The Beatles – With The Beatles
OK, maybe this is a bit of a cheat, this isn’t an album of mine, it’s one of Jack’s which seems to have turned up on my shelves amongst all the recommending and house-moving he and I appear to take part in every few months or so. But finally I’ve arrived at The Beatles, who I loved feverishly as a teenager, and still are a kind of home in my head where I recognise and know and love.

I did a mini-study of The Beatles catalogue for my A level music, focusing on Sgt Pepper. Actually just writing this I feel rather excited and looking forward to all the Beatle albums yet to come. All the other CDs I’ve written about so far are ones that I own but don’t necessarily know or love as well as others. This seems to be the first clear run of adored music in my collection. As some-one wrote (who? Who?) the connection between amazing music and the letter “B” has never been adequately explained. But back to my A-level study…it managed to split Beatle History into two distinct phases; one where John Lennon dominated, and the other where Paul McCartney did. I adore Paul McCartney and always will; recorders and harpsichords go better in my head than harmonicas and blues. But I do love this album, which comes much more out of the boots & suits end of the Beatles repertoire.

The music’s so black and white…I don’t know if that’s subliminal reactions to the record cover, or memories of watching “A Hard Day’s Night”, which uses a few songs from this album as incidental music. George Harrison’s sole song for this album appears, and it’s such a strange mixture between quite Latino rhythm and a really plodding blues-y feel to it – his earlier songs (before the Indian influence really happened) weren’t that different from his later ones, there must be a connection between Vedic and Mississippi folk (“It’s all folk music ain’t it? I never heard a horse do it yet!”).

I think this album is 1963 (Oh no, the song “Little child, won’t you dance with me? I’m so sad and lonely, baby take a chance etc” – that wouldn’t pass these days…example#2 of the lonely and miserable singer stylings of this time…). I’m working with a very old lady at the minute, and as I only have horrifying experiences of old people in the past, I feel like I have nowhere to start. I’ve begun trying to imagine myself as her, and have worked out what year it would have been when she was my age 27. I think I worked out that she would have been 27 in 1963. I can’t imagine being my age and The Beatles being around, being the biggest hottest greatest fabbest (etc)…it’s hard to continue that train of thought because “Till there was you” appears, and a schmaltzy corner of my soul becomes terribly happy and overrides any kind of sociological thought in this matter. I think it’s the delay and the blues note between and of “in sweet fragrant meadows of dawn…and dew” that kills me. There’s something quite camp about the covers chosen, ditto Besame Mucho which I also love.

Quite a few covers on this album, Mr Postman, and I remember that “Money” and “You really got a hold on me” appear later on. There’s probably further thoughts about the ratio of covers to originals at this time in Beatle history – tours etc…but all the covers are so thoughtfully done. All the Beatle-lore of Mach Shau (so well known from many books and biopics in the crassest possible taste) clearly results in almost automatic brilliance. I picked up enough to see me through lesser pursuits of busking in Bolton and Manchester, and singing endless Dusty Springfield covers in that old Edinburgh sushi bar…

This album always surprises me because it’s very Rock & Roll (in the most traditional sense) and by the time I get through the first side (I knew this album first on vinyl – Therese had them all, dog-eared and fabulous – and I’d play them, limit myself to maybe two or three an evening and use the record player in the music room to sit on one of those mustard-yellow tatty armchairs wearing the headphones and read the front and back covers of the record sleeves endlessly) I’ve fallen in love with it via Roll over Beethoven. I suppose there’s something primitively satisfying (without wishing to sound condescending) in the simplicity, the call and response and the strict patterns that everyone knows, even if the lyrics are trite (and they are). There’s something pretty joyous (I must remember also that I’m really fond of 20-flight rock by Eddie Cochran, for the ridiculous story of the horny young man whose girlfriend lives on the top floor with a broken elevator, so by the time he’s climbed all the stairs he’s far too tired for sex and is increasingly exasperated but continues to make the climb) in it all.

Then it’s “You really got a hold on me”, which I used to sing with Sarah Falzon while we were waiting for the bus in the morning to Sharples High, swaying and clicking to a slow can-can outside Woolworth’s. It’s quite a sexy song really, thrown into sharp relief by the fucking DROSS (and I’m sorry but it’s true) of that stupid “I wanna be your man” (distrust anything that flouts mis-spelling as a positive feature). I’m sure this one is supposed to be The Beatles “do” the Rolling Stones. Sorry, but the Rolling Stones are fucking ridiculous. I’m firmly with the North on this one. Am tempted to skip. I last till the end, with that famous Aeolian cadence like good old Mahler’s song of the earth…oh lovely times.