Dec 14

EMI Records

EMI RECORDS
 
 
EMI Records  was a British record label.  It was founded by the EMI company in 1972 as its flagship label and launched in January 1973 as the successor to its Columbia and Parlophone labels.  The EMI label was launched worldwide.  (More from Wikipedia)
 
 
The Beatles’ debut album Please Please Me was released in England on EMI/Parlophone Records in March 1963, under the direction of Sir George Martin, who turned 87 earlier this month.  Martin had joined EMI in 1950 and oversaw the Parlophone label, which released the early Beatles albums in the UK.  The label also featured several other major acts, including the Hollies, Cilla Black, and Billy J. Kramer. 
 
Over the ensuing years, the Beatles’ financial entanglements only worsened.  This occurred, in part, because of the somewhat bitter and highly public break-up of the band; but for the most part, it was simply ill-advised business practices as I understand it.  Continued standoffs by the band and the other representatives in charge of their recordings – whose owners by then included Michael Jackson – kept the Beatles canon from being available via online sales until 2010.  With the acquisition of EMI by Universal Music Group in 2012 and the subsequent creation of a new Capitol Records subsidiary to oversee the Beatles catalogue, perhaps the matter is finally settled. 
 
(January 2013)
 
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In July 1967, the Klubs were given a recording test at EMI’s famed Abbey Road Studios, renamed for the Beatles’ penultimate album, Abbey Road in 1970.  Staff producer Alan Paramor oversaw a marathon recording session, where the Klubs worked on covers of Cream’s “NSU”, and “Desdemona” by John’s Children (back when Marc Bolan, later of T. Rex was a bandmember), plus a new recording of their own song “Livin’ Today”.  Paramor called the band “unrecordable” and sent them on their way. 

 

(July 2013)

 

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The Sons of Fred released their first single, “Sweet Love” b/w “I’ll Be There” in 1964 on Columbia Records – not the same as our Columbia Records (outside the U.S. and Canada, their releases are on CBS Records due to the name conflict) but rather a subsidiary of EMI Records.  This was an R&B record. 

 

For their second single, they moved to another EMI label, Parlophone Records (the Beatles’ record company in Britain) and adopted a more pop-oriented sound reminiscent of another Parlophone band, the Hollies, releasing “I, I, I Want Your Lovin’” b/w “She Only Wants a Friend”.  For the final single by the Sons of Fred for Parlophone in 1966, they went back to R&B for “Baby What You Want Me To Do” b/w “You Told Me”. 

 

(March 2014/2)

 

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When Manfred Mann left EMI Records and signed with Fontana Records in 1966, this was a new direction for the band that was described as “Chapter Two”.  A more definitive chapter was announced with the formation of the jazz/rock group Manfred Mann Chapter Three, with only Mike Hugg and Manfred Mann himself remaining from the original band – described on the liner notes as “the Manfred Mann pop group”. 

 

(June 2014)

 

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One of the early fruits of this new stance is a Beatles single from that period, “Penny Lane” b/w “Strawberry Fields Forever”.  Penny Lane is a real street in Liverpool, near one of John Lennon’s boyhood homes; the actual place that Paul McCartney was writing about was a bus stop where he would have to change buses when going to John’s house (and vice versa).  Strawberry Field is a Salvation Army children’s home in Liverpool; in his song, John was writing about the garden there where he used to play as a child.  Originally planned for the Sgt. Pepper album, EMI Records pressured the band into releasing them only as a single; the songs were later included on the U.S. version of the Magical Mystery Tour album. 
 
(June 2015)
 
Last edited: March 22, 2021