Читать книгу The Mojo Collection - Various Mojo Magazine - Страница 45

Record label: Parlophone (UK) United Artists (US)

Produced: George Martin

Recorded: Abbey Road and Marconi Pathe Studios, London; January 29–June 3, 1964

Released: July 10, 1964 (UK) June 26, 1964 (US)

Chart peaks: 1 (UK) 1 (US)

Personnel: John Lennon (v, g); Paul McCartney (v, b); George Harrison (v, g); Ringo Starr (d); George Martin (p)

Track listing: 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

Running time: 30.30

Current CD: CDP7464372

Further listening: With The Beatles (1963); Help! (1965)

Further reading: Revolution In The Head (Ian Macdonald, 1998); The Beatles As Musicians (Walter Everett, 1999); The Beatles: An Illustrated Record (Roy Carr and Tony Tyler, 1975); www.beatles.com

Download: Not currently legally available

By March 1964, The Beatles had changed pop music forever, setting standards of cross-generational appeal that remain a wonder to this day. They were also getting nods of musical approval from the establishment about their songwriting and for their third album – also serving as the soundtrack to their first movie – they decided to go for an unheard-of option, an all-originals set. In the end, side one of the LP comprised songs from the film while side two contained other new songs. (In America, side two used George Martin instrumentals, the other tracks creeping out on other albums.) John Lennon, perturbed by a recent Beatles single A-side being nabbed by the Paul McCartney-penned Can’t Buy Me Love, took full advantage of Paul being relatively distracted (by his romance with Jane Asher) to reassert his domination of the band by lead-composing or singing on ten of the thirteen resulting tracks.

Inevitably, given that the songs were written in the pressure bubble that was Beatlemania, the band – however spirited – occasionally sounded formulaic (Any Time At All, I Should Have Known Better, When I Get Home), but the best tracks were the pinnacle of what rock-era pop songwriting had yet achieved. Lennon’s ballad If I Fell encapsulates what Carr and Tyler called the ‘excellence-through-innocence’ that characterises the whole album while McCartney’s And I Love Her was instantly seized upon by adult pop merchants as a new standard. ‘I consider it his first Yesterday,’ Lennon reflected much later.

There was the bluesy title track with its unforgettable opening chord (written specifically as a startling opening to the movie), exotic guitar textures courtesy of George’s new Rickenbacker 12-string (which would have such an effect on West Coast Beatle-freak Roger McGuinn) and a pair of delicious compositions (Lennon’s I’ll Be Back – based on Del Shannon’s Runaway – and McCartney’s Things We Said Today) that wallow in minor/major ambivalence, signposts toward future sophistication. The Dick Lester-directed black-and-white biographical fantasy film was described by US critic Andrew Sarris as ‘the Citizen Kane of jukebox movies’ while elsewhere Lennon and McCartney were hailed as the greatest songwriters since Schubert.