BEATLES Arizona State University
Unit 1: In the Beginning (1958 - 1963)
Lecture 9: With the Beatles
, Audio Lecture
Featured Songs
• "All My Loving"
• "Please Mr. Postman"
• "Roll Over Beethoven"
• "I Wanna Be Your Man"
• "Money (That's What I Want)"
Clip:
The Beatles' next album, entitled "With The Beatles". The band's intent was to release two albums
and four double-backed singles each year. It was pretty exhausting that they maintained this
recording schedule 365. But unlike "Please Please Me", "With The Beatles" was recorded over 3
months during the time they were on tour. A grueling schedule to be sure, so they were ducking it
out of the studio to record this album.
When they hit the charts in the United Kingdom, it stayed 50 weeks on the charts, the longest by
any artist. And "With The Beatles" was the second album to sell a million copies in Britain. The first
had been "South Pacific". But in perspective, 2% of the British population bought this record. In the
US, the equivalent was "Meet The Beatles", which excluded 5 tracks and added 3 others. So "With
The Beatles" was recorded between July 18th and October 23rd of 1963.
The album itself is basically a representation of Paul on bass, John on rhythm guitar, George on lead
guitar, Ringo on drums, but yet some new studio technology. The newest option: double-tracking
their vocals, singing a melody and singing along with it using both tracks. John liked this, and they
use that trick or musical gimmick quite often from this point on.
Cover of the album is interesting: it's a shot of all four Beatles shot in black turtlenecks, but it's a
shaded photo with the left side of their faces in shade and right side in light. Actually, Astrid
Kircher, Stewart's girlfriend, did create a photo like this, but this photo itself is very unique and sets
a tone for The Beatles. Grillo Marcus, great American writer says: "Meet The Beatles" is joyous,
pertinent, absurd, arrogant, detergent innocent and tough. And the album itself is interesting
because they choose a variety of different sources for their songs: many originals, as you can
imagine, and George gets some in himself, and covers songs of Smokey Robinson, Chuck Berry,
Motown songs, even "Till There Was You", which was written by Meredith Wilson. Paul sings that,
and it appeared first in "The Music Man" years and years earlier.