Beatles
With The Beatles

THE REVIEW

Given the recent Beatles revival thanks to Lucio on debaser, I feel obligated to share my thoughts on what is often considered the most popular and, in the opinion of many, the greatest pop band of the 20th century. I am focusing on the second effort of the Liverpool quartet, the "With The Beatles" album, which in my opinion can justifiably be considered a cohesive unit alongside their first album, "Please Please Me". In fact, these albums were released just a few months apart and have a similar structure: fourteen concise pop gems, with the majority being Lennon & McCartney originals, a handful of rock 'n' roll covers, minimal space for George Harrison (a maximum of two songs per album), and possibly a spot for Ringo Starr (see "I Wanna Be Your Man," offered somewhat unenthusiastically by Lennon).

It is incredible, I reiterate, to see the homogeneity of these two works, the same intensity of gems and missteps, novelty and naivete. But it’s useful to break through the barrier of the judgments surrounding these 28 songs. Critics, understandably, began to take the Beatles seriously as artists from "A Hard Day's Night" onward, which is indeed the band’s first absolute masterpiece. Moreover, we all know the incredible results the Fab Four achieved with their subsequent albums. A Sgt. Pepper would overshadow anyone's career, even a Rubber Soul; but this takes nothing away from the beauty of these first two works. We often imagine these early Beatles as young boys still fresh and trying to make it as a teen band. In reality, they had significantly paid their dues with a year and a half of playing nights at clubs in Hamburg (where they unfortunately even had to befriend Mino Reitano...), as well as dozens of auditions and hundreds of performances back home. As described by their former drummer, Pete Best, this seemingly unripe group once behind their instruments became a "charismatic powerhouse,” ready for any type of performance. The only limit the quartet might still have lacked was the creative maturity of the years to come, which is nonetheless starting to be shaped here. It is unsustainable, as many claim, that these Beatles were merely adapting to the current trend, because they themselves were defining the merseybeat trend, although everything in these songs suggests how much they wished to escape any definition.

In just over half an hour, you can go from listening to the pop perfection of the McCartney-like "All My Loving" or "Hold Me Tight" (how many times must Supergrass have heard it?) to the rage of father-to-be Lennon, arrogant and exuberant in "It Won't Be Long" or "Little Child" (not yet softened and slowed by LSD) or to the fragile and sensitive Harrison, memorable in both "Don't Bother Me", the most acidic and unusual song on the album, and an emotional "Roll Over Beethoven", where intimidated by the recordings he hesitates on chords he may have rehearsed hundreds of times. And there is also the already mentioned charming attempt to launch Ringo as a lead vocalist for a song: how many bands would (have) give/given this opportunity to their drummer?

Lennon & McCartney are not interested in becoming the best in a pre-existing genre but rather attempt to conglomerate all prior musical experiences (in "Till There Was You" McCartney even attempts a Broadway-Latin style cover!) into a new kind of music - future pop - with the sole goal of driving the masses wild, getting them to sing and dance, sigh and dream. Lyrics are still not a concern, serving simply as fillers with the exclusive function of accompanying the instrumental part. This does not make them banal or limping, but rather superficial and smoothed over with too much sentimentality. But those were different times, after all, the Beatles had not yet arrived...