Following on from Beatles Night, published on this blog on the 30th September, I found recommendations for this study of their recordings. My copy is the Third Revised Edition which starts with a Preface to the First and Second Editions. The First includes a part about Art Schools and John Lennon at an Art College. These establishments "became incorporated into the UK gig circuit" ..... "Art school as a result became the secret ingredient in the most imaginative English pop/rock".
The author tells us that "the Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band began their career at the Royal College of Art". I was so lucky to see them at Sussex University. In the Preface to the Second Edition the author complains "the comparative vagueness of their lyrics is the price we pay for their originality". No. We loved the lyrics and how they were vague, that was the whole point. They spoke to us older teenagers.
We are then on to Introduction: Fabled Foursome, Disappearing Decade
Unfortunately there is a lot of pretentious prose in what else is an amazing hugely detailed account of The Beatles and their recordings. I think that "disappearing decade" was the fifties when rock and roll was all American. That is what The Beatles first played. "Lennon rarely bothered to learn any instrument properly". What was he doing in Hamburg? Improvising to break the tedium of repetitive playing. The author belittles "Six Five Special" and "Juke Box Jury". You had to have been there to know how special these were to us teenagers. I don't understand his "teenagers saw it as a stifling drag against which they had to kick". Not at all. At just nineteen, the Central Estimating Dinner and Dance was a huge black tie affair at the ballroom in Derry and Toms on Kensington High Street. A formal occasion with ballroom dancing to a large dance band. But then. An interlude with a pop group. All the dancers left the floor, leaving us youngsters the space to dance and jive.
The Beatles' Records Three hundred and twenty three pages of every song dissected.
The author makes many references to the recordings on the Anthology albums. I was glad I had these to hand so I could listen and relate to what I was being told. I was therefore surprised when I heard Hello Little Girl, written by John Lennon in 1957 and recorded on the 1st January 1962 at the session to impress Decca. (They didn't and it was EMI who gained the benefit). I thought it sounded very derivative of American songs of the time. That same year (1957) Paul had written Like Dreamers Do that was also being tested for that Decca session. But they had to use the studio's equipment and not their own amplifiers. It did not go well.
Fortunately it all happened for The Beatles six months later on 6th June 1962 when they entered the Abbey Road studios thinking that Brian Epstein had organised an actual recording contract. Not knowing it was only another try out, this time for EMI's Parlophone label run by a certain George Martin. After their Besame Mucho failed to impress, and with Martin having disappeared to the canteen, they played an audition version of ..... Love Me Do. (Pete Best was still on drums). Martin was sent for and he supervised the recording of this unexpected original song. This was followed by P.S. I Love You and Ask Me Why. The rest is history.
Back in the studio in November, Martin tries to get them to record Mitch Murray's composition How Do You Do It. The boys were not impressed, Martin capitulates and Gerry and The Pacemakers have a number one. We get a long and detailed account of the complicated gestation of the recording of Love Me Do. The first version has Ringo on drums, the second with Andy White on drums and Ringo on tambourine. We are on to my favourite I Saw Her Standing There. An "explosive rocker" that is "now rated a rock and roll standard". "A shock of earthy rawness through the British pop scene". The Beatles played it for ten minutes live. That must have been something. The song takes up two and a half pages in the book and as a demonstration of how every song is covered, here goes. It starts with the band and what they play. When and where it was recorded, producer, engineer and when released in the UK and then in America. Who wrote it (Paul "in the front parlour of the house in Allerton") a discussion about the lyrics and how the verse and chorus were structured. There are the influences, how it was performed live "giving Harrison a modified sixteen-bar verse/chorus break in which to get his reverbed Gretsch Duo Jet into Action". See what I mean about the detail.
In March 1963 they released their first album Please Please Me. I was eighteen as we danced to it outside at the school leaving do in the July. The last track to be recorded for the album was down to George Martin wanting one more song. "Something to send the album out with a bang". "The wildest thing in The Beatles' act was a cover of Twist and Shout. That did it.
There are references to songs recorded by other artists, for example the first from Kenny Lynch. But this was not the first hit. That was Billy J Cramer and The Dakotas Do You Want To Know A Secret that made number one in June 1963.
Another three pages dissects the background and recording of She Loves You on 1st July 1963. The author is less kind about the B-Side of the single I'll Get You which I actually prefer. Maybe as it is less familiar. The author guesses it was written in late 1962 which does the book no favours in just guessing.
We are then on to the tracks recorded for the album With The Beatles. It was released on 22nd November 1963. I was working for George Wimpey on Hammersmith Grove and I immediately bought the LP at a record shop at the top of King Street. Those original compositions which included You Really Got a Hold on Me, Till There Was You, I Won't Be Long, All My Loving and All I've Got To Do are surprisingly far superior to the few covers. I even forgot the album included Not a Second Time and George's Don't Bother Me. This was "unlike anything the band had done before" with it's Latin rhythm.
Then an even longer piece about I Wanna Hold Your Hand at four and a half pages. Again I preferred the B-Side, the ballad This Boy. It became their first release in America and it "electrified American pop". We are told about their appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show on 9th February 1964. The following month they released Can't Buy Me Love with the better You Can't Do That. Both songs make an appearance on the movie and album A Hard Day's Night. There is the scene from the film of the former on YouTube where the boys escape down some escape stairs. I remember taking the underground to the London Pavilion the first week of the film's release. But my favourite scene at the time was in the guards van where they sing I Should Have Known Better.
Well, that is where I shall take a break. The story of the songs gets less interesting for me as they go on. We shall see if I come back to this. In the meantime, here are some of my other posts about The Beatles:
How I Remember The Beatles 8 September 2009
I Saw Her Standing There 27 January 2010
I Should Have Known Better 10th November 2010
Can't Buy Me Love 18th January 2011
Jim Carter 20th April 2016
Eight Days A Week 16 September 2016
Roots, Radicals and Rockers 10 March 2018
In My Life 11 March 2019
Beatles Night On Sky Arts 16 October 2023
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