Track Listing

Disc 1:

1. Strawberry Fields Forever
2. Penny Lane
3. Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
4. With a Little Help from My Friends
5. Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds
6. Day in the Life
7. All You Need Is Love
8. I Am the Walrus
9. Hello, Goodbye
10. Fool on the Hill
11. Magical Mystery Tour
12. Lady Madonna
13. Hey Jude
14. Revolution

Disc 2:

1. Back in the U.S.S.R.
2. While My Guitar Gently Weeps
3. Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da
4. Get Back
5. Don't Let Me Down
6. Ballad of John and Yoko
7. Old Brown Shoe
8. Here Comes the Sun
9. Come Together
10. Something
11. Octopus's Garden
12. Let It Be
13. Across the Universe
14. Long and Winding Road

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #437 in Music
• Brand: Beatles
• Released on: 1993-10-05
• Number of discs: 2
• Dimensions: .43 pounds

Amazon.com
Even as the Beatles began heading toward an inevitable breakup, their prolific ways continued; this two-disc look back only skims the surface of their later achievements. Excerpts from Sgt. Pepper, Magical Mystery Tour, the white album, Abbey Road, and Let It Be compete for space with classic singles that do as much or more to prove their eclecticism: the epic ballad "Hey Jude," the plaintive "Strawberry Fields Forever," straight rock & roll of all stripes from the plainspoken "Revolution" and "Get Back" to the surreal "Come Together." Decades after the split, this (and its companion set of 1962-1966 cuts) remains a favored introduction for young listeners and a key sampler for veteran fans. --Rickey Wright

Customer Reviews

Genius!
The "Red" and "Blue" Beatles CDs are testament to the genius of the band's music and are an excellent overview and a great place to start for those uninitiated (if there are such people) with the greatest band in history.

1962-1966 ("Red") covers the Beatles' Merseybeat era, a time when the Beatles were considered a singles "teenybopper" band. Among the best cuts on the first CD are "Please Please Me", "She Loves You", "Eight Days a Week", and "Ticket to Ride".

Their progression from teenyboppers to "serious band" begins to show in the songs from 1965's Rubber Soul, including "Norwegian Wood", featuring George Harrison on the sitar, and John Lennon's introspective "In My Life", which hints at the band's glorious and more complex studio work that was to follow.

The Red CD collection ends with two songs from 1966's Revolver, a record that placed the band on even higher creative ground: Paul McCartney's masterpiece "Eleanor Rigby" is the first time a string quartet accompanied a rock and roll record, and "Yellow Submarine" was one in a line of catchy, childlike songs written for resident jester and drummer extrodinaire Ringo Starr.

The first disc of 1967-1970 ("Blue") has the far more unenviable task of selecting four representative tracks from 1967's Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, still considered to be the most ground-breaking and influential album in the history of rock. "A Day in the Life" is the standout -- Sgt. Pepper's closer and emotional peak.

The CD closes with the two songs that best demonstrate the eventual clash in Lennon and McCartney's songwriting styles: McCartney's "Hey Jude" and Lennon's "Revolution" were sides A and B respectively of the Beatles' greatest-selling (and perhaps just "greatest") single. Where Lennon's song is a snarling, self-righteous rocker, McCartney's is a sing-song orchestral ballad. The one you like best probably depends on whether you're a "John" or "Paul" person -- truth is they're both great.

The final CD spans from 1968's The Beatles ("The White Album") to the end of the band's career. McCartney's best moments "Let it Be", "Get Back", and "The Long and Winding Road" (Despite that over-the-top Phil Spector production) are here, as are Lennon's "Don't Let Me Down" and "Come Together". The closer is "Long and Winding Road", though it's perhaps a weaker conclusion than "Two of Us" might have been.

The Red and Blue collections are awesome reminders of the Beatles' past accomplishments and their continued vitality even today.

The ULTIMATE desert island disc
No matter how much music I've listened to over the years, I always come back to the "blue" album, in my opinion the best greatest hits package of all time. From Sgt. Pepper, to Magical Mystery Tour, to the White Album, Abbey Road and Let It Be, it captures the best of the Beatles' later more creative period. This was my introduction to A Day In the Life, I Am The Walrus, Don't Let Me Down, and other songs which I didn't know at the time. Many years later I have bought all the records, heard all the songs a million times, but there's something about playing this at the right time that makes this the one I would take to a desert island with me. (if I could choose only one)

Any collection which has Hey Jude, Let It Be, Get Back, Strawberry Fields Forever and While My Guitar Gently Weeps on the same album is pretty damn great no matter how you look at it, and there's much more of course. Over the years there have been other much hyped collections, but the red and blue albums are absolutely definitive.

The Art of Great Compilations (and Sequencing)
Despite the number of releases in the late 90's with the Anthology series, the Beatles greatest songs have been compiled only one time in the last 30 years, in 2000's "1". It's fun to go back to the companion 1973 releases "1962-1966" and this "1967-1970" (28 tracks, 99 min.), and marvel in particular at the latter's song selection and sequencing.

While now a bit awkwardly on 2 CDs, the original double vinyl was the perfect package. The song selection is just about perfect, really. Nothing to take away from "1", but can you really call that the ultimate compilation of the Beatles when it doesn't have "A Day in the Life" (the definitive Beatles song?) or "While My Guitar Gently Weeps"? Maybe it's too soon yet after "1", but I really believe there is room for a 2 CD collection of the entire Beatles catalogue (greatest hits and essential album tracks) along the lines of "The Definitive Bob Dylan", a great example of how to use the full capacity of CDs. Is anyone with me on that?