3585: THE BEATLES! ‘the never released MARY JANE’ / “MARY JANE”

Date of release: November 1972

The cover also exists in blue but the resolution/contrast is much worse in all the images I have found.

“The CBM record THE NEVER RELEASED MARY JANE, with matrix 3585, was originally distributed in November 1972 with a purple slip sheet and label with printed title. The subsequent issues had generic labels and usually a blue printed insert.” From “A COMPREHENSIVE BEATLES HISTORY of THE BEATLES’ BBC Bootleg Releases.”

The last two must have been left over from a double album job but they were also used for this single LP.

It’s 1972 and the first unreleased Beatles song has leaked – why not have it be the most off-wall-ish one of them all? I’d love to know how Contraband got that tape. It is known that a four track copy of this 3:09 stereo mix had been made at Abbey Road in late June of 1971.

Side 1: What’s The New Mary Jane (incomplete) / Shout! / Ed Rudy phone interview w/George (ca. 8 February 1964)* / People Say (not the Beatles) / You Know My Name (Look Up The Number) (released B-side)
Side 2: Long Tall Sally / A Hard Day’s Night / Things We Said Today (these last 3 are BBC recordings from July of 1964)/ I’m Walking (B-side to ‘People Say’) / Sie Liebt Dich (released 45)  

* from a broadcast of an Ed Rudy open-end interview disc, with the questions dubbed in by a French DJ

From a 1972 perspective, this was a pretty good album. Excepting the two tracks taken from official 45’s, pretty much every single track had never been available before. The complete version of the lead off track would be made available for the first time in 1973 on TMoQ’s Spicy Beatles Songs.

A bit off topic: The decision to not include “What’s The new Mary Jane” on the White Album was only made at the 11th hour during a 24 hour marathon session preparing the final pre-master from October 16th – 17th. Would we feel about it differently if it had stayed?

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Such was the appeal of being able to offer an unreleased Beatles song for the first time – or maybe it was that ‘wink wink, nod nod’ drug reference, that CBM got copied themselves in 1973:

Ca. 1975, King Kong records gave it another spin:

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And copied on the 1970’s version of the GLC label as GLC-93 with a matrix of 93-A/B:

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_WLV30DQNb4

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I had said at the start of the CBM series that I would go easy on the label images and here I am happily showing every label variation I have stumbled upon. I’m getting carried away but hopefully in a good way. My used up space indicator is stuck at 4%, so I guess I can keep going like this until post # 5000 (not that there will ever be one, of course).

• Contraband CBM King Kong bootleg label
• rock music
• The Beatles
• underground releases
• vinyl records cover art