As I pointed out in another thread, I just got my copy today. But I noticed this is neither version of the Quad mixes that have appeared on the Robin Reels. This is a third, previously unknown Quad mix. This mix has Don Young written all over it. It's painfully similar to the Sly Stone/Greatest Hits mix. Drums in Back Right, Bass in Back Left. Other instruments in the front corners with the only thing taking up the front-center stage is vocals. Nothing appears in back-center unlike other Laura Nyro mixes which, obviously, makes sense if this was considered for an SQ-disc release. So, like I say, this is either a third, previously unknown mix, or this was prepared for an SQ-disc and dropped at the 11th hour. Why else would they mix it three times? Seems like a huge waste of time and tape if you ask me.
Another idea popped into my head. I really wish somebody who was there at the time could answer this as this is complete speculation on my part. Do you suppose, when they did a Quad mix, the shirts gave the assignment to a couple remix engineers then they picked the best mix? Seems like a huge waste of time but at the dawn of the Quad era, maybe that's how they did it? That would explain why we've seen multiple mixes of the same album.
Just thinkin' out loud.....
It's entirely possible that they let a bunch of different guys have a crack at remixing it. In the heyday of Motown (before they moved to LA) they would let any of their engineers who wanted to try to mix something have a go, and Berry Gordy would pick the one he thought had the most 'hit' potential.
There are also some other factors to consider. One is that CBS owned all their own studios and their engineers were staff guys on salary rather than freelancers, they were getting paid regardless of whether they worked 2 hours a day or 8 hours a day, or did 1 mix or 5 mixes of something. Another is that CBS was apparently doing quad tests as early as 1969 (and maybe even earlier, who knows) but they didn't get hot on SQ as their encoding method until 1971 - if you read
Wendy Carlos' webpages about her surround sound and quad experiences, she talks about this. So it's entirely possible that CBS did loads of quad mixes, or test quad mixes, and then later on realised they needed to re-do them to make the most of the early SQ decoders, ie. stuff pushed primarily to the 4 corners with nothing in the center-rear position.
I think there's probably lots more in the vaults from that 1969-1971 period that people don't even know about. Velvet Underground's John Cale was hired by CBS to help develop quad (see the 'quad squad' paragraph in the article
here) but he only ended up with one quad sound supervision credit, for Poco's 'Deliverin'. Do we really think that's all he did in his time there? I think with the pace the industry was moving at in the late 60's and early 70's, labels were always focused on current product and older stuff often fell by the wayside - to me that would explain why things like Johnny Mathis 'Love Story' and the Byrds 'Byrdmaniax' (both 1971 albums) only saw quad release in Japan, because CBS US wanted to promote current (ie 72, 73, 74 etc. ) albums. So by the time Columbia/Epic etc. started releasing quad in January '72, I think they had mixed a bunch of stuff, but only the 'crown jewels' (Janis, Sly, Santana, BS&T, etc.) got released. I'm not saying that there are dozens of pre '72 quad mixes languishing in the vault, but it really wouldn't surprise me if there are a few.