Rock Legends

Pressing & Mastering

First Issued	Side 1	Side 2	Parts
17-Oct-80	2475 662A	2475 662B	AU
85	✎RLP 499095 A	✎RLP 499095 B.	NZ

Sleeve Information

Code	Circulated	Comments
AU1	Oct-80	Front laminated; PolyGram Records Pty Ltd. Liner notes: "Tony Sheridan, 1960"
AU2	81	Front laminated; PolyGram Records Pty Ltd. Liner notes: "Tony Sheridan"
AU3	85	Front AND back laminated; Rainbow Record Products

Overview
Long before The Beatles’ EMI recordings, their June 1961 Hamburg sessions produced a small catalogue that Polydor would revisit repeatedly. Most of the recordings featured the early Beatles backing Tony Sheridan, although the group also recorded a couple of tracks on its own. Initially billed as the Beat Brothers, their contribution became a valuable commercial asset once Beatlemania made the participants world-famous.

In August 1980, PolyGram Australia launched Rock Legends, an ambitious budget series initially comprising forty-five albums in a uniform sleeve design. At $5.99, it undercut CBS’s $6.99 Nice Price range and WEA’s $6.99 series. The collection found a ready market, selling more than 150,000 units in its first ten months, with exports accounting for at least twenty per cent.

The Beatles appeared as title seventeen. Their contribution was another repackaging of the same twelve tracks repeatedly issued since the German The Beatles First! in 1964. Australian buyers had previously encountered the programme as The Beatles in Hamburg, issued by Karussell in March 1970 as 635056 and by Summit in November 1970 as SRA 250-550. Official imports had also kept it available, most recently the French Impact edition of The Beatles First, 6886 556, in February 1980.

Following John Lennon’s death in December 1980, demand exceeded local supply and PolyGram, like EMI, obtained additional pressings from New Zealand. Australian-market copies can therefore contain either Australian or New Zealand vinyl. The World Record Club also offered the album in 1982 as R 91447, normally identified by its red catalogue sticker on the upper-right rear cover. Other Rock Legends titles joined the club’s offerings at the same time.

The first sleeves incorrectly referred to “Tony Sheridan, 1960”. Later printings removed “, 1960” without repositioning the remaining name. In 1985, Rainbow Products reissued the album using the same title and basic artwork, with small changes illustrated below. The “Tony Sheridan” reference was now right-aligned. Although the sleeves were Australian-made, most Rainbow copies appear to contain New Zealand vinyl, reflecting a growing practice during the 1980s before PolyGram New Zealand ceased pressing in mid-1986.

The recordings continued to return under other titles and formats: The Beatles, cassette POL 26, in 1982; The Early Tapes of The Beatles, CD 823 701-2, in August 1987 and January 1992; Startrax, cassette 3236 662, in August 1988; Meet the Beat, LP 819 826-1, in January 1989; The Beatles with Tony Sheridan and the Beat Brothers, CD PKD 3038, in November 1990; and another The Early Tapes of The Beatles CD, 550037-2, during the 1990s. The succession of packages demonstrates just how enduring a market these early Hamburg recordings found.