https://top40musiconcd.com/forum/ Copyright (c) 2006-2013 Web Wiz Forums - All Rights Reserved. Wed, 29 Apr 2026 14:02:44 +0000 Mon, 26 Jan 2026 09:09:11 +0000 http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss Web Wiz Forums 12.07 360 https://top40musiconcd.com/forum/RSS_post_feed.asp?TID=3155 https://top40musiconcd.com/forum//images/Top-40-Music-on-CD-Forum-Logo.png https://top40musiconcd.com/forum/ https://top40musiconcd.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=3155&PID=67710&title=holliesbus-stop#67710 Author: VWestlife
Subject: 3155
Posted: 26 January 2026 at 9:09am

The WCBS-FM music library has it in mono, but it has "busgoes" at 2:22 so it must've been made from a fold-down of the stereo version.]]> Mon, 26 Jan 2026 09:09:11 +0000 https://top40musiconcd.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=3155&PID=67710&title=holliesbus-stop#67710 https://top40musiconcd.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=3155&PID=67709&title=holliesbus-stop#67709 Author: LunarLaugh
Subject: 3155
Posted: 25 January 2026 at 8:32pm

Sony/Legacy's 2002 Vic Anesini remaster of The Hollies' Greatest Hits album (with "The Air That I Breathe" as a bonus track) has the 1968 stereo mix with really good EQ. This my go-to if I want to hear Bus Stop in stereo. I generally prefer the mono, though.

Edited by LunarLaugh - 25 January 2026 at 8:33pm]]> Sun, 25 Jan 2026 20:32:45 +0000 https://top40musiconcd.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=3155&PID=67709&title=holliesbus-stop#67709 https://top40musiconcd.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=3155&PID=65672&title=holliesbus-stop#65672 Author: crapfromthepast
Subject: 3155
Posted: 25 January 2025 at 10:57pm

Woo-hoo!

It turns out that the Simitar disc is a level-shifted digital clone of EMI UK's 20 Golden Greats (copyright 1978, CD released 1987)!

20 Golden Greats is now my go-to for the 1968 stereo version.

Well done, dc1!]]> Sat, 25 Jan 2025 22:57:02 +0000 https://top40musiconcd.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=3155&PID=65672&title=holliesbus-stop#65672 https://top40musiconcd.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=3155&PID=65671&title=holliesbus-stop#65671 Author: davidclark
Subject: 3155
Posted: 25 January 2025 at 5:24pm

In fact, the first stereo mix from that Hollies' Greatest LP was indeed wide - I
have it on 1987 CD "20 Golden Greats", which is a CD issue of the 1978 LP. I
bought it in Canada, pressed in W-Germany.

https://www.discogs.com/release/3976472-The-Hollies-20-Golde n-Greats

The wide mix has been narrowed for many if not most CD issues, including on
Rhino "The British Invasion: The History Of British Rock Vol. 3".]]> Sat, 25 Jan 2025 17:24:47 +0000 https://top40musiconcd.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=3155&PID=65671&title=holliesbus-stop#65671 https://top40musiconcd.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=3155&PID=65664&title=holliesbus-stop#65664 Author: crapfromthepast
Subject: 3155
Posted: 23 January 2025 at 10:55pm

Graham Gouldman was on tear in 1966, writing a flood of hits for the Yardbirds, Herman's Hermits, the Hollies, and others. He was just 19 when he wrote "Bus Stop", which is still amazing to me. He definitely has a gift for songwriting.

Hit mono version

The 1966 hit was mono. The song wasn't mixed to stereo when it was a hit.

You have exactly one choice for finding the mono version on a US CD: Capitol's Classic Masters (2002). As far as I know, it's not on a UK CD, either. It runs 2:52 here. It's mastered a little loud for my tastes (a bit of clipping or compression/limiting), but overall the sound is fine. The EQ is nice, and I don't hear artifacts on the fade from any added noise reduction. It might even be a very nice dub from vinyl - do I hear a little low-frequency turntable rumble on the fade and maybe a tick or pop? Not sure. But vinyl dub or not, this CD is all there is and I'm grateful that it exists at all.

I assume that the 45 represents the full performance of the song, without any editing or rearranging (can't confirm, but I think it's a pretty good assumption). At 0:16, Allan Clarke sings "bus stops / busgoes" with the words bus and goes being squashed together like we're used to hearing. At 2:22, Allan Clarke sings "bus stops / bus goes" with the words bus and goes being sung on the beat, which sounds a little stiff to my ears because we've never heard it sung like that before. (Unless we lived through hearing it on the radio in 1966.)

At 1:09, you can hear an edit in the vocals on the word "true". It sounds like the engineer is switching from one vocal take to another take at the edit. I don't hear any edit in the instrumentation at 1:09 (although it's hard to hear behind the vocals). The edit is between beats.

If you want another CD with the full performance, it appears in dreadful fake stereo on JCI's Rockin' Sixties (1988). It runs 0.9% slower than Classic Masters. The tail of the fade is about 4 beats shorter than Classic Masters. If you use only the left channel, apply a whole lot of EQ correction, speed up the track by 0.9%, and pretend the fade runs 4 beats longer... it will still likely sound like mud, but you'll get a good idea of what the full performance sounds like.

Non-hit 1968 stereo version

Parlophone UK did a proper stereo mix in 1968 for the Hollies' Greatest vinyl LP, two years after the song was a hit. If the CD copies of this mix are to be believed, the drums are panned mostly left, and the vocals are panned mostly right. The panning isn't 100%, so there's a little bit of drums on the right and a little bit of vocals on the left. Maybe there's a version out there with a wider soundstage that has complete panning, but I haven't encountered it on CD.

I believe that the first CD to include the stereo version was EMI UK's 2-CD All The Hits And More - The Definitive Collection (1988). It runs 2:53 here. The tail of the fade is about two beats shorter than the mono 45 version. Sound quality is quite nice, with seemingly low-generation source tapes, great dynamic range, nice EQ, and no evidence on the fade of any added noise reduction. I'm more impressed with the sound on this disc than I expected to be.

At 0:16, Allan Clarke sings "bus stops / busgoes" with the words bus and goes being squashed together like we're used to hearing. But at 2:22, Allan Clarke sings "bus stops / busgoes" with the words bus and goes also being squashed together, which is different from the mono 45 version.

At 1:10, you can hear the edit in the vocals on the word "true", just like the mono 45 version. Because the vocals are pretty well confined to the right channel, you can isolate the point where the vocals are edited. There's no corresponding edit in the instrumentation in the left channel at that point. The edit occurs between beats, at the same location as on the mono 45 version.

I A/B-ed the vocal tracks between this stereo version and the mono 45 version, and I can't find any other differences aside from right around the 2:22 point.

The following CDs use the same analog transfer as All The Hits And More - The Definitive Collection:

• Time-Life's Superhits Vol. 12 The Mid-'60s (1991) - tail of fade is 2 beats shorter
• Time-Life's AM Gold Vol. 5 The Mid-'60s (1995) - tail of fade is 2 beats shorter
• Cema Special Markets' 2-CD Rock N Roll Greatest Hits Of All Time Vol. 3 (1995) - tail of fade is 2 beats shorter
• Disky UK's 10-volume The Beat Goes On Disc 5 (1997) - if not the same analog transfer, then uses the same tape source; tail of fade is 3 beats shorter

There's a new analog transfer on Rhino's British Invasion Vol. 3 (1988), which sounds almost exactly like All The Hits And More - The Definitive Collection with a small treble boost. The fade begins and ends in the same places. The waveforms even look similar. The same analog transfer is used on:

• Time-Life's Classic Rock Vol. 22 Blowin' Your Mind (1990, RE-1 reissue) - has left/right channels swapped; tail of fade is 1 beat shorter
• Entertainment Weekly's Rock Archives Vol. 1 (1990) - has left/right channels swapped; tail of fade is 1 beat shorter
• Time-Life's History Of Rock 'N' Roll Vol. 7 The British Invasion 1964-1966 (1993) - tail of fade is 1 beat shorter

EMI put out a Greatest Hits in 2003, which sounds like the 1968 mix, but with a narrowed soundstage and very muddy sound. Not sure what happened here; avoid.

Finally, a complete surprise: Simitar's Love Rocks - In Love With Love (1998) seems to use the same analog transfer as All The Hits And More (or both use the same source from EMI), but runs 2 beats longer than All The Hits And More! Plus, it has a very slightly wider soundstage than All The Hits And More! I don't know what source Simitar used from EMI, but it's a winner!

Non-hit 1993 remix

Ron Furmanek and Mike Jarratt remixed the song in very nice stereo for EMI's 2-CD 30th Anniversary Collection (1993).   It runs 2:55 here, and about 6 beats longer than the stereo mixes listed above. The 1993 remix separates the double-tracked vocals into the left and right channels, respectively, so each vocal track is isolated in a single channel.

It still has the vocal edit during the word "true" at 1:09, but only in the left channel! The right channel's vocals go on just fine at the word "true".

To deal with the 2:22 stuff, Ron Furmanek and Mike Jarratt repeated the portion of 0:13.7 to 0:17.6 at 2:20.0 to 2:23.9. It's literally the same 0's and 1's, cut-and-pasted from the first instance of "busgoes" to the second instance of "busgoes". This is not the case with the 1968 stereo mix (I checked it). Not sure why they did that, unless the vocals that were used for the 1968 stereo mix at 2:22 were unavailable for some reason.

My recommendations

For the hit mono version, go with Capitol's Classic Masters (2002).

For the non-hit 1968 stereo version, go with Simitar's Love Rocks - In Love With Love (1998). If you can't find it (or we can't identify what mastering this Simitar disc is really based on), EMI UK's 2-CD All The Hits And More - The Definitive Collection (1988) and Rhino's British Invasion Vol. 3 (1988) are both much more common and sound about the same as the Simitar disc.

For the non-hit 1993 remix, go with EMI's 2-CD 30th Anniversary Collection (1993).

Edited by crapfromthepast - 03 December 2025 at 10:39pm]]> Thu, 23 Jan 2025 22:55:27 +0000 https://top40musiconcd.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=3155&PID=65664&title=holliesbus-stop#65664 https://top40musiconcd.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=3155&PID=14937&title=holliesbus-stop#14937 Author: MCT1
Subject: 3155
Posted: 14 March 2008 at 12:49pm

MCT1 wrote: --It's very possible that a stereo master didn't even exist, so requesting one might have been problematic (or at the very least, may have involved Imperial shelling out some money to have one made). In the '60s, British singles were often not included on any contemporaneous album, so a stereo master might not be made until it was needed for a compliation album somewhere down the road. I don't know if this was the case with "Bus Stop", but it's a possibility. (FWIW, the Hollies discography on Wikipedia shows an American album released in 1966 called "Bus Stop", but no British counterpart.)

I found a page with a detailed UK Hollies discography. I do not see "Bus Stop" on the tracklistings for any albums released around the time it was out as a single. Its first UK LP appearance seems to be in 1968 on the album "The Hollies' Greatest". I'd think it likely that the stereo mix was not done until at least then.   

http://www.proweb.co.uk/~rhaywood/records/albums.htm

Edited by MCT1]]> Fri, 14 Mar 2008 12:49:39 +0000 https://top40musiconcd.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=3155&PID=14937&title=holliesbus-stop#14937 https://top40musiconcd.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=3155&PID=14933&title=holliesbus-stop#14933 Author: Hykker
Subject: 3155
Posted: 14 March 2008 at 9:10am

Yah Shure wrote: Lest we forget, "Happy Together" was the only track on stereo copies of the similarly-titled Turtles album on White Whale to appear in rechanneled stereo. Was the title track not yet mixed to stereo in time for inclusion on the LP? The Turtles Golden Hits LP on White Whale did have "Happy Together" in true stereo a couple of years later.

Wasn't even that long. The first GH LP came out in late '67. I remember getting it for Christmas that year.]]> Fri, 14 Mar 2008 09:10:30 +0000 https://top40musiconcd.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=3155&PID=14933&title=holliesbus-stop#14933 https://top40musiconcd.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=3155&PID=14918&title=holliesbus-stop#14918 Author: Yah Shure
Subject: 3155
Posted: 13 March 2008 at 9:00pm

I agree. Although Imperial was likely responsible for the rechanneling job, that label never had any Hollies session tapes; those belonged to EMI (and we all know how erratic they were when sending mixdowns across the pond.) EMI may have taken a "this is what you're getting, and that's it" approach. In light of Pat's statement that the Imperial Bus Stop album included a rechanneling of the mono 'bus_goes' version, I also agree that the song was likely mixed to stereo some time later. It didn't appear in the US in stereo until the 1973 Epic Hollies' Greatest Hits LP. Perhaps the multis were damaged when the stereo mixdown was done.

Lest we forget, "Happy Together" was the only track on stereo copies of the similarly-titled Turtles album on White Whale to appear in rechanneled stereo. Was the title track not yet mixed to stereo in time for inclusion on the LP? The Turtles Golden Hits LP on White Whale did have "Happy Together" in true stereo a couple of years later.

Todd, thanks for the heads up regarding the quality issues on the Capitol Classic Masters series. Unfortunately, "Bus Stop" and its flipside, "Don't Run And Hide," were left off of EMI's 2004 A's B's & EP's 24-track mono Hollies CD.   Oddly, both sides of "Bus Stop" 's follow-up 45 ("Stop! Stop! Stop!" / "It's You") are included (the "Bus Stop" 45 hit #5 in both the US and UK in '66.) I bought the Seekers CD in the A's B's series in order to get the mono mix of "A World Of Our Own," with its prominent guitar intro that gets buried under the autoharp on the stereo version. The sound quality on that track and the others is excellent. Although the A's B's series was originally issued with copy protection, the copy of the Seekers disc I bought new last year no longer had it.

Speaking of EMI's haphazard approach to sending tapes to America, has anyone heard whether or not Caroline's new Gerry & The Pacemakers boxed set You'll Never Walk Alone contains the US version of "I'll Be There"? This set is described as having " some recordings issued only in the USA and Canada," but I can't find any particulars. It's due out March 25th. ]]> Thu, 13 Mar 2008 21:00:17 +0000 https://top40musiconcd.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=3155&PID=14918&title=holliesbus-stop#14918 https://top40musiconcd.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=3155&PID=14916&title=holliesbus-stop#14916 Author: MCT1
Subject: 3155
Posted: 13 March 2008 at 8:36pm

Todd Ireland wrote: 1) Why would the Imperial record label have elected to go with an electronically rechanneled mix of "Bus Stop" on the parent LP? Wouldn't they have had the multi-track session tapes handy to do a true stereo mix?

A couple of thoughts on this:

--Because the Hollies were British, and were signed to different, unrelated labels in the UK and US, Imperial may not have had ready access to the tapes. If Imperial had been sent a mono master for the single, they may have felt that was good enough, and were too lazy/cheap/whatever (see Bill's post) to request a stereo master.

--It's very possible that a stereo master didn't even exist, so requesting one might have been problematic (or at the very least, may have involved Imperial shelling out some money to have one made). In the '60s, British singles were often not included on any contemporaneous album, so a stereo master might not be made until it was needed for a compliation album somewhere down the road. I don't know if this was the case with "Bus Stop", but it's a possibility. (FWIW, the Hollies discography on Wikipedia shows an American album released in 1966 called "Bus Stop", but no British counterpart.) There were a number of Beatles singles where this type of thing happened. IIRC, "I Want To Hold Your Hand" and "I Feel Fine" are a couple of examples. Capitol wanted to include these songs on LPs, but they had been non-album singles in the UK, so no stereo master existed. Rather than pay to have one made, Capitol released the song in fake stereo -- and kept making the album that way for years, even after stereo masters had been made for use on compilations released in the UK or elsewhere. And in the Beatles' case, the US and UK labels weren't even unrelated -- they were under common ownership (EMI).    
]]> Thu, 13 Mar 2008 20:36:15 +0000 https://top40musiconcd.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=3155&PID=14916&title=holliesbus-stop#14916 https://top40musiconcd.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=3155&PID=14910&title=holliesbus-stop#14910 Author: Bill Cahill
Subject: 3155
Posted: 13 March 2008 at 5:08pm

I can confirm that even the mono Bus Stop DJ LP has the same mono mix Robert described. So does the Capitol re-issue of Hollies Greatest on vinyl, which clearly states on the bottom of the back cover, a monophonic recording.

As far as why use an electronically simulated version for the Bus Stop LP, Greatest Hits, etc, Imperial was probably too lazy, ignorant, or cheap to ask for the stereo tape. I think later United Artists inherited the distribution rights and didn't bother to get the tapes either. ]]> Thu, 13 Mar 2008 17:08:03 +0000 https://top40musiconcd.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=3155&PID=14910&title=holliesbus-stop#14910