Gary Pig Gold Meets The Beatles . . . Only Somewhere Else

Being 8 years old in the Toronto suburbs of 1963, I was at the perfect age – and in the perfect place – to, yes, meet the Beatles. Because by the time "those four youngsters from Liverpool" hit "The Ed Sullivan Show" on 9 February '64, my friends and I had already spent the past six months familiarizing ourselves with John, Paul, George and Ringo's initial A-sides via Ontario's mighty 1050 CHUM-AM Radio.

In other words then, the British Beat had no reason to invade Canada. It was invited.

Unlike with our big American neighbors you see, each of the Beatles' earliest discs garnered automatic release on Captiol Records of Canada, beginning right at the beginning with "Love Me Do" in February of '63 (the version with Ringo on drums, by the way!), and the Canadian Beatle Discography boasts many other rare slices of vintage vinyl totally unique to the genre, and as a result extremely collectable.

For example, the Canadian "Beatlemania!" album not only sported an identical cover and track lineup, but was released the very same week "With the Beatles" was in the UK (making it the first Beatle album released anywhere within North America), and its twelve-inch Capitol Canada follow-up, the "Twist and Shout" album – No. 1 on the Canadian charts for ten weeks in early '64 – was in fact the very first "big record" I ever had the pleasure to have owned.

And what a remarkable record it was: Fourteen action-packed tracks featuring all four – "count 'em"! – of the band's first UK 45 top-sides, plus a generous helping of Cavern-baked covers from their homeland debut album, "Please Please Me." Being too young then to know, and still too young to care if nary a Beatle wrote each and every note or lyric herein, Carole King's "Chains" stacked so easily around Len/Mac's similarly George Harri-sung "Do You Want to Know a Secret," Bacharach and David's "Baby, It's You" seamlessly followed John and Paul's "P.S. I Love You" on "T & S" Side 2, and the magnificent Arthur Alexander's "Anna (Go to Him)," which kicked off this entire collection, continues to this day to hold more than its own against any Beatles composition you or even I could mention.

And while Lennon's wholly larynx-bursting "Twist and Shout" completed the first Beatles album in Great Britain, the ever-inventive Canadian Capitol chose to close its namesake long-player with none other than – wait for it – "She Loves You." Take that, Sir George Martin! (and tell Dave Dexter, Jr. the news).

Meanwhile in the seven-inch division, "Please Please Me" actually hit the CFGP Top Forty in Grande Prairie, Alberta in April of '63, while two of Capitol Canada's most unique couplings, "All My Loving"/"This Boy" and "Roll Over Beethoven"/"Please Mister Postman," sold sufficient (smuggled) copies to reach even the American Hot One Hundred a year later. Also, the U.S. Tollie label "Twist and Shout"/"There's a Place" 45, which soared to Billboard No. 2 in April of 1964, was an identically-formed Canadian Capitol Top Ten much, much earlier.

Plus, may I just add that every single one of the above-mentioned original deep-grooved, meticulously mastered Canadian (mono!) pressings put their U.S. and even U.K. counterparts – not to mention the latest CD incarnations, truth to tell – to total, unequivocal sonic shame. Really!

The moral of this absolutely Fab story then? Good music IS good music, and shall forever remain so, regardless of the size, format, packaging, advertising budget or even country-of-origin of the item in hand.


Gary Pig Gold