Beatles For Sale (1964) is an often forgotten Beatles album. I think that is a true shame because while it’s definitely not among The Beatles most important records, it still has some charms and I do think it’s worth taking a good listen to.
Particularly I think the eight original Lennon and McCartney songs on the record are very good (even if not as great as the original songs on A Hard Day’s Night and Help!) What I really like about these eight originals is that they have a special cohesive feeling to them. I think these songs would work fantastically 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 off great with John’s “No Reply,” “I’m A Loser,” & “Baby’s In Black.” These are 3 good tracks and they all have a introspective dark mood that ties the tracks together well.
I am not a big fan of the covers on this album, unfortunately. Even more sadly is that these covers make up nearly half of the record (6 of the 14 songs are cover songs.) The only covers that I’ve got any patience for are “Rock and Roll Music and “Words of Love” However even these are not nearly as good as The Beatles originals.
The most popular of those Beatles originals on this record is probably “Eight Days A Week” which is a recording that both John and Paul said negative things about (they wrote it together) and the band never played it live, not even once. However despite that, it is a good tune. No, it is not among their best work, but it’s catchy and the fade-in is really cool.
All of the songs on the album (covers and originals) sound far better on the new remastered CDs than they did on the old CDs. I definitely recommend that you purchase The Beatles in Stereo Box Set and The Beatles in Mono CD Box Set and give both the mono and stereo remastered versions of this album a close listen before you go about your business.
I’m not trying to say that the Remastered Beatles For Sale is destined to be your favorite CD, but I do think you’ll find that is far better than it’s reputation. In my opinion it’s much better than With The Beatles.
