20 Very Original Tracks

(Insert standard intro paragraphs found whenever a blogger of a certain age condescends to write about the Beatles)

The Beatles are and have been so much a part of my whole life that they pose a uniquely difficult challenge to write about. I mean, I have infant memories of singing the tune of ‘Yellow Submarine’ with my mother, 8 years later James, Paul and I wanted to start a band after we watched the film Help! and I remember singing ‘Maxwell’s Silver Hammer’ to my baby son at 4am on a work night because it was the only tune I could remember after 3 hours sleep spread over 2 days, they are a golden vein running though my very existence.

I have listened to everything so many times* in so many different moods that is actually difficult to hear the songs. Which is why it is far easier to knock off a review of a passing Fall 10″ EP than anything mop-toppy.

It is interesting to hear Beatles songs out of their natural habitat, it does cause you to hear them again and I have been enjoying The Beatles Ballads this week for just this reason, plus, you know, they were quite good at music and stuff.

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Beatles Ballads was a 1980 compilation, cramming in 20 tracks across two sides of vinyl** with no frills unless you listen very closely; more of that anon. Beatles Ballads is subtitled ’20 Original Tracks’, although a scurvy pedant would point out that ‘Till There Was You’ is a cover.

I bought Beatles Ballads solely for the brilliant cover art by John Byrne^^, featuring a slightly faux-naif, almost Beryl Cook, group pic of the fabs surrounded by various animals. I dig Paul’s camouflage face paint, George’s frankly terrifying eyes, Ringo’s stripey trews and John’s Yoko locket (?). It was always said that this was rejected cover art for the White Album, but it wasn’t it was produced for Alan Aldridge’s The Beatles Illustrated Lyrics*^

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Not many albums ever released open with a song as good as ‘Yesterday’ and it sounds great in this context, making me swoon at those understated strings all over again. Obviously we then need to veer from a beautifully articulated gentle existential meditation on true love to a seedy affair to the sound of a sitar, ‘Norwegian Wood’. I struggle a little with this one, mostly because of that very sub-par line about the chair not being there.

The hits keep on coming and track-by-track it becomes obviously that the concept of calling all these songs ballads is pretty flawed. Basically its a collection of mostly slower lovey-dovey cuts, at least until you look even closer – its complicated, as richly so as life itself and Beatles. You find the similarity between the slick pop of ‘Michelle’, the psych sketch of ‘Nowhere Man’, the drowning-yourself-in-trifle ‘The Long And Winding Road’, the … you get the picture, ballads they ain’t. The only Beatles track that actually uses the word ballad in the title is missing from here, which is a shame.

Some songs really prosper in their changed context, some shuffle into an unfamiliar light hang around awkwardly and blow away. Beatles Ballads uses the rare ‘Wildlife’ version of ‘Across The Universe’ and it really works, I like it a lot more here. Early Beatles groovers ‘Do You Want To Know A Secret’, a wonderfully romantic song and the candlelit ‘Till There Was You’ grow in stature in this company. Conversely, the heavy artillery of ‘Hey Jude’ and ‘Let It Be’ just do not work here at all.

I’ve never been able to like ‘She’s Leaving Home’, included here surely only as a means of shoe horning in a Sgt Pepper‘s track and so I’d do away with it as well as the last two cuts above. Feel free to play along at home, but I would add ‘Martha My Dear’, ‘Julia’ and ‘In My Life’; the latter being one of the best things ever recorded by anyone, ever and when I am elected God Emperor will be included on every LP ever released by anyone in perpetuity.

In amongst it all Beatles Ballads includes some astonishingly good, innovative songs which do their thing just the same as they have always done – looking at you ‘Blackbird’, ‘Here, There & Everywhere’ and ‘Here Comes The Sun’, their stock unaffected.

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Beatles Ballads includes a rare 1977 remix of ‘Norwegian Wood’ and some stereo mixing quirks across a few other tracks, nothing I would suggest that would excite too much interest from any sexually active adult, or myself.

I have really enjoyed spinning Beatles Ballads, catching myself wrongly anticipating the usual following tracks – ‘Because’ after ‘Here Comes The Sun’ for example, humming their ghostly melodies to myself. It’s fun and I really have found myself singing a lot this week, which is a good thing for the soul.

Not many bands can heal your soul like the Beatles, even after all those years. Never mind the ballads which aren’t really ballads, just stare at the LP cover and let yourself get fuzzy, you won’t regret it.

1320 Down (Penny Memory Lane).

*as usual I really cannot be arsed with multiple takes of certain songs which only the purchasers of the most limited bloated rereleases are privy to.

**cramming it in very well actually, 59 minutes with only a vague sense that it is a bit quiet, which is the sort of thing that sends the sort of moron who lurks in the comments section of Discogs barmy^. Its what your knob is for, turn it up, its not hard.

^you know the sort of man and they are ALL men, who say things like ‘played this on my D-Bec 4100, with a Blue 427 cartridge through a Hotpoint 410 Twin tub and I wanted to shoot myself in the fucking head because it was a slightly louder pressing than my original 1972 Hungarian version‘. The idiots who really wind me up though are the fuckers who wang on endlessly about the lack of poly-lined inners and that they had to clean their brand new LP before it met their lofty standards like it was the most vital, interesting bastard thing in the whole twatting world. Get a life. I mean I like vinyl a lot, but you make me want to burn it all.

^^who I was stunned to read today was the writer of the BBC series Tutti Frutti which I was a big fan of.

*^an enormously formative book for me and not solely for all the boobs therein.