Overview
Abbey Road arrived as the first Australian album by The Beatles issued exclusively in stereo. Its earliest packaging, however, supplied a more conspicuous distinction: a printing error that became known among collectors as the “blood cover”.
Too much red ink gave the entire sleeve, front and rear, a pink cast — please see sleeve image above. On the road between Ringo and John, it created a prominent mark that could be interpreted as a bloodstain. The anomaly became one of the cited “clues” in the “Paul is Dead” conspiracy, although its origin was a printing fault corrected soon afterwards.
The same effect appears on Australian sheet music for ‘Come Together’ and ‘Maxwell’s Silver Hammer’, illustrated below. Other sleeve details changed more gradually. The drainage grate at the bottom of the photograph is prominent on the earliest covers, becomes less visible on later examples and disappears from the image during the 1970s. All Australian-manufactured sleeves have the rear Apple logo misaligned relative to the text.
The 1988 recut introduced a more consequential difference: ‘Her Majesty’ was omitted. Allan Parsons knew the track was present on the source CD, but it did not appear on EMI (Australia)’s Acceptance Sheet. Company policy required mastering engineers to follow that document, preventing its inclusion.
Purported Australian coloured editions
From around July 2010, coloured-vinyl and picture-disc copies claiming Australian manufacture began appearing in substantial numbers on auction sites. No Australian coloured-vinyl or picture-disc edition of Abbey Road was manufactured. Copies presented as such are fakes.
