Beatles gave terrific record value

When it came to making hit records, The Beatles
had another advantage that stars today cannot
hope to match. Although it's true that part of
their greatness is that they did it even though
nobody else could.

See, back then, the dominant music format was
the 45 rpm record. It had one song on one side
-- the A side, which was the good song designed
to be the hit played by the radio station.

The other side was called the B side and it was
a throw away filler that nobody was expected to
listen to more than once.

At least, I'd listen to them once -- and then
never again. I'm sure many kids never even
listened to the B sides at all.

The other format was the 33 RPM album, which
contained about 5 songs on each side. Usually,
an album by a group contained 1 or 2 hit songs,
and the other were all filler B side type
songs.

So since albums cost more than singles but
often still had only one or two hits on them,
they were not a good value for the money.

The Beatles changed this in a HUGE way.

And they did it to please us fans, because
they were fans too. I recall hearing a radio
interview with one Beatle (can't remember which
one), who said, essentially,

"We remember what it was like to be working
blokes and spend all our money on a record
only to have most of it wasted. I bought one
album that was supposed to be by Little
Richard. It had two songs by him, and the rest
by somebody else.

"So we decided to make all our music good."

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