YELLOW SUBMARINE

The album is comprised of six Beatles songs on Side One, and a seven-title soundtrack, composed and conducted by Beatles producer George Martin, on Side Two. Two of the Beatles songs had already been released: "All You Need is Love" (b/w "Baby You're a Rich Man"), as a single in July 1967, and the title track, released on Revolver, and simultaneously as a double-a-side with "Eleanor Rigby," in August 1966. This means that the LP regarded as the Beatles' tenth had just four new Beatles songs: Harrison's "Only a Northern Song" and "It's All Too Much," McCartney's "All Together Now," and Lennon's "Hey Bulldog."

Unfortunately, these are third-rate Beatles tunes, and not the kind that helped fill out albums earlier in the decade; these aren't fun-but-flimsy pop tunes put together by young lads learning their craft. These are songs recorded between February 1967 and February 1968 by the band which had just released "Strawberry Fields Forever"/"Penny Lane" and Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band?a band at the absolute height of its songwriting powers. All four of these new tunes were available for inclusion on The Beatles, the sprawling, theme-free double album released in November 1968, yet there was no room for them among the thirty tracks selected for that album.

I think I'm on pretty stable ground, panning he four new songs on Yellow Submarine. Brodax's Up Periscope Yellow has Martin referring to the them as "the dregs of their inventory ? junk, file-and-forget pieces." McCartney and Lennon each disparaged their own contributions to the album. I also think it's worth pointing out that at six and a half minutes, "It's All Too Much" was one of the longest Beatles songs ever;* in its unmercifully extended form, it absolves the group from having to come up with another song for the project.

Side Two?Martin's soundtrack?isn't bad; it's actually not that different from incidental music John Williams composed in the 1970s or Danny Elfman in the 1990s. It sounds fantastic, by the way, on the 2009 remaster, from the reeds at the beginning of "Sea of Holes" to the tuned percussion in the middle of "March of the Meanies" to the dramatic brass stabs at the end of "Pepperland Laid Waste." Nonetheless, it's not the Beatles. And besides, stretching four songs into an album largely by adding eighteen minutes of the film's score seems a move beneath the Beatles.

To recap: the only two really good cuts on this album were previously released. Half of the album is unexceptional, albeit great-sounding, film music not performed by band named on the cover. The remaining four songs are mediocre. If someone owned all of the group's albums, including Past Masters, except this one, I'd still consider him or her a Beatles fan. Two stars: for collectors or serious Beatles buffs.

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*Only three were longer: "Revolution 9" (8:22), "I Want You (She's So Heavy)" (7:47), and "Hey Jude" (7:10). "It's All Too Much" is also one of the group's aptest song titles.

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