Customer Reviews

The Beatles' Second Album (Rock of Ages)

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

How does someone, even the always loquacious Dave Marsh, write an entire book (albeit 180 small pages) about an album containing 11 songs? He doesn't. While perhaps a third of the book is about or relates to the Capitol concoction released in the US as "The Beatles' Second Album," the rest is a scathing attack on Capitol exec Dave Dexter, Jr., who oversaw the release of Capitol's Beatles' records from late 1963 to 1966. This puts Marsh in an odd position, too, for as much as he adores the subject LP which Dexter assembled (there is no UK "counterpart" album), he cannot stop raking Dexter over the coals for everything Marsh sees that Dexter did wrong.

There is way too much about Dexter in this book. And, of course, "Trashing Dave Dexter While Listening to the Beatles' Second Album" would not have been a marketable title, albeit a more accurate one.

Marsh offers some interesting descriptions of the LP's songs and how they affected him, though he retains his long-standing tendency to throw in totally unnecessary ten-dollar words here and there. But he does not offer any new revelations or, for that matter, insight. His primary sources are Bruce Spizer's excellent books and Dexter's own "Playback." Even so, he completely fails to explain why the LP includes both sides of the Beatles' sole Swan single (Swan did not have the rights to issue the songs on an LP), no doubt because Spizer's superb "The Beatles' Swan Song" had not yet been published when Marsh was writing his book.

Most of the factual material is condensed well, though quite a bit of it, such as the Vee Jay/Capitol debacle (all gleaned from Spizer's excellent book on the subject) has little or nothing to do with the book's subject. There are only a few obvious errors (e.g., reference to a Canadian radio station in "London" and one reference to Capitol's constructing "Meet the Beatles" from the UK "Please Please Me" instead of the UK "With the Beatles," though Marsh gets it right in the acknowledgments section).

The book suffers somewhat, though, from being written in spurts, as some sentences appear verbatim or nearly so in different chapters. This is likely due not to Dickensonian writing but rather to sloppy editing.

A casual Beatles fan may find this thinly-disguised hatchet job interesting in spots, but the more serious fan will appreciate the book more for Marsh's opinions. They make it an entertaning read, while the overbearing bludgeoning of Dexter and endless recitations of Dexter's life history, most of which are utterly superfluous to the book, render it flawed.

I have always liked Dave Marsh's take on rock history, but I believe this is his first book on the Beatles. This short volume is useful for detailing exactly why Capitol Records issued the butchered albums in the 1960's, essentially turning 7 official British albums into 11 American albums which were much shorter and appeared to be exploiting the American market by selling the same music over the course of additional albums. There were economic reasons for this, including greed (on the part of Capitol records) and practical reasons (the American market wanted the stand-alone Beatles singles on the albums, not the case in Britian). The Beatles Second Album is the high point of this otherwise sorry history, and I recall regarding this album as an interesting mix of Beatles songs. Nothing beats the official British albums, but the Second Album is not bad. In all, an interesting chapter in Beatles history, but one of great interest to fans who appreciate the official British albums but wonder why, exactly, the record company screwed up the American catalogue.

Docked a star for Marsh's constant attack on Dave Dexter, who edited and reworked the Beatles' American catalogue. Dexter appears to have been the wrong person for the job and his blunders affected how American fans viewed the music, but there is too much in the way of attacking Dexter. We get the point that Dexter was a bad-guy here, but there are better ways to express contempt for someone like this.

Dave Marsh is a well-known and well-respected author in the world of rock criticism, so it makes sense that he would someday turn his sights on the greatest rock band of all time. Add to that his quirky choice of The Beatles' Second Album as the subject for a full book and what do you expect? This is not a feel-good biography of the album, folks, or a rose-tinted history of it, though it includes some of those elements as well. This mini-tome represents Marsh at his best: opinionated, knowledgable, experienced, outspoken and absolutely fearless. While Marsh's scathing words about Dave Dexter are pointed, Marsh grounds his criticism in both history and fact. Do I believe every idiosyncratic jibe was necessary? Maybe not. A case can easily be made that Dexter's big, fat reverb-laden sound was, in fact, justified and served The Fabs very well on the AM radio of the day. And at the time, of course, who knew? Even now, it's probably my favorite early Beatles' album for all the reasons Marsh delineates in this book. Wow! What a collection of songs! So agree with it or not, this book is valid food for thought and made me appreciate the fabulous Second Album all over again, for better and worse. I can highly recommend this book for all fans. Thank you, Mr. Marsh. I'd love to read more.

This book is really just an overinflated magazine article. Half the book is an exhaustive (and exhausting) analysis of each song on the titular recording. The rest is a lengthy, vicious attack on the Capitol Records executive responsible for the Beatles' American album releases. Does that sound like a fun read?

While there is some interesting material about the original songs that the Beatles covered, the unrelenting excoriation of the record exec (who is dead and cannot defend) makes the author look worse than his subject.

I LOVE the Beatles. And even with Dexterization, I love the American Beatles albums because they are what I grew up with. Of course, nowadays I listen to the British albums, as the Beatles meant me to. But that's beside the point...

So I read this book, hoping it would bring something new to the table about the Beatles' 2nd album, that it would provide insight about it, that it would celebrate it in a way that would make me enjoy reading it.

Well, first of all, Dave Marsh is not a good writer. (Sorry, Dave.) His use of words and sentence structure are not particularly good, and even the organization of the book is rather incoherent.

Secondly, the only really interesting part of the book was about Dave Dexter who was the guy at Capitol Records who added reverb to the Beatles' albums and took the order of the songs the Beatles released on albums in Britain and edited them so as to fit only 11 or 12 songs on an album instead of the 14 the British albums had. In doing this, Dexter made a real mess of them, especially the later ones such as "Rubber Soul" and "Revolver".

Marsh argues that by luck what Dexter did in making "The Beatles' Second Album" actually turned out good because it can be called the Beatles' "Motown album". Okay. I can see his point there. The selection of the songs is pretty good. (But not as good as the ACTUAL British 2nd album!)

But Marsh spends a lot of time in the book talking about Dexter and he has one chapter of about 30 pages all about Dexter called "The man who hated the Beatles". This is one of the only parts of the book I found interesting. But the thing is, this should have been in a separate book about the whole Capitol/EMI relationship, as it does not pertain specifically to the 2nd album but rather pertains to all of the Beatles albums prior to "Sgt. Pepper's...".

So I enjoyed learning about Dexter and Capitol but most people buying this book are not looking for that, and anyway it's only about 1/3 of the book.

The rest of the book mostly consists of Marsh waxing poetic about how great the Motown songs are that were picked by Dexter to put onto "The Beatles' Second Album", and how the Beatles make them their own. This part of the book is okay but it really is just about Marsh and his opinions, it has little to do with the Beatles themselves. He adds nothing to the history of the Beatles here, aside from the Dexter information. And I'm not sure but what that hasn't also been in other books already. Maybe, maybe not. I don't read a lot of Beatles books, I prefer to just listen to them.

In conclusion, the part about Dave Dexter and how he hated the Beatles and screwed up all their earlier albums is the only part I found interesting. It is a part of the Beatles' history that you seldom hear much about. I found it fascinating to learn something about Dexter and how the job of editing the Beatles' British albums fell into his lap even though he hated rock music and didn't even want Capitol to sign the Beatles!

The rest of the book was mostly boring, just Marsh's opinions, and I had to force myself to finish it.

Overall I would say "Do not buy this book!" If you are interested in Dexter, see if you can get the book at the library or just go to a bookstore and read those 30-40 pages about Dexter. And get Dexter's book at the library if you can.

This book is a waste of money and time.

I was excited to read this book. The Beatles' Second Album was the first LP I ever purchased, and I was hoping this book would serve as a companion to my many fond memories surrounding the LP. Unfortunately Mr. Marsh spends little time discussing the album. He instead chooses to bombard the reader with self-congratulatory drivel about how as a youngster he loved Motown records, and that he was apparently the one enlightened white kid who was cool enough to realize the brilliance of the Beatles' versions of the Motown sound. I detest writers who choose to focus on themselves as opposed to the implied subject matter of their book. I was also amused how Mr. Marsh dismissed "All My Loving" from With The Beatles as being "pretty soft." No less than John Lennon stated that he thought "All My Loving" was a great McCartney song, and that he wished he had written it. Oh well, I guess Mr. Marsh knows more than the rest of us uneducated and ignorant 60's era white kids. If you ask me, Mr. Marsh comes off sounding a lot like Dave Dexter, the antagonist of Mr. Marsh's autobiography/Beatles' book.

It's interesting that Dave Marsh exhibits the very characteristics he attributes to Dave Dexter, i.e. being tied the aesthetics of a certain era, lacking vision, etc. In the decades since Marsh's glory days at Rolling Stone, entire generations and genres of American music have been reissued, re-evaluated, and placed in fresh contexts, while Marsh is still trying to convince us all of the "importance" of rock 'n' roll. If we haven't gotten that message by now, we're not likely to any time soon. Despite how you may feel about Dexter's treatment of the Beatles' catalog - and frankly I have mixed feelings - it's worth noting that Dexter brought many great artists to Capitol during its golden era, including Peggy Lee, Duke Ellington, Frank Sinatra, Stan Kenton, and Nat "King" Cole. That's more than Dave Marsh has ever done for rock or any other music.

Outstanding book for any hard core Beatle fan or any musicologist interested in the history of rock and roll.

To write about the 'assembly-line' approach Capitol records took with the Beatles' LPs, is to write about Dave Dexter. The two cannot be separated.
The book tackles several ironies: yes, as many have stated, Dave Marsh loathes Dexter for Dexter's disdain of the band. Yet, Dexter unwittingly pieced together a power-house LP, doing so after having passed on the Beatles numerous times! There is your corporate joke, folks: the guy who has the least interest in the project/product is put in charge of it, and despite his lack of qualifications, succeeds in a big way.
A fascinating essay on what is viewed as the encapsulation of The Beatles treatment by Capitol - treating every record as though it was the last the cash-cow has to offer.

I see the point Marsh is making. But I think he's a little unfair to Dexter. Marsh makes the mistake of taking Dexter out of the context of his time. It is like someone saying they "knew" Michael Jordan would end up being arguably the greatest basketball player ever while MJ was @ UNC.
Nobody from Dexter's generation understood the Beatles.
Also,the music/record business back then always treated artists like moo-cows. It was not just the Beatles that got hosed by record companies.
One thing the Dexter versions I really like (the stereo ones) is that as a hobbyist guitar player myself,I can really hear detail in the guitar parts that I can't hear that well in the mono versions.
When I bought these LP's back in the mid-60's I bought the monos and had a crap record player so there was a lot I did not hear and spent a lot of my time cursing (a 12 year old's version) at my phonograph while watching it's tone-arm skipping all over the LP's like a girl on a hop-scotch.
So,when I bought the Capitol CD re-releases a few years ago,I heard lots of stuff on the stereo versions I never heard before.
I think the Dexter versions are just as valid as any other "alternate" Beatles mix.The more Beatles,the better!
Marsh was right on in labeling the Beatles 2nd as their "Motown" album.
Anybody who listens can see how tight a band the Beatles could be,(yes I know that the songs were produced by George Martin). But in 1962-64,there was no other white band I can think of that covered MoTown better than the Beatles did. You can ask the Motown people about that,as they and other black artists covered a lot of Beatles songs. That's the ultimate sign of respect.