Thrifty Tunes: 09.19.09: The Beatles - A Hard Day's Night
Posted by Paul Hollingsworth on 09.19.2009
The Beatles invent self-promotion! The Beatles invent music videos! The Beatles invent multi-media extravaganzas! The first Beatles record I ever heard gets a fresh spin in this week's Thrifty Tunes.
As I've mentioned before, my parents were not very hip in regards to pop music. When I was a kid, my father's massive, state of the art Pioneer stereo system played mostly his classical music records (Beethoven, Bach and Brahms) and my mothers "AM Gold" type records. (The Carpenters, mostly. Although she did have a few Supremes records, which I rather liked.) The only exceptions to this were the handful of Kiss records and eight-tracks I smuggled in from my friends and my cousins' houses and a scratched up and coverless copy of A Hard Day's Night.
No one seemed to know exactly where the album had come from, but my parents, both high school math teachers, probably assumed it came from one of their students who had left it behind in an old algebra textbook that had found its way to our house. I had no knowledge, as a kid, of The Beatles in any way except through that one worn out record. One afternoon while I was playing it. when i was six or so, my father came into the room, listened for a moment, then turned and shuffled out ,muttering words like "silliness" and "awful" under his breath. Even though he and mom were both of the generation that were teenagers in the sixties, neither had much interest in The Beatles. Haircuts, according to both, was what the band needed, and music lessons, according to my father.
I do remember rather liking "A Hard Day's Night" almost as much as the Kiss classic, "Calling Dr. Love", but I never entertained my relatives with a rendition of it. (Something I did quite often with a hairbrush and tennis racket guitar with "Calling Dr. Love" and "Baby Driver" to the delight and/or horror of nearly everyone.) When I found a copy of A Hard Day's Night at a flea market for the eye popping price of two bucks, I paid quickly and rushed home to listen. It was one of the few Beatles records I didn't have any sort of copy of, and hadn't heard from beginning to end in a long time, maybe ever. (Although I don't remember, I don't think my parents would have been able to handle side one and side two of the copy we had when I was a kid.)
The album opens with the title track, which remains one of the band's most popular tunes. To me, it still sounds fresh and vibrant. Time hasn't diluted its energy and spark. (Which can be said of most of the band's songs.) "I Should Have Known Better" is another of John Lennon's attempts to be Dylan, but there's plenty of John in the song too. "If I Fell" is another highlight and a step toward the more mature sounding ballads the band would record on their next several records. Nirvana also played this when I saw them in concert, so I'd like to think it's one of Kurt's favorite Beatles songs as well. The lyrics and melody of the song are so simple and stripped down, it seems like the type of tune anybody could write. (Of course, no one else has yet figured out how to do it quite like the band.)
"Can't Buy Me Love" ends side one, and is another of the band's most well-known songs. I'm sure the first 3000 times I heard the song, I liked it, but after about 3001, it got to be a bit overplayed. Maybe the only argument I can understand by people who claim to not like the Beatles is that songs like "Can't Buy Me Love" and "Hey Jude" have been heard so many times that it's nearly impossible to hear anything fresh about the tunes. If I only knew the bigger songs, I might think that way as well. One of the great things about the Beatles, though, is the sheer depth of their catalogue. For every "Can't Buy Me Love" there's an under the radar song like "Any Time At All", which opens side two of the album.
My Top Five last week for this site was topped by "Things We Said Today", which, to me, is the highlight of the album. It's not as familiar as some of the other songs on the album, but in a little over two and a half minutes of songwriting, Paul McCartney crafted one of the most bittersweet ballads in pop music. I'm not sure that 'someday' ever really comes, (it certainly didn't for Paul) but it does a nice job of capturing the hope which anybody who's ever fallen in love feels when you have one of those perfect days.
This album is obviously the soundtrack for the film of the same name. If you've never seen it before, you should get on Youtube and take a look. The visuals and the editing of that film influenced just about every video you've ever seen in one way or another. (The entire movie, in fact, might well be considered the first music video of any kind.) The movie was released at the height of Beatlemania, (just listen to those girls screaming in the "Things You Said Today" performance) and both the movie and the album were huge hits in England and in America.
Complete Track Listing: (1964 release on Parlophone Records)
Side One:
1. A Hard Day's Night
2. I Should Have Known Better
3. If I Fell
4. I'm Happy Just To Dance With You
5. And I Love Her
6. Tell Me Why
7. Can't Buy Me Love
Side Two:
1. Any Time At All
2. I'll Cry Instead
3. Things We Said Today
4. When I Get Home
5. You Can't Do That
6. I'll Be Back
Although I don't like this album as a whole as much as Rubber Soul or Revolver, it does have its moments. "Things We Said Today" is one of my favorite songs by the band, and the title track has one of the most well known openings in pop music history. I don't necessarily think it's the most vital of their records, and some of the songs are little more than filler, (at least by Beatles standards) and it seems strangely (again by Beatles standards) in cohesive from track to track. The highpoints are high, but it just sounds uneven, maybe even a bit rushed through.
