45 YEARS AGO: THE BEATLES RELEASE ‘YELLOW SUBMARINE’ ALBUM

"The Beatles animated film ‘Yellow Submarine’ is widely heralded as a classic for its mixture of whimsy, subversive humor and psychedelic design. However,
the soundtrack  was released on Jan. 13, 1969, in the U.S. and four days later in the U.K.

The second side of the LP was devoted to George Martin’s instrumental score.They were specifically written to accompany. The first side contains six Beatles originals that appeared in ‘Yellow Submarine.’ Two of them — the title track and ‘All You Need Is Love’ — had been previously released (although the latter was not available on a U.K. album), and ‘All Together Now’ when the band appears in non-animated form.

 

George Harrison contributed two tracks that were completed almost two

 years earlier, the dour ‘Only a Northern Song’ and ‘It’s All Too Much,’ 

which has its charms, and John ´s  ‘Hey Bulldog’ adds to their legacy.

When the Beatles catalog was first issued on CD in 1987, the reissues
 stayed true to the original albums and included the soundtrack with
Martin’s score, which led to a whole new round of complaints. Apple
Records rectified this 12 years later in conjunction with a theatrical
showing of the film in 1999, putting out what they called the ‘Yellow
Submarine Songtrack.’ The disc removed Martin’s instrumentals and
replaced them with nine previously released songs that were featured in
the movie, like ‘Nowhere Man,’ ‘Eleanor Rigby’ and ‘When I’m
Sixty-Four.’ However, the 2009 Beatles remasters put the instrumentals
back onto the soundtrack, and the ‘Songtrack’ itself was reissued three
years later when the movie was released on DVD and Blu-ray.