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Beatles for Sale was the Beatles' fourth album, released in late 1964 and produced by George Martin for Parlophone. This album marked a minor turning point in the Beatles' style towards darker and more sombre songs following the highly successful and bright A Hard Day's Night. Exhausted by their relentless recording and performing schedule, the Beatles chose to return to the inclusion of a number of cover versions in Beatles for Sale.

Beatles for Sale and its counterpart in the United States, Beatles '65, both reached number one on the charts in their respective countries, with the former taking over from A Hard Day's Night in the United Kingdom. Beatles '65 became the fastest selling album of the year in the United States.

Writing and recording

When Beatles for Sale was being recorded, Beatlemania was just past its peak; in early 1964, the Beatles had made waves with their television appearances in the United States, sparking unprecedented demand for their records. Beatles for Sale was the Beatles' fourth album in 21 months, and followed on the heels of several tours. Beatles producer George Martin recalled: "They were rather war-weary during Beatles For Sale. One must remember that they'd been battered like mad throughout '64, and much of '63. Success is a wonderful thing, but it is very, very tiring." Even the prolific John Lennon/Paul McCartney songwriting team couldn't keep up with the demand for their songs, and as a result the band resorted to recording several cover versions for the album, which had been the band's mode of operation for their first albums but which had been abandoned in favor of the all-original Hard Day's Night. The final album included no less than six covers, the most for any Beatles album except their debut.

Beatles for Sale featured eight Lennon and McCartney works as well as six cover versions. At this stage in their collaboration, Lennon and McCartney's songwriting was highly collaborative; even where songs had a primary author the other would often contribute key parts, as with "No Reply" where McCartney provided a middle-eight for what was otherwise almost entirely a Lennon song.

In 1994, McCartney described the songwriting process he and Lennon went through: "We would normally be rung a couple of weeks before the recording session and they'd say, 'We're recording in a month's time and you've got a week off before the recordings to write some stuff.' . . . So I'd go out to John's every day for the week, and the rest of the time was just time off. We always wrote a song a day, whatever happened we always wrote a song a day... Mostly it was me getting out of London, to John's rather nice, comfortable Weybridge house near the golf course... So John and I would sit down, and by then it might be one or two o'clock, and by four or five o'clock we'd be done."

The recording of Beatles for Sale took place at Abbey Road Studios. The Beatles had to share the studio with classical musicians, as McCartney would relate in 1988: "These days you go to a recording studio and you tend to see other groups, other musicians . . . you'd see classical sessions going on in 'number one.' We were always asked to turn down because a classical piano was being recorded in 'number one' and they could hear us."

The original songs

The opening three tracks, "No Reply", "I'm A Loser" and "Baby's In Black", are sometimes referred to as the "Lennon Trilogy", as Lennon was the chief writer of all three tracks. Unusually for pop music, each one has a sad or resentful emotion attached to it. This opening sequence set the sombre overall mood of the album, revisited in another Lennon tune, "I Don't Want to Spoil the Party", which concerns the singer's disappointment that his girl did not show up at the party he is attending; in 1974, Lennon called the song "very personal".

According to Lennon in 1972, the Beatles' music publisher, Dick James was quite pleased with "No Reply": "I remember Dick James coming up to me after we did this one and saying, 'You're getting better now — that was a complete story.' Apparently, before that, he thought my songs wandered off. " The "story" of "No Reply" is about the singer's bitterness regarding his girlfriend's not answering the phone, as she is involved with "another man".

In 1994, McCartney referred to Lennon's "I'm A Loser", in which the singer relates the trials and tribulations of his life and cautions the listener to avoid them, as "pretty brave".

Although "Baby's In Black", which was about a girl's longing for her now missing boyfriend, was mostly Lennon's work, it was written in the same room with McCartney, who contributed a harmony to it, as he recounted in 1994: "We wanted to write something a little bit darker, bluesy... Sometimes the harmony that I was writing in sympathy to John's melody would take over and become a stronger melody... When people wrote out the music score they would ask, 'Which one is the melody?' because it was co-written that you could actually take either. We rather liked this one."

The dark theme of the album was balanced by McCartney's "Every Little Thing", a happy and light pop tune about the singer's joy when he is with his girl that appears later in the album, had been written as an attempt for a single, according to McCartney: "'Every Little Thing,' like most of the stuff I did, was my attempt at the next single... but it became an album filler rather than the great almighty single. It didn't have quite what was required."

Other McCartney songs on the album included the subdued ballad "I'll Follow The Sun" in which the singer tries to reassure the listener about his inevitable departure, as well as the rocker "What You're Doing" that implored the singer's girl to "stop your lying", and the U.S. number-one pop hit "Eight Days A Week". Although these songs are well-regarded by fans, they were regarded negatively by their creators; McCartney dismissed "What You're Doing" as " bit of filler... You sometimes start a song and hope the best will arrive by the time you get to the chorus, but sometimes that's all you get, and I suspect this was one of them. Maybe it's a better recording than it is a song...", while Lennon referred to "Eight Days A Week" in a 1980 interview with Playboy magazine as "lousy". "Eight Days A Week" is noteworthy in that the song begins with a fade-in as a counterpoint to pop songs which end in a fade-out.

"I'll Follow the Sun" was a reworking of an old song; it had originally been written when McCartney was a youth, as he related in 1988: "I wrote that in my front parlour in Forthlin Road. I was about 16. . .I seem to remember writing it just after I'd had the flu... I remember standing in the parlour looking out through lace curtains of the window and writing that one. We had this hard R&B image in Liverpool, so I think songs like 'I'll Follow The Sun,' ballads like that, got pushed back to later."

In 1972, Lennon revealed that "Eight Days A Week", which asks if the singer's lover reciprocates his love for her, had been made with the goal of being the theme song for the Help! movie: I think we wrote this when we were trying to write the title song for 'Help!' because there was at one time the thought of calling the film, 'Eight Arms To Hold You.'"

By prior agreement, all songs written by either McCartney or Lennon were credited to "Lennon/McCartney".

The covers

The remainder of the album consisted of cover versions, several of which had been staples of the Beatles' live shows years earlier. The band, which in the previous year had grown weary of performing for screaming, uncritical audiences, somewhat cynically viewed the inclusion of covers as an easy way to fill out the disc. Even the album title was a sly reference to their awareness of the album (and by extension the entire Beatles output) as "product".

However even in a somewhat weakened state the Beatles created an album regarded as only slightly removed from their finest work; as often happened the cover versions on the album, including Chuck Berry's "Rock and Roll Music", Buddy Holly's "Words of Love", and two Carl Perkins tunes ("Everybody's Trying to Be My Baby", sung by George Harrison, and "Honey Don't", sung by Ringo Starr) eventually became equally or better regarded than the original versions. However, some regarded "Mr Moonlight", which speaks to "Mr Moonlight", who brought the singer love, and begs for his return, as one of the Beatles' weakest cover versions.

The recording of the medley of "Kansas City" and "Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey" was memorable for McCartney, who in 1984 stated that it required "a great deal of nerve to just jump up and scream like an idiot". His efforts were egged on by Lennon, who "would go, 'Come on! You can sing it better than that, man! Come on, come on! Really throw it!'" The song was inspired by Little Richard who combined "Kansas City" with his own composition "Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey". The original LP sleeve listed the song as "Kansas City" (Leiber & Stoller). After the attorneys for Venice Music did their job, the record label was corrected to read "Medley: (a) Kansas City (Leiber/Stoller) (P)1964 Macmelodies Ltd./KPM. (b) Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey (Penniman) Venice Mus. Ltd. (P)1964"

The release

Beatles for Sale was released in the United Kingdom on December 4, 1964. On December 12, it began a 46-week long run in the charts, and a week later knocked A Hard Day's Night off the top of the charts. After seven weeks, the album's time at the top seemed over, but Beatles for Sale made a comeback on February 27, 1965, by dethroning the Rolling Stones and returning to the top spot for a week. The album's run in the charts was not complete either; on March 7, 1987, almost 23 years after its original release, Beatles for Sale reentered the charts briefly for a period of two weeks.

The album design

The downbeat mood of the songs on Beatles for Sale was also featured prominently on the album cover, showing the unsmiling, weary-looking Beatles in an autumn scene photographed at Hyde Park, London. The inner sleeve showed the Beatles standing in front of a montage of photos, which has been suggested by some as the source of inspiration for the cover of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.

The sleeve notes featured an observation by Derek Taylor on what the album would mean to people of the future: "There's priceless history between these covers. When, in a generation or so, a radioactive, cigar-smoking child, picnicking on Saturn, asks you what the Beatle affair was all about, don't try to explain all about the long hair and the screams! Just play them a few tracks from this album and he'll probably understand. The kids of AD2000 will draw from the music much the same sense of well being and warmth as we do today."

American release

The United States version was retitled Beatles '65, and omitted the tracks "Kansas City/Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey", "Eight Days A Week", "Words Of Love", "Every Little Thing", "I Don't Want To Spoil The Party" and "What You're Doing". In turn, it added the track "I'll Be Back" from the British release of A Hard Day's Night, and the single "I Feel Fine" / "She's A Woman". The six tracks that were omitted were finally released in America on Beatles VI in 1965. Beatles 65 became the fastest-selling album of the year in the United States, shifting a million records in its first week alone.

Personnel

• George Harrison - Guitar, Drums, Vocals
• John Lennon - Guitar, Vocals
• Paul McCartney - Piano, Guitar (Bass), Organ (Hammond), Vocals
• Ringo Starr - Drums, Tambourine, Vocals, Tympani
• George Martin - Piano, Producer, Photography
• Robert Freeman - Photography
• Derek Taylor - Liner Notes

Track listing

Side one

1. "No Reply" (Lennon-McCartney)
2. "I'm a Loser" (Lennon-McCartney) SAMPLE (92k)
3. "Baby's in Black" (Lennon-McCartney)
4. "Rock and Roll Music" (Berry)
5. "I'll Follow the Sun" (Lennon-McCartney) SAMPLE (100k)
6. "Mr. Moonlight" (Johnson)
7. Medley:
   • "Kansas City" (Leiber-Stoller)
   • "Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey" (Penniman)

Side two

1. "Eight Days a Week" (Lennon-McCartney) SAMPLE (100k)
2. "Words of Love" (Holly)
3. "Honey Don't" (Perkins)
4. "Every Little Thing" (Lennon-McCartney)
5. "I Don't Want to Spoil the Party" (Lennon-McCartney)
6. "What You're Doing" (Lennon-McCartney)
7. "Everybody's Trying to Be My Baby" (Perkins)

References

• beatles-discography.com's UK albums page. Retrieved 25 January, 2005.
• beatles-discography.com's US albums page. Retrieved 25 January, 2005.
• The Beatles Ultimate Experience. Retrieved 25 January, 2005.

External link

• Album Lyrics

• The Beatles albums
• Rock albums
• 1964 albums
• Parlophone albums