Meet the Beatles or With the Beatles--What's the Difference?

Meet The Beatles was the first album released by The Beatles in the United States. This album was intended to correspond with the almost contemporaneous release of the British album, With The Beatles which in reality was the second British album (The first was Please Please Me, released in 1963). As has always been the case, the American releases of albums by The Beatles have always been a hodge-podge of songs from different albums, singles, and even sometimes (in the case of the American version of Help! ) instrumental interludes. Even though Meet The Beatles follows this formula to some degree, it's probably the most true to its British counterpart as any of Capitol-EMI's American releases.

The Beatles introduced the idea of a concept album, but they didn't really began following this formula until Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, although some might argue that Revolver was a programmed album of sorts. Their earliest albums didn't really rely on the artistic arrangement of the tracks, so Meet The Beatles does little, if any, damage to its British counterpart, With The Beatles. The fact that nine of the tracks on this album are lifted from With The Beatles doesn't hurt either.

Here's a list of the tracks on Meet The Beatles, along with the source of each song:

1. I Want To Hold Your Hand--Previously released as a single.
2. I Saw Her Standing There--From the British album Please Please Me.
3. This Boy--Previously released as a single.
4. It Won't Be Long--All remaining tracks taken from With The Beatles.
5. All I've Got To Do
6. All My Loving
7. Don't Bother Me
8. Little Child
9. Till There Was You
10. Hold Me Tight
11. I Wanna Be Your Man
12. Not A Second Time

Here are the songs that were on With The Beatles that didn't appear on Meet The Beatles--interestingly, all are covers:

1. Please Mr. Postman
2. Roll Over Beethoven
3. You Really Got A Hold On Me
4. Devil In Her Heart
5. Money

So What About The Music?

I Want To Hold Your Hand defines the essence of Beatlemania, almost as much as the "yeah, yeah, yeah" refrain of She Loves You--it's packed with energy, and Lennon's acoustic twelve-string interlude on the bridge actually increases the tension for its ultimate release. I Saw Her Standing There is a flat-out Paul McCartney rocker, while This Boy features gorgeous three-part block harmonies and an impassioned Lennon vocal outburst in the bridge. The acapella opening of It Won't Be Long is a brief taste of the incredible energy that follows, and All I've Got To Do is a Motown influenced tune that allows Lennon to wear his heart on his sleeve. All My Loving is a melodic rockabilly offering by McCartney that features some guitar work by George Harrison that was obviously inspired by his idol, Carl Perkins.

Don't Bother Me is one of George Harrison's earliest songwriting efforts, and its painful adolescence is apparent. Little Child is a Lennon harmonica romp, while Till There Was You points up the love of The Beatles for show music--it was written by Meredith Wilson in the Broadway musical The Music Man, and this version features some incredible classical-flamenco guitar work by a young George Harrison. Hold Me Tight is a piece of McCartney pop fluff, and I Wanna Be Your Man is a tune that Lennon and McCartney wrote for The Rolling Stones who later recorded it as a single (thanks to my friend, Woody_Goode for pointing this out), but it became the obligatory Ringo song on this album. Not A Second Time is one of the few early songs by The Beatles with a "dark" theme--this one is one of the first hints at Lennon's insecurities, and it's priceless, just for that reason.

Make no mistake--Meet The Beatles is not a part of the official Beatles catalogue, which I define as being all of their British releases. Still, for the reasons that I mentioned earlier, it differs very little from its British counterpart, and I can recommend it if you can't get With The Beatles. After all, how can you go wrong with music by the greatest band in the history of rock 'n roll music?