The Beatles' contract with EMI and Capitol were pretty much over by February 06 1976. Both EMI and Capitol had the rights to the recordings and could now re-issue these songs in basically any form they wanted to with little input from the group. It would have been great to leave well enough alone but....intregity went out the window (especially with the up coming Capitol releases which we will soon discuss).
The first thing the EMI vultures got thier hands on were the entire singles back catalogue collection. On March 06 1976 EMI released all of the previous 23 singles simultaneously in newly designed picture sleeves (UK only). The back cover photos came in four versions: "Love Me Do" to "A Hard Day's Night" had an early Angus McBean photo, "I Feel Fine" to "Yellow Submarine" had a photo from the "Rain" promo shoot, "Penny Lane" to "Lady Madonna" had a photo from the "Strawberry Fields" promo shoot and lastly "Hey Jude" to "Let It Be" had a photo from a Linda McCartney photographic session (the same photo used for the itunes announcement).
Two days later on March 08 1976, EMI released the single "Yesterday/I Should Have Known Better" (Parlophone R 6013). The A-side had never previously been released in the UK but was available as a single in North America on September 13 1965 as previously discussed (Capitol 5498). The back cover of the single featured a photo from the Beatles' "Beatles '65" seasons photo session in late 1964.
Finally, in the fall of 1977, World Records released all of the above singles and picture sleeves in a box set for the UK. The set was entitled "The Beatles Collection" and the box was gold embossed but not numbered like some later collections. The set was only available through mail order and the box set was deleted by World Records in 1981.
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