All Music Guide
The Beatles 22 officially approved singles (that is, not counting North American oddities such as the Vee Jay, Tollie, and Swan releases and pieces like "Roll Over Beethoven"/"Misery", "Roll Over Beethoven"/"Please Mr. Postman" etc.), A and Bsides, are all assembled together here on just as many CD platters, in packaging recreating their picturesleeve art it might not be the most efficient way to play or hear the music, but for collectors, music history buffs, or 60's pop culture enthusiasts, the array of music and images is fascinating. The sheer quality of the material here is also amazing to contemplate anew and appreciate in detail; it wasn't that there weren't acts other than the Beatles, before or after, that delivered singles that were as good or even better than they did: Big Joe Turner, Howlin' Wolf, Bill Haley, Elvis Presley, Buddy Holly, the Beach Boys, the Rolling Stones, the Dave Clark Five, the Hollies, the Byrds, and Creedence Clearwater Revival all qualify, but the 2...2 times (and actually more than 22, as some of these were doublesided hits, such as "Day Tripper" b/w "Nowwhere Man") the Beatles scored with a record intended for AM radio is prodigious and downright astonishing; whatever the merits of individual songs, their juxtaoposition every few weeks or months across more than seven years represent a level of quality that completely altered listener expectations and buying habits, and permanently tranformed the playing field for rock stardom.It's also fascinating to listen as their songwriting and production, and the sensibilities behind them, evolve across their first four years of recording from 1962 thru 1966, even as the medium itself the 45 rpm record recedes in importance, due in large part to their own parallel work generating LPs. From "Love Me Do", a suitably commercial if relatively unambitious record, to "Please Please Me" a record of almost blinding intensity in its own time represented an immense leap in the weeks ending 1962 and those opening 1963, and luckily for music the latter became their benchmark, rather than a fluke in their output. Even the advances on the Bsides are astonishing, as the band jumps from "P.S. I Love You", a pleasant Moon/June rhyming ballad distinguished mostly by its production and harmonization, through the slightly more subtle and complex "Ask Me Why" to the driving "Thank You Girl", all in five months, the latter strong enough to have been a firstrate single in the preBeatles era, is notable and revelatory. For those coming in late on this show, the other amazing aspect of this side of their work, which is seldom mentioned anymore, is that every song here, from the beginning to the end, A and Bsides alike, is an original by the members of the band, all but two by Lennon and McCartney. And by the time one gets to 1964, and releases like "A Hard Day's Night" and "I Feel Fine", they're generating new instrumental sounds in their opening bars of their singles as well as their own rock 'n' roll standards ("She's A Woman"). The material, for reasons best understood by the producers, isn't assembled in chronological order, but that's easily rectified by the listener, assuming one wishes to. By 1966, they've reached a crossroads, generating ornate, dazzling rock 'n' roll ("Paperback Writer") and about to leave the latter behind in favor of the highly produced "Penny Lane" b/w "Strawberry Fields Forever", "Hello Goodbye" b/w "I Am The Walrus", and "All You Need Is Love" b/w "Baby You're A Rich Man". Across the rest of the band's history, the 45 rpm single was secondary to their main efforts, but they still generated a pair of poprock classics ("Lady Madonna", "Hey Jude") specific to the format, and kept their hand in, even amid the distintegration of the group, with a few personal statements ("The Ballad of John and Yoko") and one classic ballad ("Something") thrown in. The art on their picturesleeves was sophisticated for its day as, from the beginning, their manager Brian Epstein and then the group members concerned themselves with how they were presented by 1966 they were no longer casting themselves as kids, and briefly relied on some cool instrument shots, as though to bid farewell to their era as a performing band; after "Paperback Writer" the studio was their instrument, and one that proved impossible to emulate on stage. Watching them evolve in image is also fascinating, from boys testing the limits of established conventions in look, to young men making their own image, opening the way for the more daring efforts in this direction generated by the Rolling Stones et al and cease to look like the group they were, even as they cease to sound like the Beatles, so much as like John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison et al. Read more Less
