The Beatles Blasphemies

As proof that there's nothing so good that it can't be screwed up entirely, I present a project of sorts I've been tinkering with for some time:

BETTER BEATLES ALBUMS.

See? Blasphemy. Some of you may know that it was standard practice in the 1960s record industry to record singles first and worry about albums later. The LP at that time was much like the box set was in the Nineties... a purchase for hardcore fans with a lot of available scratch only. So albums were often cover-heavy, not put together with much care, and -- and this is the important part -- a separate entity from singles entirely.

The result was that the Beatles, even when their schedule slowed down and allowed them time to develop the album as an art form, often left their hit singles off the albums recorded at the same time. (Abbey Road, coming at the very butt end of their career, being the lone exception.) The result is a number of classic albums that could have been a touch better, and a two-CD set, Past Masters, which collects some of their greatest non-album songs. But you can't get that album experience from it; the material is just too spotty.  

So I took some of the more naff (bad) album tracks off of their albums, replaced them with the singles recorded at the same time (when they deserve to be there, which was almost always), rearranged the tracks a bit to make the flow work, and in some cases substituted tracks for other tracks released later on other albums. The only hard and fast rule was that all added tracks had to come from the recording sessions that produced the album itself. No fair cheating!

Okay, long story. So let me just present these, for whoever cares, in order of initial release:

PLEASE PLEASE ME MORE
1. I Saw Her Standing There
2. Misery
3. Chains
4. Do You Want To Know A Secret?
5. Boys
6. Ask Me Why
7. Please Please Me


8. Love Me Do
9. P.S. I Love You
10. Baby It's You
11. From Me To You
12. A Taste Of Honey
13. There's A Place
14. Twist And Shout


Too cover-heavy, still. And "Ask Me Why" is no great shakes. All you can do here is include the single "From Me To You," which with I replaced the lamest cover ("Anna''). I did resequence a bit.

MORE WITH THE BEATLES
1. It Won't Be Long
2. All I've Got To Do
3. All My Loving
4. Don't Bother Me
5. Little Child
6. Till There Was You
7. She Loves You


8. I Want To Hold Your Hand
9. This Boy
10. You've Really Got A Hold On Me
11. I Wanna Be Your Man
12. Devil In Her Heart
13. Not A Second Time
14. Money


This one needed a lot of work. There's no reason for "She Loves You," "This Boy," and "I Want To Hold Your Hand" not to be here. George's cover of "Roll Over Beethoven" sucks pretty bad, and "Please Mr. Postman" is inexplicable. "Hold Me Tight" is the crappiest of the filler, so out it went. (I'd love to have axed "Little Child," had there been another song to put in its place.)  

A HARD DAY'S RIGHT
1. A Hard Day's Night
2. I Should Have Known Better
3. If I Fell
4. I'm Happy Just To Dance With You
5. Can't Buy Me Love
6. And I Love Her
7. Tell Me Why


8. Any Time At All
9. I Call Your Name
10. Things We Said Today
11. I'll Cry Instead
12. You Can't Do That
13. I'll Be Back


A near-perfect album. But I always thought "Tell Me Why" should close Side One, since it's a better climax, and since it's also the climax of the film. "I Call Your Name" is almost the exact same song as "When I Get Home," except not crap. Switch!

BETTER FOR SALE
1. Eight Days A Week
2. No Reply
3. I’m A Loser
4. Baby's In Black
5. She's A Woman
6. I'll Follow The Sun
7. Everybody’s Trying To Be My Baby


8. I Feel Fine
9. Words Of Love
10. Honey Don’t
11. Every Little Thing
12. I Don’t Want To Spoil The Party
13. What You’re Doing
14. Kansas City/Hey-Hey-Hey-Hey!


Everyone usually agrees, after giving a pass to Let It Be, that this is the band's worst album. But remove the most egregious offenders -- "Mr. Moonlight," an obscure cover absolutely no one on Earth likes, and an unnecessary cover of "Rock And Roll Music" -- and you get a big improvement: the other covers are hot, and you can't fuck with "I Feel Fine," which invented feedback, and "She's A Woman," which invented Tex-Mex. Why they didn't open with "Eight Days A Week" instead of the downer (but, I admit, lyrically better) "No Reply" is beyond me. I felt I should leave the "John Trilogy" (2-4) intact. because fans love it. "Kansas City" is a better closer than "Everybody's," if only for the extended "bye bye" ending.

HELPED!
1. Help!
2. The Night Before
3. You’ve Got To Hide Your Love Away
4. I Need You
5. Another Girl
6. You’re Going To Lose That Girl
7. Ticket To Ride


8. Act Naturally
9. It’s Only Love
10. You Like Me Too Much
11. Yes It Is
12. I’ve Just Seen A Face
13. Yesterday
14. I'm Down


Like A Hard Day's Night, this has a flawless first side and a problematic second side. (Producer George Martin invented the concept of shoving a group's lamer songs into the middle of Side Two.) I'm not a big fan of "You Like Me Too Much," but it's better than "Tell Me What You See," if only by an inch. Instead, we replace it with John's spooky doo-wop "Yes It Is."

Putting a cover of "Dizzy Miss Lizzie" after "Yesterday" on the original always seemed like the group retreating back into the cave, but Martin also invented the concept of ending albums by rocking out, so I'm substituting the original "I'm Down," which actually rocks harder than the cover. 

BETTER SOUL
1. Drive My Car
2. Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)
3. You Won’t See Me
4. Nowhere Man
5. Think For Yourself
6. The Word
7. Michelle


8. Day Tripper
9. We Can Work It Out
10. Girl
4. Wait
11. In My Life
12. If I Needed Someone
13. Run For Your Life

Probably their best album; not their most far-reaching, but their most consistent. But the "Day Tripper" single eats "What Goes On" alive, and while I love "I'm Looking Through You," "We Can Work It Out" covers the same stylistic ground, but does it better. This was an important consideration in raping these classics... keeping the spirit of the original.  

RELOADED
1. Taxman
2. Eleanor Rigby
3. I’m Only Sleeping
4. Love You To
5. Here, There And Everywhere
6. Yellow Submarine
7. Rain


8. Good Day Sunshine
9. And Your Bird Can Sing
10. For No One
11. Paperback Writer
12. I Want To Tell You
13. Got To Get You Into My Life
14. Tomorrow Never Knows

On the other hand, this might have been their best album, if not for the obvious filler "Doctor Robert," which is also regressive. I don't know how you justify putting it on the same record as "Tomorrow Never Knows," frankly. So in comes a much better mod song, the single "Paperback Writer." The flip, "Rain," is widely recognized as one of the group's finest moments, so even though I adore "She Said She Said," it is  working the same stylistic side of the street, so... (Plus, you have to love ending a side with a fake, backwards ending.)


SGT. BETTER
1. Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band
2. With A Little Help From My Friends
3. Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds
4. Getting Better
5. She’s Leaving Home
6. It's All Too Much


7. Strawberry Fields Forever
8. Penny Lane
9. When I’m Sixty-Four
10. Good Morning Good Morning
11. Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (Reprise)
12. A Day In The Life


Okay. I agree with the critics that this is one of the best and most important rock albums of all time, and I think much of the recent backlash is reflexive. And that's fine. But there are still ways even this can be improved, which is my way of saying that "Within You Without You" bores the piss out of me. George Martin himself laments the fact that "Strawberry Fields" and "Penny Lane" were left off. I'm cheating slightly with "It's All Too Much," which wasn't quite done when the album was released. But if they'd meant to use it, it would have been! See what I did there?

Finally, there are four other problems with Pepper: 1) It doesn't rock much, 2) Lennon has some subpar stuff on here, making him look secondary to Paul, who 3) hits overload on the cute, jangly music-hall stuff, and 4) the project never gets back to its original intent, which was to create an album about regaining one's lost childhood. This version, hopefully, changes all that.  

MAGICAL HISTORY MORE
1. Magical Mystery Tour
2. The Fool On The Hill
3. Flying
4. Hey Bulldog
5. Blue Jay Way
6. I Am The Walrus


7. Hello, Goodbye
8. Baby, You’re A Rich Man
9. The Inner Light
10. Lady Madonna
11. All You Need Is Love


Who makes a double EP? The decision to add singles and make this a full-on album in the US is one of the best Capitol ever made. However, "Hey Bulldog" had to wait for the otherwise forgettable Yellow Submarine soundtrack to get released, and we've already lost "Fields" and "Lane." So we improvise with another single recorded that year. Actually, this version works almost as well without those two songs, I find. Plus, more rock. For what was a really soggy psych album.

THE WHITE ALBUMS


Paul's Album
1. Back In The USSR
2. Martha My Dear
3. Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da
4. Wild Honey Pie
5. Honey Pie
6. Why Don’t We Do It In The Road?
7. Helter Skelter


8. Mother Nature’s Son
9. Rocky Raccoon
10. I Will
11. Birthday
12. Blackbird
13. Hey Jude


John's Album
1. Revolution 1
2. Glass Onion
3. The Continuing Story Of Bungalow Bill
4. Yer Blues
5. Sexy Sadie
6. Happiness Is A Warm Gun


7. Dear Prudence
8. I’m So Tired
9. Everybody’s Got Something To Hide Except Me And My Monkey
10. Cry Baby Cry
11. Julia
12. Revolution (single)


I personally think the White Album is literally flawless. I would not change one second. The sheer sprawl of it holds it together, which is more evidence that the Beatles were spooky talented. But everyone always whines about whittling down double albums, even when they don't need it, and Beatles fans piss and moan about the White Album being "fragmented" because the band wasn't all working on songs together (the horror!). And lots of people hate "Revolution 9." 

So I added the singles from that time, split them up into two separate entities to spotlight John's and Paul's songs, and let 'er rip. I find the result fragmented, and any White Album without "While My Guitar Gently Sleeps" is destined for suckitude, but, hey, give 'em what they want.   

DON'T LET IT BE

1. Two Of Us
2. I Me Mine
3. Across The Universe (Spector)
4. Old Brown Shoe
5. Teddy Boy (Anthology)
6. Dig It
7. Let It Be


8. Maggie Mae
9. I’ve Got A Feeling
10. Dig A Pony
11. One After 909
12. Don't Let Me Down
13. Get Back


A mess, by everyone's standards. I replaced George's thinner-than-air "For You Blue" with his much better recent b-side "Old Brown Shoe," moved all the rooftop stuff, including the criminally neglected b-side "Don't Let Me Down," together to recreate the feel of the concert, and added Paul's "Teddy Boy" from these sessions (which captures the loose, retro feel of the album, and besides, no one is ever really happy with "Long And Winding Road").

One more thing...


Capitol (the Beatles label in the US) had a nasty habit of chopping up official Beatles albums into two shorter ones with singles and other stuff added, so as to move more units. But only one US version of a Beatles album is really beloved, and that's Rubber Soul, because the goons at Capitol, while slapping it together, accidentally made a record that focuses tightly on the group's folk-rock side. Except it doesn't quite go all the way with the concept, so I took the US and UK versions and mixed them together with selections from the comp "Yesterday and Today," released at around the same time.

The result really, really flows like honey. I recommend it.

RUBBER FOLK
1. I've Just Seen A Face
2. Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)
3. I'm Only Sleeping
4. We Can Work It Out
5. Nowhere Man
6. Michelle


7. It's Only Love
8. Girl
9. I’m Looking Through You
10. In My Life
11. Yesterday
12. If I Needed Someone