Customer Reviews

Hey Jude

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

While not really an album, "Hey Jude" is a great representation of songs that weren't available on LP in the US at the time of it's release 1970. While "Can't Buy Me Love" and "I Should Have Known Better" were released in the US on the soundtrack to "A Hard Day's Night", the album was released on the United Artists label, so "Can't Buy Me Love" and "I Should Have Known Better" had never been released on Capitol Records.

Besides those two, this was the first place you could get the other songs on an LP. "Paperback Writer" and "Rain" were two songs that were released on a single together in 1966 and are both excellent songs. "Lady Madonna" was a single from 1968 (the B-Side "The Inner Light" was also unavailable on LP and would remain so until it surfaced on "The Beatles Rarities" LP in 1980). "Ravolution" and "Hey Jude" were released together as a single with "Hey Jude" as the A-Side and "Revolution" as the B-Side. "Old Brown Shoe" was released at the B-Side to "The Ballad of John and Yoko" (also featured here) in 1969. Lastly "Don't Let Me Down" was released as the B-Side to "Get Back", also in 1969.

With the releases of the UK albums and the Past Masters, this album was no longer necessary and was never released on CD. This cassette is the easiest way to listen to this album on a stereo system.

Overall, this is a great album, even if it is not needed nowadays.

(Note: This review is for the cassette version, which is the one I own.) Hey Jude, also known as The Beatles Again, is an interesting "album," really more of a compilation, that features many of the group's single sides that didn't make it onto any of the British or American albums ("Paperback Writer," "Rain," "Lady Madonna," "Hey Jude," "Revolution," "Don't Let Me Down," "Ballad Of John & Yoko," and "Old Brown Shoe"), as well as "Can't Buy Me Love" and "I Should Have Known Better," which originally didn't appear on any of the (Capitol) albums in America. This is a good collection, but "Can't Buy Me Love" and "I Should Have Known Better" (both from '64) sound very odd alongside a bunch of songs that are of '66-'69 vintage, and I'm not particularly fond of a few of the other songs (although I like all the songs, or most of them, to certain degrees). Also, all of the songs except "Can't..." and "Should Have Known" are on Past Masters Volume 2 (or the second disc of the recent 2-CD Past Masters reissue), and you can get those two on the recent stereo reissue of the (British) A Hard Day's Night album (they're in stereo on Hey Jude, as are the other songs), so this "album" is no longer necessary in order to have all of the group's songs and to have all the songs here in stereo. (The album's current "unnecessariness" is why it isn't legitimately on CD.) I still like the cassette, though, and I think it's one of the most interesting Beatles releases. However, it is too "scattershot" --- two songs from '64 and eight from '66-'69, out of strict chronological order, with most of the latest songs ("Hey Jude," "Old Brown Shoe," "Don't Let Me Down," and "Ballad Of John & Yoko") on side one --- to have the "feel" of an album of Beatles songs recorded during the same time period. Thus, it works better as a compilation, though the track sequencing is still very weird. Just why the songs that appeared on side one of the LP, and the ones that were on side two, were flip-flopped on the cassette, I have no idea. (By the way, while Hey Jude is not on any "legit" CD, at least not on any legit ones that I'm aware of, but you could easily burn your own personal CD of it by using Past Masters Volume Two --- or "Disc Two" of the 2-CD set --- and the stereo Hard Day's Night reissue!)

This is just a collection of singles, not really an album. It doesn't have the great flow of Abbey Road or Sgt Pepper, but if all you want is a few really good songs then this is for you.