Yellow Submarine Songtrack

• 1. Introduction

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  Yellow Submarine Songtrack is a Beatles album from 1999, released to go with a new run of the band's animated film Yellow Submarine, which first appeared in 1968. It is an odd one among the group's reissues. Almost nothing on it sounds exactly like the versions listeners had known for decades. Engineers went back to the raw recorded tapes and rebuilt the songs from scratch. Why did this one album get a treatment that much of the catalogue never received? Which songs earned a place, and which famous one was shut out? And who paid to repaint an entire train for the occasion?

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• 2. A Fresh Mix

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  On the 13th of September 1999, the film returned to cinemas in the United Kingdom, and it reached American screens the next day. The album was timed to that moment.

  Its sound came from Peter Cobbin, who remixed the songs at Abbey Road Studios. He worked from the original multitrack tapes. A remaster polishes an existing final mix, while a remix rebuilds that mix from the separately recorded parts.

  That made the Songtrack a departure. The Beatles' first CD releases in the late 1980s had not been remixed, with the exceptions of Help! and Rubber Soul. The remastered albums of 2009 were not remixed either.

  Cobbin's tapes were only half of the change, because the list of songs had been rebuilt as well.

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• 3. Rebuilding the Tracklist

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  Seven pieces composed and orchestrated by George Martin had filled out the 1969 Yellow Submarine album. The Songtrack removed every one of them. In their place went the Beatles songs heard in the film that the earlier album had left off, all but one.

  The exception was "A Day in the Life." EMI chose to leave it out so that the album would not lean too heavily on Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.

  Martin was not erased from the project. His complete score appeared as an audio track on the DVD in the CD and DVD package.

  The remix choices on individual songs show most clearly what the new approach changed, beginning with a lyric that stereo listeners had been missing.

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• 4. Lines Restored

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  A line sung by John Lennon, "a life of ease," had been absent from earlier stereo mixes of the title song. The Songtrack brought it back. Lennon's replies to the main lyric now drift gradually from the right side of the stereo field to the left, fading as they go. The sound effects also stand out more than before.

  "All Together Now" received a tidier layout. Acoustic guitars and percussion sit on the left channel. Lennon and Paul McCartney sing the lead vocals from the centre, while the chorus is divided between left and right. The background vocals in the second verse are easier to hear, and the guitar is clearer.

  George Harrison sings lead on "Love You To." The earlier stereo version had a shorter fade than the first mono recording. The Songtrack keeps that shorter fade.

  Not every song allowed this much freedom, because some tapes had been recorded in a way that locked parts together.

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• 5. Limits of the Tapes

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  Only a single four-track tape holds all of "Hey Bulldog." The piano and drum performances were recorded together onto one track, so they could not be separated for a new mix. They stay on the left audio channel. The vocals sit in the centre, along with the snare overdubs played by Ringo Starr.

  A stereo mix had also appeared on the Anthology 2 compilation album. That one was assembled from alternative takes, with different overdubs and lyrics.

  The remixes were one part of the 1999 revival. The other part was spectacle, and it ran on rails between London and Paris.

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• 6. Marketing in Yellow

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  An 18-coach Eurostar train between London and Paris was repainted with Yellow Submarine designs. The new livery cost more than $160,000. McCartney, Harrison and Starr paid for it.

  The film's return brought a series of commemorative postage stamps and action figures of the main characters. A variety of other merchandise appeared too, including mousepads.

  A life-size yellow submarine also went on a publicity tour across the globe.

  Buyers who wanted the music itself could choose among several physical forms, one of them in yellow vinyl.

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• 7. Ways to Own It

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  The CD and DVD package paired the album with the film on DVD. That disc carried a remixed and remastered soundtrack, along with the original 1968 mono soundtrack.

  The yellow vinyl LP held fifteen tracks. Tracks 1-9 filled side one, and tracks 10-15 filled side two. Every song was credited to Lennon and McCartney, apart from the tracks marked as written by Harrison.

  On the 4th of June 2012, the album came out again on CD, with the film restored for DVD and Blu-ray release. North America received it a day later. The 1999 edition had come in a jewel case. The 2012 version arrived in a card sleeve, in the same slightly rectangular format as the 2009 remasters, with The Beatles logo on the left side of the cover. The booklet and catalogue numbers stayed the same.

  A copyright date of 1999 on the disc and 2012 on the sleeve tells a buyer which part came from which release.

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• 8. Chart Fortunes

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  Nineteen thousand copies sold in the first week put the album at number 8 on the UK chart. In the United States it peaked at number 15 on the Billboard 200, after 68,000 copies in its opening week.

  France welcomed it at number 13 on debut. Austria placed it at number 8, Germany at number 11 and Canada's RPM chart at number 12. Japan's Oricon chart listed it at number 6.

  The Japanese story continued through the year. On that country's year-end albums chart for 1999, the Songtrack finished at number 121.

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