BEATLES FOR SALE

Of all the Beatles albums I have (and I have them all), I consider Beatles for Sale to be the weakest of them all. You can see a band exhausted from an overload of work. After the stellar foray fo A Hard Day's Night, the Beatles went back to the studio and released this album, which is more like a return to the past albums in a way, as this album is about half original songs and half covers. Most of the original pieces are contrived and don't even come close to the quality of the songs on A Hard Day's Night, and even the covers don't match those of previous albums (except for the Chuck Berry cover in Rock 'n' Roll Music). For the most part, though, I'm not really impressed with this album, but there are a few redeeming qualities.

Instead of talking about the faults, I will talk about the songs that save this album from complete disaster. I'm a Loser is the second song on the album and it has John Lennon wailing about his troubles and he really has a convincing performance on this one. On top of that, there's an interesting minor chord progression that really helps the atmosphere. Rock 'n' Roll Music is another Chuck Berry song faithfully played by the Beatles and faithfully sung by George Harrison (or so I believe). I'll Follow the Sun is a fantastic acoustic ballad by McCartney which has a very well conceived chorus and some great guitar work throughout. Eight Days a Week was the major hit on the album and it really is one of (if not the) best songs on the album. Starting with a nice fade-in chord progression, it breaks out into a rocker with a great chorus and an awesome middle eight section. Finally, Kansas City is a nice and short medley of two songs, Kansas City and Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey, faithfully played and overall very high energy. Everything else, though in my opinion, doesn't really measure up to their past works. Although the songs aren't bad, there's just no inspiration in them, in my opinion.

Overall, Beatles For Sale would ultimately be my least favorite Beatles album. Fortunately, they would improve again for their next album, Help!, which I would rate just behind A Hard Day's Night as the best Beatles album in their early days (from the debut through Help!). For progressive rock fans searching for something of interest in this record, you won't find any. It's the farthest thing from progressive rock, but still there some redeeming moments (not saying that it's a bad album because it isn't prog) and people looking into the foundations of arguably the most important rock band that ever existed will probably find something here. But for me, I was left a bit cold after listening to this album. 2/5.