Review:

on 2011-02-21 CharlesMartel Said:

I know this is heresy in some quarters but I do find it hard to like the Beatles. Actually, that is a little harsh. I find it hard to rave over the Beatles. I can accept their significance in popular musical history, opening up popular music to a greater than ever before extent, as well as taking away from the USA the impetus and drive behind popular music and becoming the first globally popular band. But that is all in the past. And when I look back and listen to some of the Beatles' work I often feel rather let down by it, as if there should be something more to it than I am picking up.

Then again, it might just be pure and simple excessive familiarity with their work. There can't be many people in this world - the odd tribesman in the remotest radio-free zones of Papua New Guinea or the Brazilian rainforest - who hasn't heard at least one Beatles' song. And many will have heard songs from "A Hard Day's Night" which is without doubt the best of the Beatles' early albums. Partly an album and partly a soundtrack to a hugely successful foray into film by the band, this contains many of their most famous early hits. This is the Beatles at their purest and their poppiest.

If you have to buy one of the early albums, then this is the one you should go for. It is the only album in this phase of the Beatles' career in which all the songs were Lennon-McCartney compositions and the first one where all the instruments were played by the Fab Four themselves (no one picks up on this facet of the Beatles these days but their earliest albums were heavily reliant on session musicians to make up for their lack of ability). It may have taken Ringo some time to learn how to drum properly, but by the time this came out he had just about managed it.

The result is pure iconic sixties pop. Look beyond the chart hits which are on the album, these are already well known and well-appreciated, and look to some of the lesser known compositions. Any one of these could have been released as a single and would have had the potential to be as big a hit as any of those that were so released. In that sense, this represents the apogee of the Beatles as a pop group.

After this it all started to become a bit more difficult. Hits were written to be hits, and by the mid sixties the band began to veer away from strictly chart stuff into more personal and occasionally avant-garde stuff, with considerably less success in my view. The Beatles were at their best when they were playing pure pop. Once they discovered the Maharishi, LSD and grew beards they became another band altogether. They may be revered for what they became but I shall remember them best as four mop-top Scousers who changed the face of popular music forever.

Another way of looking at it is to see this album as representing every young man's dream. Here are the Beatles, doing what they want to do, getting paid huge sums of money for doing it, and having the money to spend on all the luxuries of life - fast cars, expensive booze - and jetting all around the world doing it. And women were throwing themselves at the band as well. If you were a young lad from the UK in the sixties, this could not have been better.
Rating: 6/10