The Beatles are my favourite group and with such a vast catalogue of brilliant songs, it is hard to answer the question “What’s your favourite Beatles song?”. As a young teenager when I formally discovered their music, I was enthralled with the group and always wanted to talk about them. People would ask me what my favourite Beatles song was and, as a teen obsessed with learning about their music and cataloguing my new albums and singles, I had a personality that liked to find superlatives in the world around me. It was only natural that I would want to settle on a single favourite Beatles song.
The first Beatles album I played was Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. Could there be any better album to use as an introduction to the Beatles? My favourite song off that album was “A Day in the Life”. The blending of two songs by John and Paul was ingenious. As a fourteen-year-old I placed myself in the middle of the action, imagining myself as the protagonist in each singer’s song. I look back 45 years with a laugh and eyeroll now, but in May of 1980 I was so enamoured of this song that I even made up a series of actions to accompany it. I would act out the Paul parts of dragging a comb across my head, grabbing a hat and lighting a cigarette and falling asleep. I’d count along with Mal Evans, and for the finale, slammed my fingers onto an imaginary keyboard.
I spent the rest of 1980 acquiring the Beatles’ catalogue using the meagre money I earned from my paper route. It was a wondrous time of discovery, since I had the entire Beatles oeuvre to choose from, and only had to wait to earn more money to buy more of it. I would head off to Sam the Record Man in Sherway Gardens every two weeks to buy a new album. I read everything I could about the band as well, and thus knew that the album that followed Sgt. Pepper was Magical Mystery Tour, so that was the very first Beatles album I ever bought.
As I got more albums and broadened my horizons I was introduced to and fell in love with new songs. I would never say now that any of these songs is better than the others, but while I was a teen I liked to rank my favourite. This ranking of a single favourite Beatles song changed over the years. I do remember how this list evolved. And thus after I acquired more albums, I learned more songs, and “A Day in the Life” was supplanted by:
“Yes it Is” was included on the North American album Beatles VI, which I loved. I was fourteen when I got it. As a Canadian my early Beatles album collection was based on the North American releases, which also included three unique-to-Canada albums. I couldn’t afford the price of UK imports, and was in awe of these albums, such as Please Please Me and Beatles for Sale when I saw them for sale at the Yonge Street record stores like Sam the Record Man and A&A’s. My suburban Sherway Gardens mall store did not sell them. I was brought up on the songs of the Beatles based on their North American album versions. And it was this specific version of “Yes it Is”, with its harmonies and extra echo and reverb added on Beatles VI that I adored.
“Another Girl” from the movie Help! became my favourite song for the longest time. When I told people about this song, no one knew what I was talking about. I suppose when asking what my favourite Beatles song was, people would expect to hear the name of a hit single. I love the bouncy beat of this song, plus the surging guitar near the end. Paul and John’s voices blend beautifully. At a record show I bought a copy of the Japanese single “The Night Before”/”Another Girl”, which in my opinion is the greatest pairing of two Beatles songs for a single that neither the UK nor the US released.
“Only a Northern Song” was featured in the movie Yellow Submarine in a psychedelic sequence which felt like an LSD trip (which I can only imagine what such a trip would be like). It was also a difficult song for me to acquire, as I could never find the Yellow Submarine album for sale in any local shops. Thus it remained out of reach as a cherished treasure I hoped to find someday. The album surely existed in 1980 as a Capitol of Canada reissue, but I never saw it in a shop until I went to Florida in the summer of 1981. We were visiting my father and I got an American Capitol copy. Up until then, the only time I could hear the songs from the album were when I watched the movie, so for over a year the LP soundtrack was out of reach. That meant my first acquaintance with “It’s All Too Much” was the movie version, which includes an extra verse not on the album version. I own the Mexican EP below, which mistitles the song with a superfluous “It’s”.
“Paperback Writer” starts off fast, which I like. The guitars at the beginning race and Paul sings at a rapid pace. It’s a combination I adore in Beatles music: the mania of lyrics and guitars mixed together. When I hear this song I drop the lead vocal to sing along with John and George in the “frère Jacques”.
And talk about fast: “I Feel Fine” starts off with a buzz of feedback and then the guitars and cymbals rush in, never relenting. The whole song is like this, with John’s vocals being surrounded. After years of listening to the entire Beatles catalogue I came to realize that if pressed to make a choice, I preferred the music of the early years, thus the red 1962-1966 album over the blue 1967-1970. “I Feel Fine”, for me, represents Beatlemania. I can imagine hearing this in late 1964 and going crazy with exhilaration.
One Response
Great memories, great songs. Many of my favourites are from ’64-’66 (I’ll Cry Instead, Things We Said Today, I’ll Follow the Sun, I Feel Fine, This Boy, We Can Work It Out, Norwegian Wood, Taxman, Eleanor Rigby among them). If I could only choose one it would be Strawberry Fields Forever…but I’m glad I don’t have to make that choice. I remember the thrill of flipping through record bins, hoping to find a forgotten treasure. I wouldn’t trade those days—or our Beatlemaniac adventures!—for anything.