Beatles For Sale - “An Excellent Eight Song EP”
Beatles For Sale is a frequently forgotten Beatles album. I think that’s a true shame because while it’s definitely not among The Beatles greatest albums, it does have it’s charms and I do believe it is worth taking a close listen to.
Particularly I think the 8 original Lennon/McCartney songs on the album are quite good (if not as good as the original songs on A Hard Day’s Night and Help!) What I really like about these songs is that they’ve got a certain connected feeling to them. I think these songs would work fantastically as an EP. In fact, I normally just skip all of the covers so that I listen to the album as if it were an 8 song EP.
Side one really starts off with a bang with John’s “No Reply,” “I’m A Loser,” & “Baby’s In Black.” These are three great songs and all of them have this dark introspective mood that ties the tracks together in a cohesive fashion.
I’m not a big fan of the covers on Beatles For Sale, unfortunately. Even more sadly is that they make up nearly half of the record (six of the fourteen tracks are cover songs.) The only covers that I have any patience for are Buddy Holly’s “Words of Love” and Chuck Berry’s “Rock and Roll Music” However even those two are not nearly as good as original Beatles songs.
The most famous of these Lennon and McCartney originals on this LP is probably “Eight Days A Week” which is a recording that both John and Paul dismissed and they never played it live. However despite that, it is a good tune. No, it is not among their greatest work, however it’s catchy and the fade-in is quite cool.
All of the songs on the album sound way better on the new remastered discs than they did on the previous 1980s CDs. I definitely recommend that you order The Beatles Remastered Stereo Box Set and The Beatles in Mono CD Box Set and give both the mono and stereo versions of the album a close listen before you go about your life.
I am definitely not claiming that the Remastered Beatles For Sale is going to be your new favorite album, but I do believe you will find that is far better than it’s reputation says it is. In my opinion it’s much better than With The Beatles.
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Tags: 1964, Album Review, The Beatles