The Beatles Christmas Album

chronology
The Beatles Christmas Album
Compilation album by The Beatles
Publication ; (s)	18th December 1970
Label (s)	Apple Records / EMI
Format (s)	LP
Genre (s)	Pop , Traditional , Spoken Word
Title (number)	7th
running time	43 min 58 s
occupation	John Lennon; Paul McCartney; George Harrison; Ringo Starr; Guest speaker / guest musician: George Martin; Victor Spinetti; Mal Evans; Tiny Tim; Yoko Ono;
production	George Martin , Kenny Everett
Studio (s)	Abbey Road Studios , Dick James 'Studio, Beatles' home studios

The Beatles Christmas Album is a compilation by the Beatles , released in 1970. It brings together seven singles that were sent to members of the official fan club at Christmas from 1963 to 1969 . Just like these singles, the compilation has not yet been released commercially, but has only been made available to fan club members.

Authorship and Inclusion

The original idea for the Christmas singles came from the Beatles' press secretary at the time, Tony Barrow. For the first three singles he also wrote parts of the texts for the spoken passages, from which John Lennon , Paul McCartney , George Harrison and Ringo Starr deviated. The last four singles are essentially based on improvisations by the Beatles themselves.

The singles from the years 1963 to 1967 played the Beatles together in the Abbey Road Studios or the private studio of Dick James , a, producer was George Martin . The singles from 1968 and 1969 were mostly recorded at home by the Beatles, their contributions were later edited by Kenny Everett .

The singles include greetings from the Beatles to their fans, short skits , surrealistic seeming sound collages and music . Whereby the music - mostly alluded to in a parodic way - consists of, among other things, traditional Christmas carols , Beatles songs and Christmas carols by the Beatles themselves.

The Beatles sound very exuberant on the early singles, downright turned up. In the later singles, they increasingly slide into the psychedelic .

Publications

From 1963 to 1969, shortly before Christmas, the Beatles fan club sent its British members a Flexidisc . The US Fanklubmitglieder received similar singles in December of 1964 and 1966-1969.

The Beatles Christmas Album was released on December 18, 1970 by the Apple label as an LP exclusively for the USA fan club , the version for the UK fan club was released with an identical track list as From Then To You . At that point, the Beatles had split up around eight months ago.

When the album was about to be put together, the master tapes of the original singles could not be found. Therefore, the secretary of the Beatles fan club, Freda Kelly , made her originals available for the mastering of the album.

The album was released in a stereo version in the UK and a mono version in the US .

In the following years, numerous bootlegs of these compilations came into circulation, some of which contain bonus tracks and outtakes . The US version in particular was often illegally reprinted. Some of these bootlegs were also released on CD in later years .

On December 15, 2017, the first official reprints of the seven British Christmas singles in a limited box with the title Happy Christmas Beatle People! released. Instead of being flexidiscs, they were pressed onto colorful vinyl, the artwork was based on the original covers. The liner notes include the accompanying letters from the Beatles to the fan club members at the time.

Track list

page 1

No.	title	Original release date	length
1	The Beatles Christmas Record	Dec 6, 1963	05:00
2	Another Beatles Christmas Record	Dec 18, 1964	04:05
3	The Beatles Third Christmas Record	Dec 17, 1965	06:26
4th	Pantomime: Everywhere It's Christmas	Dec 16, 1966	06:40

Page 2

No.	title	Original release date	length
5	Christmas Time Is Here Again!	Dec 15, 1967	06:10
6th	The Beatles 1968 Christmas Record	Dec 20, 1968	07:55
7th	Happy Christmas 1969	Dec. 19, 1969	07:42

In the cover text of The Beatles Christmas Album , the titles of the original Christmas singles are not mentioned; they are only given with the corresponding year. In general, the titles of the Christmas singles on the various releases differ slightly from each other.

Recording dates

No.	song	Recording dates	Producer / sound engineer	Studio	Musician / guest musician
1	The Beatles Christmas Record	Oct 17, 1963	George Martin , Norman Smith	Abbey Road Studio 2	John Lennon : Language Paul McCartney : Language George Harrison : Language Ringo Starr : Language
2	Another Beatles Christmas Record	Oct 26, 1964	George Martin, Norman Smith	Abbey Road Studio 2	John Lennon: language, piano , song Paul McCartney: language, song George Harrison: language, song Ringo Starr: language, song
3	The Beatles Third Christmas Record	0Nov 8, 1965	George Martin, Norman Smith	Abbey Road Studio 2	John Lennon: language, song Paul McCartney: language, song George Harrison: language, song Ringo Starr: language, song
4th	Pantomime: Everywhere It's Christmas	Nov 25, 1966	George Martin, Geoff Emerick	Dick James' studio	John Lennon: language, song Paul McCartney: language, song George Harrison: language, song Ringo Starr: language, song
5	Christmas Time Is Here Again!	Nov 28, 1967	George Martin, Geoff Emerick	Abbey Road Studio 3	John Lennon: drum , language, song Paul McCartney: piano, language, singing George Harrison: acoustic guitar , speech, vocals Ringo Starr: drums , speech, vocals Victor Spinetti : Language Mal Evans : Language George Martin : Language
6th	The Beatles 1968 Christmas Record	Nov & Dec 1968	Kenny Everett	Home studios of John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr; George Harrison recorded another part in the USA.	John Lennon: language, song Paul McCartney: language, guitar , vocals George Harrison: language, song Ringo Starr: language, song Mal Evans: Language Tiny Tim : ukulele , vocals
7th	Happy Christmas 1969	Nov & Dec 1969	Kenny Everett	Home studios of John Lennon, Paul McCartney, and Ringo Starr; George Harrison recorded his part at Apple Studios.	John Lennon: language, song Paul McCartney: language, guitar, vocals George Harrison: language, song Ringo Starr: language, song Yoko Ono : language

Cover design

The album covers of the British and US versions are fundamentally different. While From Then To You is based on the cover of the Christmas single The Beatles Christmas Record from December 1963, The Beatles Christmas Album has a newly created cover that shows the individual Beatles in the first four rows - top row John Lennon, second row Paul McCartney , third row George Harrison, fourth row Ringo Starr - shows on each five pictures. The first picture of the respective series is from 1964, followed by photos from 1967, 1968, 1969 and 1970. The fifth row shows four pictures of the group from 1964, 1967, 1968 and 1969. In the last field is the title of the album. Robert Baumann was responsible for compiling the photos.

review

The music critic Richie Unterberger writes about The Beatles Christmas Album : "That should be officially released."
The music magazine Rolling Stone leads the compilation in a list of 40 essential Christmas albums at number ten.
The music database Allmusic awards three out of five possible stars. The review there says: "An interesting curiosity for fans - even if you don't necessarily have to put it on to decorate the Christmas tree."

Others

John Lennon and Yoko Ono released the single Happy Xmas (War Is Over) in 1971, just under a year after The Beatles Christmas Album was published - a Christmas song that is also a protest song . It is directed against war in general and against the Vietnam War in particular. This single has a parallel to The Beatles Third Christmas Record , in which John Lennon placed a brief criticism of the Vietnam War.

literature

Mark Lewisohn: The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions: The Official Story of the Abbey Road Years . ISBN 0-600-61207-4 .
Mark Lewisohn: The Complete Beatles Chronicle. ISBN 0-600-61001-2 .
Neville Stannard: The Long & Winding Road , ISBN 0-907-08096-0 .
Ian MacDonald: Revolution in the Head , ISBN 978-0-099-52679-7 .
Christoph Maus: The Beatles Worldwide , ISBN 978-3-9809137-1-3 .
Christoph Maus: The Beatles Worldwide II , ISBN 3-9809137-2-4 .