Imaginary Albums #11: The Beatles

Like (I assume?) a lot of Beatles lovers, I've tweaked many of their existing albums--whether to add the singles and other contemporaneous recordings to flesh them out (i.e. Revolver, Sgt. Pepper) or, in the case of the White Album, to cut some of the tracks that have me reaching for the skip button.

Hey Jude, however, is a wholly fictitious creation, an imaginary 1968 album that collects some of the singles, outtakes, and other ephemera falling between Sgt. Pepper/Magical Mystery Tour and the White Album. (Not to be confused with the official 1970 album of the same name, a US-only compilation of non-album singles.)

It's a bit of a hodge-podge, but I think it works ok. It's anchored by the obvious ringer of double-A-side "Hey Jude" and "Revolution," rounded out with a few non-album tracks from that period (George's "The Inner Light," "Lady Madonna," the goofy "You Know My Name, Look Up The Number") and a couple tracks used on the Yellow Submarine soundtrack (the others were included in my Sgt. Pepper remake).

It was also a good excuse to find a proper context for two terrific George outtakes that were locked in the vault for years, "Not Guilty" and "Sour Milk Sea." (For the latter, I used a full-band version from a bootleg on my CDR copy; as that version doesn't stream, and the demo felt out of place, I cheated on the Spotify playlist below and borrowed a version by Beatles tribute band Apple Jam.)

Given its relative brevity, I filled the project out with an early version of  "Across The Universe" and Paul's throwaway "Junk" (using his later solo version rather than the 1968 demo for aesthetic reasons). For my CDR version, I closed it out with an interesting mash-up of "Revolution #1" and "Revolution #9" I found online; that's obviously omitted from the Spotify playlist, which you can check out below: