Below is a scan of PARLO 84 and PARLO 85, the production master tapes of Help!.
When it came to Beatles LPs, EMI (Australia) initially imported mothers from the UK as it was considered more economical due to unknown likely sales quantities. In 1964, once The Beatles were more than just a household name, the decision was made to obtain tape copies instead to mitigate waiting for replacement metal parts if they were subsequently required. Thus A Hard Day's Night, Beatles For Sale and Help! were cut locally from master tape copies provided by EMI UK. For whatever reason though, this approach didn't last long, with EMI (Australia) reverting back to importing Mothers for Rubber Soul and subsequent albums.
These tapes were prepared for Australia on 8 July 1965, roughly two weeks after the UK master tapes were compiled.
There's really not too much exciting to decode on these tape boxes, apart from the following:
- These tapes are LP production tapes, not cassette production tapes like most tapes sent to Australia. They were copied from an equalised and compressed copy of the UK master tapes
- They were filed locally as tapes 84 and 85 in the PARLOphone range
- Both album sides were mastered locally on 2 August 1965, allocated the local matrix numbers YAPAX 1005 and YAPAX 1006
- On 11 January 1982, tape masters were made for Walter Bay Trading Co Ltd, Papua New Guinea ("Walter Bay"). Walter Bay Trading manufactured /duplicated cassettes for release in Papua New Guinea under licence from EMI (Australia)
- The tapes were used to source three tracks for the 1982 singles reissues, mastered by Otto Ruiter on 15 June 1982
- Both album sides were recut on 28 August 1978. The recut was required due to EMI (Australia) discovering a mastering fault when they were preparing The Beatles Collection box release
- Side 2 was recut on 15 October 1982 by Otto Ruiter (-3)
