OPUS 12: WHITE ALBUM (UK/USA same album)

Each Beatle takes control, one at a time

Released November 1968

In early 1968, the Beatles took a break from the recording studio, but their songwriting remained highly prolific. What happened then was that their musical visions became much more individual, which was the beginning of the end of the band.

So while many people wish that the Beatles had stayed together longer than they did, and speculate over what their music would have sounded like, it is actually far easier to imagine what they would have done if they had broken up sooner with a big bang in late 1967 after "Magical Mystery Tour".

It would be a simple straightforward task to split up the two-disc "White Album" into three solo albums, one each for John, Paul and George. Ringo's "Don't Pass Me By" would have certainly been released sometime and somewhere as well. George also had other songs ready. The solo albums would have all sounded more-or-less the same as they did, and would have been excellent.

Instead, the Beatles had to resist suggestions from George Martin and others that the "White Album" should be chopped down to a single disc by simply getting rid of the weaker tracks. To which I say, "No way! I want to hear it all!" Who's to say that someone's weaker track wouldn't be someone else's favorite, depending on their mood?

Now George Martin may have had a point if he had been able to command attention to ways that particular songs could be made stronger, without the distraction of the weaker songs. That's sort of what happened on "Abbey Road", but it's highly doubtful that the Beatles were ready to submit to that, considering that the overall songwriting on the "White Album" is at least as good and arguably better. There are also weaker songs on "Abbey Road" too, but they too are helped by brilliant production.

As such, the four Beatles' growing individuality and power is actually what made the "White Album" what it is. It's the clear beginning of the Beatles' final phase and it's just what they wanted.

Also interestingly, the Beatles were working on another project at the same time, the "Yellow Submarine" animated film, so they did divert four of their supposed "weaker tracks" to that. But as one would expect, George got the short end of that stick, contributing two songs, compared to one each from John and Paul. That project kept dragging on, while "The White Album" was released identically in the UK and USA in late 1968 to an appreciative Beatles-starved public.

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OPUS 11: MAGICAL MYSTERY TOUR (USA version)

Masterpiece #5: UK misses the album tour bus

Released November 1967

In the Sgt. Pepper sessions, the Beatles became a well-oiled musical masterpiece machine. Their first output, "Penny Lane" and "Strawberry Fields Forever",was indicative of the creativity and quality that was to come, but their label still adhered to the British custom that it must either be a single or a part of the album, not both.

So it became a single. The same for the second output, "All You Need is Love" and "Baby You're a Rich Man". Also fabulous.

Not long after Sgt. Pepper finally came out and rocked the world, the question was asked as to what to do with these great but leftover tracks. Meanwhile, the Beatles were working on their next project, a more homespun kind of movie than their previous two. As was their custom, they only needed half an album's worth of songs for it.

The obviously and smashingly successful thing to do was to put the new movie music on Side One of an album, and put the previous singles on Side Two, filling it in with another great new single, "Hello Goodbye". That's what was done in the US.

But could the stiff upper lip Brits follow this rational American lead for a change? Nooooooo! Instead, the UK release oddly split it all up on a pair of EPs. They did not correct the error of their ways until 1976, six years after the Beatles had broken up.

The overall musical feel of the album was very similar to Sgt. Pepper, which made the decision to screw around with the format all the more irrational. The artistic structure of Sgt. Pepper required or even demanded an album format, setting the standard for all to follow. Every other serious rock band wanted to put out their own answer to Sgt. Pepper. Why do anything else for the obvious sequel?

The album starts with a rousing fanfare and invitation to take the "Magical Mystery Tour". You joined in with Sgt. Pepper's Band, so how could you not take the tour? This fades perfectly into the much more solitary "Fool on the Hill", much like how it was previously done into "A Little Help From My Friends" Then comes a dose of psychedelic mysticism from George, eventually leading to "Your Mother Should Know", a sequel of "When I'm 64" nostalgia. Side One ends with what is arguably the Beatles' all-time greatest masterpiece, "I Am the Walrus".

Once you get over the fact that Side Two is already familiar, it is no less brilliant. Unless you're so preoccupied flipping sides on your British EPs that you can't get wrapped up in the music.

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OPUS 10: SGT PEPPER'S LONELY HEARTS CLUB BAND (UK/USA same)

Masterpiece #4: The BIG production no one dared to mess with

Released May 1967

Record executives often don't understand music, but what they do understand is big production. And "Sargent Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" was the biggest, most expansive, most expensive and most widely heralded album production ever, from Edison's first wax cylinder to probably all the way up to the present.

So for the first time ever, the way the Beatles and producer George Martin ultimately put it onto tape was destined to be the way it would be released, on both sides of the pond. End of discussion. (But I'll keep writing anyway. After all, this is Sgt. Pepper!!!!)

The most obvious part of this was how the songs were cross-faded to flow into each other to create one single big album-length work. Who would dare mess with that?

Then there is the fact that the introductory theme song is repeated in a different version as the next-to-last song. That creates unity. That creates the sense that the album is an event.

Then there is just how adult it all is. The first words Paul sings are "It was 20 years ago today, Sgt. Pepper taught the band to play..." That would have made it 1947. So this is not supposed to be baby boomer kiddie music. Paul then continues by writing a song about parents and their daughter when "She's Leaving Home", and about what it's going to be like "When I'm 64". The songs that John and George wrote may not be that self-consciously adult, but are nevertheless suitably big.

Finally, to wrap it all up, there is that gigantic orchestral chord in "A Day in the Life", played once in the middle of the song between John's and Paul's vocals and once at the end of the song and the album.

The album was actually featured on the cover of Time Magazine when it first came out. This is when Time Magazine was written and edited by a bunch of old fuddy-duddies who heretofore had thought that rock music was just a noisy adolescent fad that would die like poodle skirts. Essentially, they made the announcement that rock music had arrived and attained maturity.

So even the US Capitol Records desk-jockeys finally had to realize the Beatles were bigger than they were, and their music had to be released as presented by the artistes - an album as art form. So the UK and USA versions are essentially the same except for the smallest details.

Many arguments have been made as to which Beatles album is the best, but everyone must know that "Sgt. Pepper" is the biggest. (Production, that is.)

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OPUS 9: REVOLVER (UK version)

Masterpiece #3: The avant-garde album

Released August 1966

"Revolver" simply stuns from one song to the next, each one starting fresh as a new expression of what Beatles music is.

Song One opens with the same "one-two-three-four" count which opens the very first Beatles album's youthful energetic lead into "I Saw Her Standing There". But here it's a greedy old coughing codger counting money - the "Taxman". It's a very stark spare song which allows its individual elements to stand out, particularly George's spikey guitar, heretofore like no other.

In stark contrast, Song Two is a driving string quartet, "Eleanor Rigby", but not the sweet syrupy strings of "Yesterday".

Song Three, "I'm Only Sleeping", rescued to its rightful place from the executive poaching of "Yesterday and Today", is based not on a spikey guitar or string section, but on a very fluid backwards guitar.

Topping that, Song Four is based on sitar, but not the seamlessly integrated sitar of "Norwegian Wood" but a fully fledged rock-raga, "Love You To".

Three more songs need special mention: "For No One" is a baroque pop masterpiece that echoes Rubber Soul's "In My Life" but with just a hint of modern dissonance near the end of each verse. On "I Want to Tell You", the dissonance gets much louder and central to the foundation of the song. Then finally, they let out all their avant-garde stops on "Tomorrow Never Knows" - which foreshadows "Revolution #9" at the end of the "White Album", but integrated into a fully formed song with sitar, mellotron and all manner of musical effects, not a mere sound collage.

The USA version of "Revolver" actually survives the theft of three of its fourteen songs fairly well, because all the songs stand so well on their own. In fact, the three stolen songs are among the least weird on the album, despite all being John Lennon songs, so the USA version sounds even more avant-garde without them. But more is simply better, 14 vs. 11. And why mess with a masterpiece?

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OPUS 8: YESTERDAY AND TODAY (USA version w/4 changes)

The butchering finally went too far

Released June 1966

It was time for another USA-only album, and this one did about as good a job of picking from the many excellent songs available as it could. But they poached three songs from the not-yet released "Revolver" album, which meant that record executives were already desecrating an album while the Beatles were still working on it. That crossed the line of tolerable tampering.

So to show their displeasure and flex their artistic freedom, the Beatles commissioned the infamous "butcher cover" for the "Yesterday and Today" album.

Soon after that, Capitol Records retaliated again by removing the butcher album covers from the stores and replacing them with innocuous non-offensive sleeves.

But what still needs to be done is to remove the offending songs, "I'm Only Sleeping", "And Your Bird Can Sing" and "Dr. Robert" from the album, so that the integrity of the then-upcoming "Revolver" album can be kept intact. These can be ably replaced by the then-current single, "Paperback Writer" / "Rain" and by two other songs which were previously rejected during the "Help!" sessions and never released until three decades later on the 1996 "Anthology 2" album, "That Means a Lot" and "If You've Got Trouble".

Another song that fits in chronologically, if not musically, is "I'm Down". Astonishingly, it was recorded during the same session as "Yesterday" - two songs which could hardly be more different. Obviously, the Beatles didn't know what to do with it at the time, but this album is the best place for it, where the contrast can be highlighted to best advantage.

Overall, this album is solid if not particularly consistent. It starts with a winner, "Drive My Car", a hard rocker which proved its value as an opener on the British "Rubber Soul" album. From there, it's somewhat top-heavy with Ringo vocals - "Act Naturally" which never really fit the "Help!" album, "What Goes On" which never really fit "Rubber Soul" and (on this rebooted version) "If You've Got Trouble" which never fit or was even heard anywhere. Good old Ringo fits in by not fitting in.

In effect, the whole album makes a virtue of not fitting in. And it finally makes a home for the unique and ever-popular "Yesterday" for Paul and string quartet. Unique, that is, until "Revolver" which outdoes the Paul and strings thing with "Eleanor Rigby" in a way that's not just unique for the Beatles, but for all music.

It's worth clearing the way on "Yesterday and Today" so that "Revolver" could achieve such a special status and more.

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OPUS 7: RUBBER SOUL (USA version)

Masterpiece #2: American triumph of folk-rock

Released December 1965

While it is widely agreed that "Rubber Soul" is the album that pushed the Beatles' boundaries into the new frontier, it is not so clear how and why.

The USA version shows quite a different artistic direction from the UK version, with the emphasis on artistic.

"Rubber Soul" actually concedes to the British sensibility of not including the concurrent single, "Day Tripper / We Can Work It Out", and actually goes two steps further than the Brits in also excluding the follow-up singles "Nowhere Man" and "Drive My Car" as well. All of these songs are just too electric and too rocking to fit the artistic vision. 

So while the British version is seen by critics as the album that opens up a new eclectic world of artistic freedom, the American version is more disciplined and focused, and thus even clearer and more powerful - and better.

And what the American version opens up is a new world of folk-rock. Did the control freaks at US Capitol Records know what they were doing when they selectively dipped back into the leftovers from the "Help!" album to do this?

Apparently they did, because they did not take the easy way by grabbing "Yesterday", which was already becoming the song that finally opened up the Beatles to acclaim among all generations, young and old, even though it had not yet appeared on an American album.

What they grabbed instead was "I've Just Seen a Face" and "It's Only Love" to open Sides 1 and 2, songs whose guitars are so wooden and organic as to truly lead the way. Yes, Bob Dylan came first to folk-rock, and John Lennon already gave his nod to him with "You've Got to Hide Your Love Away", and Dylan had already been stylishly slicked up with electric twelve-string guitar by The Byrds, and Simon and Garfunkel had turned all this into highly produced precious poetry.

But it was the Beatles who turned folk-rock into a genre for the ages. The second song on "Rubber Soul", the Bohemia with sitar "Norwegian Wood", could not have segued better from the first. And it keeps on going from there. Even the heavier electric songs miraculously sound light and organic. "In My Life" has been a favorite cover for mature adult folkies like Judy Collins ever since, but nobody else has ever given it the double tape speed piano that sounds like baroque harpsichord like the Beatles did. Non-folk rockers were also inspired, most notably the Beach Boys, who cited "Rubber Soul" as a key influence for their masterpiece album, "Pet Sounds".

All this emerges far more clearly in the American version than the British version. The American record execs had been messing with the Beatles' albums since the beginning, but here they somehow finally got it right.

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OPUS 6: HELP! (UK version w/5 changes)

Side 1 is "Help!" Side 2 needs help.

Released August 1965

Side 1 is the movie music and Side 2 is the you-name-it. The movie music has a purpose. But what can you say about Side 2 when it begins with Ringo's cover of Buck Owens and the Buckaroos rockabilly hit, "Act Naturally", then eventually gets to "Yesterday", the absolute ultimate schmaltz adult-pop classic for crooning Paul and soothing string quartet, then suddenly collides into John's disembodied larynx screaming "Dizzy Miss Lizzy"?

Side 2 simply doesn't work. But at least the UK version safely consolidates all the movie songs onto Side 1, unlike the USA version where the actual songs are messily scattered and diluted among a bunch of vacuous soundtrack instrumentals, such as for the nineteenth century Wagner opera "Lohengrin", of all things.

The only good thing about the UK version's Side 2 collection of songs is that they formed a reservoir for the two next US releases, "Rubber Soul" and "Yesterday and Today". They're all good songs. They just need to find good homes. Some of these songs point the ways to various future directions for the Beatles, when what they should do is capture the present. More about that later when we address those two albums.

But here's how to turn Side 2 into something that makes some sense. The key is to link the songs into compatible pairs. There's the great single "I Feel Fine" / "She's A Woman" which was released concurrently with their previous album, "Beatles for Sale". Then there is the B-Side of "Ticket to Ride", "Yes It Is". None of these songs were put on the album, but if not here, then where?

Then there are two songs which were included in the album and form a pair by virtue of their innocuousness, "You Like Me Too Much" and "Tell Me What You See". If any two Beatles songs could be considered the last representatives of the innocent early era, it would be those two.

Finally, there are John's two great Larry Williams covers, "Bad Boy" and "Dizzy Miss Lizzy". Both were recorded in the same session and included in the American "Beatles VI" album, but they were probably considered too similar to both be included here. But why not? They're both great and represent the boy and girl sides of rock-crazed adolescence. Most importantly, what Side 2 of "Help!" needs more than anything is some consistency. These two, plus Paul's "I'm Down", are the final pages of the Beatles' crazy screaming phase.

In the conventional UK discography, "Help!" is the fifth Beatles album and a somewhat fuzzy transition between their early and middle periods, but as reorganized here, it is the sixth album and serves as a very clear and resounding closure to the early period.

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OPUS 5: BEATLES FOR SALE (UK version)

A step back to rockabilly roots

Released December 1964

After "A Hard Days Night", the pressure was off and The Beatles were able to let up on the gas pedal and just have fun. The title "Beatles For Sale" seems to refer to the idea that after their recent frenetic pace of albums, live appearances, touring and even a movie, they had become a well-oiled production machine that could just go out and sell anything they want.

It's a bit similar to "Let It Be" at the end of their career, but this time it worked. It even seems logical that they would follow the British marketing strategy and leave the single off of the album. So there's no "I Feel Fine" / "She's a Woman" here. Those two songs are both more Beatle-esque and more forward looking than anything else here, so they'd stick out a bit too much.

But in the USA, they included the single and split the album in two, Beatles '65 and Beatles VI, with help from stealing a few songs from elsewhere. That makes the USA albums a bit more contrived and reduces the spontaneity of it all. The UK "Beatles For Sale" is a fresher statement.

Rockabilly is the overarching theme, particularly in the selection of cover songs, in contrast to the previous covers which tended toward Motown/R&B. But there was still room for another Chuck Berry song, "Rock and Roll Music".

John seems slightly more dominant than usual on this album, just as he also seemed to become on "Let It Be". And as with the latter, this may be more of a political than artistic outcome. His soulful wail on "Mr. Moonlight" and countrified bass voice on "I'm a Loser" are real stretches. Paul gets only three lead vocals, "I'll Follow the Sun", "Kansas City" and "What You're Doing".

The twang of George Harrison's lead guitar on this album seems a long way from the Indian flavored songs he would move toward later, although its really just the distance between Country/ Western music and Country/ Eastern music. Once you know George, it all makes sense.

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OPUS 4: A HARD DAYS NIGHT (UK version)

Masterpiece #1: Half movie music, all Lennon-McCartney

Released July 1964

The Beatles released four soundtrack albums in their career. All the others (Help, Magical Mystery Tour, Yellow Submarine and the USA version of this one) consist only half with songs from the movie. The other half is either vacuous soundtrack instrumentals or else filled-in with previously leftover songs.

But the UK version of "A Hard Days Night" is quite an exception. It could be described as the most consistent and concentrated album of pure Beatles music that they ever did. 

There are no covers. It's all originals, and since George had not yet blossomed as a songwriter, its all Lennon-McCartney. All of it is still largely the same style as their very first music, but hewed to a fine perfection. At this stage, John and Paul are still more together than separate, and show their individual styles only as they always had or in other subtle ways. They hadn't yet tried to branch out onto any creative limbs.

There's also not much difference between the songs from the movie on Side One and the remaining songs on Side Two (to use vinyl parlance). There is no distraction regarding whether to include singles because the only two UK singles ("Hard Days Night" and "Can't Buy Me Love") are from the movie. Most other Beatles albums have some twist or anomaly, and often many of them. On this album, all the songs are cut from the same cloth. Clearly, if you don't like "A Hard Days Night", you don't like The Beatles. Is there anybody out there like that?

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OPUS 3: BEATLES SECOND ALBUM (USA version w/3 changes)

The almost lost album devoted to cover versions

Released April 1964

As soon as "Meet the Beatles" started flying out of the record store bins in early 1964, the "suits" at Capitol Records finally realized what flaming idiots they had been to reject their parent British company EMI's first Beatles album "Please Please Me". So they quickly decided to put out another album, and they decided to call it the "Second Album" in a ridiculous fit of denial of the fact that it would actually be the Beatles' third album - as if any Beatles album that's not on Capitol isn't really a Beatles album.

But in the late 1980s, the British record company (EMI, Parlophone, Apple) got the last laugh with their international release of the CD versions of the Beatles catalog, which expelled all the U.S. Capitol versions. And since there is no British equivalent to the USA "Second Album", that knocked it into virtual obscurity.

That's a shame, because the USA "Second Album" is a truly unique artistic statement all its own. It's the only Beatles album focused squarely on cover versions of other artists.

The album starts with a bang - Chuck Berry's seminal "Roll Over Beethoven", one of only two cover songs ever to begin a major label Beatles album ("Kansas City" on Beatles VI is the other). By 1964, Chuck Berry had been marginalized in the US as just another 1950's guy stuck between blues and rock, who had not yet been been conferred his rightful place in history as "The Father of Rock and Roll".

But the Beatles knew it, and the song itself is all about rock music's place in history, which was still being freshly written with every new Beatles release. It indeed goes all the way back a century and a half to Ludwig Van Beethoven. (His last piano sonata even includes a passage interpreted by some pianists as the beginning of rock.) Chuck Berry wanted Beethoven to "Tell Tchaikovsky the news", as the first step in passing the legacy along to the present.

Interestingly, all the covers here are from black American artists. Three are from Motown (Got a Hold on Me, Mr. Postman and Money), one was a very obscure Motown wannabe girl group from Detroit, the Donays (Devil in His Heart), and one from Little Richard (Long Tall Sally). In the early sixties, Motown was still in relative infancy, not yet the powerhouse label/genre it would become, while Little Richard's persona was not clear then at all. The Beatles did their part to change that.

So in all, six of the eleven songs are cover versions. But one of the other Lennon/McCartney compositions, "You Can't Do That", was stolen from the upcoming "Hard Days Night" album, and so does not really belong here. It should be replaced with more cover songs. The Beatles had a huge repertoire of cover songs from their old Hamburg days to choose from. Possibly the best choice would be Little Willie John's "Leave My Kitten Alone", which practically jumps off the disc as the best and most finished track on "Anthology 1".

Two other worthwhile picks would be "Slow Down" and "Matchbox" (both on the flip side of the "Long Tall Sally" / "I Call Your Name" EP), even though they were not recorded until two months later. That would make this album 9 out of 13 cover songs (and 8 of the first 9). In our revisionist scenario, the album could either be postponed for two more months or the recording session moved up. "Slow Down" and "Matchbox" were the beginning of The Beatles rockabilly phase, so they would also be at home on "Beatles For Sale".

Of the four remaining Beatles penned songs, three have always languished in relative obscurity. One of them, "I Call Your Name", is actually more associated with The Mamas and the Papas, so here it sounds like a cover of a cover.

The album's only truly famous Beatles composition is saved for last - "She Loves You". Its iconic "yeah, yeah, yeah" chorus fittingly ends the album with its revolutionary resounding coda, rather than the kind of wimpy fade-out which was customary for the time.

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OPUS 2: MEET THE BEATLES (USA version w/2 changes)

Putting hit singles on albums is the American way

Released January 1964

The Beatles first US album on Capitol came out just as Beatlemania was finally sweeping the country. It was highly anticipated, since it was the American version of "With the Beatles", their second UK album which was released in the UK two months before.

But the British version did not include the runaway hit single, "I Want to Hold Your Hand", which leads off the American version and was a major theme song for Beatlemania and the British Invasion. Really... How could such a momentous album be released with such a gaping omission? 

For that reason, the American version wins. But the second track on the album, "I Saw Her Standing There", which was the flip side of the same hit single in the US, was already released on the first UK album, so it should be replaced on your streaming playlist, mixtape, MP3 file list or other format version with "This Boy", the UK flip side of the hit single. 

Of course, as per tradition, USA albums are stingier than UK albums so more songs should be found. That bill is filled by "From Me to You", another fairly recent single, and "I'll Be On My Way", a great Everly Brothers inspired track from the BBC Sessions collection, which sounds polished enough to meet the Beatles already high studio standards. So that gets it up to 13 tracks.

Another advantage of the American version is that it is all Lennon-McCartney originals, except for just one cover song, "Til There Was You", which Paul croons from "The Music Man". The UK version has six covers. We could go higher than 13 tracks by including a couple of those cover songs from the UK version on the USA version, but Lennon-McCartney originals should take priority. There will be plenty of room for the Beatles cover song repertoire soon enough.

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OPUS 1: PLEASE PLEASE ME (UK version)

The first rock album as an artistic statement

Released March 1963

Way back in 1963 when the whole idea of rock albums as artistic statements was still in its infancy, the formula for the Beatles first album was simple: Just collect the best fourteen songs they had recorded to date. Among these were two hit singles, "Love Me Do / PS I Love You" and "Please Please Me / Ask Me Why". 

This allowed the Beatles first album to be presented on as high a note as possible. The British predilection for avoiding putting singles on albums was ignored, so there they are in all their glory, along with ten other songs.

There is something uniquely special about the fresh innocence of this album, the start of something that became as great as the Beatles. So why would anyone second guess it? Certainly not the American branch of The Beatles' EMI record label, Capitol Records. They stupidly rejected the entire album outright, so the temptation to tamper with this nascent greatness in the U.S. fell to the second-string VeeJay Label. What VeeJay did was simply discard two of the songs because Americans weren't used to getting 14 songs on an album. But why settle for 12 when you can have 14? Eventually, Capitol released all the songs in one form or another, mostly on a bastard compilation called "Early Beatles", but by then, the context of the specialness of the 1963 premiere was gone. Only the greatness of the songs themselves remained.

But knowing this album was recorded as long ago as 1962 and early 1963 makes it even greater - before the British Invasion, when Elvis had gone from the Army to Hollywood, Buddy Holly had recently died in a plane crash, schlock-pop was king, and rock music was still considered a fad that was already fading out. 

So this album is essentially the beginning of the great rock era which lasted until the end of the 1970s. Given all that, the unaltered 1963 UK album release of "Please Please Me" is the only version to have.

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