Beatles '65--A Moneymaker at the Expense of the Beatles

Beatles '65 is another one of those American releases that were cobbled together by Capitol Records from the British albums, various singles, and just about anything else the company could come up with to fill up an album (If you don't believe me, check out the American versions of Help! and A Hard Day's Night--Capitol shamelessly included instrumental material on these albums just to have enough tracks to call them albums). The bottom line of all these machinations isn't complicated--Capitol Records wanted to make profits, and since they had The Beatles under contract, the company could do just about anything it wanted to with the American releases, even at the expense of compromising the artistic integrity which was inherent in the structure of many of the British albums.

Beatles '65 might be Capitol's worst crime--eight of the eleven tracks on the album were taken from Beatles For Sale, while A Hard Day's Night is relieved of one song. The other two tunes were the A and B sides of a single that was wildly successful both in America and Great Britain (at least the A side was). I guess because eight of the album's tracks were lifted from one British release makes me view this as Capitol's most blatant commercial rip-off.

And the rip-off doesn't end there--there's the not-so-small matter of artistic freedom. The Beatles carefully thought out the order of their songs on their British albums. Remember how you anticipated the gorgeous acapella opening of Nowhere Man after the frivolous You Won't See Me on Rubber Soul? On the album A Hard Day's Night, could any other song logically follow Lennon's harmonica romp on I Should Have Known Better than the restrained, elegant If I Fell? See what I mean? All that is thrown to the wind on Capitol's American releases.

Enough of my rant--here's the low down on the tracks on Beatles '65.

Four covers show up on this album--The Beatles show their rockabilly influences by covering Honey Don't and Everybody's Trying To Be My Baby, two of Carl Perkins' biggest tunes, while Chuck Berry gets a tip of the hat with John Lennon's interpretation of Rock And Roll Music. I've never understand the fourth cover, Mr. Moonlight, originally done by an obscure group called Dr. Feelgood and The Interns. I've never heard the original version, but The Beatles camp it up pretty well with faux sincere vocals and a soap opera organ solo.

No Reply and I'll Follow The Sun are acoustic songs, the former a rocker and the latter an interesting ballad featuring a somewhat self-centered attitude by Paul McCartney. I'm A Loser is a lament about the weight of fame that hints at the attitudes expressed in Carry That Weight off of Abbey Road, while Baby's In Black operates around a neat play on words with the lyric "baby's in black and I'm feeling blue". The laconic but optimistic I'll Be Back is the lone track taken from the British version of A Hard Day's Night.

I Feel Fine was the A side of the single that I referred to, and it reached No.1 on the charts if I recall correctly. I've always remembered this song because John Lennon said it was the first instance of feedback being recorded. The B side, She's A Woman, features yanked, clipped guitar chords and some great vocal gymnastics by Paul McCartney.

Should you buy Beatles '65? If you have the entire catalogue of The Beatles, there's no need--you've got all the songs, on one album or another. Personally, I did buy it when it was wax (almost forty years ago!) but I wouldn't buy it now, simply to protest record company gluttony.

Thanks for reading.