Review: The Beatles - Beatles For Sale (1964)

Tracks: 1) No Reply; 2) Iʼm A Loser; 3) Babyʼs In Black; 4) Rock And Roll Music; 5) Iʼll Follow The Sun; 6) Mr. Moonlight; 7) Kansas City/Hey Hey Hey Hey; 8) Eight Days A Week; 9) Words Of Love; 10) Honey Donʼt; 11) Every Little Thing; 12) I Donʼt Want To Spoil The Party; 13) What Youʼre Doing; 14) Everybodyʼs Trying To Be My Baby.

REVIEW

Critical tradition dictates quite precisely that Beatles For Sale should always be docked half a point, one star, or the + sign next to A Hard Dayʼs Night, its luckier elder brother from the same year. It is one of the few Beatles albums that makes no easily detectable giant steps forwards; in fact, it is objectively the only Beatles album that makes one small step backwards by re-introducing the six obligatory cover tunes, where the previous record had seemed to so effectively obliterate this custom; most importantly, the four band members are standing in a transparently autumnal mood on the front cover, all of them dressed up as «babies in black», worn and torn by heavy touring, annoying socializing and never-ending bloodsucking demands from the music industry.

Critical tradition may be square and boring for us iconoclasts, but, admittedly, it does not arise out of nothing at all (other than coordinated whimsy of shady individuals, as certain conspiracy theories would have us believe). It is certainly well documented that the boys were getting tired, particularly of having too many other people make the decisions for them, and it does seem to be true that, with their constant international touring (recording sessions took place in between the band’s major US and UK tours in the fall of ’64), they simply did not have the time to come up with enough original material to fill a complete LP. It is unquestionably true that, on the whole, the sound of Beatles For Sale is less happy than that of Hard Dayʼs Night — the al­bum does, after all, begin with three «downers» in a row, and John is no longer contributing even a single teenage ode to joy à la ʽI Should Have Known Betterʼ.

Speaking of the covers, after decades of listening I still stand by the opinion that ʽMr. Moonlightʼ is one of the unluckiest choices in covers that the band ever made. The Dr. Feelgood version, which they copied with unusually little imagination, had it registered as a soul ballad with an almost crooning atmosphere, barely compa­tible with Johnʼs usual singing voice; where his frenzied and desperate screaming worked so well on something like ʽAnnaʼ, since the song had a tragic heart from the very beginning, it feels rather wasted on the bridge sections of this parti­cular tune. The only clever touch was to replace the original rudimentary guitar solo with an eerie Hammond organ passage, which gives the recording a proto-psychedelic vibe; but certainly no Beatles song in which the instrumental, rather than vocal, part is the best part of the song could really count as successful.

However, apart from that minor misstep, Beatles For Sale is anything but a «step backwards» in the ongoing story of the Beatlesʼ artistic development. Any detailed song-by-song analysis, such as performed by Alan Pollack, for instance, would immediately reveal just how many new itty-bitty-beatly «trifles» make their first appearance here: whenever the guys were locked in the studio with George the Fifth at the helm, be they exhausted or well-rested, they were never content, like so many of their peers, to simply repeat the same old formula. «Beatle-quality» had to mean «creative», even if, for the time being, this meant being «creative» on an old piece of Carl Perkins boogie.

So, just a few things off the top of my head. Buddy Holly wrote ʽWords Of Loveʼ in 1957, and he must have been so proud to have come up with that melody that he did not bother properly polishing it with all the studio care it required (admittedly, in 1957 the studio itself may not have been ready for this, both from the technological and the sociological points of view). Play the original and the cover back to back, and the first thing you notice is how much juicier the main guitar line is sounding. Where Buddy is satisfied with just occa­sionally letting out that high-pitched piercing tone, George uses it on every note, getting a warm, jangly effect — tender and cordial, yet still without a trace of cheap sentimentality. With John out there behind him, partially doubling his work on a second, barely audible guitar, the effect is otherworldly, and even if the solo break, faithfully following Hollyʼs original, is no more than two different phrases played over and over again, I would not mind an infinite loop. Yes, Buddy wrote the song, but the Beatles completed it, bringing the song to such perfection that I could not imagine anybody ever doing an even better job on it. (Here’s Jeff Lynne’s tribute version for you, for comparison — big-ass whooping drums with Jeff, as always, and guitars which honestly sound like sanitized compressed trash next to George and John’s succulent tones).

Laying on echo effects was one of the bandʼs favorite tricks ever since With The Beatles at least, but they took it one step further when they applied them to ʽRock And Roll Musicʼ and ʽEverybodyʼs Trying To Be My Babyʼ, giving those old rockʼnʼroll chestnuts a proto-arena-rock feel instead of the more subdued, chamber-like feel of the originals. As a result, the effect of ʽRock And Roll Musicʼ has completely shifted: Chuck did this song just like he did all the rest — with his friendly (and just a tad creepy) smile, inviting all the young ladies and gentlemen out there to try out this brand new hot dance like they would try out a new brand of ice cream. This rendition notably demands that you yell your head off, instead of dancing your legs off: because of the echo effects, Johnʼs all-out-there screamfest, and Paulʼs somber bass, it is far more aggressive and anthemic than Chuck ever intended it to be. Ditto with Carl Perkins, when they start laying that thick reverb on Harrisonʼs vocals (on the other hand, this approach did not seem to work so well with ʽHoney Donʼtʼ, so they just ended up giving it to Ringo, driving up the comedy effect instead); and note also how all of George Harrison’s solos go at least one octave higher than Carl’s in the original version, raising the bar on tension and recklessness.

Now, about the originals. First, we are all taught by biographers that it is here, and nowhere else, where John started to fall under the Dylan spell and take a healthier attitude towards the lyrics — hence, ʽIʼm A Loserʼ, a somewhat tentative, but determined, first attempt to climb out of the mire of teen-pop clichés. The famous "although I laugh and I act like a clown / beneath this mask I am fearing a frown" would hardly count as a signifi­cant lyrical breakthrough today, but for the Beatles in 1964, it was a milestone. It is debatable if we can really point to ʽIʼm A Loserʼ as the true beginning of Johnʼs «no bullshit allowed» phase, where everything had to be either strictly tongue-in-cheek or strictly heart-on-the-sleeve, but, in any case, there is increased «character complexity» here, and that be good: deep psychologism is not gained overnight, after all. Also, behind all that lyrical debate what often gets lost is that melodically, ‘I’m A Loser’ is a big step on the road toward folk-rock and country-rock as their own genres: those little licks George throws in between each of John’s lines predict both the Byrds and the Beatles’ own subsequent mastery of the style on Rubber Soul. (‘I Don’t Want To Spoil The Party’ is another good example of the same style, though the song itself is less often remembered than ‘I’m A Loser’).

Second, McCartney is quickly learning how to put genius and corn in the same package, co­ming up with his first genuinely great softie. Curiously, ʽIʼll Follow The Sunʼ is usually said to have been written around 1960, which might explain the man dragging it out of the storeroom for lack of time to write something new; but maybe it is a good thing that it was given four years of fermentation. Now it sounds a bit Searchers-style, what with the folksy melody and the harmo­nic layering and all, but more homely and sincere, due to the production and the clever alternation between group singing and Paulʼs solo lines. Just a year and a half separate this from the thematically similar ʽP.S. I Love Youʼ, but that song screamed NAÏVE all over the place, and this one spells WISENED — big reason why Paul still performs ʽIʼll Follow The Sunʼ in concert, on occa­sion, but hardly ever the other one (not that anyone would mind).

Third, shortly after discovering feedback on the single ʽI Feel Fineʼ, they also discover the potential of the fade-in — on ʽEight Days A Weekʼ. Much of the bandʼs experimentation was done randomly, «just for fun» etc., but one big difference of the Beatlesʼ approach to experimentation is that they rarely kept their experimental results if they werenʼt sure that they had come out somewhat meaningful and were appropriate for the song in question. So, before we go «a fade-in on ʽEight Days A We­ekʼ? big deal! who the heck cares?», let us listen to the fade-in and, perhaps, understand that it works here as the teen-pop equivalent of a crescendo, which the band had no special means of producing at that time (they would need an orchestra at least). ʽEight Days A Weekʼ is another one of those ode-to-joy songs, cruder and simpler than ʽI Should Have Known Betterʼ, and never one of my favorites in that genre (for one thing, too repetitive — a solo break couldnʼt have hurt, and the "hold me, love me, hold me, love me" refrain also seems too roughly hewn), but the fade-in suits it perfect­ly — it is really the opening ten seconds of the song, from the first faraway notes to the breakout of "ooh I need your love babe..." that clinch it for me.

Fourth, the Beatles discover the value of... silence. While the more famous songs of Side B have always been ʽEight Days A Weekʼ and ʽEvery Little Thingʼ, I have always held a soft spot for ʽWhat Youʼre Doingʼ, because of the important role with which they entrusted Ringo — hold the melody for the first few bars on his little old drummerʼs own, before introducing the looped electric riff (very similar in texture, by the way, to the one that would soon make the Byrds famous with ʽMr. Tambourine Manʼ). Then, once the song is done, they repeat the same trick once again before fading out — as if saying, «hey, it was quite cool in the beginning, surely you want us to do it one more time? heavier on the bass this time, right?»... and it works.

Fifth, ‘No Reply’. You know what is probably the single most gripping thing about ‘No Reply’? The odd beat. The song is formally in 4/4, but only the bridge, actually, is in standard 4/4; on the main part of the song, Ringo plays something trickier, shifting the location of the strong beat from bar to bar, which is probably why Chris Hillman of the Byrds described the song as «funky». That might have been the reason the Beatles never played the song live — the tricky pattern might have been too much for Ringo to keep up properly during actual show time. Listen to the early demo bits on Anthology 1 and see how much less interesting the song is at the beginning of its life journey; listen to the completed version and hear just how much the stuttering confusion of its rhythm agrees with the perturbed state of mind of its protagonist. Had the song been written by the likes of, say, the Dave Clark Five, they would never have taken the time to embellish it in this particular manner, and it would have forever remained just a normal, average, run-of-the-mill pop song from 1964.

In the end, itʼs just all those little things that make Beatles For Sale as essential a Beatles album in your catalog as everything that surrounds it. It takes its cue from the second half of Hard Dayʼs Night, not the first one, and overcomes it in terms of diversity, jangliness, and, in a way, «dark­ness». Artistically, it is still dominated by John, which is a good thing, because Paul as dominant personality would only be acceptable once the band had fully embraced its wild-experimental-frenzy phase (otherwise, they might have drowned in excess sentimentality); but overall, it is still very much a group effort, and, ultimately, another success, if not necessarily ano­ther «triumph». Skipping the album in your exploration of the Beatlesʼ legacy is possible, but only if you are really seriously pressed for time.

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