Listen, Do You Want To Know A Secret? – thirteen under-appreciated Beatles songs

The Beatles

The coverage and discussion of The Beatles‘ re-issues this September carried with it the associated feeling that it marks the death of the CD-age in the same way the band helped to usher it in. Coupled with the sense that there’s very little that can be written about the greatest and most popular music of the 20th Century in the 21st, we decided to shine a light on a few of the Fab Four’s fabbest moments that don’t typically find their way onto compilations.

‘There’s A Place’ from Please Please Me (1963)

It’s well known that final track recorded in the marathon session at Abbey Road on 11th February 1963 was the closer ‘Twist and Shout’, the song leading in to it was the first committed to tape. With the technological limits of the day meaning that there was only so much prominence that bass could have without it causing the stylus to jump this as near as the band and George Martin got to capturing their live rawness with the ramshackle nature of the harmonies, alternating between McCartney dominating and Lennon (who wrote this bold declaration of independence) adding his phlegm drenched vowels to the end of the lines as well the punctuating harmonica found throughout the album.

‘I’ll Be Back’ from A Hard Day’s Night (1964)

One of the songs on the second half of the LP and so not appearing on the film of the same name and at the time one of the more intricate and complex songs Lennon had written. It has a loose Spanish flavour to the acoustic backing and Lennon vocal as naked, personally and passionate as that on ‘Help!’ It doesn’t have a chorus and seems to be compromised solely of middle-eights and bridges which contain some fabulous, unexpected key shifts. Like many of these songs we’ve highlighted it points the way forward to where they were heading.

‘No Reply’ from Beatles For Sale (1964)

Of all the re-masters Beatles For Sale is the one that most benefitted versus the original CD versions, you can finally hear the whooshing crash of Ringo’s cymbals alongside the bossa-nova thump of the rhythm section. The doomy, tucked into the background, piano from George Martin lurks in the shadows much like Lennon. Amongst the almost jazz like air to the track the lyrics seem to come from a rather dark place. The casual snarl that Lennon works into when delivers the ‘That’s a li-i-ie’ line and the crashing doom of the ‘I nearly died’ line.  The glorious hand-claps and wrong footing that section delivers when it sticks the ball through your legs and sprints past you. Not to mention the final, chilling ringing chord of acceptance.

‘Yes It Is’ B-side to ‘Ticket To Ride’ (1965)

Sounding dazed and woozy like it’s been drinking red wine before it starts up it’s a surprisingly romantic turn from Lennon who would go onto write the worryingly misogynistic ‘Run For Your Life’ that same year. Despite the hissing snake sound of Starr’s snare, there’s no suggestion that the women in red is like the disinterested soon to be arson victim of ‘Norwegian Wood’ or ‘prick teaser’ as ‘Day Tripper’ almost had. It’s generally accepted as a paean to Lennon’s late, red-haired mother, Julia and ties in with the creeping nagging sense of death that permeates throughout as Lennon castigates himself for his inability to forget this idolisation in the presence of a woman who could make him happy if he could lose his ideal.  Not to forget gorgeous three way harmonies as good as those lauded on ‘Because’.

‘I’ve Just Seen A Face’ from Help! (1965)

You have noticed the lack of McCartney so far in this article. This is mainly as the best of his pre- Rubber Soul material was written ‘eyeball-to-eyeball’ with Lennon or is too well known for this feature. Lennon had provided the more interesting and challenging songs on the previous two LPs as well as the majority of the a-sides around that time. McCartney stepped up his game again with this song which like ‘I’ll Be Back’ was surely good enough to feature in the film the album soundtracks but was recorded slightly too late to make the cut. The thing that I really like about ‘I’ve Just Seen A Face’ is the sheer simplicity of it.  The joy, fate and wonder of falling of love in at first sight captured in the gleeful skipping and cheerful nature of it as it breathlessly sails past us.

‘The Word’ from Rubber Soul (1965)

At this point the band were frankly taking the piss, not content with releasing what dullards think was their first great album they also released one of their best singles, ‘Day Tripper’ / ‘We Can Work It Out’ on the same day! ‘The Word’ could have easily, to my ears, have appeared on Revolver without too much disruption. The lyrics sound like Lennon inventing the hippy anthem before the word phrase had even been coined. Between the comedy piano intro, the stabbing one note guitar bites from Harrison and George Martin’s harmonium at the end we also get one of McCartney’s best wobbling basslines and Starr’s back-to-front drum fills. A song that would point them in the direction explored on ‘Rain’, Taxman’, ‘Paperback Writer’ and ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’ six months later.

‘I’m Only Sleeping’ from Revolver (1966)

As a young boy my first exposure to this song, aged eleven, was when Suggs was let near it in the mid-nineties. Lennon’s original is one of the first real examples of the band throwing aside any inclination of creating something that could possibly be performed live (along with, of course, ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’ which was started earlier that same month.) Lennon’s LSD induced apathy with the world of the squares and love of his bed (hinted at in his annoyance of not getting a good night’s sleep in ‘Norwegian Wood’ and brought up again in ‘I’m So Tired’) is luxuriously spread across this atmospheric track helped mainly by Starr’s dopey drumming, McCartney’s stalking bass and Harrison’s acidic and Eastern infused guitar solo, which was re-recorded ‘frontwards’ after he had learnt it backwards. The best moments however are reserved for Lennon drawling the title as ‘I’m only seeping’ and the yawn exactly two minutes in.  Quick fact, every track on the album is at most three minutes and a couple of seconds. That’s how you do it.

‘Getting Better’ from Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Heart’s Club Band (1967)

Despite starting with those urgent pulses of guitar, throwaway Beatle humour (’It can’t get any worse’) McCartney’s ‘Getting Better’ might have been considered a lightweight addition to their catalogue Indeed with the cheerfulness and unrelenting chord progression it  might be looked on as an inferior remake of ‘Good Day Sunshine’ and/or ‘Penny Lane’. That is if it wasn’t one of the best examples of the production techniques employed on Sgt. Pepper (aside from dripping the tracks in cellos.) With the droning tambura, Martin hitting a pianette strings with a mallet and congas add yet another element of Indian mysticism to the mix and stomp to the piece. It’s also worth noting the auto-biographical lyrics added by Lennon about beating women and angry youth adding yet more snap.

‘It’s All Too Much’ from Yellow Submarine (1969)

One of Harrison’s more overlooked pieces. Days before the release of Sgt Pepper and without the pressure of touring the band were almost free to pop into EMI studios at Abbey Road on a whim and almost certainly with his brain fogged with LSD Harrison delivered one of the bands longest songs (an 8 minute mono mix is widely bootlegged) and one of the most vividly psychedelic tracks in their oeuvre. Clattering percussion, Hammond organ, trumpets and with that restrained wave of feedback it’s no surprise that it was covered by The House of Love twenty years later.  Like a lot of the English psychedelic music produced around this time despite the mind-altering and consciousness widening property of LSD there is an amount of turning in one oneself that’s also displayed in acid casualty #1 Syd Barrett of Pink Floyd’s writing. The influence of Lewis Carrol’s Alice through the Looking-Glass reflected in the apparent importance of birthday cake and getting home for tea, these were certainly not themes to be found in the lyrics of the Haight-Ashbury hippies.  It found a suitable home in the Yellow Submarine film after not making it on to the Magical Mystery Tour double EP.

‘Dear Prudence’ from The Beatles (1968)

For all the variety on offer on The White Album, there does seem to be a consensus developing that this is the most representative track from the album. Moving from the psychedelic, sonic experimentation to a simpler, acoustic based form of song writing with George Martin used to add studio trickery and effects to complement, not as a vitally important stage in a song’s development. ‘Dear Prudence’, a call for Mia Farrow’s sister to emerge from her chalet in Rishikesh with it’s almost nursery rhyme simplicity, common on many of Lennon’s songs from this period and coloured by the descending finger picking by Lennon and Harrison’s gently playful stings on lead. After Starr’s temporary departure, McCartney does a passing job behind the drum-kit and the climatic fill, aided by handclaps and piano is one of the bands most quietly euphoric.

‘Cry , Baby Cry’ from The Beatles (1968)

The wealth of material written in the spring of 1968 in India and demoed at Harrison’s Esher mansion on their return that would not only feature on The Beatles but Abbey Road and even all three songwriter’s first few solo albums. Most would agree that a good deal of the material on The White Album isn’t amongst the best that the band wrote. However, there is something persuasive about the way that the album is brilliant sequenced and cemented what could a rambling and incoherent mess into a work fondly thought of and in my case my favourite album of all time. Like ‘Dear Prudence’ and ‘Sexy Sadie’ there’s an chugging descent of chords and piano as well as more of the childlike lyrics with the song not only taking the form of a nursery rhyme but could even pass for one. That is if Lennon hadn’t punctuated with creepy allusion to a séances. Right at the end, leading into ‘Revolution #9′ is a short burst of McCartney singing ‘Can you take me back where I came from.’ One of the glorious little moments tucked away into the vast folds of this intricate album.

‘You Never Give Me Your Money’ from Abbey Road (1969)

The founding stone on the so-called Long Melody that closes both this record and pretty much The Beatles as recording entity was one of the first tracks attempted by McCartney after the problematic ‘Get Back’ sessions (That would go on to be Let It Be.) It’s one of the saddest things the band put to tape, anyone that has listened to the band’s songs in a marathon session will feel a pull on the heart strings at this point as McCartney mournfully conveys his sense of sorrow that the band has all but disintegrated and squabbles about money, Allan Klein and so on are the order of the day. Being the Beatles it is also inevitable that this song represents them going all out to wrap things up with a flourish with this mini-suite remind us of why we love them and that as they kiss goodbye to the Sixties,  four lads who did so much to define it both at the time (and to those looking back) had ‘nowhere to go’ as a band anymore. None of them were even thirty years old at the time.