Why Do People Hate Mr. Moonlight by the Beatles?

To me, the opening vocal only highlights how pedestrian the rest of "Mr. Moonlight" is.

And I agree about "Dizzy Miss Lizzie", it doesn't sound of a piece with the rest of Help!

 

Okay, but you're still discounting the fact that many Beatles fans dislike "Mr. Moonlight". The idea that only an outright Beatles-hater could dislike "Mr. Moonlight" seems supremely silly.

 

wasn't the matchbox / slow down etc. ep from thist period ? (not really familiar with the us albums) also great performances... and the carl perkins covers... and "rock and roll music" ...
i think mr. moonlight is not that bad, i would put it on a par with "a taste of honey", but for beatles standards it is not that good.. they should have put one of the songs from the ep

 

I love The Beatles but there was always a few clunkers at the beginning...my little list
Anna (Go To Him)
Chains
P.S. I Love You
If I Fell

 

Dizzy Miss Lizzie- ROCKS

 

I love it, the song, John's vocal and I love the organ.

 

Me a Beatle hater? yeah, ok. Again, the organ. Don't like the tone, sound, just........BLAH>>>>>>

 

Why was Kitten left off out of interest?

 

I've never hated it, but I think it's the arrangement that lets it down. If only they'd used the arrangement they used on the live Hamburg recordings, it'd probably have given 'Leave My Kitten Alone' a run for it's money. Do I need to point out - for the several hundredth time - that 'Beatles For Sale' has always been one of my favourite Fabs albums?. I'll take it over 'Sgt. Pepper' any day.

 

That's a question that has needed asking for a LONG time. As far as I know, no interviewer has ever asked that one.

 

The EP had been recorded at the same time of the A Hard Day's Night album, and released in June 1964. So those four songs had been on sale for six months by the time Beatles For Sale was issued.
Putting out old recordings may have been OK for Capitol but Parlophone stopped doing that with Please Please Me.

No one knows, but it's significant that the recording was never even mixed down in 1964, and John Lennon never asked to hear it played back. It seems The Beatles felt they hadn't got a good take.
By May 1965 they'd either forgotten about it or hated it, going to the trouble of recording two new covers (Dizzy Miss Lizzie and Bad Boy) for Capitol's upcoming new album Beatles VI instead of dusting off the similar Leave My Kitten Alone instead.

 

I love Bad Boy - my first Beatles album was Oldies But Goldies and I always felt Bad Boy held amongst the other classics

 

I don't hate it. And in fact The Beatles liked it well enough to use it as an opener on some of their prefame shows.

 

The organ thing is revisionism. In 64 that was not a cheesy organ sound. It's just that after 1972 you almost never heard an organ that didn't run through a leslie. Yes i think it sounds cheesy too but not enough to make me hate the song. I do like the Anthology take more though.

 

It's an O.K. song / performance... but the organ solo has got to be the worst solo the Beatles ever recorded!

Yes, they were faithful to the original solo, but they made variations on other songs they covered, improving them... why not on this one?

.

 

Funny, I had a dream last night where I was looking through used Beatles LPs and found an Apple pressing of Beatles '65 where "Mr. Moonlight" had been removed from the album.

 

The 'squares' always need to be told what to like. You obviously have a good ear and a mind of your own.

 

I dislike most of BFS.

 

People don't like it because they read somewhere along the way that they weren't supposed to like it and that it was bad and thus the sheep follow as instructed. The same goes with the Beatles For Sale album as a whole. George Martin was like, "Oh, they went into a slump" or something and that plants the seed. There ain't a damn thing wrong with this song, or this record. I play "Beatles For Sale" more often than most other Beatle albums. It reeks of 1964 Beatlemania, and the McCartney/Lennon vocal blend was never sweeter. The original Beatle material on For Sale shows continued growth and mastery of the craft. The covers are tasteful and mostly long-standing elements of The Beatles stage show, thus historically significant. Mr. Moonlight's diabolical organ solo sounds like a deranged circus troupe of jugglers and clowns trotting through the middle of the recording. The percussion sounds like raw hamburger being thrown against a brick wall in a Liverpool alley. Lennon's vocal commitment is unwavering and borderline psychotic. McCartney's flat-lining counterpoint provides the perfect balance as we totter between mania and slumber. The song, and the album as a whole, is a work of art from start to finish, housed in a stylish and creative gatefold sleeve. The Beatle projectile consistently moves upward until 1967. "Beatles for Sale" is not a dip in quality, just as "Mr. Moonlight" is not a misfire nor error in judgement, it is another step forward from "A Hard Days Night". Anyone who fails to comprehend these simple truths should be taken to Room 101 and have a sack of rats put over their head until they accept.

 

I don't hate anything, per se, but the song is just lame. It was done better by others, in my opinion.

 

They were pushed too hard. It was not possible with the schedule they were keeping (albums, singles, concerts, tv appearances) to fill out this album with all killer material. It is incredible that they did just that on most every other album. And it is still the greatest testament to Rubber Soul. Does the White Album have more great material than Rubber Soul? Yes. But it was recorded over several months. Rubber Soul was written and recorded in a few weeks!

 

They should have ended help with Yesterday, and relegated Lizzie to a B-side or EP. It really does not fit at all.

 

Nicely put!

 

It's also a very performable song too - great fun to play, as I've done on many an occasion through the years.
Now, if "Blue Jay Way" was anyone else's song but a Beatles song, that's certainly a song one that no-one would be discussing all these years later, never mind Mr Moonlight! (some interesting production ideas perhaps, but a lousy song IMO).

 

With all due respect for how we all perceive music in our own way, to be honest I could never even in my weirdest state of mind would I hear the song this way. Cool description though. I would love to see your take on Helter Skelter.