Post by henryj on Jun 3, 2015 17:42:06 GMT
With the Beatles
Full disclosure: I have never heard With the Beatles as an album. I have heard every song on the album many, many times. So my review will be of the two American albums released by Capitol Records, over which the songs were spread, because that’s how I first heard them over 40 years ago when I was a teenager. Song order on With the Beatles is something I am not qualified to comment on.
“It Won’t Be Long” Appeared on Capitol Meet the Beatles in the US
“All I’ve Got to Do” Appeared on Meet the Beatles
“All My Loving” Appeared on Meet the Beatles
“Don’t Bother Me” Appeared on Meet the Beatles
“Little Child” Appeared on Meet the Beatles
“Till There Was You” Appeared on Meet the Beatles
“Please Mr. Postman” Appeared on Capitol The Beatles Second Album in the US
“Roll Over Beethoven” Appeared on Second Album
“Hold Me Tight” Appeared on Meet the Beatles
“You Really Got a Hold on Me” Appeared on Second Album
“I Wanna Be Your Man” on Meet the Beatles
“Devil in Her Heart” on Second Album
“Not a Second Time” on Meet the Beatles
“Money (That’s What I Want)” on Second Album
Meet the Beatles
I think it was in one of the PBS Beatles Anthology shows where Beach Boy Brian Wilson was interviewed. He was asked about when he first heard the Beatles. He said that the Beatles had “electricity.” Wilson said “electricity” through clenched teeth, since he viewed them as competition.
More than likely he was referring to Meet the Beatles, the Dexterized version of With the Beatles. This album showcased the Beatles as a very energetic group. It might have been the amphetamines the Beatles had begun taking when playing hours on end in the sleazy Hamburg nightclubs. It is as if Dave Dexter Jr. had taken the most energetic songs from With the Beatles and combined them with some of the more energetic single and EP sides to come up with a magical album. Yeah, I know it’s totally unhip to say anything positive about Mr. Dexter, but Meet the Beatles was a good album and it got American popular music out of its doldrums.
“I Want to Hold Your Hand.” What could be more energetic than the Capitol debut single? John and Paul in unison, guitars being strummed in eighth notes, probably all downstrokes. My dad was surprised their guitars stayed in tune for the entire song with all that flailing. At that time, not on a British album. I can still remember hearing on WLS-AM radio, 890 kHz, an ad proclaiming “The Beatles are on Capitol Records with ‘I Want to Hold Your Hand.’” This was before I had even heard the song. WLS could be picked up all over the country, even in Louisiana, at night.
“I Saw Her Standing There.” With a 1-2-3-4 countoff, even more energetic than the opening cut. A Paul vocal on a song from the Please Please Me British debut. Paul’s head cold is evident, which I thought added an element of soul to the vocal performance.
“This Boy.” Okay, slow down with a 12/8 ballad. But listen to John’s rhythm guitar. Just as energetic as the first two cuts with the eighth two 16ths, eighth and then three more eighths before repeating the rhythmic figure. Good harmonies, soulful John lead vocal. At that time, not on a British album.
“It Won’t Be Long.” MORE energy. Does it have two different song-verses, or is that a bridge? From With the Beatles.
“All I’ve Got to Do.” Ok, NOW a little musical relaxation. A John song, obviously influenced by Smokey Robinson with its parallel fourths. From With the Beatles.
“All My Loving.” Moderately up-tempo, very much energy. On another forum several years ago a poster asked why George was singing harmony with Paul and not John. My reply was that he was seeing a live performance and John was busy playing that manic rhythm guitar part. I believe John was singing the harmony on the record. Very soulful Paul vocal on the coda. From With the Beatles.
“Don’t Bother Me.” The first song George wrote that got recorded. The Quiet Beatle. The Shy Beatle. Don’t Bother Me indeed. I dare say this is the first instance of a Beatle putting his actual personality into a song he wrote. Not the John Lennon POB Primal Scream album. Not a bad song. I was always fascinated by the fact that, on this song, the vocal soloist was also the guitar soloist. From With the Beatles.
“Little Child.” This is all harmonica and piano. Well, bass and drums too. I'm sure George is on this somewhere, just playing a Freddie Green volume. From With the Beatles.
“Till There Was You.” The only cover version on the album, this Meredith Willson tune is from the Broadway musical The Music Man. The Beatles learned eclecticism in German dives, complying with requests to “Mach Shau.” (Make show). The Beatles could do country, blues, folk, Broadway, rock, whatever, and it worked well for them. In other words, doing a Broadway show wasn’t necessarily Brian Epstein’s idea. From With the Beatles.
I suspect John didn’t like this too much, since his tastes were far less eclectic than Paul’s. I don’t think the positive reaction they got bothered him too much, though.
Really sophisticated guitar work on this one, particularly by George. Both guitars were acoustic, and suspect played on John and George’s matching Gibson J-160e’s, but not using the “e” part.
“Hold Me Tight.” More high energy. More teeth-clenching “electricity.” Supposedly they went through this one during the Please Please Me sessions. Sources imply that this is a re-recording, but Paul, singing lead, sounds like he had the same cold he had when recording the Please Please Me album. From With the Beatles. Not the Johnny Nash song from the last ‘60s.
“I Wanna Be Your Man.” Not the neatest performance on the album, but IMHO better than the Rolling Stones cover version that was an early British hit for them. The Stones played it with chord changes on the verse where the Beatles did not change chords until the refrain. Did the Beatles teach the Stones one way and then play it a different way themselves? Did the Stones learn it wrong? Or intentionally change the chords? The Ringo vocal on the album. A rocker of a number. More high-energy. From With the Beatles.
“Not a Second Time.” A John song. There is a cheesy single-line piano solo played in the bass clef side. About this time there was a local TV talk show hosted by a gentleman who played piano and organ simultaneously, and it featured single-line piano solos played in the bass clef. Such music sounded like elevator music, and that was what “Not a Second Time” made me think of. From With the Beatles.
“Not a Second Time” is not a bad song, just not as stirring as all the high-energy “electricity” songs appearing on the album.
Meet the Beatles was a somewhat misleading title, since it really was not. But as their American debut, it was a really good album, and didn’t have a stinker among the 12 songs. Certainly not a bit of filler.
The Beatles Second Album, released in the spring of 1964, was the first of those three Capitol American releases of leftovers, the others being Beatles VI in 1965 and Yesterday and Today in 1966. It has the 5 songs from With the Beatles that were omitted from Meet the Beatles, and all 5 of these are cover versions. Of the 6 other songs (2nd has 11, not 12 songs), three are single sides, two are from EPs that were released later in the UK, and one was from the upcoming A Hard Day’s Night album. An EP side, the AHDN song, and the single sides were all Lennon-McCartney originals, where the rest are covers. Second has no Ringo lead vocals.
“Roll Over Beethoven.” Chuck Berry song from With the Beatles. George sings lead and plays the guitar solo. Very engaging performance. More energy. I wonder if, when the above-mentioned Brian Wilson heard this and was singing along, if he wanted to sing “Well she got her daddy’s car and she cruised to the hamburger stand now” at the end of the guitar intro.
“Thank You Girl.” British B-side to “From Me to You.” Someone once said that the use of personal pronouns in the titles of Beatles songs was a factor in their success. I don’t know, but there were a lot of pronouns, and they sold a lot of records. Very energetic. Recorded before the Beatles had the clout to commandeer studio time, so they had to leave in the part where one sang “seems too good” and the other “is too good.”
“You Really Got a Hold on Me.” John singing a Smokey Robinson song that was a hit for Smokey’s group, the Miracles. I don’t know if it’s a good thing or a bad thing that this was separated from “All I’ve Got to Do” in the American market. From With the Beatles.
This is just me: I consider this and other R&B covers sung by John as proto primal scream. I imagine John singing the words to this song, or “Twist and Shout,” or the three Larry Williams songs, while thinking “Mother, you had me, but I never had you.” Singing is such therapy!
“Devil in Her Heart.” Cover version sung by George. Good guitar work. From With the Beatles.
“Money (That’s What I Want).” I bet The Beatles Second Album is Berry Gordy Jr.’s favorite Beatle album, all these Motown songs, published by Gordy’s Jobete publishing company. More proto-primal scream from John. Piano begins the songs, but the guitar entrance is sloppily behind.
“You Can’t Do That.” From the then-upcoming A Hard Day’s Night album. Now, this is real expression from John. In my mind, this is the first of a triumvirate of John Lennon songs that includes “Run For Your Life” from 1965’s Rubber Soul and “Jealous Guy” from his 1971 solo album Imagine. Because John was really a jealous guy and needed to express himself in song. Two lead guitar solos, one a 12-string.
“Long Tall Sally.” From a British EP. This time it’s Paul doing the screaming. I’ve always liked this one. George plays a part in the first verse that sounds like it could have been played on a slide trombone. But not slide guitar. This one rocks, and has two guitar solos from George.
“I Call Your Name.” Ric-12 intro from George. A Lennon-McCartney original appearing on an EP with “Long Tall Sally.” John vocal. I prefer the Beatles original to the Mamas and Papas cover version recorded a couple of years later.
“Please Mr. Postman.” The third Motown song on the album. John vocal. Yet more proto-primal scream. They do a pretty good version of this song. Originally done by the Marvellettes, yet another girl-group song covered by the Beatles, their first album covering two Shirelles songs and a Cookies song. (And let’s not mention the Chiffons.)
“I’ll Get You.” Another song that had a mistake left in because they hadn’t reserved enough studio time to correct it. One sings “change your mind” and the other sings “make you mine.” The vocal octaves aren’t all that good, but the song itself is.
“She Love You.” Their humongously successful single. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The yeah, yeah, yeah part was the very first three notes I ever heard the Beatles sing. It was in December 1963, the month before the Beatles hit in America. It was on the CBS Evening news, reported by Walter Cronkite, maybe less than a month after Mr. Cronkite had reported the assassination of President Kennedy. Very high-energy.
The Beatles Second album wasn’t as slick as Meet the Beatles. It sounds more like it would have been the second album to Please Please Me/Introducing the Beatles/The Early Beatles et al.
Say what you will about the Dave Dexter desecration of Beatle albums, but hey, it’s the Beatles. As I’ve said before, you could release the Beatles’ catalog in alphabetical order, 12 songs at a time, and it would still be good.
And I believe this covers all the songs in With the Beatles.
Full disclosure: I have never heard With the Beatles as an album. I have heard every song on the album many, many times. So my review will be of the two American albums released by Capitol Records, over which the songs were spread, because that’s how I first heard them over 40 years ago when I was a teenager. Song order on With the Beatles is something I am not qualified to comment on.
“It Won’t Be Long” Appeared on Capitol Meet the Beatles in the US
“All I’ve Got to Do” Appeared on Meet the Beatles
“All My Loving” Appeared on Meet the Beatles
“Don’t Bother Me” Appeared on Meet the Beatles
“Little Child” Appeared on Meet the Beatles
“Till There Was You” Appeared on Meet the Beatles
“Please Mr. Postman” Appeared on Capitol The Beatles Second Album in the US
“Roll Over Beethoven” Appeared on Second Album
“Hold Me Tight” Appeared on Meet the Beatles
“You Really Got a Hold on Me” Appeared on Second Album
“I Wanna Be Your Man” on Meet the Beatles
“Devil in Her Heart” on Second Album
“Not a Second Time” on Meet the Beatles
“Money (That’s What I Want)” on Second Album
Meet the Beatles
I think it was in one of the PBS Beatles Anthology shows where Beach Boy Brian Wilson was interviewed. He was asked about when he first heard the Beatles. He said that the Beatles had “electricity.” Wilson said “electricity” through clenched teeth, since he viewed them as competition.
More than likely he was referring to Meet the Beatles, the Dexterized version of With the Beatles. This album showcased the Beatles as a very energetic group. It might have been the amphetamines the Beatles had begun taking when playing hours on end in the sleazy Hamburg nightclubs. It is as if Dave Dexter Jr. had taken the most energetic songs from With the Beatles and combined them with some of the more energetic single and EP sides to come up with a magical album. Yeah, I know it’s totally unhip to say anything positive about Mr. Dexter, but Meet the Beatles was a good album and it got American popular music out of its doldrums.
“I Want to Hold Your Hand.” What could be more energetic than the Capitol debut single? John and Paul in unison, guitars being strummed in eighth notes, probably all downstrokes. My dad was surprised their guitars stayed in tune for the entire song with all that flailing. At that time, not on a British album. I can still remember hearing on WLS-AM radio, 890 kHz, an ad proclaiming “The Beatles are on Capitol Records with ‘I Want to Hold Your Hand.’” This was before I had even heard the song. WLS could be picked up all over the country, even in Louisiana, at night.
“I Saw Her Standing There.” With a 1-2-3-4 countoff, even more energetic than the opening cut. A Paul vocal on a song from the Please Please Me British debut. Paul’s head cold is evident, which I thought added an element of soul to the vocal performance.
“This Boy.” Okay, slow down with a 12/8 ballad. But listen to John’s rhythm guitar. Just as energetic as the first two cuts with the eighth two 16ths, eighth and then three more eighths before repeating the rhythmic figure. Good harmonies, soulful John lead vocal. At that time, not on a British album.
“It Won’t Be Long.” MORE energy. Does it have two different song-verses, or is that a bridge? From With the Beatles.
“All I’ve Got to Do.” Ok, NOW a little musical relaxation. A John song, obviously influenced by Smokey Robinson with its parallel fourths. From With the Beatles.
“All My Loving.” Moderately up-tempo, very much energy. On another forum several years ago a poster asked why George was singing harmony with Paul and not John. My reply was that he was seeing a live performance and John was busy playing that manic rhythm guitar part. I believe John was singing the harmony on the record. Very soulful Paul vocal on the coda. From With the Beatles.
“Don’t Bother Me.” The first song George wrote that got recorded. The Quiet Beatle. The Shy Beatle. Don’t Bother Me indeed. I dare say this is the first instance of a Beatle putting his actual personality into a song he wrote. Not the John Lennon POB Primal Scream album. Not a bad song. I was always fascinated by the fact that, on this song, the vocal soloist was also the guitar soloist. From With the Beatles.
“Little Child.” This is all harmonica and piano. Well, bass and drums too. I'm sure George is on this somewhere, just playing a Freddie Green volume. From With the Beatles.
“Till There Was You.” The only cover version on the album, this Meredith Willson tune is from the Broadway musical The Music Man. The Beatles learned eclecticism in German dives, complying with requests to “Mach Shau.” (Make show). The Beatles could do country, blues, folk, Broadway, rock, whatever, and it worked well for them. In other words, doing a Broadway show wasn’t necessarily Brian Epstein’s idea. From With the Beatles.
I suspect John didn’t like this too much, since his tastes were far less eclectic than Paul’s. I don’t think the positive reaction they got bothered him too much, though.
Really sophisticated guitar work on this one, particularly by George. Both guitars were acoustic, and suspect played on John and George’s matching Gibson J-160e’s, but not using the “e” part.
“Hold Me Tight.” More high energy. More teeth-clenching “electricity.” Supposedly they went through this one during the Please Please Me sessions. Sources imply that this is a re-recording, but Paul, singing lead, sounds like he had the same cold he had when recording the Please Please Me album. From With the Beatles. Not the Johnny Nash song from the last ‘60s.
“I Wanna Be Your Man.” Not the neatest performance on the album, but IMHO better than the Rolling Stones cover version that was an early British hit for them. The Stones played it with chord changes on the verse where the Beatles did not change chords until the refrain. Did the Beatles teach the Stones one way and then play it a different way themselves? Did the Stones learn it wrong? Or intentionally change the chords? The Ringo vocal on the album. A rocker of a number. More high-energy. From With the Beatles.
“Not a Second Time.” A John song. There is a cheesy single-line piano solo played in the bass clef side. About this time there was a local TV talk show hosted by a gentleman who played piano and organ simultaneously, and it featured single-line piano solos played in the bass clef. Such music sounded like elevator music, and that was what “Not a Second Time” made me think of. From With the Beatles.
“Not a Second Time” is not a bad song, just not as stirring as all the high-energy “electricity” songs appearing on the album.
Meet the Beatles was a somewhat misleading title, since it really was not. But as their American debut, it was a really good album, and didn’t have a stinker among the 12 songs. Certainly not a bit of filler.
The Beatles Second Album, released in the spring of 1964, was the first of those three Capitol American releases of leftovers, the others being Beatles VI in 1965 and Yesterday and Today in 1966. It has the 5 songs from With the Beatles that were omitted from Meet the Beatles, and all 5 of these are cover versions. Of the 6 other songs (2nd has 11, not 12 songs), three are single sides, two are from EPs that were released later in the UK, and one was from the upcoming A Hard Day’s Night album. An EP side, the AHDN song, and the single sides were all Lennon-McCartney originals, where the rest are covers. Second has no Ringo lead vocals.
“Roll Over Beethoven.” Chuck Berry song from With the Beatles. George sings lead and plays the guitar solo. Very engaging performance. More energy. I wonder if, when the above-mentioned Brian Wilson heard this and was singing along, if he wanted to sing “Well she got her daddy’s car and she cruised to the hamburger stand now” at the end of the guitar intro.
“Thank You Girl.” British B-side to “From Me to You.” Someone once said that the use of personal pronouns in the titles of Beatles songs was a factor in their success. I don’t know, but there were a lot of pronouns, and they sold a lot of records. Very energetic. Recorded before the Beatles had the clout to commandeer studio time, so they had to leave in the part where one sang “seems too good” and the other “is too good.”
“You Really Got a Hold on Me.” John singing a Smokey Robinson song that was a hit for Smokey’s group, the Miracles. I don’t know if it’s a good thing or a bad thing that this was separated from “All I’ve Got to Do” in the American market. From With the Beatles.
This is just me: I consider this and other R&B covers sung by John as proto primal scream. I imagine John singing the words to this song, or “Twist and Shout,” or the three Larry Williams songs, while thinking “Mother, you had me, but I never had you.” Singing is such therapy!
“Devil in Her Heart.” Cover version sung by George. Good guitar work. From With the Beatles.
“Money (That’s What I Want).” I bet The Beatles Second Album is Berry Gordy Jr.’s favorite Beatle album, all these Motown songs, published by Gordy’s Jobete publishing company. More proto-primal scream from John. Piano begins the songs, but the guitar entrance is sloppily behind.
“You Can’t Do That.” From the then-upcoming A Hard Day’s Night album. Now, this is real expression from John. In my mind, this is the first of a triumvirate of John Lennon songs that includes “Run For Your Life” from 1965’s Rubber Soul and “Jealous Guy” from his 1971 solo album Imagine. Because John was really a jealous guy and needed to express himself in song. Two lead guitar solos, one a 12-string.
“Long Tall Sally.” From a British EP. This time it’s Paul doing the screaming. I’ve always liked this one. George plays a part in the first verse that sounds like it could have been played on a slide trombone. But not slide guitar. This one rocks, and has two guitar solos from George.
“I Call Your Name.” Ric-12 intro from George. A Lennon-McCartney original appearing on an EP with “Long Tall Sally.” John vocal. I prefer the Beatles original to the Mamas and Papas cover version recorded a couple of years later.
“Please Mr. Postman.” The third Motown song on the album. John vocal. Yet more proto-primal scream. They do a pretty good version of this song. Originally done by the Marvellettes, yet another girl-group song covered by the Beatles, their first album covering two Shirelles songs and a Cookies song. (And let’s not mention the Chiffons.)
“I’ll Get You.” Another song that had a mistake left in because they hadn’t reserved enough studio time to correct it. One sings “change your mind” and the other sings “make you mine.” The vocal octaves aren’t all that good, but the song itself is.
“She Love You.” Their humongously successful single. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The yeah, yeah, yeah part was the very first three notes I ever heard the Beatles sing. It was in December 1963, the month before the Beatles hit in America. It was on the CBS Evening news, reported by Walter Cronkite, maybe less than a month after Mr. Cronkite had reported the assassination of President Kennedy. Very high-energy.
The Beatles Second album wasn’t as slick as Meet the Beatles. It sounds more like it would have been the second album to Please Please Me/Introducing the Beatles/The Early Beatles et al.
Say what you will about the Dave Dexter desecration of Beatle albums, but hey, it’s the Beatles. As I’ve said before, you could release the Beatles’ catalog in alphabetical order, 12 songs at a time, and it would still be good.
And I believe this covers all the songs in With the Beatles.