With the Beatles (Mono)

Track list

Side 1

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Side 2

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About

From Wikipedia:

With the Beatles is the second studio album by the English rock band the Beatles. It was released on 22 November 1963 on Parlophone, exactly eight months after the band’s debut Please Please Me. Produced by George Martin, the album features eight original compositions (seven by Lennon–McCartney and “Don’t Bother Me“, George Harrison’s first recorded solo composition and his first released on a Beatles album) and six covers (mostly of Motown, rock and roll, and R&B hits). The cover photograph was taken by the fashion photographer Robert Freeman and has since been mimicked by several music groups over the years. A different cover was used for the Australian release of the album, which the Beatles were displeased with.

In the United States, the album’s tracks were unevenly split over the group’s first two albums released on Capitol Records: Meet the Beatles! and The Beatles’ Second Album. It was also released in Canada under the name Beatlemania! With the Beatles. The album was ranked number 420 on Rolling Stone magazine’s list of The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time in 2003, and was included in Robert Dimery’s 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die. It was voted number 275 in Colin Larkin’s All Time Top 1000 Albums. It was rated the 29th greatest album in the book Paul Gambaccini Presents the Top 100 Albums. This book “canvassed a panel of experts in seven countries” to determine the greatest albums.

Recording

Unlike Please Please Me, the bulk of whose tracks (10 of the 14, excluding previously issued singles) were recorded in one day, With the Beatles was recorded over seven sessions across three months, from 18 July to 23 October. None of its 14 tracks were issued as singles in the UK. In between sessions, as Beatlemania took off across the UK, the group were busy with radio, TV, and live performances.

Packaging

Impressed with Robert Freeman’s black-and-white pictures of John Coltrane, Brian Epstein invited the photographer to create the cover image. George Harrison later said that, whereas the cover of Please Please Me had been “crap”, their second LP was “the beginning of us being actively involved in The Beatles’ artwork … the first one where we thought, ‘Hey, let’s get artistic.'” The group asked Freeman to take inspiration from pictures their friend Astrid Kirchherr had taken in Hamburg between 1960 and 1962, featuring the band members in half-shadow and not smiling. To achieve this result, on 22 August 1963, Freeman photographed them in a dark corridor of the Palace Court Hotel in Bournemouth, where the band were playing a summer residency at the local Gaumont Cinema. To fit the square format of the cover, he put Ringo Starr in the bottom right corner, “since he was the last to join the group. He was also the shortest”. Paul McCartney described the result as “very moody”, adding: “people think he must have worked at [it] forever and ever. But it was an hour. He sat down, took a couple of rolls, and he had it.” The original concept was to paint the picture from edge to edge, with no bleeding, title or artist credit – a concept that went against music industry practice and was immediately vetoed by EMI. The first album to carry an edge-to-edge cover was the Rolling Stones’ self-titled debut, released five months later. EMI also objected to the fact that the Beatles were not smiling; it was only after George Martin intervened, as head of Parlophone, that the cover portrait was approved. Freeman was paid £75 for his work, which was three times the fee first offered by EMI.

Music critic John Harris finds the cover most reminiscent of the photos Kirchherr took in Hamburg of Lennon, Harrison and Stuart Sutcliffe using the “half-lit technique” and says that, together with songs such as “Roll Over Beethoven” and “Money (That’s What I Want)”, With the Beatles thereby represents “a canny repackaging of their early ’60s incarnation: Hamburg shorn of Prellies and leather, and sold to their public as a mixture of accomplished rock ‘n’ roll and art-house cool”. Harris also sees the LP cover as a “watershed” design that encouraged other acts to eschew “the more cartoonish aspects of pop photography” and continued to exert an influence in the 1970s on covers such as those for Lou Reed’s Transformer, Patti Smith’s Horses and various punk rock albums.

EMI Australia did not receive the cover art, and used different shots of the band in a similar style to the black-and-white photograph on other releases. The Beatles were unaware of this until fans showed them the cover during their only Australian tour, and informed the EMI publicity staff that they were not pleased with the substitution.

Release and reception

The album became the first Beatles album released in North America when it was released in Canada on 25 November 1963 under the augmented title Beatlemania! With the Beatles, with additional text on the album cover, and issued only in mono at the time, catalogue number T 6051 (a stereo Canadian release would come in 1968, catalogue number ST 6051). For the United States release, the original running order of With the Beatles was unevenly split over the group’s first two Capitol albums: nine tracks were issued on Meet the Beatles! (the eight original compositions plus “Till There Was You“), while the remaining five songs, all cover versions, were placed on The Beatles’ Second Album.

The LP had advance orders of a half million and sold another half million by September 1965, making it the second album to sell a million copies in the United Kingdom, after the soundtrack to the 1958 film South Pacific. With the Beatles remained at the top of the charts for 21 weeks, displacing Please Please Me, so that the Beatles occupied the top spot for 51 consecutive weeks. It even reached number 11 in the “singles charts” (because at the time UK charts counted all records sold, regardless of format). No other group or singer has achieved 51 consecutive weeks at number 1 in the album charts. However, the soundtrack for the South Pacific movie did achieve 70 consecutive weeks at number one in the album charts.

On 26 February 1987, With the Beatles was officially released on compact disc (in mono only, catalogue number CDP 7 46436 2). Having been available only as an import in the US in the past, the album was also issued domestically in the US on LP and cassette on 21 July 1987. Along with the rest of the Beatles’ canon, it was re-released on CD in newly re-mastered stereo and mono versions on 9 September 2009. […]

Original Liner Notes from LP:

Fourteen freshly recorded titles – including many sure-fire stage-show favourites – are featured on the two generously filled sides of this record. The Beatles have repeated the successful formula which made their first ‘Please Please Me’ LP into the fastest-selling album of 1963. Again they have set eight of their own original compositions alongside a batch of ‘personal choice; pieces selected from the recording repertoires of the American R&B artists they admire most.

The first half of the session gets away to a rip-roarin’ start with John’s powerful treatment of IT WON’T BE LONG NOW. Two more Lennon/McCartney compositions follow with these two remarkably talented tunesmiths handling their own lyrics on ALL I’VE GOT TO DO and ALL MY LOVING. On the first slower number John takes the vocal lead with Paul supplying the harmony. On ALL MY LOVING Paul stands in the vocal spotlight with John and George chanting in the background. Listen to George’s superb, slightly Country and Western guitar solo, an intriguing feature of ALL MY LOVING.

DON’T BOTHER ME marks the disc debut of George Harrison as a composer. It is a fairly fast number with a haunting theme tune. Behind George’s double-tracked voice the rest of the fabulous foursome create some unusual instrumental effects. Paul beats out a lean, hollow-boned rhythm from the claves, John uses a tambourine and Ringo hits out at a loose-skinned Arabian bongo (don’t ask me where he picked that up!) to pound out the on-beat percussive drive.

On a fair number of previous recordings by The Beatles producer George Martin has joined the group to add suitable piano sounds to their instrumental arrangements. His keyboard contributions come a little later in this new programme but on LITTLE CHILD it is Paul McCartney who plays piano. John and Paul join forces for the vocal on this rocker and, whilst Paul was over-dubbing the piano bits. John was standing beside another microphone adding in some neatly-timed mouth-organ phrases.

Those who considered Paul’s interpretation of A Taste Of Honey to be a stand-out attraction of The Beatles’ first LP will be more than pleased to hear him assume the role of romantic balladeer again on TILL THERE WAS YOU, the near-standard hit from the show ‘The Music Man.’

Ringo plays the bongos behind Paul’s solo performance, George and John switch to acoustic guitars for this track only Paul’s’ pulsating bass uses electricity.

If you have read a great deal in the musical press about Merseyside’s beat basement, The Cavern, you might imagine that the cellar stompers of Liverpool would demand an all-up-tempo programme. Curiously Paul’s persuasive handling of TILL THERE WAS YOU used to go down extremely well at the club long before the Love me do days when The Beatles were frequent bill-toppers at this now-famous venue.

The first half closed with another number which dates back to The Beatles’ Cavern Club period. Once an American chart-topper for a recording group called The Marvelettes, PLEASE MR. POSTMAN features a double-tracked John Lennon with George and Paul in vocal support.

Chuck Berry’s ROLL OVER BEETHOVEN has been one of the most requested items at recent concert performances by The Beatles. George duets with himself on this one; the boys add to the atmosphere of active excitement by their handclapping.

Paul issues forth with the invitation HOLD ME TIGHT on the fairly brisk second track of Side Two. More handclapping and energetic vocal support from John and George.

The boys have an immense admiration for America’s rhythmic group The Miracles, to whom they pay tribute via their interpretation of YOU REALLY GOT A HOLD ON ME. John and George tackle the wild, relentless vocal with Paul joining them for the chorus lines. Incidentally that IS George Martin on piano this time!

Observing the tremendous audience response that Ringo has been getting whenever he sings Boys, John and Paul put their heads together to pen a special new number their fierce-voiced drumming man. The result is a real raver entitled I WANNA BE YOUR MAN. The Hammond organ in the background is played by John Lennon.

Though they are lesser known on our side of the Atlantic than The Crystals or The Shirelles, the American all-girl group The Donays have always commanded plenty of professional respect from The Beatles. Therefore, they switched around the lyrics of DEVIL IN HER HEART and handed this medium-paced beat offering to George Harrison, John and Paul provide the harmony with Ringo using his maracas.

The final Lennon/McCartney composition of this session features a double-tracked John Lennon singing NOT A SECOND TIME. George Martin’s piano work is featured on this number and again upon the programme’s closing track MONEY. Paul describes MONEY as ‘a really big screamer’ and he recalls the numerous Cavern Club occasions when this item brought forth the same type of overwhelming response given to Twist and Shout. Much recorded by American blues merchants, MONEY has John shouting the raw lyrics with tremendous force and feeling whilst George and Paul supply the answers.

MONEY makes a completely worthy climax to this knock-out programme. Hope it doesn’t leave you too breathless to flip back to Side One for a repeat-play session WITH THE BEATLES.

Tony Barrow

Last updated on May 4, 2021