STACK New Zealand December Issue 69

30 / 60

visit FEATURE MUSIC
I t's a safe bet a number of people
knew what they wanted so bought
their own Christmas present. And that
a whole bunch of others — maybe people
getting it from parents or grandparents — got
the same welcome gift: a copy of the Beatles' 1
CD and DVD collection.
Very lucky people got the expanded 1+
edition which came with two DVDs of film clips.
The Beatles are the gift which keeps on
giving, because these digitally enhanced
film clips (27 on one and 50 in total over the
expanded collection) can still transport you back
to a time when they were a culture-changing
band delivering one hit single after another.
But they were always about more than hit
singles. Their b-sides and album tracks could
be thrillingly innovative, and anyone serious
about filling in the gaps beyond the 27 British
number ones on that CD needs to hear songs
like Norwegian Wood, Tomorrow Never Knows,
Taxman and many others.
So where to after you've absorbed the hits?
To fully appreciate the excitement of the first
phase of the Beatles' remarkable career — the
Beatlemania Years – then you need With the
Beatles, released in Britain in late 1963 when
the screaming was starting in earnest.
From the iconic cover image — those serious
You’ve got The Beatles’ 1, so what next?
Graham Reid looks beyond the Fab Four’s top selling singles.
30 DECEMBER 2015
faces in half-shadow — and Tony Barrow's
useful liner notes, this just looked like a great
album. And the contents – Ringo's lame stab
at the minor league Lennon-McCartney original
I Wanna Be Your Man excepted — pulled
together exciting or inventive originals ( It Won't
Be Long, Little Child, Hold Me Tight, Not a
Second Time) with inspired covers of black
American artists (the fairly obscure Please Mr
Postman and Devil in Her Heart , Chuck Berry's
Roll Over Beethoven, Smokey Robinson's You
Really Got a Hold on Me).
George Harrison contributes his monochrome
Don't Bother Me and the whole thing goes
out with Lennon – as he did with Twist and
Shout which closed their previous album Please
Please Me – tearing his lungs out on classic
Motown rock'n'roll, Money.
None of the songs on With the Beatles are
on 1.
Their next album A Hard Day's Night (1964)
had 14 firecracker originals and equals With the
Beatles (just two songs, Can't Buy Me Love and
the title track appear on 1).
Two years later, exhausted by the mayhem
and after the patchy Beatles For Sale (a title as
cynical as some of its knocked-off covers from
Hamburg days), it was entirely possible the
Beatles might have called it a day.
A lesser band would have. By 1965 American
groups were fighting back against the British
Invasion the Beatles had led, Dylan was ablaze,
bands out of their homeland (the Stones, Who,
Kinks, Small Faces and others) were snapping
at their heels and writing more challenging
songs…
But the Beatles rose to the challenge and
with a double-whammy
(Harrison said he always
thought of them as part one
and part two) they delivered
the groundbreaking Rubber
Soul and Revolver, two
essential albums.
These 28 songs reach
from the crystalline sheen of
Nowhere Man and McCartney
ballads (Michelle, Here There
and Everywhere, For No
One) to playfulness (Yellow
Submarine), psychedelic rock (She Said) and
Lennon's remarkable spiritual trip on Tomorrow
Never Knows.
Of them, only Eleanor Rigby (loneliness,
death and old people were hardly the stuff of
pop) and Yellow Submarine appear on the 1
collection.
So you've ticked off Beatlemania Beatles
and ground-breaking Beatles, where to now?
Some might put their money on the trippy Sgt
Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band from 1967
(no tracks on 1) or even the highly polished
Abbey Road of 1969 (Something and Come
Together on 1).
But between those two was the double
album (no songs on 1), which is a goldmine of
proto-metal (Helter Skelter), oddities (Long Long
Long, Revolution 9 ), rocking humour (Back in
the USSR, Glass Onion), acoustic ballads (I Will,
Julia) and much more.
Just called The Beatles but known as “The
White Album”, it fills in even more of what you
need to hear.
And dammit, you still don't have Strawberry
Fields Forever and I Am the Walrus (which are
on the Magical Mystery Tour album).
Lotta Beatles to discover beyond 1. A band
which keeps on giving.
For more interviews, overviews and reviews
by Graham Reid see:
DOYOUWANT
TOKNOW
ASECRET?
Photo © Apple Corps Ltd.