“That’ll Be the Day”/ “In Spite of All the Danger”
78 RPM disc – Unique; priceless
In 1955, Percy Phillips set up a recording facility in Liverpool at 38 Kensington, where people could come in and record their own music. After they were finished recording, Phillips would transfer their music to shellac 78 rpm discs. On July 12, 1958, the Quarrymen — John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, John “Duff” Lowe and Colin Hanton — walked into the recording service and paid to make a 78 rpm recording of two songs. These were their cover version of The Crickets’ “That’ll Be the Day” and an original song, “In Spite of All the Danger.” For some months, they passed around the record among one another and played it for friends. It wound up in Lowe’s collection. In 1981, Lowe discovered that he still had the record and went to sell it at an auction. McCartney made him a preliminary offer, and he rejected it, but McCartney eventually bought it from him. That year, he paid to have 50 replica copies made — some as 78s and others as 45s. Those copies have “1981” in the matrix. This original, a piece of Beatles history, might be priceless.
In 1968, The Beatles solicited potential designs for their new album. The design that they preferred was Richard Hamilton’s concept of a stark white cover with no print. “The BEATLES” would be embossed on the front cover, which would fold open to reveal the song titles and black-and-white images of the band. It intrigued Hamilton that the album might sell millions of copies, and so he suggested that each copy be individually numbered — like limited-edition works of art. This made each copy unique, even though the “limited edition” might consist of a million copies. Hamilton also put together the album’s poster, which contained on one side the lyrics to all of the songs.
Every EMI affiliate around the world that had the equipment to do so attempted to reproduce the idea, numbering their own covers. In the United Kingdom, EMI allocated 300,000 numbers to mono copies and 300,000 numbers to stereo copies, so that album number 0300001 is actually as early as copy number 1. Since they liked the numbering concept, EMI made sure that the first few numbers were used as giveaways to The Beatles, their friends and record-company employees. For years, it was believed that Lennon’s copy was number 0000001. However, a few years ago, we all found out that it was Ringo Starr who owned No. 1. He sold it
