I, likewise, placed songs that were completed but not released until the Anthology collections, such as Leave My Kitten Alone and What’s the New Mary Jane, in their proper locations.
But Kev, what about Bad Boy? In the good ol’ U.S of A, it was released on BEATLES VI (sixth song, side two) in 1965. But it didn’t get released in the U. of K. until the quickly-put-together-greatest-hits-package A Collection of Beatles Oldies, providing a holiday release in late 1966. (Bad Boy is the second song, side two.) Where, oh where did you place Bad Boy?
What an intelligent question! I thought long and hard about the placement of Bad Boy and came to the conclusion that it should be placed after Beatles For Sale, which is about when it was recorded and released in the U.S. (To be accurate, given recording dates, etc., I placed Bad Boy between Yes It Is— the b-side to Ticket To Ride—and I’m Down—the b-side to Help!).
What about singles? How did they fit in?
Another stellar question. As we know, in general for the U.K., the Beatles did not include the songs they released as singles and EPs on their LPs. So, singles and EPs were simply placed where they were released. (The single From Me To You/Thank You Girl after the LP Please Please Me, for instance.) In those cases where a single was also included on an album, I just used the album release. (The singles Ticket to Ride and Help!, for instance, were both released before the album Help!. So as not to duplicate those tracks, and to keep the integrity of the Help! album intact, I did not include those songs as singles. However, their b-sides, Yes It Is and I’m Down, which were not included on the Help! album, were placed in their proper chronology, before the LP.)
Now, to confuse things a bit, in the case of the singles Love Me Do and Let It Be, I did include both the single and album versions, as they are not exactly the same. (On the single Love Me Do, Ringo plays drums; on the LP, studio drummer Alan White plays drums with Ringo relegated to tambourine. Harrison’s guitar solo on the Let It Be single is different than that on the LP.)
And yes, I did include both version of Across the Universe, too. And Get Back.
So, basically I drove from My Bonnie all the way through Real Love. I stayed mono—since that’s how the boys would have wanted it—until there was no more mono to be had (Abbey Road on). The total number of songs was 266, with a running time of 11 hours and 57 minutes. And guess what? It’s a twelve hour drive from my house in Indy, to my brother’s in Jersey. No foolin’. (Okay, I sat in his driveway for the last verse of Real Love. Sue me.)
So, what, if anything did I learn?
Po-len-ty.
For songs and albums I literarily know backwards and forwards (Yes, I have Beatlegs with their songs playing backwards. I’ve even listened to them.), there were still some pretty significant things I’d only peripherally thought about or never considered.
For instance:
The trajectory and momentum of their work, particularly in the first few years is astonishing. It’s always been clear that the leap from their first album, Please Please Me, to their second, With the Beatles, is enormous. But when heard in context, with an astounding 25 BBC cover songs, not to mention the single She Loves You separating the two albums, the leap ahead from one album to the other becomes clearer.
Not so clear, and perhaps their biggest leap forward comes from With the Beatles to A Hard Day’s Night. While the single, I Want To Hold Your Hand is, indeed, a huge step, the handful of BBC cover song tracks now seem old and out of place. The EP Long Tall Sally rocks pretty hard, however, but still doesn’t foreshadow the bliss of that chord opening A Hard Day’s Night, song and album.
With no more BBC songs (from here on out, the lads played mostly their own songs for the BBC) we are pretty much left with the known catalog. But, again, by placing the singles and EPs in their proper order, the progress is more understandable. Still awesome, but understandable.
The feedback of I Feel Fine (and the hyper reverb, if one is listening to the American version) is jarringly advancing as well as welcome, as is the blues of the b-side, She’s a Woman. But this single leads us to the only—not step back, but more accurately a place holder—Beatles For Sale. The original material doesn’t seem terribly “new,” and the album also reverts to the earlier LP formula by including a substantial amount of covers. How they left off Leave My Kitten Alone but included Mr. Moonlight—which gets my vote for worst Beatle song—is beyond me. But, I did rectify that omission by including Kitten immediately following the album’s last tune, Everybody’s Trying to Be My Baby. Following Kitten, I then put the Harrison composition, You Know What To Do; an okay song that would have worked on the first album or so, but not now.
Yes It Is, Bad Boy (Bad Boy should have been on Beatles For Sale, too), and I’m Down come next. Admittedly, it was odd hearing I’m Down before Help!, but, as explained above, I didn’t want to duplicate songs. The album Help! has always been a favorite, and, with it’s regular use of acoustic guitar, is a perfect bridge to Rubber Soul.
Before Soul, though, is the double A-sided We Can Work It Out/Day Tripper, which is that perfect little step between the two albums.
I was curious how Rubber Soul would lead to Revolver so paid particular attention after Run For Your Life. Next I’d placed the Fabs’ instrumental, 12-Bar Original, since it was one of their complete unreleased songs. A novelty, really, which, does little. Not so, of course, for their next single, Paperback Writer. While a terrific rocker, it’s the b-side, Rain, which, with it’s backwards guitar, comes as an interesting little “shock,” but, again, is that perfect step leading us to the wonder that is Revolver.
With this chronological sequencing, finally we get to hear, what to my mind is the Beatles' greatest single, in it’s proper place, before Sgt. Pepper. Strawberry Fields Forever and Penny Lane have, at least in the U.S., forever been a part of Magical Mystery Tour. But in reality, of course, the single was released after Revolver. I seriously got chills when, after the fade-out of Tomorrow Never Knows, the first strains of Strawberry Fields Forever came wafting through my car speakers. I can’t even imagine what fans at the time of it’s original release made of it. Even given the experimental nature of Revolver, Strawberry Fields seems light years away. But, as with most things Fab, it also provides that bridge to the next album, Sgt. Pepper.
After Pepper (and that annoying Inner Groove bit), we return to again, what most consider, Magical Mystery Tour territory. All You Need Is Love, Baby Your a Rich Man and Hello Goodbye do work as the tiny step down from the ubber-psychedelia of Pepper and takes us comfortably to, what once was, the EP Magical Mystery Tour.
The contrast from the close of I Am the Walrus to the bouncing piano of Lady Madonna works well, and eases us further away from the psychodelic period. That is, after a brief return, of sorts, with Harrison’s The Inner Light. With Lady Madonna in memory, Hey Jude slips right in place and Revolution firmly returns us to the land of rock and roll.
And rock and roll is where the White album begins, with, of course, Back in the U.S.S.R. While the White album’s close, Goodnight, works as a bit of a pallet cleanser after Revolution 9, it also, in an odd way, leads us to What’s the New, Mary Jane. Goodnight’s final string fade meeting with the lone piano of Mary Jane works nicely and allows Mary Jane to take us, what feels like a bit backwards, to the four Yellow Submarine tunes. (I say four, because, of course the songs Yellow Submarine and All You Need Is Love are repeats.)
Would that EMI/Apple/Capitol have put out Yellow Submarine as an EP, because it would have been great. Well, in this chronological sequencing, it is essential an EP, and, while the songs feel more in the Pepper/Mystery Tour-ish vein, the long fade-out of It’s All Too Much works amazingly well with the fade-in of the Get Back single. It is a bit startling hearing Get Back before Abbey Road, but it’s back where it belongs. (Pun intended.) Get Back’s flip side Don’t Let Me Down leads us to the next single, The Ballad of John and Yoko and it’s b-side, Harrison’s Old Brown Shoe, which brings us to the opening track of Abbey Road, Come Together.
Abbey Road ends, of course, with Her Majesty, and that brings us to the opening strains of the single version of Let It Be. Now the flip side, You Know My Name (Look Up the Number) always felt, to me, like it should be the last Beatle song. But, alas, keeping true to the proper order, it is not even the last non-album track. That “honor” is left to the World Wildlife Fund version of Across the Universe. And, while I don’t particularly care for this version, it does lead nicely to the opening track to the final Beatle album.
While Let It Be seems anti-climatic coming after Abbey Road, it does work well as a kind of a coda. It feels like, what is was, a work in progress, and culminates with that “live” rooftop version of Get Back and the “hope we passed the audition” gag.
While I knew they wouldn’t quite fit, I did include Free As a Bird and Real Love. I mean, they are Beatle songs, right? Indeed.
Some things I learned about The Fabs’ Individually:
George:
When CD burners were all the rage, I’m confident that the first disc burned by a whole host of people, including moi, was a disc that was made up of all the Beatle Harrisongs. My disc, cleverly called: The Quiet One, opened with Cry For a Shadow and went thru I Me Mine. The disc not only was (and still is) great, but it really puts Harrison—as a songwriter—in perspective. My trip, however, put Harrison—as a Beatle—in perspective.
When including the Decca audition and the BBC recordings, George Harrison is surprisingly quite often the lead singer. On the fifteen track Decca audition tape, George sings lead on four songs. This, in itself, shows how much confidence John and Paul must have had in George as a singer. Why else would they have risked four songs on their audition for a recording contract? (For my trip I only included three of Harrison’s Decca tunes: Three Cool Cats, Crying, Waiting, Hoping and Sheik of Araby, which are found on Anthology 1. While I have his fourth, Take Good Care of My Baby, I did not want to include anything from Beatlegs.)
Most of the BBC cover tracks were recorded and broadcast between the release of their first two albums. While George takes lead on two tracks on Please Please Me (Chains, Do You Want To Know a Secret), and three on With the Beatles (She’s Got the) Devil in Her Heart, Roll Over Beethoven, and his own, Don’t Bother Me) in between, on The BBC recordings, George takes over the lead singer role on a whole host of numbers, including Glad All Over, Young Blood, Nothin’ Shakin’ to name but a few.
It’s when the albums were made up entirely of original material, beginning with A Hard Day’s Night—the only album where George has no lead-singing spot—where Harrison’s presence as lead singer is noticeably diminished. (Beatles For Sale, of course, only allows for one solo Harrison vocal, the album’s closing cover, Everybody’s Trying To Be My Baby.)
While Harrison himself dismissed his first song, Don’t Bother Me actually sits quite well among the Lennon/McCartney originals found on With the Beatles. However, it’s clear that his second song, You Know What To Do, the unreleased (until the Anthology series) Beatles For Sale-era Harrisong, was a step backwards, perhaps fitting more comfortably on Please Please Me. Following two albums without an original Harrison tune, at least one original Harrisong is found on each side of a Beatle LP—notable exception being Sgt. Pepper, of course. (Remember, I’m doing this chronologically, so Magical Mystery Tour is an EP, not an LP.) From, perhaps, Rubber Soul but certainly from Revolver on, Harrison’s songs are as good as, and sometimes better than Lennon’s and McCarney’s. But, because he is only represented by one tune per side, Harrison seems less present than he did earlier with the Fabs. This is born out by the Yellow Submarine LP, which, as I explained above, I treated it as a 4-song EP. With two songs, one over six minutes, Harrison actually dominates, and, while often dismissed by critics (and the Fabs’ themselves), Harrison’s songs are certainly good, with one, Only a Northern Song, also being quite funny. (As far as funny Beatle songs, I think Harrison’s Taxman and Only a Northern Song win. And yes, I know that Lennon offered some of the best lines in Taxman, but it’s still a Harrisong.)
So, in regards to Harrison, the stand out lesson for me when listening to the Beatle chronology, especially when including the BBC and Decca tunes, is how often Harrison is featured. Because in the early years, 1962-1963, he was featured so much, Harrison is noticeably absent in 1964. Because he tended to take a different lyrical bent in his songs (Don’t Bother Me,Think For Yourself, If I Needed Someone are hardly love songs. Or are they?), it’s quite nice when he returns to the fore in ’65, and from there, well… You know.
John & Paul:
The interesting thing I gleaned about Lennon during this exercise is how often he halts the band, with, maybe just a drum beat or vocal filling the void before the band comes back in. Indeed, it’s there in the very beginning, in Please Please Me, where Lennon halts the band, allowing just that little guitar riff, right before the “c’mon, c’mon” bit, before bringing the band back in for the “Please, please me/Oh yea” chorus. It’s there, too, at the very end, in Dig a Pony. This happens throughout Lennon’s Beatle output, the most obvious, in my mind’s ear, being in The Ballad of John and Yoko.
While always aware of Lennon’s penchant for gloomy lyrics, it wasn’t until this trip that I realized just how forlorn John was. Dejected, miserable, lonely, jealous, depressed…and these were the early pop love songs. Misery, There’s a Place, Little Child, Not a Second Time, I Call Your Name, I Should Have Known Better, Tell Me Why, You Can’t Do That, I Don’t want To Spoil the Party…. the list is endless. And Endlessly fascinating.
Not surprisingly, McCartney is quite the opposite. Most of his love songs are, well, love songs.
One of the fascinating things in regards to McCartney is, unlike the other Beatles, McCartney presence is felt on nearly ever track. (Well, maybe not Within You Without You. Nor Julia. But most everything else.) It becomes quite clear, very quickly, that McCartney is the best musician in the band, and he uses this talent to the best of his ability on all of the songs. Two late examples would be his bass playing on Harrison’s Something and particularly on Lennon’s Come Together, where McCartney’s bass nearly defines and certainly drives the song. Both tunes on Abbey Road, both recorded after various disagreements and serious rows with the band (see the film Let It Be), and both pure and simply Beatle songs. Lennon often said that, after Sgt. Pepper, the Beatles were essentially four solo acts on one album. That doesn’t really hold up. (With the exception of several tracks from the White Album, mostly by McCartney.) Whether it be his backup and/or harmony vocals or his melodic bass and/or other instrument playing, McCartney turned, what Lennon saw as a solo song, into a Beatle song. The Ballad of John and Yoko, the very title and lyric of which screams solo (or duo with Yoko) has McCartney all over it. And he, and John too, sound as if they are having a blast.
As with Don’t Let Me Down, Give Peace a Chance is credited as Lennon/McCartney, but both songs are obviously written by Lennon. But as recordings, as records, Don’t Let Me Down, with McCartney’s essential harmonies and lilting bass, is clearly a Beatle song. Just as clearly, Give Peace a Chance, sans McCartney, is not.
Ringo:
I already knew that Ringo was a rock steady drummer, who added fills and frills only when necessary, and never wanted to draw attention to himself. What I didn’t know was how lucky the Fab-three were in getting Ringo. My Bonnie and most obviously the Decca audition tapes prove that Pete Best was not a good drummer.
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