The Beatles "The Beatles" Apple SMO 2051/52 2xLP French 1st + pics/poster 1968

	£		20
	$		27

The Beatles ? "The Beatles"  Apple Records ?SMO 2051/52  French 1st press 2 × Stereo Vinyl, LPs. They are housed in a top opening, gate-fold sleeve, with a flipback on the inside. The album was issued with 4 glossy photographs, a double-sided poster printed by Heinrich Nicolaus G.m.b.H., black inner sleeves and embossed lettering (The Beatles) on the cover.
The LPs came with German catalogue numbers, but were pressed in France. Made in France by Pathe' Marconi. The gate-fold sleeves were imported mostly from Germany, therefore inside, under the songs' titles, the credits are: ELECTROLA GESELLSCHAFT M.B.H., Köln-Braunsfeld. Printed and made in Germany by Heinrich Nicolaus G.m.b.H.
Both LPs appear to have been lightly played and are in great condition. They played through beautifully on my elderly stereo - no hop, stick or jump. They are housed in their original black inner sleeves, both of which are split along the seam. The top-loading gate-fold sleeve shows serious signs of wear , with a rip along the top of the spine and ring-wear front and back. The sleeve is numbered 0452002. The four photographs are in great shape - no rips or writing. The poster is a little creased, but intact with no rips or writing. As mentioned, the spine is very worn and no longer legible. Matrix / Runout  Side 1 : YEX 709 21 - M6 262622 Matrix / Runout  Side 2 : YEX 710 21 - M6 262623 Matrix / Runout  Side 3 : YEX 711 21 - M6 262620 Matrix / Runout  Side 4 : YEX 712 21 - M6 262621
"The Beatles", also known as the "White Album", is the Beatles' ninth studio album and only double album, released on 22 November 1968. Its plain white sleeve has no graphics or text other than the band's name embossed, which was intended as a direct contrast to the vivid cover artwork of the band's previous LP "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band". "The Beatles" is recognised for its fragmentary style and diverse range of genres, including folk, British blues, ska, music hall and the avant-garde. It has since been viewed by some critics as a postmodern work, as well as among the greatest albums of all time.
Most of the songs on the album were written during March and April 1968 at a Transcendental Meditation course in Rishikesh, India. There, the only western instrument available to the band was the acoustic guitar; some of these songs remained acoustic on "The Beatles" and were recorded solo, or only by part of the group. The production aesthetic ensured that the album's sound was scaled-down and less reliant on studio innovation than all their releases since 1966's "Revolver". "The Beatles" also broke with the band's recent tradition of incorporating several musical styles in one song by keeping each piece of music consistently faithful to a select genre.
At the end of May 1968, the Beatles returned to EMI Studios in London to commence recording sessions that lasted until mid-October. During these sessions, arguments broke out among the foursome over creative differences and John Lennon's new partner, Yoko Ono, whose constant presence subverted the Beatles' policy regarding wives and girlfriends in the studio. After a series of problems, including producer George Martin taking a sudden leave of absence and engineer Geoff Emerick suddenly quitting, Ringo Starr left the band briefly in August. The same tensions continued throughout the following year and led to the band's break-up.
"The Beatles" received favourable reviews from the majority of music critics; detractors found its satirical songs unimportant and apolitical amid the turbulent political and social climate of 1968. Nonetheless, "The Beatles" topped record charts in Britain and the United States. Although no singles were issued in either territory, the songs "Hey Jude" and "Revolution" originated from the same recording sessions and were issued on a single in August 1968.
By 1968, the Beatles had achieved commercial and critical success. The group's mid-1967 release, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, was number one in the UK for 27 weeks, until the start of February 1968, having sold 250,000 copies in the first week after release. Time magazine declared that Sgt. Pepper constituted a "historic departure in the progress of music – any music", while the American writer Timothy Leary wrote that the band were "the wisest, holiest, most effective avatars (Divine Incarnate, God Agents) that the human race has ever produced". The band received a negative critical response to their television film Magical Mystery Tour, which aired in Britain in December 1967, but fan reaction was nevertheless positive.
Most of the songs for "The Beatles" were written during a Transcendental Meditation course with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi in Rishikesh, India, between February and April 1968. The retreat involved long periods of meditation, conceived by the band as a spiritual respite from all worldly endeavours – a chance, in John Lennon's words, to "get away from everything". Lennon and Paul McCartney quickly re-engaged themselves in songwriting, often meeting "clandestinely in the afternoons in each other's rooms" to review their new work. "Regardless of what I was supposed to be doing," Lennon later recalled, "I did write some of my best songs there." Author Ian MacDonald said Sgt Pepper was "shaped by LSD", but the Beatles took no drugs with them to India aside from marijuana, and their clear minds helped the group with their songwriting. The stay in Rishikesh proved especially fruitful for George Harrison as a songwriter, coinciding with his re-engagement with the guitar after two years studying the sitar. The musicologist Walter Everett likens Harrison's development as a composer in 1968 to that of Lennon and McCartney five years before, although he notes that Harrison became "privately prolific", given his customary junior status in the group.
The Beatles left Rishikesh before the end of the course. Ringo Starr was the first to leave, less than two weeks later, as he said he could not stand the food; McCartney departed in mid-March, while Harrison and Lennon were more interested in Indian religion and remained until April. Lennon left Rishikesh because he felt personally betrayed after hearing rumours that the Maharishi had behaved inappropriately towards women who accompanied the Beatles to India. McCartney and Harrison later discovered the rumours to be untrue and Lennon's wife Cynthia reported there was "not a shred of evidence or justification".
Collectively, the group wrote around 40 new compositions in Rishikesh, 26 of which would be recorded in very rough form at Kinfauns, Harrison's home in Esher, in May 1968. Lennon wrote the bulk of the new material, contributing 14 songs. Lennon and McCartney brought home-recorded demos to the session, and worked on them together.
During the recording sessions for "The Beatles", the members became increasingly individuated artists who frequently found themselves at odds. McCartney described the sessions as a turning point for the group because "there was a lot of friction during that album. We were just about to break up, and that was tense in itself", while Lennon said that "the break-up of the Beatles can be heard on that album". Recording engineer Geoff Emerick had worked with the group since "Revolver", but he became disillusioned with the sessions. He overheard Martin criticising McCartney's lead vocal performance while recording "Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da", to which McCartney replied, "Well you come down and sing it". On 16 July, Emerick announced that he was no longer willing to work with the group and immediately left the studio.
The sessions marked the first appearance in the studio of Lennon's new domestic and artistic partner, Yoko Ono, who accompanied him to Abbey Road to work on "Revolution 1" and who would thereafter be a more or less constant presence at all Beatles sessions. Ono's presence was highly unorthodox as, up to that point, the Beatles had generally worked in isolation, rarely inviting wives and girlfriends to recording sessions. Lennon's devotion to Ono over the other Beatles made working conditions difficult by impeding the intuitive aspect that had previously been essential to the band's music. McCartney's girlfriend at the time, Francie Schwartz, was also present at some sessions, as were the other two Beatles' wives, Pattie Harrison and Maureen Starkey.
Peter Doggett writes that "the most essential line of communication" had been broken between Lennon and McCartney by Ono's presence on the first day of recording. Beatles biographer Philip Norman comments that the two principal songwriters shared a mutual disregard for the other's new compositions; Lennon found McCartney's songs "cloyingly sweet and bland", while McCartney viewed Lennon's as "harsh, unmelodious and deliberately provocative". Harrison and Starr chose to distance themselves part way through the project, flying to California on 7 June so that Harrison could film his scenes for the Ravi Shankar documentary Raga. Lennon, McCartney, and Harrison's individual musical projects outside the band during 1968 were further evidence of the group's fragmentation. In Lennon's case, the album cover of his experimental collaboration with Ono "Two Virgins" featured the couple completely naked, a gesture which his bandmates found bewildering and unnecessary.
On 20 August, Lennon and Starr were working on overdubs for "Yer Blues" in Studio 3, and they visited McCartney in Studio 2 where he was working on "Mother Nature's Son". The positive spirit of the session disappeared immediately, and engineer Ken Scott later claimed that "you could cut the atmosphere with a knife". Starr abruptly left the studio on 22 August during the session for "Back in the U.S.S.R.", feeling that his role in the group was peripheral compared to the other members, and upset at McCartney's constant criticism of his drumming on the track. Abbey Road staff later commented that Starr was usually the first to arrive at the studio and would sit waiting in the reception area for the others to turn up. In his absence, McCartney played the drums on "Dear Prudence". For "Back in the U.S.S.R.", the three remaining Beatles each made contributions on bass and drums, and the drum part is a composite of Lennon, McCartney, and Harrison's playing. Lennon, McCartney, and Harrison pleaded with Starr to reconsider. He duly returned on 5 September to find his drum kit decorated with flowers, a welcome-back gesture from Harrison.
On release, "The Beatles" gained highly favourable reviews from the majority of music critics. Others bemoaned its length or found that the music lacked the adventurous quality that had distinguished Sgt. Pepper. According to the author Ian Inglis: "Whether positive or negative, all assessments of "The Beatles" drew attention to its fragmentary style. However, while some complained about the lack of a coherent style, others recognized this as the album's raison d'être."
In The Observer, Tony Palmer wrote that "if there is still any doubt that Lennon and McCartney are the greatest songwriters since Schubert", the album "should surely see the last vestiges of cultural snobbery and bourgeois prejudice swept away in a deluge of joyful music making". Richard Goldstein of The New York Times considered the double album to be "a major success" and "far more imaginative" than Sgt. Pepper or Magical Mystery Tour, due to the band's improved songwriting and their relying less on the studio tricks of those earlier works. In The Sunday Times, Derek Jewell hailed it as "the best thing in pop since Sgt. Pepper" and concluded: "Musically, there is beauty, horror, surprise, chaos, order. And that is the world; and that is what The Beatles are on about. Created by, creating for, their age." Although he dismissed "Revolution 9" as a "pretentious" example of "idiot immaturity", the NME's Alan Smith declared "God Bless You, Beatles!" to the majority of the album. Jann Wenner of Rolling Stone called it "the history and synthesis of Western music", and the group's best album yet. Wenner contended that they were allowed to appropriate other styles and traditions into rock music because their ability and identity were "so strong that they make it uniquely theirs, and uniquely the Beatles. They are so good that they not only expand the idiom, but they are also able to penetrate it and take it further."
The album was voted number 5 in Colin Larkin's All Time Top 1000 Albums 3rd Edition (2000). In 2003, Rolling Stone ranked The Beatles at number 10 on its list of 500 Greatest Albums of All Time, maintaining the rating in a 2012 revised list. On the 40th anniversary of the album's release, Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano wrote that it "remains a type of magical musical anthology: 30 songs you can go through and listen to at will, certain of finding some pearls that even today remain unparalleled". In 2011, Kerrang! placed the album at number 49 on a list of "The 50 Heaviest Albums Of All Time". The magazine praised the guitar work in "Helter Skelter". The album was also included in the book 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die.