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The cover artwork
Beatles For Sale was packaged in a gatefold sleeve, a first for the group. The front and back covers featured photographs of The Beatles taken by Robert Freeman in London's Hyde Park.
The album cover was rather nice: Robert Freeman's photos. It was easy. We did a session lasting a couple of hours and had some reasonable pictures to use. We showed up in Hyde Park by the Albert Memorial. I was quite impressed by George's hair there. He managed to create his little turnip top. The photographer would always be able to say to us, 'Just show up,' because we all wore the same kind of gear all the time. Black stuff; white shirts and big black scarves.
Anthology
The Beatles appeared looking notably weary in Freeman's photographs, with pale, unsmiling faces frames by their long hair and turned-up collars. The album's title appeared in a small type size, dwarfed than the EMI/Parlophone logos, with the group's name nowhere else on the cover.
Inside the gatefold was a photograph of The Beatles standing in front of a montage of photographs at Twickenham Film Studios, another of the group performing in Washington, DC on 11 February 1964, and sleeve notes by Derek Taylor:
This is the fourth by the four. 'Please Please Me', 'With The Beatles', 'A Hard Day's Night'. That's three. Now...'Beatles For Sale'.
The young men themselves aren't for sale. Money, noisy though it is, doesn't talk that loud. But you can buy this album - you probably have, unless you're just browsing, in which case don't leave any dirty thumbprints on the sleeve!
It isn't all currency or current though. There's priceless history between these covers. None of us is getting any younger. When, in a generation or so, a radio-active, cigar-smoking child, picnicking on Saturn, asks you what the Beatle affair was all about - 'Did you actually know them?' - don't try to explain all about the long hair and the screams! Just play the child a few tracks from this album and he'll probably understand what it was all about. The kids of AD 2000 will draw from the music much the same sense of well being and warmth as we do today.
For the magic of the Beatles is, I suspect, timeless and ageless. It has broken all frontiers and barriers. It has cut through differences of race, age and class. It is adored by the world.
This album has some lovely samples of Beatle music. It has, for instance, eight new titles wrought by the incomparable John Lennon and Paul McCartney, and, mingling with the new, there are six numbers culled from the rhythmic wealth of the past extraordinary decade; pieces like Kansas City, and Rock And Roll Music. Marvellous.
Many hours and hard day's nights of devoted industry went into the production of this album. It isn't a potboiling quick-sale any-old-thing-will-do-for-Christmas mixture.
At least three of the Lennon-McCartney songs were seriously considered as single releases until John popped up with I Feel Fine. These three were Eight Days A Week, No Reply and I'm A Loser. Each would have topped the charts, but as it is they are an adornment to this LP, and a lesson to other artists. As on other albums, the Beatles have tossed in far more value than the market usually demands.
There are few gimmicks or recording tricks, though for effect, the Beatles and their recording manager George Martin, have slipped in some novelties. Like Paul on Hammond organ to introduce drama into Mr. Moonlight, which also, and for the first time, has George Harrison applying a thump to an elderly African drum because Ringo was busy elsewhere in the studio, playing bongos. George's thump remains on the track. The bongos were later dropped. Ringo plays timpani in Every Little Thing, and on the Rock and Roll Music track George Martin joins John and Paul on one piano. On Words Of Love, Ringo plays a packing case.
Beyond this, it is straightforward 1964 disc-making. Quite the best of its kind in the world. There is little or nothing on the album which cannot be reproduced on stage, which is, as students and critics of pop-music know, not always the case.
Here it is then. The best album yet - quite definitely, says John, Paul, George, and Ringo - full of everything which made the four the biggest attraction the world has ever known. Full of raw John and melodic Paul; a number from George, and a bonus from Ringo. For those who like to know who does precisely what, there are details alongside each title.
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Related articles:
- Honey Don't
- UK LP release: Beatles For Sale
- Rock And Roll Music
- Beatles iPod goes on sale at Bloomingdale's
- UK EP release: Beatles For Sale No 2
this album is one of their underrated albums...but this album contains a lot of great songs one of them is i'll follow the sun.
Great album, I need to pick it up sometime.
I just played this one again, twice, after many years. And I was really taken by many of the songs, including the strong opening 5 tracks, skipping Mr. Moonlight which I've always detested, and I especially liked I Don't Want To Spoil The Party, an early melancholic Lennon number. And adding in Eight Days A Week, Kansas City/Hey Hey Hey, and a few more great covers make this album quite an enjoyable listen. This record certainly gets overlooked unnecessarily.
I've noticed quite a few negative references to Mr. Moonlight, which I do like. Its got a powerful vocal. (Listen to John perfect it on the Anthology series. It also points to the fact that even from their early days they were playing a whole variety of different songs from different genres. This could also be said of many of the Beat boom groups from Liverpool. But it was this diversity as much as anything else which would define the Beatles as timeless.
This is probably my least favourite Beatles album (other than Yellow Submarine but that hardly counts). But when you look at each individual song, they're all great. Not sure what it's lacking, perhaps it's just they were still doing covers when they could have filled the album with self-written music. George didn't have any self-written songs on the album and only sang one, that's also a downside for me.
This album gets ragged on for being "war weary". Actually, I think Help is a better candidate for being tired (but I'll leave those comments for that page). Certainly it's not as varied or dynamic as Hard Days Night, but this is a very good album; especially when you add the single to the analysis. Alot is mentioned of the Dylan influence, but I think many of the acoustic tracks are also inspired by the success of the acoustic numbers from A Hard Days Night. Specifically, I believe they were building on the success of "if I Fell" and "I'll be Back". I know many of these tracks started out with a full electric line up, but I believe the above mentioned influences made it easy to go acoustic. To my mind they are doing the Everly Brothers and adding the folk/Dylan influence, along with their own awareness of their fantastic ability to sing duets. (Cynthia mentions how many times she and her friends were enraptured by the acoustic duets John and Paul would sing). As to the covers, Everybody and Moonlight are weak, but the rest are great. John dominates the writing, as Paul still seems to be looking for his voice (comparatively speaking); which I don't think he really finds until Rubber Soul. What your doing is not a very strong track. I rank it ahead of both Help and their first album and MMT and possibly Let it Be (even with Don't let me Down added). I love Georges 12 string , but it does seem to be getting old on some of these songs.
I really liked this album a lot... the covers and originals. It was an album made in a frenzied time, but you can start to hear the changes that were to be evident a year later with Rubber Soul.
What if the album lineup went like this:
No Reply
I'm a Loser
Baby's in Black
Rock and Roll Music
I'll Follow the Sun
Everybody's Trying to Be My Baby
Kansas City/Hey Hey Hey
Eight Days and Week
Words of Love
Honey Don't
Every Little Thing
I Don't Want to Spoil the Party
What You're Doing
Leave My Kitten Alone
Better? Post modern disc jockeying?
Hey Jerry, looks like you have my habit of mentally resequencing albums or adding unused tracks to see what happens. I do it all the time and my rejigged version of For Sale was pretty much the same except that I think Kansas City would have been a better closer. I agree with inserting Kitten, after hearing it on Anthology 1 I can't imagine why it wasn't used. I would have put it at the end of side one. Maybe I'd have switched round Baby's in Black and I'm a loser too. Otherwise I think you're spot on with this one. Incidentally, I think Mr.Moonlight sounds 10 times better on the remastered version - it's come to life.
This album took a long time for me to like, but once I matured with their music & came back to it, I realized how ridiculously strong it is. "I'll Follow The Sun" was my long time fav, but after really listening I realized "I Don't Want To Spoil The Party" is one of John's great performances & "What You're Doing" is definitely one of the most slept on songs they've ever made. Add in "Baby In Black", which is one of the best Lennon/McCartney combo vocals of their entire catalog, and this album is among the strong of the pre-Studio band years. As a complete work, I'd take it over With The Beatles, Please Please Me & even A Hard Days Night.