The Beatles – Beatles for Sale (1964)

I don't know if the name of this album is just a joke on how albums were advertised back in the day, or if it's actually an ironic statement about the rough life The Beatles were living through at the time to make money for themselves and the record company. When this fourth album of theirs was released, they were at the peak of the so-called Beatlemania. They were touring around the world and this was their fourth album in less than two years. No band today goes through this kind of work anymore, but I guess back in the day they wanted to squeeze every penny out of the band. Maybe they thought that The Beatles was only going to be a short-lived fad and wanted to get everything out of it. To me, it sounds more like this kind of approach was the reason they started touring altogether a couple of years later and eventually split up.



The sounds of the album are still very similar to the first few albums, but there are some definite advances at least in studio techniques and more varied instrumentation. Also, The Beatles had at this point gotten new influences from US and there are songs on this album that were aimed to sound like Bob Dylan or some US country artists. Of course, from today's perspective it doesn't sound much like country music and apparently The Beatles called Dylan's type of folk country music back in the day. In addition to those country influences, there are lots of pure rock n' roll songs on this album.

There are quite a few cover songs on this album. Only eight out of fourteen songs are their own songs. There's quite a clear reason for it. They were touring constantly and there wasn't that much time to write songs. There are still eight songs of their own and at the same period they also wrote two songs that came out only on singles. Paul McCartney said back in the day that this album was basically their concert set list recorded at a studio. Compared to other Beatles albums, this one seems to have significantly less hit songs. Eight Days a Week seems to be the only mega hit and even that was dropped from the US album to sell more singles there.

To me personally, this is one of the most boring Beatle-albums. It's still significant historically, but it doesn't really include any of my favourite songs. The song I really like, is the cover version of Rock and Roll Music. This is probably the best version of this song ever recorded. It gives a sense of the wild rock n' roll sound the band had on their gigs at the Cavern. When this song was used in the Swedish book Popular Music from Vittula by Mikael Niemi and the film with the same name to highlight what kind of life changing experience it was for kids from the middle of nowhere to be introduced to rock n' roll, I got shivers all down my back from just the sheer thought of hearing something like this for the first time.

Many people have commented on the guitars and vocal harmonies on this album and said that this sounds like a direct influence that gave birth to the band The Byrds. I can totally hear that. These are the things that make The Beatles so significant. Even if some of these albums don't sound that exciting anymore today, at the time they've been something groundbreaking and new and we can thank them for so many other bands in the world. They really are the most influential band that has ever existed and I'm happy to own pretty much all of their albums. This one on vinyl.

Listen to the album on Spotify.