Capitol Records third Beatles album was released on July 20, 1964 in both mono and stereo. The company also continued their policy of “Beatles ‘over saturation’ by releasing two more singles that same day: ‘I’ll Cry Instead’ b/w ‘I’m Happy Just To Dance With You’ and ‘And I Love Her’ b/w ‘If I Fell’. Entering the Billboard album chart on August 8, it became the first Capitol Beatles release to not hit #1, peaking at #2 for 9 weeks. The album that kept it out of the top spot? ‘A Hard Days Night’.
Nine of the eleven tracks were written by Lennon-McCartney. The two exceptions were covers of Larry Williams ‘Slow Down’ and Carl Perkins (one of George Harrison’s favorite artists) classic Sun track ‘Matchbox’. The album stayed on Billboard’s chart for a total of 41 weeks, eventually selling over 2,000,000 copies.
The recently released CD contains both mono and stereo versions of the album. The mono version of ‘I’ll Cry Instead’ is the longer version with an extra verse repeated clocking in at 2:09 while the true stereo version (not featured on the ‘A Hard Days Night’ album does not have the verse repeated and is only 1:49 long. The mono versions of ‘And I Love Her’ and ‘If I Fell’ are the American single versions with Paul and John’s voices single tracked on the first verse of each song. The stereo versions are double tracked vocals throughout. In fact all of the stereo mixes are the same masters that were used on the 2009 remasters of the British albums.
