition of the Beatles Monthly and stated at the end, “I hope you’ll agree that The Beatles’ Get Back is a very interesting addition to your collection and that you’ll enjoy the come-and-join-us informality of the whole thing.”
Of course, as the LP was scrapped, no one got to enjoy Get Back but no one had thought that a final running order made it as far as the rear of a proposed final sleeve. Goldman’s rear sleeve proof confirms that there was indeed a running order as well as liner notes by Tony Barrow. Barrow had, of course, penned the original notes for Please Please Me in 1963 and had become The Beatles’ press officer at NEMS Enterprises throughout their ascent.
By 1968 he had gone freelance with Tony Barrow International Ltd, and also ran a management company. Barrow’s sleeve notes for Get Back are playful and riff from the original notes to Please Please Me to tie in with the cover image of Get Back. One crucial part of these new sleeve notes states: “I also retain my original promotional copy of the Please Please Me album. On the sleeve back, after the headline JOHN LENNON (rhythm guitar) appears in John’s scrawled handwriting: (married). But those who saw his addition thought it was just John’s joke because up-and-coming pop stars didn’t have wives according to prevailing tradition.” Someone who bought Barrow’s collection after his death confirms that his claims were correct. So this allows us to verify that these Barrow sleevenotes and this proof are kosher.
Crucially, Goldman states that this proof of the sleeve notes is the only copy ever printed. “That came in as a piece of artwork and everything that came into the company was photographed, so the back [of the sleeve] was photographed but it was a negative. I saw it [the negative] and thought it was interesting as it was copying the original Please Please Me. So I took a bromide of it and that was it, the only copy.”
Bromides were part and parcel of the printing business at this time as they allowed a single copy to be made – literally as a large photograph – for the text to be proof-read and corrected before the final plate was made. Goldman took his copy of the sleevenotes home with his copy of the proof cover and, “That is really unique as that (negative) was destroyed straight away after it went back to EMI and nothing came of it.”
Barrow’s sleevenotes are dated January 1970 but shortly after the proof had been made, there had been a sea change in the approach to the LP, which saw Phil Spector brought in to add some production magic. The Spector-honed tracks became the Let It Be LP as issued in May ’70. Saying that, Let It Be had the catalogue number PXS 1, which was also on the proof sleeve of the abandoned Get Back.
So, this proof sleeve and its sleevenotes tell us what the track listing was going to be on the abandoned Get Back. Having seen and handled them both, they are pristine, though Goldman states that this is no surprise. Not only have they been looked after for the last 47 years, but also “the reason for that is that as it is a photographic image, it is not printed”, which generally survive better.
Of course, the biggest surprise about the Get Back proof sleeve and notes is how low the final bid was. It seems that the old adage of “buyer beware” saw many hardcore Beatles fans convince themselves that the proof sleeve and sleeve notes were not original. As for value, if it is as authentic as it seems, it is worth a five-figure sum rather than the three-figures it sold for…
THE MIGHTY APHRODITE
Can you explain to me why the first Aphrodite’s Child single that I own called Rain And Tears is only worth around £15 and the 666 LP on Vertigo (that I don’t) is worth £1,000?
Henry Valer, via email
Back in 1965/66 Vangelis Papathanassiou (keyboards) was a member of the band The Forminx in Greece that recorded several popular singles influenced by The Beatles (complete with English lyrics) as well as the British instrumental beat boom.
Their best known song was Jeronimo Yanka which was a Greek hit, and they were so popular that there were plans to make a film about them, though this was abandoned once it was apparent the band were splitting.
Though Vangelis moved into songwriting and production, he soon teamed up with Demis Roussos who played bass and sang a bit in a popular band called The Idols who formed in 1964, and are still going in some shape or form today. Loukas Sideras (drums) and later Silver Koulouris (guitar) were also roped into the line-up of this new group though his first stint with the band was cut short by military service. A two-song demo record was sent to Philips and the band decided to relocate to London in an attempt to kick-start their new career and help secure a record deal.
When travelling via Orly airport, a strike in London meant that they got stuck in Paris. Though despite the setback they did secure a deal with Mercury on the strength of their demo and the band was christened Aphrodite’s Child. Their first single, the pleasing pop sunshine of Rain And Tears saw them adapt a 17th century composition by the organist Pachelbel. Rain And Tears actually became a massive hit in France and other European countries and even got to No 29 in the UK in July 1968 (Mercury MF 1039, £15).
A debut LP End Of The World was issued in 1968 though it was not released in the UK until 1969 as End Of The World (Rain And Tears) (Mercury SMCL 20140, £35) after a number of less successful singles had been issued on Mercury and Polydor.
The crucial thing is that by 1972 Vangelis was more interested in writing and recording more expansive progressive music than the short psychedelic material that Aphrodite’s Child were known for. Thus, Vangelis planned an LP based on the Book of Revelations from the Bible called 666 that was recorded in Paris with Koulouris returning to the band.
Internal tensions meant that by the time it was finished, released and a commercial flop as a 2LP set, the band had split up. 666 – The Apocalypse Of John was issued on the highly collectable Vertigo label in the UK (Vertigo 6673 001) in 1972 and over time the album has been hailed as a classic and is sought after by collectors around the world.
So, this is why your pop single is only worth £30 compared to the whopping £1,000 for the Vertigo swirling serious 666. As you are no doubt fully aware, both Vangelis and Roussos went on to bigger and better things.
CUTTING CORNERS
I have an excellent record called She’s Got Fever by what I would consider a “modern” rockabilly group called The Brilliant Corners. I note from my old price guide from a few years ago that it is worth £10. The 7” is from 1983. I say modern as I’m a fan of the more classic rock’n’roll and rockabilly fare from the 50s, but it would be good to see if this record has appreciated in value.
Mike Grey, via email
The Brilliant Corners formed in Bristol in 1983 with a line-up of David Woodward (guitar/vocals), Chris Galvin (bass) and Bob Woods (drums). Musically they initially wanted to combine the three Cs – (Eddie) Cochran, The Clash and The Cramps.
Early gigs were at the student union or in a small Bristol club called Upstairs. They decided to self-record and release their debut single on their own SS20 label in 1983 as they thought their music was not commercial enough to attract an indie or major label.
She’s Got Fever/Black Water was recorded cheaply at Right Track studios in Bristol. The initial pressing came in a pink sleeve and received excellent reviews and thanks to a distribution deal with Revolver, was soon in the Top 30 of the independent charts. This gave the band confidence to play more gigs, tour and continue to release singles and LPs on their SS20 label. To meet demand there was a second run of She’s Got Fever in a blue sleeve. The pink sleeve version is worth £30 and the blues is worth £15.
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