1970s Record Labels' Questionable Quad Release Program

[winopener]

Released through Atlantic, but didn't bear that specific label.

Actually a quad release on the Rolling stones label does exist, Bill Wyman Monkey grip:

 

[jaybird100]

Probably because WEA had no financial incentive behind QUAD. After all, Columbia owned the SQ encode system and RCA at the time promulgated their CD~4 Discrete system. WEA probably had to pay royalties to RCA for licensing CD~4.

And let's not forget, the artists themselves who heard those various QUAD LPs in actual playback were probably not at all impressed with the results and history would prove them correct. Only the QR [QUAD OPEN REEL] system adequately conveyed 4 channel QUAD at the time and the expense of producing those open reel tapes prohibited a lot of releases in that format....as it utilized double the tape traveling @ 7 1/2 ips.

As to ALL the A+ list bands you mentioned who didn't have QUAD releases in the 70's, they were ALL British Bands and I don't know if QUAD was popular in Europe at the time. Perhaps some of our knowledgeable European QQ posters could enlighten us?

I find it surprising that Capitol Records, despite them being a part of EMI in those days, didn't get behind quad. They gave us some sampler records, and fully supported classical quad through their Angel and Seraphim subsidiaries, but they pretty much avoided popular music in quad LP. Q8 had some support for pop. Even DSOTM, from Pink Floyd, got a Q8 release on American shores, but no SQ LP release. McCartney and Wings; Deep Purple; Where were the Capitol SQ's?

 

[jimfisheye]

BTW, had no idea that “Welcome Back…” was on quad 8. The shows that were recorded for that album were my first rock concert. How was it mixed? Was it crowd noises in the rear speakers, or did the synth track while around the room?

It has a very gratuitous playful mix of the keyboard! Often panning around the room with abandon. The other instruments have a few cursory moments of quad play. I think it kind of follows the live mix approach with that. The complaint is the rest of the instruments and especially the drums not given extended treatment.

Oh, and the big complaint is literally every copy made was flawed product from one of the trashier duplication houses with no content above 8kHz!

The stereo mix is actually a fold down of the quad mix and there was never a stereo mix. That didn't work well! Apparently the quad mix master is lost. There's a reasonable restoration shared online that stays authentic to the original mix recording. There are a few very botched attempts shared around too! The more reasonable one took advantage of the fact that the drum mix was mostly only front stereo and extracted the drum content above 8k from the stereo fold down.

This has been your ELP quad digression!

 

[barfle]

But think about it. If the labels had pushed A+ list artists like Led Zeppelin, The Stones, The Fab Four during the QUAD era it might've catapulted the format to more mainstream recognition. Who wouldn't want to hear their favorite artists in discrete four channel QUAD? But not even releasing them in Q4 Open Reel which did offer the BEST separation at the time [and dolby b NR] was an egregious omission!

Finally in 2024 we do have the Beatles and the Stones in 5.1/ATMOS but still no LED ZEP.

Wake up Page and Plant: you ain't gonna live FOREVER!

IIRC, Mitch Miller almost single-handedly destroyed Columbia Records because he didn’t like rock and roll. “Do you really call that snot music?” And, of course, they were the prime mover behind SQ, so I can’t say I’m exactly surprised that there was so little music that appealed to kids in the day.

 

[winopener]

Oh, and the big complaint is literally every copy made was flawed product from one of the trashier duplication houses with no content above 8kHz!

It's worse that that.
All copies of ELP WBMF Part 2 suffer, some more, some less, by a very serious flutter problem that make the tape unlistenable. It is rare to find this flutter problem in a tape (sometimes quality control does exist...) and i have other two or three tapes - among the hundred i have - that shows a flutter problem, but it was possible to find out a copy that worked ok. With Part 2 no one among us old farts has ever found a P2 tape that didn't have that problem at all.

 

[jimfisheye]

Yeah, spent a lot of time stabilizing the two main fluttered out sections too! And plenty of other problems! Kind of astonished it cleaned up as well as it did if I do say so myself.

Not only that but there were dozens of dropouts throughout where split second bits of the tape were sliced out and spliced. Like 30 or 40! I'm envisioning a duplication master getting chewed up by a malfunctioning machine. Then instead of getting a new copy made (and revealing their blunder that day) someone crudely spliced it together chopping out the most mangled chewed up bits. I can only guess and take cheap shots but the poor thing was riddled with 30 or 40 dropouts throughout! The missing gaps being spliced created timing lurches.

Quite the significantly flawed release!

 

[par4ken]

IIRC, Mitch Miller almost single-handedly destroyed Columbia Records because he didn’t like rock and roll. “Do you really call that snot music?” And, of course, they were the prime mover behind SQ, so I can’t say I’m exactly surprised that there was so little music that appealed to kids in the day.

My Mother had the album "Sing Along with Mitch", I still have it somewhere. It is one of those that I never ever liked.

By the time of SQ there was a lot of rock on Columbia Records. Many of the biggest names in fact. The best selection in the Quad era came from CBS (Columbia/Epic)!

I find it surprising that Capitol Records, despite them being a part of EMI in those days, didn't get behind quad. They gave us some sampler records, and fully supported classical quad through their Angel and Seraphim subsidiaries, but they pretty much avoided popular music in quad LP. Q8 had some support for pop. Even DSOTM, from Pink Floyd, got a Q8 release on American shores, but no SQ LP release. McCartney and Wings; Deep Purple; Where were the Capitol SQ's?

I don't really fault Capitol too much, they just took a bit slower approach, largely missing the bus. Sadly it was a bus that ended up going nowhere. There were a lot of rock Q8's released on Capitol. Why so reluctant to release popular titles in SQ might just have been a bad management decision. They wanted to see how quad and the format war would shape up, then an impatient industry destroyed the very idea before it was given a half a chance!

The more popular SQ albums that did get released (EMI Canada) like Mandingo III, John Keating Incorporated Hits In HiFi and Space Experience were fantastic!

 

[marcb]

I've never met any record execs from the 70s, so I have no idea what their own favored titles may have been.

Were younger people complaining about what was or wasn't released in quad at the time? When I was a teen in the 70s, I didn't know a single person with a quad system.

current music being mixed to Atmos is primarily done with those listening on earbuds in mind. Which is likely to skew much younger than did those with quad systems back in the 70s.

Also, today when new music is being mixed in Atmos, I presume it is usually being done at the same time they are mixing to stereo. It's probably cheaper to create an Atmos mix of the, say, new Olivia Rodrigo album while they are also doing the stereo than it is to drag out old tapes of a classic title and hire someone to specifically create an Atmos mix of that.

I have no data to back this up, but I do believe that then and now they were/are targeting those with the playback systems.

Record execs favored anything which would make them money.

Hell, many 60's artists still preferred mono over stereo in the early 70s. I suspect many artists who had a fair degree of control over their catalog to a large degree were constantly touring and recording and had little interest in creating another mix. And after phasing out mono - and the resulting 2 catalog items for every album - just 5 or 6 (or so) years earlier, I imagine there were very mixed reactions internally about going back to that arrangement from a cost/marketing perspective. Particularly if you didn't generate any proprietary interest in one of the algorithms and had to pay a licensing fee.

 

[JonUrban]

But it really does make one curious as to what happened behind the scenes. Was the Walter Murphy title mixed to Quad back in '76 when it was fresh or was in mixed in 1979?
I honestly can't believe RCA would do that only to print a small run of 100 tapes. It had to come to them already mixed. (that's my guess, anyway!) The mix also doesn't jive with anything RCA was doing at the time as there's a lot of "side" information going on.

I don't have the original "Private Stock Records" pressing so I'm no help there.

If I remember correctly (which is not at all a 100% surety) the "Fifth of Beethoven" Q8 from RCA was sold mail-order direct to purchasers of Lincoln Continentals, which still had Q8 players installed as standard equipment in 79 and maybe 80. Those of us quad folks who communicated by snail-mail and sometimes phone calls got wind of it and we all ordered the tape.

As for when it was mixed, I would believe that it was probably mixed for a 1976 release by RCA, maybe on CD-4 as well, but the market had soured and many releases got canned. This one was probably on the shelf and someone at Ford asked for something new and they pulled this one out.

This is all speculation, but it kind of makes sense. Larry Clifton or Nick Perugini might know more, but they rarely stop in here anymore - and haven't for years