Giving It Away

The one thing I like about being a Beatles fan is the level to which you can mine to find new gems. Once the BBC recordings were out of the bag, it became obvious that there was more to the catalogue than just what the band put out. I'm talking here about the catalogue of songs they gave away. There are some obvious gems in this oft forgotten part of Beatledom. Songs like Bad To Me and I'll Be On My Way for example. In the case of Bad To Me it's difficult to understand why they didn't do themselves? It could easily have fitted on a b side, or indeed on the first couple of albums. Whilst With The Beatles is fairly strong overall, Please Please Me could have dropped Chains in favour of say, Love of the Loved? I can understand that by giving these tunes to others, it created a scenario where it was advantageous for them to spread out the publishing to make a few extra bucks. It was also good for the receiving artist, many of whom were new names and breaking into the market. Perhaps more deviously though, it also allowed them to add to their already dominant position in the market place by putting tracks out that didn't have The Beatles brand name directly on it. It also gave them the chance to develop their reputations as tune smiths; "bigging up" on the Tin Pan Alley muscle. Songs like Nobody I Know, World Without Love and From A Window. These are solid and competent examples of a writing style obviously under serious and rapid development. They are becoming professionals. There is such a wealth of material that they have spawned albums in themselves, like the excellent "Unheard Melodies" set which includes most of the good ones. For me, it was a must have. Whilst I was learning to play the guitar, I (of course) bought a couple of Beatle chord books. Quite a few of these books contained songs I'd never heard, like Love Of The Loved, Step Inside Love and That Mean's A Lot and I was desperate to hear them. P.J Proby's version of That Mean's A Lot is just amazing! Which voice will he use on this tune? He had a gift, a fantastic set of pipes, but man what a ham!! The way he sings that song MUST have had the boys on the deck laughing their heads off! So bad in fact, that it's great!
When I first heard I'm In Love, I was floored by it's simplicity. John's demo of it is simply beautiful. I love the line when he sings "according to my friends - I'm In Love". A good early example of John using a device in the lyric to stand the song on it's head. I'm in Love is one of two personal favourites, the other being It's For You released by Silly... sorry.. Cilla Black in 1964. I can't understand why that one wasn't kept in-house? It's such a well produced piece of work and seems to be more developed than most of their 1964 output. Granted it probably wouldn't have been at home on say, A Hard Day's Night, but it might have made a brilliant single or E.P track. A song of this calibre left out and released in the same year which brought some of the dubious content of Beatles For Sale seems to defy artistic logic. There were a couple of suspect decisions made around that time, witness putting Mr Moonlight (a C side if there ever was one) on the album as opposed to Leave My Kitten...I mean WHAT?...(knock, knock) HELLO?? ...any one at home here? Surely a crazy idea?
The songs given away probably give more of an insight into the business end of things rather than the artistic. Perhaps a song like It's For You might have been seen as being not being poppy enough, not Beatley enough? Maybe it may have been too sophisticated for the average fan at that time? No doubt Ms Black's audience were probably just that little bit older than the average Beatle fan in 1964? So, perhaps it was the right business decision. In most cases maybe it was the right thing to do i.e. give the songs away. However, it doesn't stop you wanting to hear a Beatle version does it?