Past Masters Vol. 2

...and so the magic of the 'non-album' tracks continue.... It is EMBARRASSING how good these songs are and the fact they WEREN'T on their albums!!!! I have seen sites where people have 're-configured' the 'White Album' to include 'Hey Jude' and 'Lady Madonna', or re-configured 'Rubber Soul' to include 'We Can Work It Out' and 'Day Tripper'... it just don't work!!!! Their albums are 'peerless' and 'perfect'.... these singles showed you how great The Beatles were and how much they gave to the record buying public of the day.

Past Masters Vol. 1

We come to the end of The Beatles' albums reviewed.... This of course leaves us with the 'non-album' songs.... it just so happens that some of these 'non-album' songs happen to be the most significant, ground-breaking and brilliant songs EVER recorded!!!! Oh yes The Beatles did NOT short sell their millions of fans.... the very concept of constructing a song that is so utterly original and brilliant and NOT promote your latest album with it still to this day confounds me!!!! Picture this, release a song called, 'I Want To Hold Your Hand' (Top 5) and have the confidence and audacity that the album that you are releasing the same week ('With The Beatles') DOESN'T need a majestic song like 'I Want To Hold Your Hand' to 'sell' it!!!!! Man oh man....

Let It Be (1970)

And so we come to the end! Let It Be... an apt title for the last Beatle album released. Although as previously mentioned this was recorded BEFORE Abbey Road, but it was salvaged amongst the carnage left behind some 16 months earlier by the time this was released in April 1970.

This album I LOVE. Again it is different to the previous, perhaps not an improvement this time that is true but it is DIFFERENT! Captured as live and as raw as possible this is The Beatles ripping through newly constructed songs... 'Getting Back' to their roots, back to the first album 'Please, Please Me' in an attempt to 'drop' the studio trickery, the exotic instruments, the over-layered dubs and back to the days of The Cavern... to a three guitar and drums (maybe a piano) outfit! In fact the ORIGINAL album cover was even a re-creation of the 'Please, Please Me' photo!!! (Thankfully not lost as it turned up some 3 years later on the excellent 1967 - 1970 Blue album compilation)

A side note to this, is that as a 9 year old, I first fell in love with The Beatles' music (due to the sad death of John, this 9 year old was curious as to the 'attention' and sadness this man's death brought to the world) and hence my Beatle journey began! Of course as a 9 year old I loved 'She Loves You', 'From Me To You', 'I Want To Hold Your Hand', 'Love Me Do', 'Help!', 'Nowhere Man' etc ... you get the picture...so the more Beatle music I got my hands (ears) on the more I discovered wonderment UNTIL I walked into the record shop and bought 'Let It Be'!!! Yes I knew the title song, I knew the pulsating 'Get Back' and I knew the gorgeous 'Long and Winding Road' BUT I didn't know the rest and on my first listen I was AGHAST at the 'sloppiness' of the playing, the crazy banter between the songs, just the WHOLE scene was not what The Beatles were in my head at that stage... So I literally DROPPED the album from my turntable and focused on the 'polished' 'upbeat' Beatles for my early teen years.

Then as my appreciation for music widened, this 17 year old went back to 'Let It Be' and I discovered it properly!!!! And I could NOT stop playing this album from BACK to FRONT and then BACK again!!!! It was like I could see again!!!

This album TRULY inspired my LOVE of The Beatles... The songs are GREAT! The 'Two Of Us' is TOP 5!!! What a song... and what a gesture from Paul in writing a song designed for him and John to 'Get Back' to those beautiful harmonies feeding off from each other for this most beautiful of songs...

'I've Got A Feeling' and 'One After 909' are just damned exciting and George's 'For You Blue' is simply an uplifting song and the slide guitar work by John is ANOTHER bow to The Beatles canon and the banter between George and John is hilarious considering these were supposed to be 'bad' times for the four Beatles....

Again, The Beatles show they are peerless in the art of making music....

Abbey Road (1969)

The last Beatle album recorded but the penultimate release. After the shambolic, relationship deteriorating sessions of the 'Get Back' project (which turned into the 'Let It Be' album), Paul convinced the other three as well as producer George Martin to come back for one last hurrah! And what a hurrah it turned out to be! Perhaps this is The Beatle's most FLAWLESS album... SHEER PERFECTION on all levels!

Side 1 was designed to appease John that assembled a collection of great songs from 'Come Together', 'Oh! Darling', 'I Want You (She's So Heavy)' and surely George's greatest gift to The Beatles... 'Something'. Throw in Ringo's finest moment as a song writer in the very clever (check out the Paul and George water bubble blowing backing vocals) Octopus' Garden and you are cooking up a red hot album!!!

Side 2 appeased Paul, the grandiose, highly ambitious 'Rock Opera' which of course Beatles being Beatles, they manage to nail it PERFECTLY!!!

What makes The Beatles a true unexplainable chemistry is the fact that both Paul's and John's respective contributions to their non-preferred album sides are the very reason this album is as perfect as it is. It also appears that on a sub-conscious level that the four Beatles put all of their current personal differences aside and just focused on being 'Beatles' and each playing their part that produces that magic 'whole' ... The Beatles.... and I don't think they could even explain it... it just happens!

Did I say that 'Something' was George's greatest gift to The Beatles??? Bloody hell, where does that leave 'Here Comes The Sun'? This song still to this day makes me feel... just .... GREAT!!! I LOVE IT!!!!

'You Never Give Me Your Money', the first song of the 'Rock Opera' is a beautiful, melancholy piece from Paul that drifts into snippets of incomplete songs / scraps that unbelievably just WORK! Check out Paul's voice on 'Golden Slumbers'... the part where he sings, 'Smiles awake you when you rise'... SHISHKER BOB!!!!! Stunningly emotive and it just makes you feel a sense of loss and hope at the same instant!!!! Like he was telling the world that The Beatle dream is coming to an end! Then the three stinging lead guitars by John, Paul and George that close 'The End' flow in to the last Beatle lyric on the last Beatle album....'and in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make'... very COSMIC!!!

Yellow Submarine (1969)

Not really a Beatle album but released as such. The Beatle's song on it are of course majestic but side two, the George Martin score, ain't what Beatle-o-philes would've been looking for. Still the four new songs on side 1 offer some great Beatle moments. The throw away 'All Together Now' is as catchy as it is simple and the two George songs, 'Only a Northern Song' and 'It's All Too Much' are great examples of psychedelic rock!!!

However BEST of all is the scintillating 'Hey Bulldog'!!!! I ADORE this song and am staggered that it doesn't register on the 'Beatle Radar' of casual fans!!! This song must simply be introduced to any casual Beatle fan for sheer evidence of what a GREAT rock outfit The Beatles were. The voices, the smashing piano, the RIFF and the scathing, mercurial lead guitar solo from George makes this John song one of his great 'late period Beatle' songs!!! Top 5.... EASILY!!!

The Beatles (1968)

The White Album... what to make of this sprawling landscape of the most diverse range of music to ever converge onto one title???? MAGNIFICENT is a good word!

I remember I was 17 years old when my Mother bought me this for Xmas. It was 1988 and it came with white vinyl!!! I had known a few of the more famous songs but had not heard the others.... it was a shock when I first heard it I must say! But very quickly it became an absolute favourite for me too.... perhaps this IS my favourite album!!!

The opener 'Back in the USSR' is perhaps the greatest opener on ANY Beatle album... as the soaring jet takes off so does this album.... and then the jets takes us back down to the gorgeous, spine tingling sounds of 'Dear Prudence'.... Ah and then the 'BOMP, BOMP' and off it goes into 'Glass Onion'!!! This truly is a showcase of four men whose talent had just been realized and each of them are as cocky as the other and almost daring each other to top the next song. 'Ob-La-Di Ob-La-Da' I must confess is a mind blower... so easily dismissed as 'soft' but LISTEN to what is going on in this song??? Add to that the humourous / frustrated additions from John and George to Paul's last verse and this song just works!!!

The raucous 'Why Don't We Do It In The Road', the heavy 'Helter Skelter', the tender paean to 'Julia', the wacky 'Rocky Raccoon', the classy 'While My Guitar Gently Weeps', the angry 'Yer Blues', the mini-suite 'Happiness Is A Warm Gun' to the call for 'Revolution', the pro-civil rights, 'Blackbird', the social comment of 'Piggies' and the closer 'Goodnight' that I must point out that I was CONVINCED for years this was a Paul song sung by Paul... hell, I then find out it was a John song sung by Ringo!!! That's what The White Album was about, it turned all of The Beatles conventions upside down and what came out was ANOTHER direction for The Beatles and ANOTHER major victory of creativity!

Can I add that 'Long, Long, Long' is perhaps THE most underrated song in The Beatle's catalogue!!! This song personifies tenderness and grace in the one breath! Oh and one other.... Is 'I'm So Tired' the first palindromic song??? Listen to it!!! It convinces you that you are tired!!!! BRILLIANT!!!

PS... The cover??? Only The Beatles knew how to top the glorious Sgt. Pepper cover didn't they? Plain white with 'The Beatles' embossed into the cover. Again, it's only the magic of The Beatles who could turn a plain white cover into something so iconic...

And I also really need to point out again the joy it must have been to be a member of the record buying public back in the day... this 30 song masterpiece came hot on the heels of perhaps their best single, 'Hey Jude' back with the fast version of 'Revolution'.... WOW!!!

Magical Mystery Tour (1967)

The American record distributors certainly carved up those early Beatle records and 'destroyed' the 'art' of what The Beatles were presenting to the rest of the world. However, in the case of Magical Mystery Tour, they actually augmented the Beatle catalogue by turning an outstanding Double EP into an incredible album that today is ACCEPTED as an album in The Beatles' catalogue.

Rounding up the 1967 singles ('Hello Goodbye', 'Strawberry Fields Forever', 'Penny Lane', 'Baby You're A Rich Man' and 'All You Need Is Love') with the excellent EP tracks makes an all-time classic album! How good is 'Hello Goodbye' by the way? Just an impossibly infectious song that is PURE pop genius and one of those effortless Paul songs that has SO much going on in it.

Of the EP tracks, 'I Am The Walrus' has ALWAYS been in my Top 5!!! It is a sprawling epic of a song that perhaps sums up what the 'Psychedelic Summer' was all about. The strings, the drums, the lyrics (oh those crazy lyrics) and the dramatic changes of key and mood that make this John song truly unique. Can you think of any other song that is similar to this??? The gorgeous 'The Fool On The Hill' is another example of Paul's effortless ability to create beautiful melodies that just stick in your head long after you hear it. Strangely, I think this song is 'overlooked' far too often. This would be any other band's masterpiece if they were able to record something of this quality! Oh and I also need to mention 'Your Mother Should Know'... A dance hall type number that has an INCREDIBLE piano riff that drives your feet crazy!