The Beatles: The Story of With the Beatles
The Beatles second album came out in England nine months after ‘Please Please Me’.
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The Beatles sophomore album was planned in great detail, with the obsessive attention that their unforeseen success imposed. Capitol Records, the American label managed by EMI, had chanced upon a real goldmine and missed the opportunity to release the first two albums of The Beatles concurrently with the UK management. But in November 1963, Americans finally made up for the lost time and published in short distance a first album named “Meet The Beatles!” — with the iconic Astrid Kirchherr’s photo used for “With The Beatles”- and a second album titled (in a highly original way) “The Beatles’ Second Album”. This choice paved the way to the fab four’s American rise.
The British Beatlemania began to be evident four days before November 22nd 1963. While the world was helplessly witnessing J.F. Kennedy exhaling his last breath, the United Kingdom experienced an epidemic of sales. Only 96 hours before the official release, With The Beatles had already sold 250 thousand copies and on September 1965 it became the best selling British album, a record that until then had only been achieved by South Pacific soundtrack.
From a structural point of view, the fourteen tracks included in “With The Beatles” — in Italy released by Parlophone under the title “I Favolosi Beatles” — seemed to only follow in the footsteps of the first successful record, with a sequence of covers and originals, put in such an order that could spark a pleasant feeling of astonishment. Seven songs signed by Lennon/McCartney, and the first appearance of a Harrison song composed the first half of the album, integrated by the cover versions of Wilson’s Till There Was You, Berry’s Roll Over Beethoven, Robinson’s You Really Got a Hold On Me, Drapkin’s Devil In Her Heart, Bradford and Gordy’s Money (That’s What I Want) and the hit by Georgia Dobbins, William Garrett, Freddie Gorman, Brian Holland, e Robert Bateman, Please Mister Postman.
Right away, the most loved songs turned out to be McCartney’s All My Loving, inspired by his ex-girlfriend Jane Asher, Lennon’s All I’ve Got To Do, recorded in just one session on September 11th 1963 and inspired by Smokey Robinson, and Ringo’s rendition of I Wanna Be Your Man, which is still to this day associated to their musical antagonists, the Rolling Stones, who actually received it as a gift from Lennon and McCartney — legend has it that they met at Studio 51 in Soho, where Paul and John completed the song in a matter of minutes, living the “rival” band gobsmacked.
Some of the reasons why the Beatles are what they are today were already obvious in their sophomore, from Lennon’s wit and complicated personality to the positive attitude of McCartney and the gradual openness of Harrison, as well as the great attention to sound quality that would eventually bring them to Apple Records, the choice to give all the band members a chance to sing, and to top it all the fruitful collaboration/competition between John and Paul, whose debut was set forth by “All My Loving”, the first of many amazing songs.
But we’ll be digging it up again in the next chapter of the Beatles story, dedicated to A Hard Day’s Night.
