The cover illustration was originally taken from Alan Aldridge’s 1969 book The Beatles Illustrated Lyrics I.

Almost all of the art from that book was reprinted in Russia by the magazine Student Meridian in the early 1990s, so it’s likely this cover came from there.

Unlike Andrei Tropillo’s Antrop releases, which were exact copies of the original albums, this one from Russian Disc was a classic bootleg. At the time of its release, the songs hadn’t been officially published, even though they had been around since the early 1970s.

Labels

Instead of the usual labels, the record had custom ones showing the band members’ heads taken from the cover of With the Beatles. On the flip side, though, the photos were inverted.

The back cover had a review that ended with the line: “You can think of this record as a sneak peek of the series ‘Rare Beatles Recordings.’” The rest of the series was never released, though.

In his 1995 article “The British Invasion,” journalist Sergey Gribushin said that this was the first time pirates in Russia had copied pirated material. Just a year later, in 1994, most of these tracks were officially released on the compilation Live at the BBC.

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© Artur Netsvetaev