February's Album of the Month: Meet the Beatles

Well, here it is... the big bang! The very source from which all I love about music is drawn; ladies and gentlemen: The Beatles! This month will be the 50th anniversary of the Beatles' appearance on Ed Sullivan and what was, quite possibly, the most significant event in popular music in the second half of the Twentieth-Century... hell, I'll just say it, the most significant event in popular music in the  entire Twentieth-Century.  So, in honor of that, this month's album of the month will be the band's breakthrough album in the US, Meet the Beatles.

Meet the Beatles is not my favorite Beatles album (that would be Rubber Soul); it's not even my favorite early Beatles album (that would be A Hard Day's Night) but, in terms of what it represents in terms of cultural impact, it is perhaps their most important album. Until very recently, I actually didn't own this album--- at least not in a hard copy form.  My parents were not Beatlemaniacs, so I grew up with the Beatles on CD and the CD releases were the original UK versions of the albums and, in the UK, Meet the Beatles did not exists.... well, sort of.

Meet the Beatles is actually the American version of their second album, With the Beatles.  However, there are a few significant changes that make the American version the more compelling musical artifact.  First of all, the album was stripped of all of its early rock and Motown covers (Chuck Berry's "Roll Over Beethoven", "Please Mr. Postman", "Money (That's What I Want)", "Devil in her Heart").  This left Broadway ballad, "Til There Was You", as the only unoriginal work on the album.  Then, the one-two punch of "I Want to Hold Your Hand" and "I Saw Her Standing There" were inserted as the album's opening assault (which were the A and B side respectively of the band's first big stateside hit).

The result was an album composed almost entirely of original numbers (and, in the case, of "Til There Was You" a very original arrangement) that was perfect for showcasing just how the band was already redefining popular music. All but one of these originals was, of course, the product of the Lennon/McCartney songwriting team that, over the next 6 years, would produce nearly 200 songs (the album also features George Harrison's first songwriting effort "Don't Bother Me"). The liner notes to the original album state, "It isn't rhythm and blues. It isn't exactly rock 'n' roll. It's their own special sound, or, as group leader Lennon puts it, 'Our music is just --- well, our music' ".   And that, very succinctly, sums up the importance of what the Beatles were doing musically, even very early on; they took everything from the popular music of the previous decade, Rock 'N' Roll, Country and Western, Motown, Soul, Doo-Wop, Rhythm and Blues, traditional Pop and Jazz, and the fused it into their own unique sound.  They had the guitars from rock and roll, the vocal harmonies of the Motown and soul groups, the rhythm of rhythm and blues, and the song writing chops of  the great pop songsmiths.  The result was they didn't quite sound like anything else that had come before.  Sure, one track might evoke the Everly Brothers, another Little Richard or Buddy Holly, but rarely did anyone bring all of these styles together. It was a sound that would come to define what popular music would sound like over the next couple of decades.


Admittedly, they hadn't quite perfected their early sound yet (that would come a little later in the year on A Hard Day's Night) but the first hints are here.  And there is no more obvious example of this than "I Want to Hold Your Hand", the band's first truly great record.  It's opening guitar assault is pure rock, with a romantic pop middle eight and chorus that soars to the heavens. It might very well be the most important two and a half minutes in pop music history. And then, to follow that with "I Saw Her Standing There", a barn burner whose opening line is "She was just seventeen and you know what I mean"... Seriously? How did they get away with that in 1964?

This was, of course, just the opening salvo in what would become a full frontal assault of British rock bands over the next few years: The Kinks, The Who, The Stones.  Then, there would be the counter assault: countless American garage bands, Dylan would go electric.  Suddenly, it wasn't Rock 'N' Roll anymore it was just simply Rock, and it was upon that rock that I have built the foundations of my own musical preferences.  And, in the end, it can all be traced back to this moment and this band--- at the end of the day, what is this album?  It is a collection of catchy, electric guitar driven Pop and, more than anything else, that will always be the music that I love more than anything.

Key Tracks: ALL OF THEM!  ... but especially "I Want to Hold Your Hand", "I Saw Her Standing There", "All My Loving" "It Won't Be Long", "All I've Got To Do", "This Boy"