Originally published in millennium pop, Volume II, Issue 1, Winter 1995
Too little too late but nothing to snort at, Live at the BBC captures the Beatles in the act of defining themselves. The group's live appearances on British radio between 1962 and 1966 have been on collectors' short lists of unpublished Beatle wonders since they were first resurrected over ten years ago. Beginning back when manager Brian Epstein began pounding London pavement in search of a recording deal, these tracks stake a claim in rock mythology equal to that of Bob Dylan's Basement Tapes (recorded in 1967, released in 1975) or Elvis Presley's comeback television special in 1968 (available as One Night With You on video). All these projects tell secrets about these performers that are central to their greatness-Dylan's cockeyed take on the early American west; or Presley's inspired notion of how to rock into middle age.
The 56 tracks included on these two discs, interspersed with gaggles of between-song chatter, trace Lennon and McCartney's distinct vocal development, the seeds of their songwriting partnership, and the way these four instrumentalists learned to play off each others' strengths to create an unparalleled ensemble. Paradoxically, these tracks also show how the Beatles elevated the idea of covering other peoples' songs into an act of self-definition, a glossary of their own taste and aspirations, a bildungsroman of song. The Band's Moondog Matinee, Guns'n' Roses' The Spaghetti Incident, and the current spate of best-selling tribute albums are all direct descendants of the Beatles' impulse to absorb, imitate, and expand on their models. To hear the Beatles perform before they were signed provides the most accurate picture of the band's character before Epstein tailored the act for television. Live and unvarnished (and rolling about giggling on the bathroom floor, as host Brian Matthews remembers), the Beatles made music as great as they would ever record in the studio.
On the other hand, the BBC and Capitol have contrived to make this two-disc release (clocking in at 2 hours, 13 minutes, and 40 seconds) an unnecessarily frugal sampling of the vast selection available. The rival nine-CD set (a 1992 bootleg) from Italy's underground Great Dane, The Complete BBC Sessions, lasts well over ten hours. The major-label defense: sound fidelity, which is poppycock. Although some of the digitally cleaned-up sound here is wonderful, sound quality is hardly what makes the collection as a whole so appealing. This music has already won over skeptics through hundreds of low-quality vinyl pressings. The supposedly superior quality of the paltry "official" selection doesn't justify cheating fans out of even more revelatory material that's been making the bootleg rounds for 20 years.
Granted, Capitol seems to take pains to irritate Beatle fans, whether it's putting out the right thing in the wrong format (the first four CDs in mono only), or the right thing in the wrong packaging (Rock'n'Roll, 1976), the wrong thing period (Love Songs, 1977), or the wrong thing done wrong twice over (The Beatles/1962-66 and The Beatles/1967-69, a.k.a. the red and blue collections, released as two CDs each when the material could easily fit on one long-playing review apiece). Can't wait to see how they muck up the Hollywood Bowl CD, if and when it ever does appear.
The Beatles elevated the idea of covering other peoples' songs
into an act of self-definition.
Even a "testing the waters" defense doesn't jibe with the enormous sales potential of this material, which has certainly made Capitol stockholders happy: The package debuted at number three, spent three weeks in the Top Ten during the Christmas spree, and remained in the top 40 for over six weeks. That makes Live at the BBC an anomaly in pop history: What other 30-year-old collection of covers ever did as well? (Natalie Cole dueting with her dead dad doesn't count.) Capitol can rest comfortably in the knowledge that Live at the BBC will head straight to Classic Hits radio without passing go, where it risks being calcified beyond recognition by being drummed into our heads ad nauseam. The bottom line is: If Frank Sinatra's Duets II can spar with the Eagles' Hell Freezes Over in the Top Ten, the Beatles, the most successful act in the history of show business, can afford to be true to their beginnings. Why not give their audience as many CDs as the recent Temptations or Miracles sets on Motown (four and five discs respectively), or two separate packages so people can spread out their purchases?
The explanation seems depressingly obvious: The remaining ex-Beatles have started heeding the dreaded bean-counting suits they once charmed into submission-presumably out of greed and hearing loss. Otherwise, how explain the trial balloon Paul McCartney floated last year suggesting the Beatles stage a three-quarter reunion? Or why, even though the public groaned, he joined Harrison and Starr to lay tracks over an unfinished Lennon demo called "Free Like a Bird," using Lennon's voice. (Yoko Ono provided the working tape her husband left behind.) The new sessions will be used for an autobiographical film called The Long and Winding Road, bumped back (again) for release in late 1995. The only voice of sanity comes from longtime Beatle producer George Martin, who also oversaw the digital remastering of this BBC material; Martin has given a thumbs down to both the reunion idea and its results so far.
All this notwithstanding, how does the "official" version of the Beatles' formative history stack up? Quite well, in spite of everything, as usual. They were a generous and combustible live act before worldwide Beatlemania began stirring their creative juices. And they knew more than a thing or two about how songs are put together before Martin began suggesting arrangements. And though it's long been known that the Beatles had exceptional taste in cover material, what Live at the BBC reveals is just how abiding that taste was, and how fiercely they embraced rock history (at that point, barely a decade old) before anybody took notice. Even with the omissions, this song sequence presents a pretty balanced picture of how the Beatles defined rock style: as a mixture of rhythm and blues (Arthur Alexander), catchy guitar riffs (Chuck Berry), campy belters (Little Richard), novelty items ("The Honeymoon Song"), and more rockabilly and country than you'd guess (the Harrison-sung Carl Perkins number "Everybody's Trying to Be My Baby," Buddy Holly's "Crying, Waiting, Hoping," as well as the early Lennon-McCartney duet on Perkins's "Sure to Fall").
The Beatles' quest to be original led to ingenious theft. Take their affection for girl group material, which they held in at least as much esteem as they did Elvis Presley or Buddy Holly. They start by completely reimagining the tacky gender roles in songs by the Shirelles and the Cookies. Manhandling Little Eva's "Keep Your Hands Off My Baby," Lennon bites into some possessive girl-talk and spits out an insecure macho threat. In the Shirelles' "Baby It's You," instead of a woman pleading to a man, he reverses the emotional tone from one of shivering feminine dependence to shuddering male vulnerability. When they get to the second verse ("You should hear what they say about you. . . . "), Paul and George chirp "Cheat-cheat," which lends the original Shirelles' gesture an early twinge of Lennonesque paranoia. Sung by men, the sha-la-la-las lilting behind the lead vocal turn precociously liberated and subversive. Like the sound of football players making baby goo-goo sounds, these nonsense words pitched in character behind the singer jack up the camaraderie already alive in the playing.
Everything included on Live at the BBC points to numbers left behind, and conceals the more wide-reaching sources the Beatles heard in rock'n'roll. On their set list in this period were such gems as Roy Orbison's "Dream Baby," which McCartney turned in at their very first BBC session in 1962. Other missing essentials include Carl Perkins's "Lend Me Your Comb," a bouncy duet from John and Paul, and the Coasters' "Three Cool Cats," a song that shows how self-consciously they were developing their group identity (recorded twice but never broadcast by the BBC, it's easiest to find on bootlegs of their Decca audition tape). With its totemic vocal climaxes, "Twist and Shout" would emerge as their ensemble signature, but only after they test-drove many alternatives.
Granted, Capitol seems to take pains to irritate Beatle fans. . . .
Still, some important songwriting characteristics peak through: Lennon's swelling frustration in the bridge of "To Know Her Is to Love Her" sounds like a scrimmage for "I'll Get You." In the only Everly Brothers cover they ever released, "So How Come (No One Loves Me)," they show just how ineffable the Lennon-McCartney vocal duets promised to be. And included here for the first time is "I'll Be On My Way," an early Lennon-McCartney ditty that could be the Everlies singing Buddy Holly. (The key missing early rocker in their catalogue, even more intimidating to them than Presley, is Jerry Lee Lewis. We know Lennon sang "Fools Like Me," and McCartney did "High School Confidential," but not for the ages.)
The different things Lennon and McCartney heard in their favorite rock stylists dramatized their conflicting ideas about rock'n'roll. McCartney idolized Little Richard. Lennon admired Chuck Berry's way with tight narratives, and heard in Berry's candid swagger an emotional directness that answered Richard's showmanship.
So the cultural significance of John Lennon singing "Johnny B. Goode" is considerable. To Lennon, the song's hero isn't as freighted with the racial baggage that Chuck Berry slyly concealed (some read this fable as a shadow biography of Elvis Presley, or a fantasy of Berry's own story had he been white). To Lennon, "Johnny B. Goode" was the Everyman statement: Lurking inside these enviable American heros with their rock'n'roll soundtrack, there was a universal impulse waiting to be tapped. The sound was open enough for a Brit like Lennon to identify with, apply to his experience, and sing back to Americans as his own. (British rock hopefuls identified with how much noise American black musicians had to make to get noticed, never mind respected, in the pop music world.) What we hear in retrospect is the man who wrote "Don't Let Me Down" singing a bar-band staple (talk about a song with legs). But at the time, "Johnny B. Goode" signalled how much the Beatles heard for themselves in this music, and how far they felt rock'n'roll would take them.
Program your CD to sequence all the Lennon Chuck Berry covers, and you'll be hard pressed to argue that Lennon wasn't Berry's best interpreter. "Too Much Monkey Business," "Carol," "Johnny B. Goode," "Memphis, Tennessee" on disc one; and "Sweet Little Sixteen," "Rock and Roll Music," and "I Got to Find My Baby" on disc two. ("Johnny B. Goode" seguing into "Memphis, Tennessee" may be this collection's high point.)
You can't help noticing how McCartney was often at his most
vigorous
when singing about money.
For Lennon's summary of how rock's jealousy, obsessiveness, and left-field humor could quickly turn callous, try this sequence: On disc one: the Ray Charles-cum-Elvis Presley "I Got a Woman"; Goffin-King's "Keep Your Hands Off My Baby" (originally done by Little Eva); Arthur Alexander's "A Shot of Rhythm and Blues"; obscure (except to Liverpool) Ritchie Barrett's "Some Other Guy"; the Shirelles' "Baby It's You"; Arthur Alexander's "Soldier of Love"; another Presley number, "I'm Gonna Sit Right Down and Cry Over You"; Smokey Robinson and the Miracles' "You Really Got a Hold On Me"; Phil Spector's "To Know Her Is to Love Her" (originally done by Spector's Teddy Bears); and on disc two: the Johnny Burnett Trio's "Lonesome Tears in My Eyes," and Larry Williams's "Dizzy Miss Lizzie" and "Slow Down." With these tracks in your ears, the insecurity that seeps from numbers like "I'm a Loser" begins to make a lot more sense. Since he probably knew that Spector's "To Know Him Is to Love Him" was engraved on Spector's father's tombstone, could Lennon be singing that emotional black hole of a bridge in "To Know Her Is to Love Her" to . . . Julia? Stu?
Stringing together a tape sequence also lets you concentrate on McCartney's better side and avoid the tired ritual of "Till There Was You" and "A Taste of Honey." Where Lennon heard humor, verbal acrobatics, and point-of-view tricks in Chuck Berry's writing, McCartney heard pure release in Little Richard (even if it doesn't sound as if he knew what a transvestite was): On disc one, Paul sings Presley's "That's All Right [Mama]," The Jodimars' obscure-but-great "Clarabella," Little Richard's "Long Tall Sally," and "Lucille"; on disc two, Chan Romero's "The Hippy Hippy Shake," Little Richard's medleyized "Kansas City/Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey!" as well as Richard's "Ooh! My Soul." McCartney's impressive vocal yammer on these songs makes it clear why Lennon teamed up with him in the first place-for his chainsaw wail. (For a cassette that collects these tracks, follow this sequence: Chuck Berry-CD 1: 5-16-29-30; CD 2: 10, 21, 29; Lennon's emotional footsteps: CD 1: 4-6-9-11-14-17-20-23-24; CD 2: 12-23-33; McCartney's sequence-CD 1: 15-19-26-31; CD 2: 14-24-30.)
In fact, the best song sprint on these two CDs comes when these competing rock idealists go head-to-head trading favorites at the end of disc one, beginning with "You Really Got a Hold On Me" (Lennon), "To Know Her Is To Love Her" (Lennon), "Long Tall Sally" (McCartney), "I Saw Her Standing There" (McCartney), "Johnny B. Goode" (Lennon), "Memphis, Tennessee" (Lennon), "Lucille" (McCartney), and ending with the full-blown writerly confidence of "Can't Buy Me Love." Theirs is an argument between musical personalities that ping-pongs vehemence and desire, anger and exaltation, abandonment and fulfillment-with a nod to Tin Pan Alley ("The Honeymoon Song," "Till There Was You"). (Of course, this is the debate rock'n'roll has had with itself ever since.) Lennon preferred singing about characters, McCartney always seemed to be playing a character-a habit he can't seem to shake. (And you can't help noticing how McCartney was often at his most vigorous singing about money, as in "Ooh My Soul": "Honey, honey, honey, honey, honey/Give me some of that money, whew!")
Ringo tugs the reins against the band's momentum,
creating a
backlog of energy that swells hard against his imposing rhythmic spine.
These jarring contrasts-from breathtaking excitement to jittery self-scrutiny to music hall sentimentality-sum up the inclusive Beatle formula. Add a streak of country and western and rockabilly (something they're not famous for but plenty adept at), and you have the total Beatle embrace. For the hick touch they turn to George, who's perfect for the awkward narrator of the Lieber-Stoller-Pomus song, "Young Blood," the other Coasters' ensemble piece. His best moment is the Presley cover, "I Forgot to Remember to Forget," in which he embodies a sheepish teen almost too well. Missing is Harrison's droll streak through "The Sheik of Araby," a cover of a 1961 Joe Brown and the Bruvvers track, which would have rounded out his character. (Harrison excelled at tilted declamations of insecurity, a quality he revived disarmingly by trotting out Bob Dylan's "Absolutely Sweet Marie" at the Dylan 30th Anniversary Concert in 1992.)
All of which is essentially old news-except for Ringo. There's more to be learned here about Ringo than about any other member of the band. Live at the BBC should forever clear Ringo's name as the luckiest man in rock and position him as one of the most underrated musicians of all time. The Beatles did three appearances on the BBC in 1962 when the strapping but standard-issue Pete Best was still backing them up. "Sadly, no quality recording exists of this or their other three broadcasts of 1962," BBC producer Kevin Howlett writes in his liner notes. Note the evasive word "quality." These tapes are available and were voted down. The qualities Ringo brought to the party, however, should hereafter be inarguable. He was breaking himself in as the Beatles' locomotive, and on each of these tracks, he proves himself a rhythmic wonder crucial to the developing Beatle sound. Acutely attuned to the nuances in Lennon and McCartney's songs as they began pouring out, Ringo combined a controlled rhythmic drive with a keen sensitivity to each number's overall shape and hidden detail. He was a developing songwriter's dream. Underrated because they're invisible, his drum parts meld into songs as neatly as the composed retransitions and rhythm guitar fixtures.
Listen to "Thank You Girl," done in front of a live audience in June 1963, and known then as the B-side to the brand new "From Me to You" single. Just as the band finds its groove and leans into one of its early songwriting peaks, Ringo holds back just slightly where lesser drummers would push; he pulls back for tautness instead of shoving ahead (you can even hear Ringo steady the others' energies on the intro). This withheld energy adds an extra stream of tension into the sound. Song after song, Ringo tugs the reins against the band's momentum, creating a backlog of energy that swells hard against his imposing rhythmic spine. On the heels of "Some Other Guy," from the same live spot, this toughened version of "Thank You Girl" blasts its more charming studio counterpart wide open.
And when Ringo takes his breaks on "Ticket to Ride" in May 1965, nothing he does simply repeats what he had already recorded brilliantly. Not only is each verse-closing drum break varied, he alters each one subtly from version to version--he deliberately drags his fills behind the bar, and his anticipations are often simply breakneck silences (just after the brief post-bridge guitar solos) that pack even more tension than his fleet, irresistible double-stick rolls.
Live at the BBC also reveals the hitherto underestimated importance of the BBC to the Beatles' early success. You can't dub the Beeb conservationist, since many of these tapes weren't even saved in its vaults. (Luckily, there were plenty of fans with reel-to-reel tapes of the original broadcasts who were willing to contribute.) But Howlett was the man to collect them: He'd already helped out with the 1982 radio special from which most of us taped this material for the first time, and wrote the definitive account of the proceedings in The Beatles at the Beeb, 1962-65 (Pierian Press, 1983). The BBC's crucial contribution was in leaping ahead of the recording concerns in 1962 and broadcasting the Beatles live before they were signed by a record label. This surely helped the group build a visible fan base that attracted producers like George Martin at a critical time in their development.
Because it's likely to stand as the only legitimately released snapshot from this period, for most fans Live at the BBC will provide the best glimpse of the Beatles' early repertoire, and the most persuasive explanation of why they returned to these songs in early 1969 as they tried to rebuild their crumbling monument. The Let It Be sessions may be the most bootlegged rock tapes in the catalogue, but they don't come close to conveying what the Beatles were seeking in this music-the heights they'd scaled a mere seven years earlier. No wonder they turned to this material as a release from the petty bickering and business animosity that had, by then, obscured their collective vision. What you hear on these BBC tapes is immediate, direct, and unselfconscious, a sense of how alive rock could be in the moment before the world caught on to what these four voracious fans were up to.
For the Beatles, playing this music was more than a primer in rock history, it was an acting out of how much rock'n'roll had to teach. Even their contemporaneous selections (like the Shirelles' "Boys," which Ringo sings with paradoxical conviction; or Smokey Robinson's "You've Really Got a Hold On Me") testify to how far the music could be taken. (The coda of "Love Me Do" at the end of this set is an odd anticlimax to a string of revelations.) Rock'n'roll had not only reached across the Atlantic and seized the imaginations of grammar school Teds, it had taught two promising young songwriters how to compose, and three self-taught guitarists and a replacement drummer how to divine a band. The idea is exciting enough-the sound is even better.
Copyright © 1995 - 1997 millennium pop