The Beatles Christmas Record

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The Beatles Christmas Record
The Beatles
publication 1963
length 5 min
Genre (s) Pop rock
Author (s) Lennon , McCartney , Harrison , Starkey

The Beatles Christmas Record ( english , The Beatles Christmas Record ') is a five-minute so-called flexi-disc with Christmas greetings to the Beatles that the fan club sent the band on December 6, 1963 exclusively to its members. The record was never on sale and the recording is no longer available.

Emergence

The idea of ​​sending an exclusive Christmas single to the 25,000 members of the Beatles' fan club in mid-1963 goes back to Tony Barrow, an employee of Beatles management. Barrow was also responsible for overseeing the fan club. Originally the action was only planned for 1963, but from 1963 until the breakup of the Beatles the fan club published singles with Christmas greetings from the Beatles annually for Christmas.

The recordings for the single took place on October 17, 1963 following the recording for I Want To Hold Your Hand and This Boy in London's Abbey Road Studios . The recording was produced by George Martin . Tony Barrow had actually prepared texts that the Beatles should read, but the Beatles deviated significantly from these texts.

content

The single begins with John Lennon performing the song Good King Wenceslas with slightly different lyrics. Afterwards Lennon speaks briefly about the past year. He also mentions that the Beatles will perform before the Queen in November 1963 as part of the Royal Variety Show , after which he whistles the British national anthem , which the rest of the Beatles briefly dive into. His part ends with him singing a twisted version of the song Happy Birthday to You .

Paul McCartney next reports that he prefers studio work to stage and mentions that the band had been in the studio all day before the Christmas greetings were recorded. John follows again, who recites the song Good King Wenceslas in German.

Following aimed Ringo Starr made his Christmas greetings and sings another version of Good King Wenceslas - this time in a jazz version. Finally, George Harrison thanks the secretaries at the fan club for their work and sings a final version of Good King Wenceslas , followed by a text-modified version of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer . In the end, all four Beatles call out together: “Merry Christmas everybody”.

publication

In December 1963, a flexi-disk containing the recording was sent to the now 28,000 members of the Beatles fan club. The dispatch was not announced beforehand and was accordingly positively received. Another publication took place on December 18, 1970, when the recording appeared together with all subsequent recordings until 1969 on the album The Beatles Christmas Album , which was also only sent to fan club members.

Short term: was The Beatles Christmas Record in the year 2010/2011 iTunes available.

Literature / sources