(This one was written when McCartney was only just twenty and had a seventeen year old girlfriend. Don't beat that up to be anything predatory or age inappropriate because it isn't.)
Misery was intended for Helen Shapiro who would have done it more than justice. A big embracing vocal opening featuring the toolbox: melisma, tight sub-screaming Lennon voice and a charming transition from minor to major in the chorus keep it in the recollection.
Anna (Go With Him), Chains, Boys. Beatles cover versions are generally more interesting for what they reveal about their influences than as interpretations. It's almost true that the originals on this album are like homework after learning the covers. That's about the same as any band that starts writing its own material. Playing industrially long sets and keeping your job on stage is persuasive; learn it or die. Add astute, observation and high musicality (and not a little internal competition) and you get this band. All of these are competent rock cover versions of songs from the soul and Motown realms but any post-Beatles ears are going to be hankering for originals, however derivative. The addition of wailing blues harp o'er head does, however make a difference and gives the songs a Merseybeat touch.
Ask Me Why is one such and it's almost entirely forgettable. There are dynamics, scansion changes and a well wrought middle eight but it just doesn't lift above apprentice level.
Please Please Me is a triumph for the nascent relationship that the band struck up with their producer George Martin. Conceived as a Roy Orbison thumper like Running Scared or In Dreams, Martin suggested they speed it up. They did and made it their own thing. A harmonica riff adds a bright wail to the guitar figure. The vocal harmonies are classic Lennon McCartney with John singing the descending line while Paul stays on the high note, each line ending with a surprise ascension in the rhythm guitar. A tight call and response chorus that blooms into a falsetto title line. All present and correct. This is why people not only caught on but made it the band's first number one.
Love Me Do was their first single and is a great illustration on the difference between influence and copying. If they'd stuck to the plan of writing an Everly Brothers number they would have incorporated more of those country harmonies and thought more about the separation of the verse and chorus. Instead, they sang and played it until it sounded like themselves. It's stripped back. Harmonica riff, glistening harmonies, cool middle eight that works both sung and done on harmonica and a stop start chorus that drives it into memory. All acoustic, too. Not bad.
PS I Love You is a pleasant wafting song of romantic longing with Paul singing in his grownup voice (until the end where he sings fill lines in his rock voice). The arrangement and choruses with the vocal harmonies come off as more staid than the songs of the first side but the gamechanger chords and the strange hushed solemnity make it a quiet kind of standout.
Baby it's You starts with the sha la la la las of the previous era and for all the energy keeping it aloft it sounds and feels like filler.
Do You Want to Know a Secret begins with George's vocal in cod flamenco mode with a showbiz slow mo introduction in a minor key. This quickly turns into a slow trotting sweet address to a girlfriend. The chorus (which is not the title line) ends with an off pitch falsetto which marks the fade out, producing winces.
A Taste of Honey a big showbiz reverb slow intro with big harmonies continues through the modal folky waltz with Paul being a grownup again. This is a gem from the days of the Hamburg lifestyle gigs. The middle eight changes time signature before launching into the call and response ending. It's the most effectively melancholy song (cover or not) on the record. Even if overdrenched in reverb and erring on the off-broadway side of things it does foreshadow McCartney's future penchant for quiet sadness. Three years later it would be the genuinely affecting For No One and the ice cold wrench of Eleanor Rigby. Three years.
There's a Place is one of the least celebrated early Beatles songs and that's a pity as it's a gem and it's interesting. After a brief harmonica riff the mid paced rocker features almost exclusively John and Paul harmonies until the middle eight. While there are lines about an assumed object of affection the main point is that the narrator of the song seems happiest when withdrawn into his own mind. The lines about no sad tomorrows and there being no sorrow in his mind sound like over-protestation when that's the place he goes when he wants to escape things just like that. No chorus as such but the ending insistent on the title phrase repeats to the fade with more melancholy harmonica tells us there's always one place to run.
Twist and Shout proves that while most of the covers were a mix of tribute, songcraft recognition and filler, they could make some of their choices their own. While I knew as a much younger fan that this was not their song, I still cannot hear the Top Notes or the Isley Brothers versions because this one is in the way. A big clunking riff circles around C F G like a steam era machine starting up. Lennon's throat tearing berserker vocal rips holes in the wallpaper as the others repeat his lines in gleaming harmony. After a little guitar harmonising the next hook appears with the harmonies forming a chord and get so high they start screaming the last verse gets stuck on the instantly sexual "well shake it shake it shake i, baby, now!" before the triad once again builds up to a climax and then comes to a sighing rest.
If the opening track promised good times we've just heard where they lead. This is Lennon's response to McCartney's workout in Standing There and the two contain what only have to be some songs. The fact that it is better than that makes this a debut to remember. Except that people don't.
This and the next one released in the first year of Beatlemania are eclipsed by the monster singles the band released as a priority and still form the main touchpoint of revisits to the first era of the band. It's true that the two earliest singles are on the record (including their first number one) and they're good pop songs, they don't have quite the force or invention of a She Love's You or I Want to Hold Your Hand.
This album sounds like the albums of any band of the time, almost an afterthought between the singles rather than the other way around. The band that would, more than any other demonstrate the value of albums to make larger statements began like all the others because who could know? But if you go through from this to mid point at Rubber Soul you will know from the simpler more rushed affair that this is that the seeds will sprout into a dazzling garden. Then embark on the rest of the trek with the callback on Revolver, the sinister, druggy count in to the opening track, and you'll know that, while their own past never dragged them, they were thankful of it.
Listening notes: I chose the CD from the Beatles in Mono box from 2009 as it remains the best way to hear this.
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