Fab Four on Vinyl and More

Is this 1994 or 1964?

That’s what Beatles fans must be wondering after the news this week that Capitol Records is preparing to ship 30,000 vinyl collector’s copies of “I Want to Hold Your Hand,” the Fab Four’s first U.S. hit single.

The move represents the first salvo in Capitol’s yearlong, 30th anniversary celebration, another of many Beatles efforts of the Hollywood-based record company.

The multimillion-dollar marketing campaign, designed to stimulate sales of the group’s old albums, is expected to culminate next year with the release of “The Beatles Anthology.” According to sources, that six-disc box set will include Beatles classics and an undetermined amount of unreleased material.

“The Beatles are back in a big way,” said Capitol president and CEO Gary Gersh, who wouldn’t confirm specifics of the anthology project. “The day the Beatles set foot on American soil was truly a historic moment in pop history. It wasn’t just an exciting event for me and every kid I knew, it was a moment that altered the course of pop culture.”

Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr--the three surviving Beatles--are scheduled to reunite next month to record new music for a 10-hour video documentary, also titled “The Beatles Anthology.”

George Martin, who produced most of the Beatles albums, has begun mixing unreleased material culled from more than 400 hours of tape from BBC Radio archives, studio outtakes and personal collections of the Beatles for the upcoming CD set. The anthology package will also include vintage, new film clips released in video format plus a coffee-table book.

While some of the unreleased material has been available on the bootleg market for years, this package will include the first legitimate “new” recordings since the 1977 release of “The Beatles at the Hollywood Bowl” concert album.

“This is truly exciting news for Beatles fans,” says Pete Howard, editor and publisher of ICE, the nation’s leading compact disc newsletter.

“Within the next year, we’ll be able to hear tons of stuff few people have ever had access to before--tracks like the very first take of ‘Strawberry Fields.’ Even the most jaded cynics agree that the Beatles were the most important rock band in the history of pop.”

For Capitol, the Beatles have been a continuing source of major revenue. The label has sold more than 70 million Beatles albums in the last 30 years--a healthy percentage of which sold in the late ‘80s to fans who bought CD copies of the old albums.

When the label’s CD push seemed all but exhausted late last year, the company demonstrated the continuing sales lure of the group by releasing two “greatest hits” packages from the early ‘70s. The result: an estimated $18 million in sales since October despite a hefty $32 price tag per album.

Capitol isn’t the only label hoping to cash in on the Fab Four’s 30th anniversary.

Virgin Records will soon release a soundtrack album to “Backbeat,” a film biography of the Liverpool quartet’s original bassist Stu Sutcliffe, who died of a brain hemorrhage in 1962. Produced by Don Was, the album features early Beatles songs performed by a band drawn from members of various contemporary rock groups.