With The Beatles, the follow-up to The Beatles’ debut album Please Please Me, consolidated their position as the United Kingdom’s number one pop act.
The album was released eight months to the day after Please Please Me, and was an instant hit. Although no singles were taken from it, With The Beatles came three months after ‘She Loves You’ became a smash, and just seven days before The Beatles conquered the world with ‘I Want To Hold Your Hand’.
Seven of the album’s 14 tracks were written by John Lennon and Paul McCartney. On Please Please Me the pair had demonstrated to audiences that they were more than capable at writing their own material, and With The Beatles proved that they were no flash in the pan.
The Beatles rarely had a day off in 1963, working a punishing schedule of recording sessions, concerts, dozens of radio and television appearances and numerous other public engagements. On 13 October they appeared on Sunday Night At The London Palladium before a television audience of 15 million, winning over Fleet Street journalists who coined the term Beatlemania to describe their fans’ hysteria, and the following month they appeared before the Queen Mother and Princess Margaret at the Royal Command Performance.
Admiration for The Beatles had spread by this time into the establishment. In his essay What Songs The Beatles Sang, The Times newspaper’s music critic William Mann praised Lennon and McCartney as “the outstanding English composers of 1963.”
One gets the impression that they think simultaneously of harmony and melody, so firmly are the major tonic sevenths and ninths built into their tunes, and the flat submediant key switches, so natural is the Aeolian cadence at the end of ‘Not A Second Time’ (the chord progression which ends Mahler’s Song of the Earth).
The Times
By the time they came to record With The Beatles, Lennon and McCartney had used up the best of their original compositions. The challenge of writing a new selection of songs meant they recorded the album’s cover versions first, but the pair eventually came up with a host of classic songs: ‘It Won’t Be Long’ and ‘All My Loving’ were on a par with anything else The Beatles recorded in 1963, and ‘I Wanna Be Your Man’ later became a hit single for The Rolling Stones, though for this album it was sung by Ringo Starr.
George Harrison, too, was emerging as a songwriter. His first released composition, ‘Don’t Bother Me’, was recorded for With The Beatles; although its author later dismissed it as a throwaway, it is often acknowledged that Lennon and McCartney had several years of songwriting by 1963 and were far more confident in their abilities.
The remaining six songs were cover versions. The choice of songs demonstrated the group’s maturity, with a greater emphasis on Motown and R&B songs. Two were sung by Harrison: ‘Devil In Her Heart’, and ‘Roll Over Beethoven’.
In the studio
The success of their debut album, plus numerous radio sessions and TV appearances, meant The Beatles had become more confident in the studio by the time they came to record With The Beatles.
However, they were still bound by the technological limitations of the time, and the album was recorded entirely on two-track machines. It was only from ‘I Want To Hold Your Hand’ that the group moved on to four-track recording.
With The Beatles was recorded between July and October 1963. In contrast to the straightforward guitar, bass and drums line up of much of Please Please Me, The Beatles’ second album included greater use of percussion and keyboard instruments.
On 18 July 1963, the first recording session, The Beatles worked on four cover versions: ‘You Really Got A Hold On Me’, ‘Money (That’s What I Want)’, ‘Devil In Her Heart’, and ‘Till There Was You’. The first two, in particular, arguably eclipsed any of the covers on Please Please Me, and remain among the group’s finest recordings.
Although they had more time to work on With The Beatles than on Please Please Me, the album was recorded in just seven non-consecutive days, plus several editing and mixing sessions. The most complicated song was ‘Money (That’s What I Want)’, which contained enough overdubs to warrant a series of reduction mixes. The final stereo version used a separate mono mix in each channel, in order to avoid any more tape-to-tape copying.
Mono was still the preferred format in 1963. Stereo mixes were made, but The Beatles attended none of the sessions. The stereo mixes were primarily intended to feature a balance between the vocals and instrumentation, with each typically filling one of the available recording tracks.
Chart success
By the time With The Beatles was released, Please Please Me had been atop the UK album charts for seven months. The best-selling EP of 1963 was The Beatles’ ‘Twist And Shout’, and three of their singles – ‘Please Please Me’, ‘From Me To You’, and ‘She Loves You’ – had conquered the charts.
With The Beatles replaced Please Please Me at the number one spot, and stayed there for 21 weeks. Combined with the success of their debut, The Beatles achieved a continuous run of 51 weeks at the top of the charts.
The album also briefly entered the UK singles chart, where it peaked at number 11. In the early 1960s the chart included all releases, regardless of format or diameter.
With The Beatles spent a total of 51 weeks in the top 20.
Iconic artwork on the cover. Although possibly a poorer representation of Astrid Kirsheners work, this was the first step to rewriting the rules on pop production. George Martin calls it their first songbook. It took me longer to get to know this album than any other Beatle album. By the time of With The Beatles, the innocence of Please Please Me had given way to an expectation. This is a fine album. But to truley appreciate what was happening with the group, you really need to listen to their first three albums, in order, one after another, and then you will actually hear The Beatles sound evolve.
Astrid Kirchherr. She didn’t take this cover. This was Robert Freeman, who took many classic Beatles shots. 🙂
It was based on an Astrid photograph which she took in the Hamburg days.
I never understood why the faces are different sizes. When I was a kid, I thought Paul had to be smaller than the other Beatles.
That’s Ringo in the bottom left corner not Paul
Top right. Paul’s face is smaller than John’s and George’s.
That’s because Paul is standing behind George, who is standing behind John. Simple perspective. He’s just further away.
So you think Ringo was very, very short? The album cover was a design choice to make the faces appear that way. The question is why.
Yes, why not photograph the 4 Beatles individually, and space them out across the record sleeve, instead of having 3 along the top (with Paul behind the other 2) and Ringo alone in the bottom corner!
The Album was released, and recalled because the spelling on “You really gotta hold on me” was said to be too” Americanized” Finally released with “You really got a hold on me”. The same as the original Miracles single.
John also played Hammond organ on this album.
On which song(s)? Not on I Wanna Be Your Man, as you claim on that page – that was George Martin.
Tony Barrow’s liner notes on page 2 here claim that it’s John, so if you have better sources that say otherwise you might want to add a note to that effect in brackets.
The Hammond part was recorded by Martin on 30 September 1963, while The Beatles were on holiday, according to the studio documentation (see Mark Lewisohn’s Complete Beatles Recording Sessions for a good source).
Liner notes are pure PR and as such not necessarily reliable.
“With The Beatles” marks their first real lasting “moment” in my book, but that is just by the cover image. The content of this album is probably my least favorite. The highs are very high, but the lows are down there among the worse stuff they did. “It Won’t Be Long” continues their trend of starting an album out 100 mph & “All My Loving” is one of their best, but it gets a bit inconsistent after that. “Little Child” & “Devil In Her Heart” just aren’t a good sound. George did well on this album & “Money” is their best cover ever for my buck. It helps to know they also did “She Loves You” during this time, but all in all, I think it’s a step down from Please Please Me as a total product.
Nine years later with my agreeing vote. In fact, after just listening to PPM and WTB back to back, that’s what I came here to post. I think it was the power of the singles that drove their success; as we’ve read in Lewisohn and others, singles are what young people bought in those days, anyway. Without the three chart toppers not on this album, they might have faded away soon after.
naw, I think its its top 3 (2)
Yeah, this is probably my least favourite too. I don’t see it as a step down, though – more of a step sideways.
I agree with the assessment that this album is very uneven. Having grown up with the American versions, I think it’s counterpart “Meet the Beatles” is an unqualified masterpiece. Practically all originals and nearly every song is strong. The overall effect of Meet the Beatles is “WOW!” the overall effect of “With the Beatles is “Hey cool, more Beatles songs!” Of course, Capitol cherry-picked the best songs available for their first Beatles release.
You cannot compare it to the American counterpart ‘Meet The Beatles’ as that is not an album, merely a compilation. You may as well compare it to the first disc of The Red Album if you are going to compare.
Sure you can compare. In fact, Bob Ryan just did, so it sure looks like you can!
And of course, the comparison is a good once since “Meet The Beatles” was the U.S. introduction of 9 of the songs on “With The Beatles” rounded out by the A- and B-side of the single recorded at the same sessions, and one song from “Please Please Me”. So it’s nothing like comparing it to the first disc of the Red Album.
In other words, “Meet The Beatles” contains 11 of the 16 songs the Beatles originally released in the UK in November 1963–all 11 of the 11 original compositions released that month, opting to hold back the 5 cover songs for a subsequent album. In fact, tracks 4-12 on “Meet The Beatles” are the 9 originals released on “With The Beatles” in the exact same running order (sans covers) they are heard on the original album. So it’s a good way of hearing what their songwriting was like in late 1963.
And as Bob Ryan pointed out, many fans feel it’s a better way to hear those 1963 originals than to intermix them with cover songs, some of which they’d been performing for a number of years.
Great, tasteful, woefully underrated album. Interesting to note that George and Paul sing lead on only 3 songs!
(actually GH has a bit more than PM since he sings along with John on “You really got a hold on me”).
All ive got to do is a good example of how the beatles could have such solid numbers of songs they never did live or payed to much attention to but oher groups would have used the same material for singles. From the opening as energetic as ever sliding into all ive got to do has such a great flow. Album is better than beatles for sale which imo has the most filler of any album. Wtb is a solid beatles album.
Freeman’s image was also used on the cover of Meet The Beatles!, the group’s first Capitol album in North America.
This above statement is wrong. Canada’s “Beatlemania! With the Beatles” was the group’s first Capitol album in North America to use Freeman’s image, two days after the U.K. release in November 1963. Meet the Beatles came out in 1964.
Thanks for clarifying. I changed the wording in the article.
I have always considered this my favourite Beatles album of the 4 early albums (PPM, WTB, HDN, BFS). Track for track it may not be the best however as an ‘album’, I have always loved how it flows from ‘It Won’t Be Long’ to ‘Money’, it just works so wonderfully well.
Gotta agree with you Joe. Some bands have a hard time following up with a good one after their first release, but these bugs keep on going!
Yeah, it’s fab. Especially on 2014 mono vinyl.
Their first iconic album cover…Great album!
What a follow up to Please Please Me and only just over 6 months later. As with all their albums a great cover. This is a groundbreaking album and the progressions from the first one are their for all to see, especially in the song writing of John Lennon and Paul McCartney.I got my copy of this for Christmas 1979. Paul McCartney comes up with his first great standard in All My Loving. John Lennons All Ive Got To Do is a lovely song.And It Wont Be Long,(which apparently nearly got released as a single, but along came I Want To Hold Your Hand),Little Child, Hold Me Tight and Not A Second Time are infectious. Two of my favorite Beatles covers are on this. Roll Over Beethoven and Money. Like Twist and Shout did on the first album, Money is a great way to finish a record. John Lennons lead vocal on this is amazing. And I have alot of time for George Harrisons first foray into song writing , Dont Bother Me.Ringo has the lead on I Wanna Be Your Man, but I must admit I have always preferred the Rolling Stones version of this. John and Paul suggested this to Mick Jagger when the Stones were stuck for a second single. I just love the break neck speed of the Stones version and Brian Jones great guitar solo break.
Mom bought me Meet the Beatles (US version of With the Beatles) at my request for a Beatles album when I was 10 (in 1970) I was hooked after that.
John wrote and sang lead on It Won’t Be Long, All I’ve Got To Do and Not A Second Time for this album and collaborated with Paul and sang lead for Little Child. He also sang lead on the covers Please Mister Postman, You’ve Really Got A Hold On Me and Money.
Paul only wrote and sang lead 2 songs, the stereotypical All My Loving and the poorly performed Hold Me Tight, along with singing lead on the cover Til There Was You.
George wrote Don’t Bother Me and sang lead on it as well as 2 covers, Roll Over Beethoven and Devil In Her Heart. He also sang duet harmony with John in most of Hold On Me.
So that is 7 lead vocals for John,
3 1/2 for George (counting his prominent vocal in Hold On Me),
3 for Paul
And I Wanna Be Your Man for Ringo
Notice how George’s contributions were actually greater than Paul’s.
At this point, it looked like George was set to usurp Paul’s role as the second Beatle
(John was entrenched as the leader by now). Clearly desperate, Paul made sure that George didn’t get more than one song on their next 2 albums. It’s interesting to see how close we were to Lennon-Harrison though
Pure silliness. You weren’t there and you have no knowledge or basis for the suppositions in that last paragraph. You haven’t a clue what the intent or motivation (if any at all, which is doubtful) for any of it.
What kind of bean counting is this? Who cares how many lead vocals and how many backing vocals and how many this and how many that? Just like how many number 1 songs in Norway by John or other mathematical gibberish. The bottom line is The Beatles made great music and that’s fine by me and many other fans. All of this silly bean counting is just a hidden agenda to try and prove that my favorite Beatle was better than yours. What counts (pun intended) is the overall compilation of what they did as a group and how excellent it was. No other artist, in my humble opinion, comes close.
Everybody who is a Beatles fan is entitled to express their fandom in their own way. Some people may enjoy analysing the songs and albums more than you do, but there’s no need to be disparaging towards them. Let’s keep the discussion to With The Beatles from now on.
Based on With the Beatles it would be interesting if a Lennon/Harrison partnership would have led to the phenomenon the Beatles became. Very unlikely I think.
Millions weren’t wrong about All My Loving, the strongest song on the album by far. I’ve always liked All I’ve Got To Do, another strong song. Apart from some powerful harmonies from McCartney, most of the others are so so in my opinion.
Biased Lennon-Harrison fan;
John Lennon wrote three songs “It Won”t Be Long” (With some help from Paul!), “All I’ve Got To Do” and “Not A Second Time”. He sung lead vocals on three songs “Please Mister Postmen” written by Holland-Bateman-Garrett-Dobbins-Gorman, “You Really Got A Hold On Me” written by Robinson and “Money (That’s What I Want)” written by Bradford – Gordy.
Paul McCartney wrote two songs “All My Loving” and “Hold Me Tight”. And he sung lead vocal on one song “Till There Was You” which was wrote by Willson.
George Harrison wrote one song “Don’t Bother Me”. And he sung lead vocals on two songs “Roll Over Beethoven” written by Chuck Berry and “Devil In Her Heart” written by Richard P. Drapkin.
John Lennon and Paul McCartney wrote two songs together 50%/50% “Little Child” and “I Wanna Be Your Man” Sung by Ringo.
So, John Lennon has written three Songs and he has Co-written two Songs. He has sung lead vocals on seven Songs. Paul McCartney has written two Songs and he has Co-written two Songs. He has sung lead vocals on four Songs. George has written one Song. He has sung lead vocals on three Songs. And Ringo has sung lead vocal on one Song.
“Notice how George “s contributions were actually greater than Paul”? NOPE With Paul McCartney writing two Songs and he has Co-written two more Songs. Compare to George Harrison only writing one Song! And with Singing Paul McCartney was lead on four Songs where George only sung lead on three.
And
“At this point, it looked like George’s was set to usurp Paul’s role as the second Beatle
(John was entrenched as the leader by now). Clearly desperate, Paul made sure that George didn’t get more than one song on their next 2 albums. It’s interesting to see how close we were to Lennon-Harrison, though.” Very Ridiculous paragraph!
I like to listen to this album with a modified order, using the 1963 singles as well.
Side one
1. It Won’t Be Long
2. All I’ve Got To Do
3. All My Loving
4. Don’t Bother Me
5. She Loves You
6. Little Child
7. Til There Was You
8. Please Mister Postman
9. Money (side one closer)
Side two
10. I’ll Get You
11. Roll Over Beethoven
12. Hold Me Tight
13. You Really Got A Hold On Me
14. I Wanna Be Your Man
15. This Boy
16. Devil In Her Heart
17. Not A Second Time
18. I Want To Hold Your Hand (album closer)
I like the transition from Don’t Bother Me to She Loves You, the Beatles had an affinity, if even they were unaware of it, of finishing the story they started. Another example of this is It Won’t Be Long being answered a year and a half later by Wait.
The Beatles 2 first albums sound amazingly great for 2 track recording. Kudos to George Martin!
My only complaint about this album as a bass player, the bass is mixed so low on this album you can barely hear it.On Please Please Me it’s louder .The only other thing that I can discuss here, for the cover shoot,only two Beatles were present,the other two were missing. Look at the cover again,the two Beatles where you can see their necks were present for the shoot,the other two Beatle photos with no necks showing,those two photos were pasted on.I read that somewhere.
Absolute nonsense.
“I read that somewhere”. Yes, and I read somewhere that the Pope was Jewish. Somewhere.
Talking of a Pope – there were two catholic popes called John Paul. Here we have got a genius music tandem John & Paul…
The below statement blows my mind regarding mono vs stereo. My, times have changed!
Mono was still the preferred format in 1963. Stereo mixes were made, but The Beatles attended none of the sessions. The stereo mixes were primarily intended to feature a balance between the vocals and instrumentation, with each typically filling one of the available recording tracks.
Sorry but that’s not true. The photo shoot for With…. Was done in a hotel dining room in Bournmouth with the Beatles back against a window by Robert Freeman.
I used to have the german pressing of WTB, there were 5 cymbals beat just before the opening of “All my loving” and no percussion at the beginning of “Money”.
Is the Mono version worth more than the Stereo version. ‘With The Beatles’ Album.
A few cosmic coincidences about this album:
— The UK release date 11,22,63 was the day that JFK’s brains were shot out in the middle of the day in the middle of the street in Dallas, TX, USA. In 1968, after the murders of MLK and RFK, the Beatles released The White Album on that same day 11,22. On purpose, I believe. “The Beatles” is chock full of clues about UMSA, the Ubiquitous Murder States of Amerika. CIA pushed all those idiotic “Paul is dead” ideas to divert. Macca was actually an early, vocal critic of the WARren COmmissioN, read Mark Lane’s manuscript for “Rush to Judgment” and offered to compose a score for the documentary.
— Phil Spector’s masterpiece Christmas album, A Christmas Gift for You, came out that same day 11,22,63. Every one of those songs became iconic season offerings, but much later in 1972 when Apple reissued it. In 1963 it topped out at #14, a big disappointment to the band, but they understood. I spoke with Ronnie Spector on the phone once about this. They were on a plane going to a roll-out show when they heard the news from Dallas. Folks in the States didn’t feel like listening to happy music for a while; that is, until “I Want to Hold Your Hand” came out in December ’63, the perfect antidote for the gloom.
— November 22 is the Feast Day of St. Cecilia, patron of musicians and poets. As if With the Beatles and The White Album were trying to set the world back in balance.
— Aldous Huxley and C. S. Lewis, who started out as spiritual twins, but ended as opposites, died 11,22,63, but that’s far afield.
Your wife just called from the kitchen: You’re running out of tin foil again!
Oh, good grief…….
The current text states: “On 13 October they appeared on Sunday Night At The London Palladium before a television audience of 15 million, winning over Fleet Street journalists who coined the term Beatlemania to describe their fans’ hysteria, and the following month they appeared before the Queen at the Royal Command Performance.”
This is not right as the Queen didn’t go to the 1963 Royal Command Performance. The Queen Mother and Princess Margaret were in attendance, as mentioned in the text at:
https://www.beatlesbible.com/1963/11/04/live-royal-command-performance/
Now here’s a strange thing. I have a red vinyl Odeon record – OR7041 that is entitled ‘Meet the Beatles’, but carries the same image as ‘With the Beatles’. The tracks are very different too, and there was no lyric sheet with the LP, bought by me in Nagoya, Japan 1964. This pressing is not listed anywhere, so my questions are: why? how rare is it and what’s it worth? Answers on a Christmas card please.
“With The Beatles” is still a great LP. It mixes Meet The Beatles an The Beatles Second Album nicely and holds up to any other Beatles LP from the UK. That’s my opinion. I grew up with the Capitol LP American releases but bought all the UK Parlophone LP’s as soon as I could afford them. All “Mono” and with great sound. I purchased the entire Stereo remasters as the came out over the passed several years. I’m very happy with them and Giles did a great finish on the White Album. Well worth my money.
The Beatles’ second album “With the Beatles” was quite an interesting album.
George made his debut as a songwriter with “Don’t Bother Me” – one that they could’ve easily done live onstage, even if George later unjustly dismissed it as “crappy”. He also diversified his repertoire of guitars by playing a nylon-string acoustic guitar on “Till There Was You” and IMO, he made the right choice.
This was the last album on which John used his original Gibson J-160E, but contrary to popular belief, it was actually George’s Gibson J-160E that disappeared.
The choice of covers was quite interesting, particularly the inclusion of three Motown covers, and as I have stated many times, their cover of “You Really Got a Hold on Me” was a crucial element that motivated me to become a fan of Smokey Robinson and The Miracles and Motown when I started high school in 2002.
In the liner notes, Tony Barrow got a few things incorrect: it was actually George Martin who played the Hammond organ on “I Wanna Be Your Man” (John was on tour with the others when this overdub took place) and Paul actually played a wood block, not claves, on “Don’t Bother Me”.