Author: brendanmstewart

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The Beatles: Beatles For Sale

Beatles For SaleIn the Beatles discography this, their fourth album, presents some problems. On its own, Beatles For Sale is a fine album with several excellent songs on it. However, coming after the triumph of the Hard Day’s Night album, there’s no question that this sounds like the Beatles running a little low on petrol.

Exhausted by their schedule of touring and recording, unable to get a moment’s peace, being pushed for more, more, more by their manager Brian Epstein and a music industry that was ravenous for new Beatle music, it’s no surprise that Beatles For Sale fails to live up to the expectations set by its predecessor. The pace at which the Beatles were living was so fast they were grateful for so much as a single day off. If A Hard Day’s Night represents the peak of the cultural revolution of Beatlemania (and I think it does), then Beatles For Sale is the inevitable hangover from that particular party. After nearly a full year of seeing their hotel bed sheets cut into one-inch squares and sold, Beatle wigs, Beatle buttons, Beatle guitars, television appearances, concert tours, a movie…it’s no wonder the album was called For Sale, and the faces looking out from the cover were downbeat and gloomy.

Once again, For Sale did not exist as an LP in America. Capitol Records wanted their Mop Tops to look happy, so they again cannibalized the LP and various singles to create two new albums, and plastered their four smiling faces in various silly poses on the cover. For sale, indeed.

Beatles For Sale
No Reply*
I’m A Loser*
Baby’s In Black*
Rock And Roll Music*
I’ll Follow The Sun*
Mr. Moonlight*
Kansas City/Hey Hey Hey Hey**
Eight Days A Week**
Words Of Love**
Honey Don’t*
Every Little Thing**
I Don’t Want To Spoil The Party**
What You’re Doing**
* Released in America on the LP Beatles ’65
** Released in America on the LP Beatles VI

The music on this slab of vinyl also tells a darker story. You can see it just in the titles of the originals: “I’m A Loser,” “No Reply,” “Baby’s In Black,” “I Don’t Want To Spoil The Party.”

All of this is why some of the album sounds forced. By this time the Beatles had released one full album of all-original material, and had met Bob Dylan, one of only a few performers who was recording exclusively original songs. But due to the constant grind of Beatlemania, the Beatles were short of original songs. To fill the gap, they went back to cover versions of rock ‘n’ roll classics: Chuck Berry’s “Rock And Roll Music,” Little Richard’s “Kansas City,” Buddy Holly’s “Words Of Love,” Carl Perkins’s “Honey Don’t.”

The cover songs are uniformly good. The Beatles played this music with an enormous amount of spirit. Lennon’s take on “Rock and Roll Music” may not be as good as similar Chuck Berry covers by the Rolling Stones, but he buries George Harrison’s version of “Roll Over Beethoven” from With The Beatles. Ringo makes “Honey Don’t” his own, adding all the charm and insouciance at his command. Paul McCartney puts his all into “Kansas City.”

The problem with these songs are not the songs themselves or the performances. The problem is that the Beatles had already progressed well beyond this type of material. With some exceptions, the Beatles always sounded much more comfortable doing their own music than they did doing covers. By late 1964, these originals were sounding less like the covers than ever.

There’s simply no comparison between a rehash of a Carl Perkins song and the acoustic introspection of a song like “I’m A Loser.” The latter, with its strummed acoustic guitars and wailing harmonica clearly reflect the influence of Dylan while the lyrics are a vivid demonstration of the toll that Beatlemania was taking on Lennon. “I’m A Loser” carries the same theme as “Help!” would the following year.

“Baby’s In Black” swings, once again held together by acoustic guitar and little stabs of electric lead. But here the lyrics are a far cry from “I Want To Hold Your Hand” or “She Loves You.” The lyrics recount the singer’s frustration at being unable to woo his intended because her lover has died, but for a song whose tagline is “Baby’s in black and I’m feeling blue” the music is irrepressible. Rarely in the Beatles career has a lyric and music been so mismatched, although the combination works like a charm.

“No Reply,” which kicks off the album in grand fashion, also tells a tale of lying and cheating against a mostly acoustic backdrop. Taken together, these three songs are a triptych that clearly illustrate where the songwriting team of Lennon and McCartney were…and it wasn’t covers of ’50s rock ‘n’ roll classics.

Beatles For Sale is a schizophrenic album, capturing the Beatles at a fascinating time in their history as they were starting to shed the “happy little rockers” image and starting to explore more diverse instrumentation, more introspective lyrical themes, and different types of music. The covers are all very good, and remind the listener of how the Beatles began their career. The originals were, for the most part, remarkably different and served as a signpost to where the Beatles were going.

“Eight Days A Week” is probably the most “typical” Beatles song on the album, a glorious combination of harmonies, melodies, and jangling electric guitars. It is also the only original song on the album that could have easily fit on the Hard Day’s Night album. All of the other originals come from a completely different place, either lyrically or musically. “I’ll Follow the Sun” was written in the 1950s, pre-Hamburg, and is a surprisingly mature McCartney ballad,

All of this makes Beatles For Sale an ordinary album from an extraordinary group. The album has the feel of being filler material, though it’s far superior to the usual stuff that passes as filler. This is the only Beatles album that does not feel like an artistic statement but rather comes across as a holding pattern. There’s just enough of the old rockers to keep the kids happy, just enough of the new sound to intrigue the more astute listeners and whet their appetite for the next step.

Beatles For Sale is an important album for this reason: it is the last album released by the lovable Mop Tops. Tired and frustrated by the grind, they recorded several songs that they could have done in their sleep and several songs that were pointing the ways towards the gob-smacking masterpieces of Help! and Rubber Soul.

Grade: B+

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The Listening Post: December 2010

A little late, and all those Christmas carols cut into my listening time.

  • Long Live The Duke & The King—The Duke & The King. The thing that stands out the most about this album is that is sounds simply beautiful. It’s recorded, mixed, and mastered perfectly, giving the album the warm intimacy of a small live show. The plaintive lead vocals and gorgeous harmonies sound like they could be coming from right in front of you. Great production will only get you so far, and Long Live The Duke & The King has no shortage of quality songs. These songs are a study in contrasts. The music is pure summertime, all warmth. The lyrics, however, are often dark. “Shaky” tells a harrowing tale of drugs and post-traumatic stress and sets it to music that would sound great coming out of a convertible on a warm summer day. Another standout, “Hudson River” is marked by the plea “don’t you take your love away.” Simi Stone sings “No Easy Way Out” which swings with a sunshine-y groove while the lyrics are about despair and loss. The band is named after the con artists in Huckleberry Finn, and the sound matches that image: pastoral, lazy days, and sunshine mixed with danger, loneliness, and a sense of dread. Despite a stellar beginning, the end of the album collapses under the weight of its own pretenses. “You and I” has some of the silliest lyrics since Edie Brickell told us the definition of religion and philosophy, and features a leaden chorus that sits like a bag of rocks in the middle of the song. “Children Of The Sun” strives for some deep message, but never connects. Worst of all is the closing track “Don’t Take That” which appears to be about warning someone not to get on a plane. It’s nearly seven minutes of awful, and the biggest strength of the band (those great harmony vocals) fails miserably…the backing vocals are awkward, tuneless, and out of place. It’s a genuinely depressing end to the album and should have been left on the cutting room floor. With the exception of “Don’t Take That,” even the songs that are undermined by their lyrics still sound beautiful on a casual listening. But in the end it’s the impression that lyricist Simone Felice feels he has something important to say that holds the album back from being a stone cold soul-funk-folk classic.
    Grade: B
  • ****—The Greenhornes. On the other hand, The Greenhornes are back with a vengeance. Jack White’s favorite rhythm section and guitarist Craig Fox are back with their first new album in eight years, and they’ve barely skipped a beat. The vibe of **** is a little heavier on old soul music than it is on garage rock, but it still works like a charm. Craig Fox is a fine guitarist and excellent singer, and bassist Jack Lawrence and drummer Patrick Keeler are Jack White’s favorites for a very good reason: they snap into a pocket like nobody since Duck Dunn and Al Jackson. The Greenhornes are completely enamored with 1960s era rock, but the suit fits. Unlike other 60s rock revivalists like The Grip Weeds, that 60s vibe seems completely natural coming from the Greenhornes. “Jacob’s Ladder” begins like Cream’s “White Room” before turning into the best Face To Face-era song the Kinks never did, and yet it doesn’t sound like they are imitating either Cream or The Kinks. The Greenhornes succeed as garage rock revivalists precisely because their influences are not worn on their sleeves; their influences are hardwired into their DNA. They sweat this stuff out, and in the process it ceases to be the work of 60s garage rock fanboys. It becomes something as real and vital as the best work of the bands that inspired them.
    Grade: A

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The Listening Post: November 2010

Less time on the tracks, less music in the brain. But what’s there is all excellent this time around.

  • Slanted & Enchanted—Pavement. When Pavement had a one-off hit with “Cut My Hair” it was easy to assume that they were a harmless pop band…not as classicist as Teenage Fanclub, not as heavy as Weezer. That’s certainly the assumption I made. Never assume. Pavement’s début album is a collection of some of the most perverse anti-pop ever written. At its core, this is a pop album but the core is buried deeply in some of the most aggressively idiosyncratic instrumentation since The Velvet Underground and Nico. The result is that Slanted & Enchanted is one of the catchiest subversions of the pop format you will ever hear. For 14 songs, Pavement turns pop music upside down and inside out. You recognize the format, but it’s unlike anything else you’ve heard. There are familiar elements: some dissonant noise guitar à la Sonic Youth, vocals from the Velvet Underground, melodies from pop music, the aggression of alternative rock. It’s not an album that lends itself to casual listening, but repeated listenings pay off in spades. Unlike other noise merchants, the songs on Slanted stick with you when they’re over. The melodies may rise and fall, appearing like a shooting star and then disappearing just as quickly, but they stick with you. Even the cacaphonic elements, like the repeated scream of “I’m trying!” that provides the…er, hook… of “Conduit For Sale” will get stuck in your head. To be this noisy and this discordant while simultaneously being this melodic and this memorable is a neat trick. In fact, it’s brilliant. You will have to work at liking this album because it is so off-putting at first, but the rewards are immense.
    Grade: A
  • Copper Blue—Sugar. Following the lamented demise of Hüsker Dü, songwriter and singer Bob Mould released two brilliant albums, the transcendent Workbook and the corrosive Black Sheets of Rain. He then retrenched and formed a new band, Sugar. Copper Blue is closer to Workbook and latter-day Hüskers than it is to the molten heart of darkness at the center of Black Sheets of Rain, and it is another triumph from Mould. The closest kin of Copper Blue is Hüsker Dü’s Warehouse: Songs and Stories or Candy Apple Grey. Melodies and choruses soar throughout. Copper Blue may be Mould’s catchiest album, but the music retains the aggressive combination of R.E.M./Byrds jangle pop and heavy distortion that is Mould’s trademark. Of particular note are the savage tale at the root of “A Good Idea,” the sunny pop music that makes a great counterpoint to the tortured lyrics of “If I Can’t Change Your Mind,” and the Workbook-style “Hoover Dam.” Start to finish, this is a strong collection of music and while it might not be as consistently great as Workbook, Black Sheets, or the last couple of Hüsker albums, it is consistently good with moments of real brilliance. This is the sound of a great songwriter near the top of his game.
    Grade: A-
  • MTV Unplugged—Oasis. This is a well-recorded bootleg of Oasis’s famous performance on MTV’s acoustic showcase Unplugged. The music is lush and beautifully performed. Oasis supplemented their sound with horns and strings and trotted out lesser-known, but stunning, selections like “Talk Tonight” and “The Masterplan.” The performance is remembered primarily for the fact that lead singer Liam Gallagher does not perform. Guitarist and songwriter Noel Gallagher ascribed his brother’s absence to illness, but Liam was sitting in the balcony, clearly drunk, waving a bottle of beer, and acting like the git we all know him to be. He was not missed, however. Noel Gallagher is just as strong and expressive a singer as his brother, and the performances are top-notch throughout.
    Grade: A-

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The Listening Post: October 2010

California dreaming in the October chill.

  • Gene Clark—Gene Clark with the Gosdin Brothers. This 1967 effort can best be described as the best album the Byrds didn’t record. The former Byrds singer is in fine voice throughout, and Byrds/Beatles-style harmonies are provided by former Chris Hillman band mates the Gosdin Brothers, while the frequently sublime guitar playing is shared by all-stars like Clarence White and Doug Dillard. There are strong traces of pop, rock, and country on nearly every song, making this one of the earliest examples of country rock. Clark was a great songwriter (to my mind the Byrds never recorded a better song than Clark’s “I’ll Feel A Whole Lot Better”) and he had been the best singer in that band of great harmony vocalists. The highs here may not match the heights on the Byrds albums, but you can make a case that this is a more consistently good album than most of the efforts of his previous band, many of which featured at least one or two strong clunkers.
    Grade: B+
  • Teenage Head—The Flamin’ Groovies. The rumor/legend is that Mick Jagger claimed that Teenage Head was a better album than Sticky Fingers, and that the Groovies had done a better job of creating a modern blues/roots record than the Stones. I wouldn’t go that far, since I think Sticky Fingers is one of the greatest rock albums ever made. However, Teenage Head is a stellar effort, an intense blending of garage rock (“Have You Seen My Baby?”, “Teenage Head”), blues (“High Flyin’ Baby,” “32-20,” “City Lights”), rockabilly (“Evil Hearted Ada,” “Doctor Boogie”), and sublime pop (“Yesterday’s Numbers,” “Whiskey Woman”). “Evil Hearted Ada” crosses the line into pastiche, if not parody, but the rest of the album seamlessly skips between many of the elements that went into rock and roll in the first place. This is a brilliant album for the quality of performance and passion if not actual songwriting.
    Grade: A
  • Crown Of Creation—Jefferson Airplane. One of the lesser-known Great Moments In Psychedelic Rock comes at 1:50 into “Share A Little Joke.” In an otherwise unremarkable but good song, Marty Balin shouts “Hey!” as if he had suddenly been shoved off a cliff and Jorma Kaukonen follows with a guitar solo that puts the “surge” in Lysergic. That moment lifts the entire song. The Airplane’s fourth studio album, Crown Of Creation, is the bridge between the acid-tinged folk of their second and third, Surrealistic Pillow and After Bathing At Baxter’s, and the full-on acid rock of their fifth, Volunteers. The folk aspect of the original Airplane is here on tracks like “Lather” and “Triad” while other songs are a full-on sonic assault on the senses (“House On Pooneil Corner,” “Greasy Heart”). What makes the Airplane worth listening to long after psychedelic rock became a quaint memory is the arsenal they bring to the table. Marty Balin and Grace Slick are great singers apart (“If You Feel” is one of Balin’s best vocals ever); singing together they’re simply ferocious, leaving behind a scorched earth. Jorma’s guitar is synonymous with the guitar sound of psychedelia and acid-rock…go ahead and try to imagine what a psychedelic guitar solo sounds like and my guess is that it will sound a lot like the bent notes, sustain, and wah-wah that Jorma practically trademarks. Perhaps best of all is the mighty Jack Casady, whose rubbery, lyrical bass is prominent throughout this album. Casady is not given enough credit for his playing. He stands with John Entwistle as one of the great bassists of the rock era. Like most of their peers, the Airplane was subject to a fair amount of noodling (“Chushingura”), but their intensity and hard rock attack make them so much more interesting than bands like the Grateful Dead.
    Grade: A
  • Red Octopus—Jefferson Starship. And then there’s Jefferson Starship. Originally a joke name for a Paul Kantner solo album (1970’s Blows Against The Empire), Jefferson Starship became an actual band in the mid-70s. Gone from the Airplane was Jorma Kaukonen and Jack Casady. But after making a guest appearance on their first album Dragon Fly, Marty Balin was back in the fold with Grace Slick and Paul Kantner for their second album Red Octopus. The heyday of psychedelia was long gone and the slick Seventies were well underway. Marty Balin contributed the lovely (if surprisingly raunchy) ballad “Miracles,” a song so good and so successful as a single that he spent the rest of his career trying to match it. “Miracles” is a breathtakingly pretty song, and Grace Slick’s “Play On Love” was another powerhouse single. Unfortunately, Jefferson Starship’s strong reputation as a 70s hit-making machine was forever destroyed by the horror of Mickey Thomas and the godawful dreck they released in the 1980s, including that terrible Song That Shall Not Be Named. But Red Octopus captures the band at their peak, before Balin succumbed completely to endless balladry. Both Balin and Slick sound as good as ever, and the songs are the best this association had done since Volunteers. There is some tough rock (“Fast Buck Freddie,” “Sweeter Than Honey,” “Play On Love,” “I Want To See Another World”), and gorgeous ballads (“Miracles,” “Al Garimasu,” “Tumblin'”). This a very 70s album, but an excellent one whose reputation has unfairly been harmed by what came later.
    Grade: B+
  • Los Angeles—X. I’m hesitant to call the début album by X a “punk” album which is how it’s generally classified. I have no hesitation in calling it a slam-bang rock ‘n’ roll album, however. Unlike many in the punk scene, X refused to disavow the bands that came before the Stooges and New York Dolls. Los Angeles is in some ways a blending of the two brightest musical stars in late-60s California rock. John Doe and Exene Cervenka use a vocal attack that is nearly identical to the aforementioned Marty Balin and Grace Slick while the lyrical view of the dark side of L.A. is cribbed straight from The Doors (Ray Manzarek produced the album and plays prominent keyboards on several songs). At the same time, guitarist Billy Zoom whips out revved up Chuck Berry licks to add an even older element to the music. For the sake of argument, let’s call it punk. If that’s the case, Los Angeles stands with the very best punk albums, from the Clash to the Ramones. X’s musical knowledge is deep, the lyrics excellent vignettes of a city lost in decadence. The album portrays the titular city as a desperate void where people are lost in isolation (“The Unheard Music,” “Your Phone’s Off The Hook, But You’re Not”) and look to fill the emptiness of their lives with sex (“Sex and Dying in High Society”), intoxicants (“Nausea”), and violence (“Johnny Hit And Run Paulene”). In the end, none of it matters and the only option is escape (“Los Angeles,” the souped-up cover of “Soul Kitchen”). This is a far bleaker vision of the City of Angels than anything even the Doors released, and makes the Eagles’ “Hotel California” sound like Randy Newman’s “I Love L.A.” But bleakness aside, what makes this album so good—and it’s a great album—are the tunes. Yes, the subject matter is coal-black, but the music—driving, propulsive, pounding—suggests a way out. Or at least a way to cope with the madness around you.
    Grade: A
  • Sailin’ Shoes—Little Feat. From the ashes of Frank Zappa’s Mothers Of Invention came Little Feat, with Mothers guitarist/singer Lowell George and bassist Roy Estrada. There’s a quirky undercurrent to a lot of this that reflects their time spent with Zappa (“Tripe Face Boogie”???), but this is much more straightforward musically. The leadoff track “Easy To Slip” could have been, and should have been, a huge hit single, something Zappa could never do without the song being branded a novelty track. The eleven songs on Sailin’ Shoes are largely the template for what would be called the “California sound” in the 1970s. Everyone from Jackson Browne to Warren Zevon to Linda Ronstadt spent a lot of time absorbing the sound of this album, though only Zevon could rock as hard as this without sounding uncomfortable. The album is diverse, ranging from the lovely acoustic “Willin'” to the punishing rock of “Teenage Nervous Breakdown” with side trips to swampy blues (“A Apolitical Blues”) and white-boy pop funk (the excellent “Got No Shadow”). The real triumph of the album belongs to Lowell George, a brilliant singer and guitar player who brought a lot of heart and soul to this album, adding enough oddball quirks (like the piano-driven instrumental break in “Texas Rose Cafe”) to keep the music fresh, exciting, and interesting nearly forty years later.
    Grade: A

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The Beatles: A Hard Day’s Night

A Hard Day's Night

Having conquered the musical world with their singles, albums, tours, and cheeky grins, the Beatles turned their attention to the world of film. Their manager, Brian Epstein, had signed them to star in and provide the soundtrack for a new movie. The upstart Beatles, not willing to put their names and reputations behind anything they didn’t in some way control, chose Richard Lester as the director because they admired his short, surrealistic comedy films. The Beatles had seen the “rock and roll movies” that had been released and did not want to be associated with the kind of junk exploitation films that Elvis Presley was making.

Yet the Beatles were exploited when it came time to do the soundtrack. In America, the soundtrack album was released by United Artists and contained eight Beatles originals and a handful of instrumental tracks that were used as the soundtrack to the movie. Unfortunately, this meant that America was deprived of the best album of the early years of the Beatles.


U.S. EditionU.K. Edition
A Hard Day’s Night
Tell Me Why
I’ll Cry Instead
I Should Have Known Better (Instrumental)
I’m Happy Just To Dance With You
And I Love Her (Instrumental)
I Should Have Known Better
If I Fell
And I Love Her
Ringo’s Theme (This Boy) (Instrumental)
Can’t Buy Me Love
A Hard Day’s Night (Instrumental)		A Hard Day’s Night
I Should Have Known Better
If I Fell
I’m Happy Just To Dance With You
And I Love Her
Tell Me Why
Can’t Buy Me Love
Any Time At All*
I’ll Cry Instead
Things We Said Today*
When I Get Home*
You Can’t Do That**
I’ll Be Back***
*Released in America on the LP Something New
**Released in America on the LP The Beatles’ Second Album
***Released in America on the LP Beatles ’65

There’s no denying that even on the U.S. edition those original songs are top-notch, but the inclusion of what is, essentially, four doses of Grade Z Muzak is enough to kill any album. The U.K. edition of the album is nearly flawless, an all-original collection of thirteen sterling Lennon/McCartney songs. Ringo loses his turn at the spotlight, and George is given the lightweight but enjoyable “I’m Happy Just To Dance With You.” Otherwise, this album belongs to John and, to a lesser degree, Paul. It is the first Beatles masterpiece.

The single strange chord that starts the album kicks down the door in dramatic fashion and launches a song that nearly perfectly distills everything that was good about the early Beatles. It’s joyful, bouncy, full of exuberant harmonies, swapped lead vocals (Lennon on the verses, McCartney on the chorus), a crisp, exciting and very brief guitar solo, and Ringo hitting the percussion for all that he’s worth. There’s simply no way to listen to “A Hard Day’s Night” without feeling better. Even the ending, with the sudden introduction of a chiming guitar lick heard nowhere else in the song, shocks the listener. The Beatles had great songs before, but this was different, a huge evolutionary leap in songwriting and performing.

“I Should Have Known Better” once again features the harmonica that was so prevalent on the early Beatles singles like “Love Me Do,” “Please Please Me,” and “From Me To You,” but here it was underpinned by a driving acoustic guitar with terse electric chords and lead lines weaving throughout, and Lennon’s masterful vocal riding the wave.

One of the things that makes Beatle albums so eminently listenable is that they contain a mix of slow, fast, and mid-tempo songs. “If I Fell” is one of the best of the early Beatles ballads, a song that is nearly breathtaking in it’s beauty. It’s also a sign of the rapid maturation of Lennon the songwriter. The man who just wanted to hold your hand a few months earlier now decries that naiveté, discovering that “love is more than just holding hands.” The vocal harmony of Lennon and McCartney is nothing less than astounding.

George Harrison gets his turn at the microphone on “I’m Happy Just To Dance With You.” It’s far and away Harrison’s best vocal performance to this point. He sounds confident and less like a Scouse teenager. The song, written by Lennon and McCartney, is a bit of a throwaway, but by this point even their throwaways were better than almost anything else being released. And whatever sins “Dance” has are more than forgiven by the Greek feel of McCartney’s gorgeous “And I Love Her,” a ballad for the ages.

“Tell Me Why” is another by-the-numbers rocker that is saved and raised to a level of greatness by Lennon’s lead vocal and the harmony vocals. A song that six months earlier probably would have been recorded very differently is now a textbook example of how to write a rocking pop song. The little guitar trills, the middle eight, the quick dash of falsetto vocal…all of these are elements the Beatles likely would not have used only a few months earlier, but their progress as songwriters was so swift that these songs almost sound as if they came from a different band than the one that recorded Please Please Me.

“Can’t Buy Me Love” steals from “She Loves You” the then-revolutionary trick of starting the song with the chorus and turns the trick into art. Has there ever been a song that reached out of the speakers and so hooked the listener with the opening line? Even “She Loves You” starts with Ringo’s brief drum roll, but “Can’t Buy Me Love” immediately immerses the listener in McCartney’s go-for-broke vocal. What often goes unnoticed is that it is the bass and drums that drive the song. True, there’s a hyperkinetic guitar solo and a steady acoustic-based rhythm, but the bass largely fills in for the lead guitar.

The second side of the LP has nothing as good as “A Hard Day’s Night,” “If I Fell,” “And I Love Her” or “Can’t Buy Me Love,” but it remains a classic album side nevertheless. Lennon solidifies his hold on the album as the lead vocal on five of the remaining six songs. This is a heavier slice of Beatle music than side one, containing no real ballads. This makes A Hard Day’s Night the hardest rocking album of the early period. In fact, while the Beatles would go on to record harder songs, this album may be the most consistently hard rocking of their career.

A Hard Day’s Night is Lennon’s triumph. It’s the album he had the largest impact on until the White Album in 1968. The whipping pace of side two, led by the one-two punch of “Any Time At All” and “I’ll Cry Instead,” the propulsive acoustic guitar workout “Things We Said Today” (one of McCartney’s best early tunes, featuring one of the best middle eights in Beatle history), and the closing triptych of “When I Get Home,” “You Can’t Do That” and “I’ll Be Back,” leaves the listener exhausted and breathless from the sheer exuberance of the Lads. While side two has no Beatles classics (from a popularity perspective, not a songwriting/performance perspective), it completes an album that surpassed With The Beatles to become the single best example of a rock and roll album to that point.

Grade: A+