Tracks: It Won;t Be Long//All I've Got to Do//All My Loving//Don't Bother Me//Little Child//Till There Was You//Please Mr Postman//Roll Over Beethoven//Hold Me Tight//You've Really Got A Hold On Me//I Wanna Be Your Man//Devil In Her Heart//Not A Second Time//Money
“My dear girl, there are some things that just aren't done, such as drinking Dom Perignon '53 above the temperature of 38 degrees Fahrenheit. That's just as bad as listening to the Beatles without earmuffs!”
- James Bond.
Recently a messageboard I frequent had a thread about what music everyone’s parents listened to. It seemed as though almost every poster had grown up hearing the Beatles. I felt very left-out, having had no more than casual exposure to the Beatles until my sister lent me a burnt copy of Revolver when I was almost 18. I didn’t mind it, but by that point my musical tastes had been fairly well-established, and as a result the only song that really clicked with me was “Tomorrow Never Knows”. I did follow up on this, slowly and with a near-complete lack of interest, but I’m still hardly what you’d call a Beatles “fan” in the full-on, “Abbey Road is the single greatest album ever produced” sort of way. I mean, Abbey Road sucks! Most of side A is alright but the medley is a pile of rubbish, and most of the songs are dispensable with the exception of the Harrison numbers and “You Never Give Me Your Money”. Revolver, however! Now that’s a great album! But we’re not discussing Abbey Road or Revolver at the moment and I suppose I should stay on topic or risk another two thousand word review.
The point of all this is that I have a love-hate sort of relationship with the Beatles, in large part fuelled by baseless antagonism, and as a consequence I am encountering almost everything prior to Revolver for the very first time. It’ll be handy to fill-out my historical knowledge a bit, since I’m pretty soft on the British Invasion – even if I am doing this list more to learn about soul music and ramble on about David Bowie.
So! With the Beatles! First British album to ever sell one million copies! Does it deserve such status? The second UK album by the group, rushed into production four months after debut Please Please Me dropped to quench the thirst of Beatlemania, it’s a very, very, very uneven affair. At this point the Beatles were still a Shadows-meets-the-Everly Brothers sort of combo with a rough soul edge – nothing spectacular but still quite capable of writing fine songs. Unfortunately for the better part of this album they fail to do so. We have some great, great songs, of course – I’m especially fond of the early Harrison number “Don’t Bother Me”, which has a great sort of early Stones feel, with some nicely dark, introspective lyrics at odds with the rest of the album. But for every “It Won’t Be Long” or “All My Loving” – big, dumb fun finely done – there’s an example of unmitigated crap such as “Hold Me Tight” and “I Wanna Be Your Man” (basically just the titles, sung over and over and over – apparently the latter was written in five minutes as a favour for the Rolling Stones!) or the shit-tastic cover of Chuck Berry’s “Roll Over Beethoven”. The original is a fine song. This cover is barely bar-band quality.
The covers are a bit of a problem here, actually. There are fourteen tracks on the album, and only 7 originals. Granted, a some of the originals are rubbish too, but it does give some idea of the hastily-assembled, “Who cares about quality as long as it’s saleable” approach to the music. There’s not an ounce of the studio trickery, or even basic quality control, that would come to define the Beatles’ work later in the decade. In fact it all sounds like it was recorded with a tin and some string. “Money” is cool, I suppose – a pretty neat cover that incorporates wacky piano and a nifty guitar riff, and some marvellous backing vocals (still, not as cool as the Flying Lizards). It’s the sound of the Beatles in later years! The sound of A Hard Day’s Night! The sound of not sucking. “Till There Was You” isn’t bad either, with a bouncy sort of jazzy beat and little more than acoustic guitar. It sounds like someone’s playing bongos in the background – does this hint at an early, aborted Afro-Cuban direction for the group? Anyway, it’s not spectacular but Paul is in very fine voice on the track. The singing here is actually, in general, pretty well done. Not bad either (but just “not bad” – I am bugged by the breaks for handclaps) is “Please Mr Postman”, complete with girl group harmonies!
I don’t want to give the impression that I hate this. I don't, really. The problem is just that the last half of the album is (with the exception of “Money”) so! Damned! Irritating! That it completely ruins the goodwill built-up by the first half, which is really fun stuff, with a few genuinely excellent songs. So, I suppose the usual pop-album complaints. I shouldn’t be too hard on it, anyway – if you read the Beatles’ comments on most of the songs then they freely admit that a lot of them were just thrown together in a few seconds.
But then, I think we can afford to be hard on these albums, given how much better the guys would be in later years. So!
5.5/10
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