THE BEATLES' SECOND ALBUM

This LP was the second album of the Beatles which Capitol Records produced for the north-American market. It is said that especially John Lennon wasn't too pleased with what the Americans did and one can understand his reasons: Capitol took material from the UK-"With The Beatles"-album (second release in Britain) they had left out from the US-"Meet The Beatles"-LP (first American album) and combined it with single-B-sides and EP-songs. The Beatles weren't happy with it, as at the time of the release in the USA they had developed their skills as composers and instrumentalists.

The LP contains quite a number of rockers the Beatles used to have in their live set-lists. Usually Chuck Berry's "Roll Over Beethoven" was sung by John, but in the studio was given to George (to increase his number of vocals on "With The Beatles"). Except for the - in comparison with Berry - messed up guitar intro they do quite nicely. "Thank You Girl" - the B-side of "From Me To You" - features John and Paul on lead vocals on their own composition whereas John and George take over for "You Really Got A Hold On Me" from Smokey Robinson. As it would be so often later on, the musical additions of producer George Martin weren't credited - but he plays piano on this one and does a brilliant job. With "Devil In Her Heart", a mid-tempo beat with some fine guitar work, the Beatles pay their respect to American all-girl band The Donays.

"Money" is a 'big screamer' (with a screaming John) and Paul recalled that when they were playing at the Cavern Club in Liverpool this one came close to "Twist And Shout" in the response from the audience. "You Can't Do That" is the second Lennon-McCartney composition on this compilation, the B-side of "Can't Buy Me Love". Another rocker follows with "Long Tall Sally", a Little-Richard-original the Beatles bring to new heights: Paul sings as he was given a last chance to prove that he's a rock'n'roller at heart, George adds a fantastic ripping guitar-solo. "I Call Your Name" (Lennon-McCartney) is from the same rocking EP as "Long Tall Sally", the other two tracks being "Slow Down" (Larry Williams) and "Matchbox" (Carl Perkins).

"Please Mr. Postman" - according to the sleeve notes on "With The Beatles" - is another number which dates back to the Beatles' Cavern Club period. It features a double tracked John with vocal support from Paul and George. "I'll Get You" was the single-B-side of the closing "She Loves You" and the latter may be defined as the most typical of all Beatles' records: The pure energy is overwhelming and the famous 'yeah, yeah, yeah'-chorus gets you hooked on immediately. With all those years gone between the recording and today it still sounds fresh and surprisingly new.

Though the Beatles may not have been to happy with this LP, it is a good example of the rock'n'roll- and other musical roots the relied on - and it's fun listening to it.

Again, let me say it up front. This isn't prog music but it's here and it deserves a decent review. It's easy to criticize this album in retrospect but, at the time, we youngsters in the USA didn't care about packaging. We just wanted more Beatles music. Period. We wanted more of that uptempo merriment that "With the Beatles" had given us and this LP delivered in spades. Just look at the lineup. There's not a slow song to be heard, just intense rock and roll from front to back. I'm sure the Fab Four weren't happy with the label taking liberties with the English versions of their albums and repackaging them for the states as they saw fit but it still got the job done as far as we fanatics were concerned. Beatlemania was in full swing and this "2nd" collection of songs hardly ever left our turntables unless it was to replay the first album. It definitely rocks, even today.

The story about The Beatles`relationship with Capitol Records (their U.S. label) is well known today: First, Capitol refused EMI`s and Brian Epstein`s offer to sign The Beatles to release their first singles and their first album in the U.S. So, Epstein and EMI looked for smaller labels to release The Beatles`music in the U.S. (among them, Vee Jay Records, Swan Records, etc.). It wasn`t until The Beatles`success started in other parts of the world that Capitol was interested in them. So, not wanting to lose more time and the opportunity to earn a lot of money, and also taking advantage of their strongest monetary power, they asked EMI and Epstein to sign The Beatles for Capitol, Capitol then sued Vee Jay Records (a modest record label) to have the rights for all The Beatles`recordings in the U.S., and started to release their own versions of The Beatles`albums in the U.S. which only had 12 songs or less per album (in comparison to 14 per album as in England), releasing one album after the other, using remaining songs from previous albums, singles and their B-sides, to release more Beatles` albums than in the U.K. They also did they own mixings of the songs for their albums!

After EMI released their original U.K. albums on CD, they released their fist four albums only in Mono, so since then the old Fans who wanted to listen to the Stereo mixings of these albums had to listen to the old U.K. LPs, or to buy the U.S versions, which were available until 5 or 6 years ago in the cassette format. I was one of those Fans who thought that, but I discovered in the Web that the mixings were different, so before purchasing those cassettes (which I didn`t buy in the end) I was disappointed by this. One has to buy those 4 U.K. Stereo albums in the used LPs shops!

I really don`t give the same importance to these U.S. albums. IMO, they were more "marketing exercises" done by Capitol (and other labels in the U.S., like Polydor, MGM and Atco with the Tony Sheridan recordings) in the `60s with the goal to earn more dollars from the U. S. Fans (with the exception of the "Magical Mystey Tour" and "Hey Jude" albums which IMO are very good albums). So, I only comment that this "The Beatles` Second Album" is another collection of songs selected from their U.K. albums available then, plus songs from singles and their B- sides and English E.P.s., with different mixings in comparison to the U.K. releases.

If the old American Fans of The Beatles are nostalgical to listen to their first eight Capitol albums, now they can buy them in 2 Boxed Sets in the CD format, called "The Capitol Albums" Vols. 1 and 2.

This album was a US release only. It will top the US charts and dethroned no other album than "Meet The Beatles". It is was a unique example in music that the same band was replacing himself on that spot!

Actually, this is a compilation album which comprises songs already released in the UK. But as usual, the US and the UK releases were not the same (covers, title, track list).

There are no less than six cover songs of which my favourite ones are the rocking ones "ROB" and "Long Tall Sally". On The melodic side "Please Mr. Postman" is of course very good as well.

Some of the material available here was also dropped from their album or were unreleased at that time. "You Can't Do That" is one of them (should have sit on "A Hard Day's Night"). Its career will be limited to the B side of "Can't Buy Me Love". You can understand why when listening to his.

Same applies to "I Call Your Name". Written by John for another artist; namely Billy Kramer, a Liverpool citizen who sung successfully several unreleased songs from the Fab Four ("Do You Want To Keep A Secret", "I'll Keep You Satisfied" and "I'll Be On My Way" amongst others. The latter topping the British charts!).

This album is not a must own of course. Only one great Fab Four song with "She Loves You". This is a bit "thin". For collectors and die-hard fans only. Two stars.

This is actually misleading because this album was basically released in the USA only. My friend loaned me the CD and it was surprising that the songs were basically taken from the band's previous four albums. It's good that newbie do not need to buy each individual album - just purchase this one and you will get the essence of The beatles music from this compilation. As for my personal taste, actually this compilation does not suit me perfectly because "I Saw Her Standing There" and "I Should Have Known You Better" are not here in this compilation. It's probably my taste does not fit with USA taste, and I can understand that because I do not like Bruce Springsteen who is adored widely in the USA. That's just different taste.

But you will get a good song "Please Mr, Postman" which shows how pop music can be composed in such a way that can transcend into something a bit of rock but still maintaining the premise being a pop song. That's basically the core competence of The Beatles: making a pop music so lively and it sounds like a rock music. You will find it also in songs like "You Can't Do That", "She Loves You", "Roll Over Beethoven". As the main intent of this CD was the band's introduction to the USA market, the list of songs served the purpose quite well.

Peace on earth and mercy mild - GW

Collection of Beatles singles, early EPs, and album tracks.

In North America, instead of releasing the UK albums, Capital Records created new albums by mixing Beatles singles with some album tracks and early EP tracks ("Long Tall Sally" was released on an EP of the same name in the UK at the time). In the US, this album was released as the Beatles second album (as the title implies), even though it was nothing of the sort in the UK. In Canada (where I am from), the first UK album (Please Please Me) was released as is but with a different names ("Twist and Shout"), but after that they also followed the practice of dividing up the album with single tracks. But because they had already released the first album, the tracks on the early subsequent albums could not be the same ones as those released in the US, which meant that for some of the Canadian albums the song lists were different from both the US AND UK (!). This is one of those albums. In Canada, this album could not be called the "Beatles Second Album" because a few albums had already been released (the Canadian version was released later than the US version) and so this one was released under the name "Long Tall Sally". The track list is very similar, but instead of "She Loves You" (which appears on this US album), the Canadian version contains "I Want to Hold Your Hand", and instead of "Thank You Girl" (which appears on this US album), the Canadian album contains the song "Misery". Finally, instead of "Money" (which appears on this US album), the Canadian version has "I Saw her Standing There" (despite the fact that this song already appeared on "Twist and Shout"). Despite this 'butchery' (as the Beatles depicted later on the US album Yesterday and Today), the songs are actually quite good on both collections. It is difficult to rate this as an album, but when pressed I would have to give it 7.9 out of 10. With the Beatles flows better, but one can't deny the quality of the tunes here.