The Beatles UK singles: A sides v B Sides

Excellent point.

 

What? I thought you wanted "Soily" played at your funeral!

 

Yesterday...

 

There really is no competition here, one is a good Buck Owen's country number with great characterful lyrics, and the other is arguably the biggest song in pop music.

Despite being overplayed, I feel (maybe because of when I was born) that the song still sounds fresh. It is one of the greatest ballads of all time IMO, and the recorded version is very beautiful. It is easy to forget how great a song it is. The string arrangement is an absolutely perfect and tasteful accompaniment to Paul's fantastic vocal. This song is an absolute classic and another major leap in terms of the Beatles songwriting. No rock and roll band had ever done anything quite like this before. As far as I am concerned, it is a perfect pop ballad and fully deserving of the status that it has, it is simply perfection.

Of course Act Naturally cannot compete, but that does not make it bad and it is still a great B-Side. I personally do like the Beatles country/bluegrass experiments (I've Just Seen A Face is a favourite of mine and I also really like Don't Pass Me By, a great catchy little song) so I have nothing against this. I feel that it perfectly matched Ringo's voice and personality and it was a great live number for him to sing. He actually sings very well as far as I am concerned.

So Yesterday has to win, but Act Naturally is a catchy and fun song, which Ringo sang very well. I don't think that you could find a better cover for him to sing.

 

ARGGHHH.......... That's what I want!!!

Has to be the B-side of the single 'Maybe I'm Amazed' though; (from, WOA... and by sheer coincidence, that's exactly the side of the album I've got on the turntable right now...!) Used to play that to death when I was a kid!

 

...all my troubles seemed so far away

 

Could not agree more...I'm trying to, but I'm afraid the above expresses my views perfectly.

 

I am glad that someone agrees with me.

 

I disagree with that statement.... Arnie

 

Damn it.

 

When I first heard Act Naturally when I picked up Yesterday & Today at age 4-5, all I could think about when I heard it was the Curious George book where he goest to Hollywood and gets to star in a movie about a monkey living wild in the jungle.

Nonetheless, I vote for Yesterday.

After decades of considering it schmaltz cause it didn't rock and had strings, I came around to truly loving it. A beautiful song and arrangement. Particularly like the counterpoint between the vocal melody and the bass notes played on the guitar.

And nothing brings it home like going through a divorce and having it become the favorite song of your 4-5 year old child in the process.

 

Am I jumping the gun by going to the UK release of "Help!/I'm Down"?
If so, apologies, but "Help!" was the watershed single for me. What I mean is, I suddenly went from buying the odd single and E.P., to an actual album. I have to point out that in 1965, when I was nineteen, a full-price album cost more than half of my weekly income.
So "Help!", the album, was my complete surrender to the Beatles. While waiting for the next album, I bought all the previous albums (and got seriously into debt).
So the album and the single of "Help!" are among my most vivid memories of my early life! The Beatles suddenly became the centre of my universe. They opened my ears and my mind to all types of music.
One small criticism of the "Help!" album: they should have put "I'm Down" as the last track instead of "Dizzie Miss Lizzie"!

 

YES!!! If you are feeling sufficiently masochistic you can go through my past posts and find me saying this several times...you are obviously--in a word, ahem--brilliant. Isn't it just the perfect ending? It would have that transcendent Beatle weirdness for album-closing that later became something of a trademark. Sigh. I'd also swap out a couple others for some of the session extras like "Yes It Is"--anyway, Help! for me is the first New Phase Beatle Opus, not Rubber Soul--they just didn't completely assemble it as such...but the sessions reveal The Truth.

 

I agree, but I actually see Beatles For Sale, Help! and Rubber Soul as a triptych of folk/country albums, each more advanced than the next. The jump between A Hard Days Night and For Sale is in my mind the bigger than between For Sale and Help! and Help! and Rubber Soul, at least stylistically, because AHDN also has fantastic songwriting, just not in the folk/country style.

 

Beatles For Sale is the big leap forward for me as well - if they'd had time to write more originals it would have been much better.

 

Totally agree about For Sale. It embodies some kind of eerie jump in whatever they were doing with A Hard Day's Night--which was nothing less than utterly exhausting the potential of a certain kind of pop sensibility--the definition of Classic. All it lacks is more L-M originals...and there were some around that I dearly wish they'd used themselves. Paul was FAR TOO GENEROUS in giving away "I don't Want to See You Again", for example. I wait for the day to hear Paul's demo for that gem--I've a strong feeling P&G walked all over his verse melody there...although the bridge seems McCartney-true....

 

Ticket To Ride from the LP HELP Capitol Full Dimensional Stereo version.

 

The "New"direction after A Hard Days Night was in the last track on the LP, I'll Be Back. It wasn't a rocker or happy love song like the rest of the album. First to appear in the folk rock vein.

 

They did this with Revolver as well - with TNK pointing towards Sgt Pepper / psychedelia.

 

I kind of agree about those 3 albums, although some of the songs from the June 1964 sessions that ended up on Side 2 of AHDN were going in that folk/country direction - I'll Cry Instead, Things We Said Today, I'll Be Back.

 

Middle of July here. It rained most of August 1965 in Liverpool. Ask anyone. I was trapped in Woolworth's by floods. Crazy.

 

Floods in Liverpool? You needed Help! indeed. Arnie.

 

And so on. Very rare, floods in Liverpool.