One of the main problems Beatles’ fans are involved in is which is the best or “authentic” version of their records: mono or stereo? Nowadays you can buy only stereo albums, as we use to; but during the 60s you could choose between both formats.

A solution is suggested by Mark Lewisohn - what a great man! - in his famous book. Talking about “Sgt. Pepper”, Richard Lush, second engeneer for that album, told him drastically: “The one and only version of Sgt. Pepper is the mono one, ‘cause all the Beatles worked on mixing. We made the stereo version later, faster and without them”.

As matter of fact, stereo format was so new in the 60s that very few people owned machines which could play it. So producers worked harder on mono mixings, being aware this would be the one to be listened.The very early Beatles’ records weren’t mixed stereo. When he had to do this later, George Martin had to fix the problem of making a stereo mix out of takes with all instruments on a track and all voices on the other one. That’s why those songs sound so strange to our ears, as unbalanced as they are. But they were not recorded for stereo.

When four-track recorders came in use, mixing became easier for both formats. The stereo one was anyway such a little brother of mono: stereo mixings were always made later and without any suggestment by the Beatles (who, on the other hand, started having much more decisional power about mono ones). A careless and fast mood which causes some lacks or differences between stereo and original mono. Anyone lucky enough to have listened to the mono version of “Sgt. Pepper” knows how if it’s not another record, anyway it sounds different. Think about the passage between “Good Morning Good Morning” and “Sgt. Pepper reprise”: in mono you can hear a famous link between a guitar note and the voice of a chicken, while in stereo there’s only the guitar.

Anyway stereo was so new that George Martin’s mixings sound so strange by today standards. Nowadays a producer who gets bass or drums toally panned on this or that channell would probably be fired; but that’s what we can hear on Beatles’ records.At the end, the real Beatles’ sound is in mono: that’s the only one approved and built by them. Think just that the first album to be mixed directly in stereo was “Let it be” in 1970…

p.s. there’s a Beatles’ song which was never mixed completely in stereo, since it had many sound effects added during mono mixing which would be hard to remake. As matter of fact, “I Am the Warlus” starts stereo and ends mono…