#38 The Beatles- Beatles For Sale

Out of stock: The Beatles take their first backward step on a record with plenty of songwriting charms lurking in dark corners…

(Parlophone)

Released: 4^th December 1964

Producer: George Martin

Topped the chart:

13^th December 1964 (for 7 weeks)

21^st February 1965 (for 1 week)

25^th April 1965 (for 3 weeks)

Eleven weeks total

Biggest selling album of 1964

Once again it’s hard to avoid the cliches of Bealtes discourse when reviewing albums of this period. If one weren’t so concerned with finding their new things to say, one might avoid pointing out that this is often found languishing at the bottom of Beatles album rankings, finding the band strapped for ideas and running out a steam. But, you’ve heard it all before, so we won’t say it.

However, from that wonderful Robert Freeman cover photo onward, there’s a weary bleakness to the record; this is clearly not an album the Beatles were thrilled to be making at the end of their worldwide fame year. Despite that, behind the autumnal emotions and disparaging comments later made by producer George Martin, there is a lot that feels different under the surface of this one.

Musically, where the first three albums are labradors excitedly bounding up to meet you at the door Beatles for Sale is more like a slightly depressed cat who couldn’t give a toss who was there. Creatively drained, For Sale returns to the well of Hamburg and Cavern Club covers, while the songwriting is much darker and obsessive in nature.

John Lennon’s creativity and penmanship are particularly strong for the time, even if modern standards of decency may pose questions. The poor lamb can’t have been in a good headspace at the time, but we get some wonderful fruits from his malaise. The opening trio of No Reply, I’m a Loser and Baby’s in Black are gloriously miserable in their lyrics, concerning stalking, self-hatred and the pains of a grieving woman not allowing him to get his leg over respectively. All three are full of the casual misogyny of an unwillingly married man in 1964, from the they’re-all-out-to-get-me of “I should have known she would win in the end” (I’m a Loser) to the more troubling of “I know where you’ve been” and “I saw you peep through your window” (No Reply).

Musically, this is where Bob Dylan’s enormous influence over Lennon starts to tell. Dylan always preferred the political or the poetically obscure over the nakedly personal lyrics of I’m a Loser, but it does mark a switch in the harmonica sound from the early to Beatles singles to something closer to Dylan’s own sloppier style, while the strummed acoustic chords have more than a little of The Freewheelin’… about them (stayed tuned for more on that particular record…)

More impressive in this trio is the sense of drama that each brings to ramp up intensity. On Loser, the folkier verses give way to bolder choruses where McCartney’s harmonising vocals add drive to the song, while No Reply employs a similar trick in its choral backing vocals in the middle eight, as Lennon’s intensity in the line, “If I were YOU,” almost makes you feel the finger being thrust into the chest of the audience. Perhaps best of all buried deep on side B is Every Little Thing, another possessive Lennon number with blasts of timpani on the chorus to really ram home the point. Lyrically these songs may feel a little distasteful to modern eyes, but there’s no doubt that Lennon commits.

Very much still the junior partner in songwriting iz McCartney. Though he often adds a little twist to the Lennon song arrangements, his own songs are conspicuous by their absence and just don’t match up. Chronically low on material, McCartney reached back to his earliest songwriting efforts for I’ll Follow the Sun, a pretty tune that evaporates faster than Angel Delight passing through a centrifugal force upon its hearing. What You’re Doing carries a little more weight thanks to some chewy chord changes in the chorus and Lennon-like accusatory lyrics, but it’s not going to appear on anyone’s 100 favourite Paul McCartney Beatles songs. Better things were on the horizon for McCartney the following year.

And then there’s the covers, the biggest sign of the desperate spot the band found themselves in creatively. Covers on the first two records had been of variable quality, but at least some of them found something uniquely Beatles in their rearrangements. None present here are essential to the cannon There are nice moments- George Martin piano-battering on Chuck Berry’s Rock and Roll Music, an energising vocal from McCartney on his version of Little Richard’s Kansas City/Hey-Hey-Hey-Hey mashup. Generally, though, they oscillate between carbon copy (the aforementioned Berry, Buddy Holly’s Words of Love) to pulping all the goodness out of the originals via overproduction (that leaden-footed Hammond organ on Dr Feelgood’s Mr Moonlight, Carl Perkins’ Everybody’s Trying to be My Baby being doubletracked into oblivion).

Despite the misery and the dark corners, Beatles for Sale is a pleasant album to revisit, albeit one that finds its creators on the backfoot. This is a record that is every bit of its time as Sgt Pepper without ever defining its era in the way that record days. It’s the most ephemeral LP that The Beatles would make, but greatness was around the corner:1965 would end very differently indeed for the Fab Four.

Score: 6/10

Track listing:

SIDE A

1.      No Reply

2.      I’m a Loser

3.      Baby’s In Black

4.      Rock and Roll Music

5.      I’ll Follow the Sun

6.      Mr Moonlight

7.      Kansas City/Hey-Hey-Hey-Hey

SIDE B

8.      Eight Days a Week

9.      Words of Love

10.  Honey Don’t

11.  Every Little Thing

12.  I Don’t Want to Spoil the Party

13.  What You’re Doing

14.  Everybody’s Trying to Be My Baby