Beatles For Sale Review – It’s Better Than It’s Reputation

Beatles For Sale (1964) is a frequently forgotten Beatles album. I think that’s a real shame because while it’s positively not among The Beatles best records, it does have it’s charms and I do think it is worth taking a good listen to.

Particularly I think the 8 original John/Paul songs on the album are very good (even if not quite as excellent as the original songs on Help! and A Hard Day’s Night) What really stands out about these eight originals is that they’ve got a cool connected feeling with them. I think these songs would work well 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 wonderfully with “No Reply,” “I’m A Loser,” & “Baby’s In Black.” These are three nice tracks and they all have a downcast mood that ties them together well.

I’m not a big fan of the covers on this album, unfortunately. Even more unfortunately is that the covers make up almost half of the album (six of the fourteen tracks are covers.) The sole covers that I have any patience for are “Words of Love” and “Rock and Roll Music” However even these are not nearly as good as the Lennon/McCartney originals.

The most famous of those Lennon and McCartney originals on the record is probably “Eight Days A Week” which is a song that both Lennon and McCartney dismissed and the band never played it live. But despite that, it’s a good tune. No, it isn’t among their best songs, however it is catchy and the fade-in opening is quite cool.

All of the songs on the album (covers and originals) sound far better on the new remastered CDs than they did on the previous 1980s CDs. I strongly recommend that you get The Beatles in Stereo Box Set and The Beatles Remastered Mono CD Box Set and give both the mono and stereo remastered versions of this album a thorough listen before you go about your life.

Harold Oliver Quesenberry plans on buying The Beatles Vinyl Remasters as soon as they come out. The vinyl LPs will likely come out individually and as a part of a Vinyl LP Box Set.

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