The soundtrack album for the second film, plus some songs not used. Plus, a couple of covers as fillers, otherwise it would have been barely 28 minutes in total. The USA took a different approach and included some of George Martin’s orchestral stuff, just as they did for Yellow Submarine, as a filler.
The songs on side one are great. Ticket To Ride was a single. The title song is dense and only I Need You is letting the side down a little.
Side two contains Yesterday. It also has a couple of good songs that might have made the film, but didn’t.
You can sense the slight lack of enthusiasm about the music and the film, and it’s a fine album but not great.
We maybe tend to forget, or did not even know, that The Beatles did something bands and performers seem not to do these days. They served an apprenticeship.
With Peter Best at the drums, John, Paul and George and maybe Stuart Sutcliffe played for hour after hour in Hamburg. True they did performances in Liverpool too, at The Cavern, but it was in Germany they became a true band of accomplished musicians.
Modern performers have it easy. They use technology to correct their singing, have synthesisers to recreate sounds, maybe even use AI to create songs. Not The Beatles. They played and they played and they learned a craft.
They did have original songs, but they needed a huge repertoire, for their sanity, for variety. They were a covers band.
So, when it came to record their first album, recorded in one long day, this is what they had. Some original songs, lots of covers, the best of their stage act chosen for variety.
It was in some ways a live recording. Yes, they had multiple takes, probably edits, definitely rehearsals and overdubs, but it does give an idea of what the band, by then including Ringo, would have been playing.
It starts with Paul’s exuberant I Saw Her Standing There and finishes with John’s raucous Twist And Shout. George gets a sing as does Ringo. Fourteen tracks including six covers. Lots of harmonies, lots of shared lead vocals.
And it has that iconic cover, much reproduced and copied.
Actually, the covers tracks are the weakest. Anna (Go To Him), Boys, Baby It’s You, but they don’t outstay their welcome. At just over 30 minutes, the album zips along.
Having had the extravagances of A Hard Day’s Night, there was pressure on the band to have a new album out and capitalise on their success.
Beatles For Sale is often chosen as their least good album, and we understand why. It sounds and feels lazy, a filler album.
We’re back in the leftovers from the Hamburg days. fourteen tracks of which six are covers. Sound familiar? It will.
Of the original tracks there are some killers: Eight Days A Week, What You’re Doing and I’m A Loser. But there’s also the twee I’ll Follow The Sun, McCartney doing his show tune type stuff again.
But there are some weak songs here. Ringo struggles through Honey Don’t, Words Of Love sounds like a poor man’s Everly Brothers and the album closer, Everybody’s Trying to Be My Baby sung by George, is awful.
