By early 1970, “unalbumized” Beatle tracks had once again piled up, and once his negotiations with Capitol had been finalized, new “manager” Allen Klein took the opportunity to put together a quickie release that served the same purpose as such old collections as Something New and Beatles VI. Originally called The Beatles Again, the new album was immediately renamed Hey Jude in honor of the first song on side two. Amazingly, this was the first Capitol LP availability of “Can’t Buy Me Love” and “I Should Have Known Better” from nearly six years earlier; those fresh-faced nuggets open the program. The bulk of the remaining tracks are singles from 1968 and 1969 that fit better with the rather dour-looking contemporary cover photos from what turned out to be their last official photo sessions as a band. “Paperback Writer” and “Rain”, being from the middle period, still connect seamlessly with the later material, providing a bridge from the early innocent days to the period of experimentation. The album definitely rocks, from those 1964 and 1966 singles to “Lady Madonna”, “Revolution”, “Don’t Let Me Down”, George’s unfairly overlooked “Old Brown Shoe”, and even “The Ballad Of John And Yoko”.
As a mop-up collection, it did the trick, collecting various recent singles unlikely to appear on the mutating Get Back/Let It Be album, which was due within a few months. Yet there were still a few unique tracks scattered throughout the boys’ career that would stay uncollected for some time yet. The odd selections notwithstanding, Hey Jude became another popular title, leading to its eventual British LP release in the late ‘70s. But while a similarly offhand compilation like Magical Mystery Tour sat comfortably in CD racks between Sgt. Pepper and the White Album for 25 years, Hey Jude was ignored as a separate entity, and sat on the wish list for many American consumers until the “U.S. Albums” rollout in 2014. (In the meantime, for those wishing to compile their own, all but the two 1964 recordings were included on Past Masters Volume Two.)
The Beatles Hey Jude (1970)—5
UK CD equivalent: A Hard Day’s Night/Past Masters
The only reason that this is less a ripoff than most of the Capitol albums is that the songs were mixed into stereo. I believe that these mixes carried over to “Past Masters”. I don’t think that it scores a 5 as an album because there’s no sonic continuity. The first four songs don’t fit in at all with the rest.
ReplyDeleteStrictly looking at the music, I don’t think that it’s a 5 as a collection, either. It gets docked a point just for “The Ballad of John and Yoko”. While I like “Old Brown Shoe”, “Don’t Let Me Down” and “I Should Have Known Better” a lot more, they aren’t quite 5 level. Everything else rules.
They do look quite uncomfortable in the album photos. I believe there were better shots from the session that they could have used.
When I started going to the junior high dances, it took the girls months to convince me to dance to the fast songs. But NO WAY was I going to dance to a slow song! Finally, at one dance, the DJ cued up the title track. Beverly Davis dragged me on to the floor semi-against my will. She then said to me, “Do you know that this song is seven minutes long?” I was horrified! I had to DANCE to a SLOW SONG for SEVEN MINUTES with a GIRL!! Well.. it actually was OK. Thanks, Beverly, wherever you are. And, thanks, Paul.
The songs make the album great for me, and as whiplashy as they are, they're still the Beatles.
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