Fresh From Apple Records: Missing LPs

Here's another round of examining the "Fresh From Apple Records" boxed set from 2010.  I remember when it came out, I figured I would wait to buy it till used copies were cheaper, which I predicted would be right around the time "Fresh From Apple Records, Volume 2" was released.  Well, it's been seven years and there's no sign of a second box ever happening.  So let's look at what is NOT in the 2010 box.  I'll be doing this in a series of posts, focusing on different facets of Apple-dom.
For reference, "Beatles Blogger" has a nice post about unboxing the "Fresh" boxed set.  He also has an excellent post on the (slightly different) 1990s Apple reissues, which came out on cassette, CD and vinyl (the 2010 reissues were CD and digital download-only).  And finally, this is a listing of all the tracks on the 2010 box.  I'm using the box as my reference point (instead of the individual reissued CDs) because the box includes two whole disks of bonus cuts, which are otherwise available only as digital downloads.

Most Apple Records LPs have been reissued and are easy to find on CD and used vinyl.  The solo work from John, Paul, George and Ringo has all been out for years (although Ringo has a bit of difficulty).  The albums actually credited to The Beatles are, of course, very easy to find.  Yoko Ono has seen her solo work issued (with ample bonus tracks) on Rykodisk in the late 1990s, and Chimera Music starting last year; this has also included the experimental albums she made with John (such as "Two Virgins").  Badfinger's work has been amply re-released (as we shall see tomorrow), and so has Mary Hopkin's.

However, a number of LPs originally released on Apple were not included in the 2010 boxed set, and have never been reissued at all in some cases...

-Most noticeably, The Beatles' Christmas Album (1970) has never been issued in any form aside from the original vinyl LP that was sent to fan club members in the US and UK (where it came out in spring, 1971 as "From Then To Us").  And it's unlikely that it ever will be given a proper reissue.

-The soundtracks for the films "Raga," "El Topo" and "Come Together" all came out on Apple, and have not been reissued, mostly due to legal entanglements with ABKCO that have even resulted in some of the films themselves disappearing for decades at a time.

-David Peel's "The Pope Smokes Dope" is a bizarre pastiche of his ramblings, so perhaps it's understandable that no one has clamored for a reissue.  (It did get a brief CD reissue on Orange Records in 2005).

-Lon & Derrek Van Eaton's "Brother" is far more musical than the Peel album, and finally got a CD reissue on RPM Records in 2012; that disk includes the duo's lone Apple non-album b-side, "Song of Songs."

-The self-titled album by "Elephant's Memory" (with ample help from John & Yoko) has never been reissued.  That's ironic considering that much of their other, less notable non-Apple work HAS been reissued.

-The double LP "In Concert 1972" by Ravi Shankar and Ali Akbar Khan was reissued on CD in 1996 and 2004, but has been ignored since then.  One advantage to the CD issues is that "Raga Manj Khamaj" is unified, whereas the vinyl issue had to split the selection up over two LP sides.

In addition to the albums listed above, there were a few LPs slated for Apple Records which were never released at all.  One is the original version of Badfinger's "Straight Up," which is now available as part of the 2010 boxed set.  The following albums, though, are not (and never will be) part of the official Apple "story."

-Zapple #3 was slated to be Richard Brautigan's "Listening to Richard Brautigan"; the album was finally released on Harvest Records in 1973.  (Zapple was an avant garde offshoot of Apple, which only ended up releasing two disks: "Unfinished Music No. 2: Life with the Lions" by John and Yoko, plus George's "Electronic Sound").

-Apple #7 was supposed to be Delaney & Bonnie's "The Original Delaney & Bonnie," which eventually came out on Elektra Records in 1969 (apparently, no one at Apple noticed that D&B had signed a record deal with Elektra).  The catalog number for this album (Apple SAPCOR 07) was later penciled in for an album by the group Trash (aka White Trash, no relation to Edgar Winter's band), but this failed to materialize, and little else is known about the project.

-Speaking of catalog numbers, there are several missing numbers in the sequence of Apple's US numbers.  Most of these are due to separate numbers being assigned to double-albums when released on vinyl versus 8-track tape.  For example, Yoko Ono's "Approximately Infinite Universe" is Apple 3399 on vinyl.  When released as two 8-track tapes, they were numbered as 3397 and 3398.

-In 1974, Yoko Ono recorded the LP "A Story," produced by ace session guitarist David Spinozza (reportedly her lover during John's "Lost Weekend").  I have always speculated that the album was shelved due to John and Yoko reconciling, and the need to forget the Spinozza (and "A Story").  The LP wouldn't be released until 1992, as part of Rykodisk's "Onobox" boxed set.  One other reason for its shelving may be that Apple was winding down by late 1974: the label only released three albums that whole year (George's "Dark Horse," Ringo's "Goodnight Vienna" and John's "Walls & Bridges").