Man, US audiences really got screwed on the Hard Days' Night and Help! albums. On the US version, five tracks from the UK version of Hard Days' Night were replaced by four George Martin remakes of other tracks on the album, and the US version of Help! has half the original tracks swapped with five instrumentals composed for the movie and a weird detracting intro to "Help!" added. I know there are lots of differences in the track listings of their early works, but these seem like the most egregious offenses. US audiences also had to wait a year after the UK to get their hands on an album with "Yesterday" on it. It is obvious that Capitol Records was out on some crazy money-grab: this way they could turn one album into two with the addition of some instrumentals.
I guess this could be seen as the difference between rock music today and rock music then--the song seemed to be the big thing. Now the album seems to be the emphasis. I mean, singles still sell albums today, but no one buys CD singles. Now iTunes and previously Napster may have brought back the single culture, but I don't see a US distributer getting away with chopping up an album of say U2's to make more cash off of it. That said, I do thank the US for putting together full albums of non-album singles and b-sides later in the Beatles career--for example, Magical Mystery Tour.
As for me, I am doing fine and am more than enjoying this so far.
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