Description
Label Review.
All seven of The Beatles Christmas Flexidiscs which were sent out to Fan Club members between 1963-1970. Remastered with each single on different colour hard vinyl. With 16pp book reproducing the newsletters which accompanied each disc.
Our Overview.
In the Autumn of 1963 it was decided that all members of The Beatles Fan Club should receive a special gift for Christmas. The idea was a five minute message from the band pressed onto a flexidisc by Lyntone Recordings, London’s premier manufacturer of the then popular floppy promotional devices. It was scripted by their press officer Tony Barrow. The following year, no-one could come up with a different gift for fan club members so Barrow wrote another few minutes of thanks for the band to recite and a second disc was sent out. The first one had proven extremely popular and the die was cast. The Beatles would send out an Xmas disc every year until they split.
In 1965 the band handled the content themselves, during sessions for ‘Rubber Soul’. The group were audibly tiring of their touring and film making cycle and they put a stop to this the following year. For their 1966 disc, having just started work on “Strawberry Fields Forever” they prepared a more creative offering featuring a selection of unconnected sketches. A similar offering was mailed out the following year which also included a fully written song “Christmas Time (Is Here Again)”.
By 1968 the band had had enough of each other following the protracted sessions for The White Album. The group taped individual messages which were handed to DJ Kenny Everett to stitch into a complete programme and included some of his own zany effects. This method was repeated twelve months later and would prove to be the seventh and final Christmas flexi disc.
Following the bands public break up in April 1970 membership of the fan club dwindled. As a final treat for the loyal followers who were still signed up a proper album of all seven messages were despatched. Entitled ‘From Us To You’ this was mastered from the original flexi discs and is the common source for most of the bootlegs which have emerged since then. The tapes have never been officially re-released until now apart from a special edit of the 1966 & 67 editions were a b-side on the ‘Free As A Bird’ single issued in 1995. Some dialogue from 1965 & 66 made it into their 2006 ‘mash-up’ album ‘Love’.
Now fully remastered from the original masters, the Xmas flexis are back, now on hard, different colour vinyls!