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Meet the Beatles (Again) - Beatles For Sale

Posted at 2:04 AM on September 9, 2009 by The Current (4 Comments)
Filed under: Meet the Beatles (Again)

Beatles For Sale
Originally released 1964
By Jim McGuinn

Beatles For Sale One of the most amazing things about having kids is seeing the world through their eyes. When my son was about six months old, I woke up one day with The Beatles song "No Reply" in my mind, figured it out on guitar, and started singing it to him. Now three years later, we've listened to Beatles For Sale more than anything. He doesn't know it's not as "important" as Revolver, it's enough that "Eight Days A Week" and "Rock and Roll Music" are great songs performed by the best band either of us have ever heard.

I've long been a fan of the under-rated album. While many love The Beatles' Sgt. Pepper, Rolling Stone's Exile on Main Street or The Who's Tommy, some of my favorites are Between The Buttons, The Who Sell Out, or Beatles For Sale. These are all transitional albums as each artist moved away from their original sound towards what would become The Great Leap Forward in their careers.

In The Beatles case, the tremendous well of material had run dry. With the pace of a blitzkrieg, over the course of just 21 months they had audaciously released three full-length albums, non-LP singles like "I Wanna Hold Your Hand," "She Loves You," and "I Feel Fine," conquered Britain, America, and the world, made their film debut with A Hard Day's Night, and generally revolutionized pop. They'd also met Bob Dylan and tried marijuana for the first time, two events that would play a role in shaping the rest of their career.

Given the three or four years it takes U2 or Coldplay to record, release, and tour behind a new album today, what the Beatles did seems unbelievable. As road manager Neil Aspinall said, "No band today would come off a long US tour at the end of September, go into the studio and start a new album still writing songs, go on a UK tour, finish the album in five weeks, still touring, and have the album out in time for Christmas. But that's what The Beatles did at the end of 1964."

While this would have been a disaster for most artists, The Beatles were blessed with both incredible talent and great record collections. Digging into their Hamburg / Cavern Club bag for material, they came up with covers from Little Richard, Chuck Berry, Buddy Holly, and two Carl Perkins songs, which was the first time The Beatles showed how much country music impacted their sound.

But the breakthroughs on Beatles For Sale were in the production and quality of the original songs. Tympani drums, 12-string guitars, bongos, and organs are added to the mix on sonically adventurous tracks like "Every Little Thing," while at the same time John Lennon wrote "I'm a Loser" at the exact moment when he should have felt like anything but. Weary from living in the bubble of fame, it's the precursor to "Help" and shows the first clear influence of Dylan, who met the band a few months before in New York.

The cover photo shows the boys in need of some rest and haircuts - we're not to the Sgt. Pepper mustaches yet, but it's clear that something is in the air and easy to see how this album is a bridge between the early Beatles sound and the psychedelia that is to emerge by the next summer's Rubber Soul. The liner notes inside the cover seem strangely prophetic, considering they were written just two years into the birth of the Beatles' career (and 45 years ago), "When, in a generation or so, a radioactive, cigar-smoking child, picnicking on Saturn asks you what The Beatles affair was all about, don't try to explain all about the long hair and the screams! Just play them a few tracks from this album and he'll probably understand. The kids of AD2000 will draw from the music much the same sense of well being and warmth as we do today." Or as my non-radioactive son said to me when I asked him about "No Reply" - "This is a cool song."

Comments (4)

Jim,

Was this the album that came out in the U.S. as Beatles '65?

Posted by Regina Stremski | September 9, 2009 9:10 AM

Mid-period Beatles are more interesting to me than the early hits or the later "genius" material. "Baby's in Black," "I'm a Loser," and "I Don't Want to Spoil the Party" are among my fave Beatles tunes.

Posted by Katherine | September 15, 2009 10:11 AM

I AGREE THAT THIS IS ALSO KNOWN AS BEATLES 65. A GREAT ALBUM TO SING ALONG TO.YOU CAN REALLY ENJOY IT WITHOUT ANALYZING WHAT ITS SUPPOSED TO MEAN, ITS JUST PLAIN GOOD.

Posted by CINDY | September 17, 2009 8:35 PM

Regina, A little over half of this record appears on Beatles 65. Beatles 65 also adds the UK single I Feel Fine/She's A Woman. Other songs from Beatles For Sale appear on the US Beatles VI album. As usual, the UK versions of the album have about three more songs than the US versions.

I bought the stereo box set and Beatles For Sale was the first disc I listened to. Beatles 65 was the first Beatles record I bought, although my parents had bought me the US soundtrack for A Hard Days Night as a Christmas gift in hopes that, by having the record, I'd get tired of listening to this flash-in-the-pan band. It didn't work.

Posted by stpaulbear | September 18, 2009 10:16 AM

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