Customer Reviews

With Beatles (Reis)

5 star:		(144)
4 star:		(36)
3 star:		(26)
2 star:		(7)
1 star:		(11)

 

 

This is the album that launched Beatlemania in the U.S. Well, sort of. The cover is the same, but this is the U.K. version of the Beatles' second album, which was released only eight months after their debut in March of 1963. The U.S. version (entitled Meet the Beatles) included only nine of these songs and added "I Want To Hold Your Hand" and its b-side "I Saw Her Standing There" along with "This Boy."

But even though this is not the version that millions of baby boomers (like myself) grew up with, it's still an essential album in the Beatles' catalog. Among the originals is their best song never released as a single, "All My Loving." Also Ringo gets a vocal on the song originally given to the Rolling Stones, "I Wanna Be Your Man." And George Harrison gets his first songwriting credit with "Don't Bother Me."

The Beatles raid the Motown vaults for many of the covers. "Please Mr. Postman," "You've Really Got a Hold on Me" and "Money" are highlights. The latter features one of Lennon's best vocals. [It wouldn't be until their next album when they released a collection of all original material.]

All told, this album catches the Beatles while they are still not too far removed from their Cavern Club and Hamburg days. As such, you hear an urgency and energy in their performance that sets their music apart from the rest of the British Invasion that followed. ESSENTIAL

As mentioned already by previous reviewers, this is the British version of Meet The Beatles-which combined a few tunes off their 2nd album with this, their 1st(in the US). I was just a wee lass when these guys arrived on our shores & as soon as I saw them on their very first appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show, I knew life was never gonna be the same. No matter what age you were if you were around 40 yrs. ago, you realized this was history in the making, the start of something new & exciting in the world of rock & roll music. From the opening cut to the very last, the music sounds just as fresh even now. NY's oldies & classic rock stations will be playing most(if not all)of The Beatles catalog during the month of February. Today's so-called 'boy bands' cannot hold a candle to these guys & all the other great rock/pop bands of the British Invasion of the 1960s. No Beatle album collection is complete without this. Extremely enjoyable & worth 10 Stars.

I can't get over how critical fans and critics alike are of this wonderful, energetic and fun album. I simply adore it, and it's my number one choice when I need something to get me up and going in the morning! Their youthful energy shines through- this is moons before bitterness, jadedness and egotism crept in. They're just a bunch of kids who enjoyed playing music together, having a great old time recording their originals and covering some classics. This "purity" is what I miss in the later recordings. They seemed to stop loving making music together. But here they are at the pinnacle of fun- and they only got better with A Hard Day's Night (which was originally my favorite early Beatles album, until this one caught me).

My favorite tracks are the rockin' opener "It Won't Be Long", Lennon's gorgeous rendition of "You've Really Got a Hold on Me", George rockin' out on "Roll Over Beethoven", and the driving beat of "I Wanna Be Your Man". And who could forget a classic like Paul's "All My Loving"? And I absolutely love "All I've Got to Do"!

No one will ever compare or even come close to the magic they created. Ever. C'mon! Give this album a chance, people! Appreciate the energy and excitement! It's what started the mania in the first place!

I've read most of the reviews below, and it seems most are doing no more than using this space to air their personal bias about the Beatles. A true shame for those who have never heard this album.

Just for the record: this album catches the Beatles at the first flush of their incredible rise in popularity, and balances their years of experience playing clubs with the freshness of riding the first wave of British Beatlemania. The British public had finally caught on to the Beatles' incredible sound, and the Beatles responded, on this album and Hard Days's Night, with an adreniline rush that is very evident in the grooves (oops, I mean bitstream).

Anyone who knows anything about the early Beatles knows very well that they weren't about silly suits, any more than they were about writing deep lyrics. They were really about music and consolidating all their wonderful influences (R&B, Motown, Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Buddy Holly, Carl Perkins, Elvis, great showtunes) into a wonderful new sound. They were about delivering the finest rock vocals and harmony that those British listeners had every heard. They were about doing their own interpertations of their favorite artists' songs, many times unwittingly blowing the originals away! They were about writing the best songs they could possibly write. Listen carefully to the quality of the individual voices, the quality of the harmonies, and the excitement of the production on this album, and see if you don't get it: the Beatles were, and are, a true musical phenomenon.

It is absurd to say that this doesn't compare to their later work. While growth and change WAS the Beatles, and there is great merit in every phase of their career, there is no way that the later works could match the sense of discovery and excitement that this album conveys. You only expode on the scene once, and this album captures that explosion with the style, grace and musicality that only the Beatles had. They will always have their detractors; there will always be those who do not have the ears to hear, but for the rest of you, if you miss out on this classic, it's your loss, and you only have yourselves to blame.

p.s. This album, possibly more than any of the others, begs for a true remix/remaster from the original four-track session tapes. The latest technology would allow the drums and bass to be moved forward and centered and the voices to fill more of the stereo spectrum. The old mono master tapes were used for this original CD release, and the trasfer was done at the beginning of 1987(and was a horrible trasfer by 1987 standards!). The technology has come a long way since then. Capital, please let us hear these songs the way they could be heard. I have the original Mobile Fidelity vinyl box, and I KNOW how good this can really sound. Don't deprive us any longer!

This, the second Beatles studio album, was recorded on a single day in June, 1963. The boys were playing their regular instruments: Ringo on drums, Paul on bass, John on rhythm guitar, and George on lead guitar. So it's all Beatles, and it's all band. It must have seemed like one huge jam session! Recorded, as it was, before Beatlemania swept America, "With The Beatles" finds the band trying to repeat the winning formula of the previous album, "Please Please Me." It was customary in those days, to release albums in Britain separate from singles. So the upcoming smash, "I Want To Hold Your Hand," is not on this album. It, and both its flip-sides ("I Saw Her Standing There" in the UK and "This Boy" in the US) were added to nine tracks of "With The Beatles" to create the American issue, "Meet The Beatles," which sold better than 5 million copies. The five other tracks from "With The Beatles" were issued in America on "The Beatles' Second Album." The group seems to be in two modes here. The 7 Lennon-McCartney numbers tend to be messages for their growing number of female fans... Lesser versions (at least in spirit) of "I Want To Hold Your Hand." The reason I rated this album only 4 stars is because there is only so much, "I'm Gonna See My Baby Tonight" that I can take in one setting. "It Won't Be Long," "All I've Got To Do," "All My Loving," "Little Child," "Hold Me Tight," "Not A Second Time." There is a sameness of message there that makes the whole a bit stale, very quickly. "I Wanna Be Your Man" isn't too far off, but it is interesting, in that it was written for The Rolling Stones! They needed one more song to finish their album, Lennon and McCartney were guests at the session, and they wrote the whole song during a break! The one dissenting voice (as would come to be usual) from all this "Yeah, Yeah, Yeah" love-man talk belonged to George Harrison, singing one of his own compositions for the first time on "Don't Bother Me." The other side of The Beatles on this album is reflected in their choice of outside material. "Please Mister Postman" shows the group paying homage to both the "Girl Group" sound (as on the previous lp) and the Motown Sound, which also gets the treament on "Money" and "You've Really Got A Hold On Me." "Roll Over Beethoven" is from the Chuck Berry catalogue, and is sung by George (he still uses it to close his concerts). "Devil In Her Heart" (also sung by George) was a minor hit for a group called the Donays, while "Till There Was You" was taken from the play, "The Music Man." All told, this album showcases a very tight band that was waiting to see if the bank would break. It did.

If you enjoy the stereo effect of "music on the left, vocals on the right"...then this is right up your alley...

As was true with the first album ...This recording lacks the drive The Beatles were known for.

I did what many of you did back on Sept 9th....purchased the entire STEREO catalogue of remasters...and then proceeded to listen to them....only to be very disappointed with many of the stereo mixes

My solution was to go ahead and purchase the MONO REMASTER BOX....it contains the first 10 Beatle albums (up thru the WHITE ALBUM) in true MONAURAL sound...They sound the way The Beatles intended you to hear them...and they capture all the energy and definition of a real Beatle performance.

The benefit of having the STEREO REMASTERS....the enclosed booklet and outer jacket are easily worth the $12....

They should have included BOTH stereo and mono mixes in the remaster package..sort of how they did with the CAPITOL ALBUM BOX SETS

In the US, these songs were on "Meet the Beatles" and "The Beatles Second Album." Meet the Beatles, for us, added "I Want to Hold Your Hand" and "I Saw Her Standing There" and "This Boy." Otherwise, the rest of the songs on that landmark album are here, largely in order. If you buy "Past Masters Volume One" you get the early singles not included on original release albums in the U.K. Most of us (back in the day) couldn't find the Vee-Jay album "Introducing the Beatles". When they broke out on Ed Sullivan, "Meet the Beatles" was the hot, available, album in stores. I played mine till the grooves wore through.

This is probably the "rockin-est" album of the period with lots of pure rock n roll songs like: "It Won't Be Long", "Please Mister Postman", "Hold me Tight", (would have been a hit single for any other band of the time), "Money", "Little Child", and George's guitar showpiece, (often performed on stage) "Roll Over Beethoven." Chuck Berry, watch out! Crank up the volume on this one! It also has George's first song writing credit on album with "Don't Bother Me."

Soulful tracks are "All I've Got To Do", "You Really Got a Hold On Me", and "Devil in her Heart." Paul's best is the hit classic "All My Loving" (first song performed on Ed Sullivan by the fabs). "Till there was You" is a nice showtune, a little lame, but has an excellent Spanish guitar solo by George. They also did this one on the Sullivan show.

I would rank this second of the early period. Behind AHDN, but ahead of Please Please Me (3rd) and Beatles for Sale. Buy Past Masters Volume One as well, which has 5 #1 hits that are featured on Beatles "One".

It's impossible for me to disagree more with the people who say this is a weak album. If anything, it's one of the Fab Four's most powerful early efforts. Not all of these tracks made the Top 40. Who cares? What's important here is the quality of the music, not the popularity of it. And that's what With the Beatles gives you: quality.

With a track listing just bursting with jangly guitars, danceable drumbeats and youthful, vibrant voices, this album is essential to those wanting to get the feel of Beatlemania. And just so you'll know, I'm 18. I bought this album when I was 14. People who claim that modern kids wouldn't "get" this kind of music need to sit down and shut up.

But back to the CD. With the Beatles contains a few of the band's popular numbers, like McCartney's "All My Loving," but more importantly, it boasts some of their unsung (though equally impressive) early material, such as the raucous "It Won't Be Long," the easier-going "Not a Second Time," the fun "Little Child," as well as the boys' inspired covers of Motown standards like "Please Mister Postman," "Money" and "You Really Got a Hold on Me," which hold their own well against their predecessors (and in certain cases, surpass them).

If you want to understand why everyone in the '60s was always copying the Beatles, get this album. It'll do your ears good.

One of the great things about the CD revolution back in the '80s was when EMI/Capitol decided to re-release all the Beatles albums on CD in the original UK versions. Naturally, I felt Capitol had ripped me off when I heard the CD versions and realized I had been swindled by Capitol's US versions. Capitol did a big butcher job on "With the Beatles" (starting with the title change- "Meet the Beatles.") Some of the songs on the US version weren't on the UK version. "I Want to Hold Your Hand" was not inteneded to be put on an album. "I Saw Her Standing There" was on the UK "Please Please Me." Some of "With the Beatle's" tunes didn't see the light of day until Capitol released it's next bastradized Beatles album, "The Beatles' Second Album."

Enough belly-achin', but, man, "With the Beatles" is a great album. It was wonderful to hear it the way the Beatles intended us to hear it back in 1963 (too bad I didn't hear it the way it was intended to be heard until 1987!) The album really isn't all that different than "Please Please Me," some original tunes and some cover tunes. However, the second album shows the Beatles becoming the studio band which, in less than four years, would release "Sgt. Pepper" unto the world. Lead vocals are double-tracked throughout. More care is observed with the recording quality and texture of guitars, bass, and drums. Overdubbing is obvious. George Martin is guiding the Fab Four in a crash course of studio technique.

The songwriting is getting better. John and Paul are obviously singing lead on the songs which, individually, they wrote the bulk of the lyrics for. This is different from the "let's share the mike we're playin' our Cavern set" approach which the band took of their first album.

I think it's instructive to listen to this album and compare it with its follow-up, "A Hard Day's Night." "A Hard Day's Night," is one of the Beatles' absolute best albums. The studio techniques and songwriting skills apparent on "With the Bealtes" would come to fruition with its follow-up. The Beatles never made an album under 5 stars. "With the Bealtes" is an essential album by any standards.

Reviewing a classic Beatles album is like sitting down to critque the sunset--but here we go. The pre-Sullivan "With The Beatles" whips through its 14 tracks in just around 30 minutes, but leaves no doubt as to who the "kings of pop" were (or were about to become) in early 1963! From Paul's original,Top 40 friendly "All My Lovin'" and George's memorable debut "Don't Bother Me" to John's raw,primal cover of "Money",the basic formula was cemented--the amiable McCartney wanted to please the fans,the edgier Lennon wanted to shake them up, and Harrison, apparently, just wanted to be left alone! (Ringo was just, well, Ringo.)Quintessential Fabbishness. One star is deducted with this "toughlove" caveat: while I have always applauded the use of the original 14-track British editions for CD issue of the Beatle catalog, the sound transfer on almost all titles remains some of the worst out there. If any group in the history of rock ever deserved a "labor of love" remastering...need I say more?