#35 With The Beatles by The Beatles

With this review I hereby touch upon the first of this list’s great leviathans. I say this because With The Beatles stands as the first of seven inclusions, with the only other acts matching this being David Bowie, Neil Young and Bob Dylan. While this may be very impressive, and these acts have undeniably been a huge influence on music as we now know it, I have a bit of a bugbear with how modern day reviewers act around them. On some review sites, not naming names, it appears as though the complete Beatles catalogue are given a 100% rating which to me just appears suspect. This is especially since in reviews of this album they note gaping flaws in it and yet still give it a 5 star rating. While being critical about 40 year old albums may appear to an exercise in futileity it would be constructive to talk about these albums without the kit-gloves, which is what I try to do. That isn’t to say though that With The Beatles isn’t a good album, as it is, but it still has flaws and no matter how many seeds of future greatness that I can see, where there are many, those alone shouldn’t guarantee it a 10/10 rating for me.

In such a fashion I am going to start with what I deem to be the great flaws of the album. This is, namely, the sheer number of covers. This may seem unfair for most artists in this era tended to produce albums with a large number of standards on there. There are exceptions to this rule, such as Fats Domino and Dave Brubeck, but if you look at the linear notes to most of the albums I have reviewed there are not many albums where a quarter (or more) of the tracks are original compositions. While in the case of Ella Fitzgerald this was fair enough as she was a great interpreter with an amazing voice this is not true for The Beatles.

On With The Beatles there is an exact 1:1 ratio original songs to covers and, sadly, it is very easy to discern which are which. Apart from Please Mr. Postman, which I think is a brilliant interpretation, these covers all fall a bit flat. The worst offender to me being Smokey Robinson’s You’ve Really Got A Hold On Me and Roll Over Beethoven where the arrangements and harmonies are jarring and as such do not really work. As such a lot of these just end up sounding derivative and forgettable.

However, when the Beatles are singing their own material you can not flaw them. Their songs are filled with spirit and the promise of what is to come. Whether it be the opener It Won’t Be Long or I Wanna Be Your Man you can really see what is to come in their future as no longer feel the need to pepper future albums with covers. The main highlight of this album for me though is Don’t Bother Me, the obligatory sole track written by George Harrison. This, to me, could be one of the best tracks I have yet heard by the Beatles as while it may not be the most complex of their songs it is one of musical simplicity and emotionality that just works really well. It also does a rather back-handed service by bolstering up the contrast between the opening four original tracks and the first of the covers. Almost like the Beatles saying in the opening ‘this is who we will be’ then saying ‘this is what we have to be to gain our creative freedom’

In the end it is easy to damn rather than praise and this review doesn’t exactly give equal footing to both sides, something which is hard to do. This may cause the rating to be a surprising one but, all things considered, this is a very good offering.

7.5/10

Fab Four:
It Won’t Be Long
Don’t Bother Me
Please Mr. Postman
I Wanna Be Your Man