While the Beatles had to write, direct, star in, and even edit Magical Mystery Tour, although they needed to do for the animated feature Yellow Submarine was provide four new, unreleased songs. Unfortunately, in this hypothetical situation, three of the four tunes they had planned to use (Sgt. Pepper’s outtakes It’s All Too Much, Only A Northern Song, and All Together Now) had been cannibalized for the Capital albums. As a result the Beatles had rush in to the studio and crank out four new tunes before taking their sabbatical to India.

The four songs they recorded were the single Lady Madonna b/w The Inner Light, the first version of Across The Universe (earmarked for the Bee Gees charity album), and Hey Bulldog (recorded while they were supposed to be filming the Lady Madonna promotional video in the studio). While there was little time for the animation studio to turn this songs around into cartoon sequences for the film, they were all still slated for side one the soundtrack along with a couple of previously released tunes: the title track Yellow Submarine and the recent single A-side All You Need Is Love.

Paying for a whole album and only getting four new Beatles songs felt like something of a rip-off to the band, who kicked around the idea of releasing those tunes simply as an EP. But ultimately they couldn’t be bothered. Which is a shame, because even today in the non-theoretical world, you have to buy the whole dang thing just to get those four tracks. They really should’ve been added to Past Masters, vol. 1 & 2 and we could all ignore this half-instrumental half-George Martin album completely.

Luckily, when the Beatles returned from the Indian sojourn, a dearth of material was not an issue that fans – or Capitol Records – would have to worry about.