1 - Beatles (The)

...hits. It was at No. 1 for six weeks in the UK, but seems to be much less regarded these days. A very underrated song in my book.

4) This is followed by "I Want To Hold Your Hand", another relentlessly cheerful, feelgood tune ("and when I touch you I feel happy inside"). Maybe it's not the most original piece of music ever written, but who cares? Just get out there and dance the night away!

5) Can't ...
...A Hard Day's Night (of which more anon) inescapably conjures up images of John, Paul, George and Ringo fooling around on fire escapes in the middle of a field. Many people tend to play it too fast - one interesting thing about the Beatles' songs is that their tempos are often not what you might expect from reading the lyrics.

6) As promised above, we now move on to A Hard Day's Night. This is a bit of a turning point - it has a little ... more

Oooh look everyone! It's a new Beatles CD! (Well, it was new last year - finely crafted ops like these take quite some time to write, you know!) And it's got, like, y'know, 27 tracks on it! And they're all, like, number ones, y'know! From back when number one was quite an achievement, rather than a place to shove things like "Gangsta Jiggy aka Da Singaz N Da Hoodz featuring Da St Winifredz Old Skool Posse Choir". And it can't be worse than that, surely? Happily, no indeed. It doesn't have any particular novelty value - it's just a collection of (mostly) good songs, and that's how I'm going to review it here.

The first thing to note is that this album is - as its title would imply - exclusively made up of songs which reached number one in either the UK or the USA. That means that there's no place for many of the Beatles' finest works, either because they only appeared on albums (Lovely Rita, for example) or because they didn't reach the top of the charts. The most infamous example of the latter qualification is Strawberry Fields, which was kept off the summit by - of all things - Please Release Me.

So, to the songs. The 27 tracks can reasonably be split into three roughly equal groups: early, middle and late. They're not perfect breaks, but they'll do. Which is rather handy for reviewers such as yours truly - cheers, Fab Four! So, without further ado, let's get on the case.

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EARLY SONGS
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1) The Beatles' very first number one was, of course, Love Me Do, which only achieved the top spot for one week, and then only in America, but was, as it turned out, the beginning of a legend. (Yes, yes, I know, the Quarrymen, Hamburg and all that - I'm talking about the mass market.) It's fair to say that Love Me Do isn't the most memorable song ever released, and might well have long since faded into obscurity were it not for the identity of its artists. I happen to be a mouthorgan fan, though, so I rather like it.

2) Next up is the group's first British number one, a position which it held for no less than seven weeks. Yes, it's From Me To You, a song which, though it retains the mouthorgan ornaments from Love Me Do, sounds considerably more recognisably "Beatley". It's here that the Fab Four's trademark harmonies really come to notice for the first time.

3) The third track, "She Loves You", gets my vote as the best of the Beatles' early numbers. It's an uptempo, happy song that can't fail to bring a smile to your face, one of the most joyful of all their hits. It was at No. 1 for six weeks in the UK, but seems to be much less regarded these days. A very underrated song in my book.

4) This is followed by "I Want To Hold Your Hand", another relentlessly cheerful, feelgood tune ("and when I touch you I feel happy inside"). Maybe it's not the most original piece of music ever written, but who cares? Just get out there and dance the night away!

5) Can't Buy Me Love, for anyone who's seen the film of A Hard Day's Night (of which more anon) inescapably conjures up images of John, Paul, George and Ringo fooling around on fire escapes in the middle of a field. Many people tend to play it too fast - one interesting thing about the Beatles' songs is that their tempos are often not what you might expect from reading the lyrics.

6) As promised above, we now move on to A Hard Day's Night. This is a bit of a turning point - it has a little bit more of an edge to it than the earlier songs. It might be considered the point at which the Fab Four started to shed the "generic Sixties pop group" label and hint at something much bigger and more interesting.

7) I Feel Fine, though, returns to the feelgood mode of She Loves You, though the slightly Oriental effect of the opening chord is hardly conventional. This is another song which is often played much too fast - it's a happy song, yes, but in a reflective way rather than a shout-it-out way. The sort of song that many of today's clubbers could never cope with - after all, the melody is louder than the drums and it's slower than 180 bpm....

8) Eight Days A Week (yep, slower than you'd think, yet again) also experiments with the opening bars, but after that it's all rather conventional. It wasn't released as a single in Britain, and to be honest I don't think that was a great loss as it really isn't especially memorable.

9) Ticket To Ride has a very interesting guitar track - it's not at all what you'd expect from an archetypal pop group of the era. It also has the "twiddly chorus" ("She oughtta think right, she oughtta do right by me") so apparent in many of the later songs. And it also fades out rather than ends cleanly - something that I generally dislike, but still... and with that, we leave the early years behind and move on to:

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MIDDLE PERIOD
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10) Help! is the song that kicks off this section. It can be read in two ways: either as a straight song, as which I really don't think it's all that interesting, or as an autobiographical comment about what fame has brought on the group, which is a much more engaging idea. Lyrics such as "and now my life has changed in oh so many ways" and, especially, "my independence seems to vanish in the haze", would seem to point to the truth of the second hypothesis.

11) And so we come, inevitably, to Yesterday. It's hard to say what I can say about this song which hasn't been said a million times already (except that this one is often played too *slowly*!). It came as quite a surprise as a child to discover that this was a Beatles number - even by the early eighties it had become an established standard. Can't say I find it *that* involving, though I realise many people beg to differ.

12) Ah, Day Tripper. Winner of the "best intro in the history of the world ever" competition. I once attended a concert at Liverpool's Albert Dock, given by a guitarist on a floating stage. The performance was, shall we say, not going too well, with many people preferring the delights of the jellybean shop. Then that famous riff sounded out... and the transformation was instant, with smiles breaking out around the dock. Needs to be played LOUD, this one :-)

13) We Can Work It Out is an interesting one. Could it be seen as an early indication of tensions within the Beatles? Personally, I don't think so, but that's just a gut feeling. It's another "two-piece" song, with an insistent, almost pleading chorus reminding us that "life is very short", and an uptempo verse which shows a more positive attitude ("we can work it out").

14) The exact halfway point of "1" is marked by Paperback Writer, and that's quite appropriate as it shows elements of both early and late Beatles styles: we have both the traditional "poppy" features of the early years and the later innovative harmonies and inventive lyrics. It's just a shame that it isn't a more memorable song.

15) Yellow Submarine was another of my "oh, is that really the Beatles?" childhood discoveries. It's the first really psychedelic song on the album, pretty much impossible to categorise and the sort of thing only a supremely gifted and confident group could get away with. If anyone else had put this out, they'd have been laughed into oblivion; because it was the Fab Four people write studious critiques of it (like this one!).

16) In Liverpool, there is a bench on one street, on which sits a cast figure of Eleanor Rigby, dedicated to "all the lonely people". A very introspective work, this one, with an overpowering sense of melancholy. The most poignant words, "died in the church and was buried along with her name", perhaps (and this is just me shooting in the dark, but what else do you expect?) hint at a worry about what will happen to the Beatles after they are gone and forgotten - as it turns out, something which is unlikely to be a problem any time soon.

17) When I lived in Liverpool, I used to pass the end of Penny Lane regularly - and yes, the barber is still there, as is the "shelter in the middle of the roundabout", though by the time I was a resident it had become a bistro. This is one of my favourite songs of this era. It proves that the really great musicians can write wonderful songs on pretty much any subject. Although I'd question how you can have "blue suburban skies" and "pouring rain" at the same time - the latter was generally my experience! Penny Lane displays a common later-Beatles trait, that of making weird noises (technical term there, ladies and gents) on the outro. Here we have what sounds like a lion roaring with about 30 seconds to go - I really have no idea whatever why.

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LATER SONGS
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18) The start of the "late Beatles" period on this album is most definitely marked by the famous "Marseilles" intro to All You Need Is Love. It must also have one of the longest outros of any song - well over a minute - taking in snatches of music drawn from as far apart as Glenn Miller and Greensleeves. Well known as the song chosen for one of the first satellite broadcasts of pop music, this one is clearly of the "peace and love, man" school - the single was also the first one to show (in some versions) John, Paul, George and Ringo in moustaches and long(ish) hair. From now on, the straight pop thrash would no longer be a part of the Beatles' vocabulary.

19) Hello, Goodbye seems at first listen to be a return to more traditional poppery (my spellchecker tried to change this to "popery"!), but if you actually listen to the words, you'll discover that they're anything but conventional. There's no explanation of what's going on, there's generalised weirdness going on on the backing track and the song has no real shape to it. Another one with an odd outro - 40 seconds of folk-style stuff that keeps threatening to turn into You Are My Sunshine....

20) Lady Madonna has a good claim to be my favourite among the later songs on this record. A strong rhythm, not *too* much strange studio trickery for the sake of it, and excellent lyrics - especially the very clever way in which "see how they'll run" is made to fit on the end of two very different verses.

21) Hey Jude, though, is not on my top songs list. There's nothing too much wrong with this slow ballad in itself, and the harmonies are interesting (especially "better better better better" - if you haven't heard it, you'll have to take my word for it that this *does* make sense!). The problem is that it's far, *far* too long. At over seven minutes, you might call it the Beatles' "Bohemian Rhapsody", except that it's not nearly so interesting. A three-minute version would have been excellent; this drags badly.

22) Get Back. Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear. Apparently this song was at the top of the charts for six weeks here and five in the US. All I can say to that is: why, for heaven's sake? It's a tremendously feeble effort by the Fab Four's standards, with possibly the least interesting melody of anything they ever put out. Frankly, this song is a disgrace to the group: overindulgent, repetitive and - yes - boring. Skip it.

23) The Ballad Of John And Yoko is probably the least well known number on "1", and that's rather a shame, I think. Despite its fairly regular use of a certain religious word beginning with "C", it can't seriously be classified as offensive, so the fact that many radio stations (especially in the US) still don't allow its play is slightly absurd. It's a bit of a throwback in some ways, eschewing the mixing-desk madness characteristic of the late period Beatles and returning to an earlier age of bouncy tunes and simple lyrics. Well worth a listen.

24) Something, the next track, is a total break with what precedes it. A dreamy, reflective piece, it's probably George Harrison's best song for the Beatles. If only he'd been able to resist those blasted sitars more of the time, there might have been more as good as this one. Very few words, but then it doesn't need them.

25) Come Together is an acquired taste, and I must admit that I haven't acquired it. If you didn't know better, you might not think this a Beatles song at all - it could quite easily have been written for a mid-Seventies film soundtrack. I'm sure it has all kinds of hidden meanings, but to be honest they're way over my head.

26) The penultimate song on the album is, unfortunately, the horribly mawkish Let It Be. If we *have* to have John Lennon playing the piano in this style, then I suppose Imagine would be preferable, though even that I feel is somewhat overrated. But not so much as this one - please tell me, what is so great about it? It's just four minutes of semi-religious drivel; the sort of mindless good intentions that achieve nothing.

27) And so we come to the end, and appropriately it's The Long And Winding Road, a fitting way to go out. By this time (1970) it was clear to all and sundry, not just the group themselves, that the Fab Four's days were numbered, and listened to in that context it's a very poignant piece - the Beatles themselves are coming to the end of their own "long and winding road".

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That's the songs dealt with - what of the packaging? The front cover is striking though dull, but the back cover has pictures of the four Beatles alongside the track list. Three are in negative, but one is not. Yep, you've guessed it - it's Paul. He's also carrying a white bird, which *clearly* indicates that he was assassinated with a poisoned hairgrip in 1969 by a deranged Abbey Road traffic warden, and replaced by the spawn of Beelzebub....

The insert booklet is very well done. There aren't any lyrics, which is a pity, but instead we get a page for each track detailing dates of recording and of hitting the top spot in either country; and also a fascinating selection of record sleeves for each song, many of them from foreign editions ("Los Beatles"). One very nice touch is that they're pictures of *real* records, complete with dog-eared corners and writing on the sleeves, rather than clinical PR shots.

So, there you have it. Twenty-seven songs tracing a path through eight of the most extraordinary years in modern musical history. Listen to Love Me Do and All You Need Is Love and you'd be hard pressed to tell they were from the same outfit. By 1970, the world of pop music had changed enormously, and these four men had played perhaps a bigger part than anyone in that. Okay, "1" isn't breaking any new ground, and it doesn't contain any great revelations, but as a guide to the way popular music changed, 1962-1970, you can't beat it. 

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