1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die: 40. The Beatles – With The Beatles (1963)

 

Forty albums in, and we finally get to a British group. And somehow I suspect there’ll be more Beatles to come. This is their second album, but the first to include actual original material from the powerhouse Lennon/McCartney output plus a bit of Harrison.  

And there are still a few covers, of rock and roll and R&B classics such as Chuck Berry’s Roll Over Beethoven, Smokey Robinson’s You Really Got a Hold on Me, and The Marvellettes’ Mr Postman. For me, the Marvelletes' version is still the best one, Gladys Horton’s vocals really catching the emotions of the song rather than making it simply a poppy number. That said, Lennon’s voice has a raspy soulful edge that works, but the song just seems better if the singer is a girl abandoned by her sweetheart (there’s an interpretation that he’s MIA in a war but the track was written after Korea and before Vietnam). 

Anyway. As far as I could tell the only original composition that really made it big is All My Loving, although the others are pretty good; the opening track It Won’t Be Long sounding like a more sophisticated variant of She Loves You. It’s the covers that have lasted, especially McCartney’s gentle rendition of Til There Was You. 

Listening to this, and getting a sense of its place in history, one thing the Beatles did is to take what would have been Motown girl group hits (e.g. the aforementioned Mr Postman) but do them as four guys. And between Lennon, McCartney, and Harrison, they produce glorious harmonies. Each one has pretty good range, and a different timbre that works well when combined. John’s slight rasp, Paul’s high and smooth, George’s slightly more nasal tones, combined with the twinned guitars, gives a very distinctive sound that can be upbeat and lively or slow and romantic as the music dictates. 

I don’t think even the most ardent Beatles fan would claim that this was their best album, but it does show a step on them becoming confident in their own right as composers as well as performers.  

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