Red & Blue

"Nobody in 1973 had any way of knowing the Beatles would be infinitely more famous and beloved in 2023. But the Red and Blue Albums are a huge part of how that happened."

Earlier today I RIGHTFULLY SO!!! bitched about the paucity of Revolver songs on the iconic Beatles' red & blue compilation albums that were released 50 years ago today; of course, Rolling Stone has a thought on this:

"We can argue all day about the song selections—too much Magical Mystery Tour, not enough Revolver."

Turns out a larger tale may be revealed, as it was Beatle Darth Vader, I mean Alan fucking Klein, whose idea the greatest hits packages was, and of course after each of The Beatles summarily dismissed the compilations as stupid they chose that day to FINALLY fire him after years of fucking their shit up:

The day the Red and Blue collections came out, John and Yoko flew to NYC to give a press conference—but not about the albums. They announced that John, George, and Ringo were finally firing Allen Klein. It’s ironic the Beatles chose this day to dump Klein, since this project was the one time he indisputably did right by them. John reluctantly conceded the split meant Paul had been right about Klein all along. “We’ll decide among the four of us how to deal with it,” he told Rolling Stone’s Stuart Werbin that day. “Which is something we should have done a long time ago, but obviously *que sera sera*, and now is the hour.” Asked about his relationship with Paul, he summed it up: “Distant physically. And mentally, pretty OK.”

The Red/Blue phenomenon was a strange case of the fans and the music business colluding to create a new Fabs album, simply because the Fabs themselves refused to do it.

It was a totally accurate revelation of the Fabs’ future: these songs would live on, long after the band stopped playing, and the world was going to keep on dreaming the Beatles forever. Fifty years later, these albums are still guaranteed to raise a smile.