The Beatles Box Set is the first complete set of original Beatles material released by EMI and Capitol (catalogue number BBX2-91302) in Compact Disc format. Released in 1988, for the first time a music fan could purchase the entire Beatles catalogue digitally formatted in a single set. The box set, available on CD, vinyl, or cassette, included all of the original UK releases. It included the LP version of Magical Mystery Tour, which had been released in the United States in 1967 as an LP but not released in the UK in this format until 1976, when the U.S. LP version superseded the original British EP. It also contained the compilations Past Masters: Volume One and Past Masters: Volume Two, which featured singles, B-sides, EP tracks, and foreign releases not found on the other thirteen albums. Although all the original British albums had been previously available in stereo on both vinyl and cassette, the versions of the first four albums included in the boxed set were the digitally remastered mono mixes released on CD in 1987.
The collection also includes a soft-cover book by Mark Lewisohn which describes every track in the collection which is encased in a black oak rolltop box.
A new Stereo Box Set, containing remastered versions of the Beatles' core albums and Past Masters, was released on September 9, 2009 along with The Beatles in Mono and new stereo reissues of the individual albums, including the first four albums given their stereo debuts on CD.
Read more about The Beatles Box Set: Album Listing, See Also
Famous quotes containing the words beatles, box and/or set:
“We were all on this ship in the sixties, our generation, a ship going to discover the New World. And the Beatles were in the crow’s nest of that ship.”
—John Lennon (1940–1980)
“The distant box is open. A sound of grain
Poured over the floor in some eagerness we
Rise with the night let out of the box of wind.”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)
“When Freedom, from her mountain height,
Unfurled her standard to the air,
She tore the azure robe of night,
And set the stars of glory there;”
—Joseph Rodman Drake (1795–1820)