Meet the Beatles! wasn’t quite
the first album released in the United States by the innovative
Brit-pop sensations, the Beatles. A little less than a week prior to the
Meet the Beatles! release, Vee-Jay Records gave the eager U.S. its first taste of the band with Introducing… The Beatles. But after multiple legal and economic struggles, Introducing…’s production and distribution was stopped.
Then came Meet the Beatles!, Capitol’s first release of the band. This album was in many ways a counterpart to the band’s UK release, With the Beatles. Released a few months before, With the Beatles shares nine tracks with the American version of the album.
Despite the ambiguity of the album’s
identity and chronological place, one thing was apparent: the U.S. had
never heard of anything quite like the Beatles.
Meet the Beatles! is full of
the charm and simple musicianship that catapulted the British boy band
into paramount success. The opening single, “I Want to Hold Your Hand”
is the prime example of the recipe for a great pop song. A fun, upbeat
tempo guided by a playful bassline, simple harmonies and flirtatious
lyrics is the mold that the Beatles return to multiple times throughout
the record.
“I Saw Her Standing There” comes next
and remains in the same vein of catchy pop as “I Want to Hold Your
Hand.” It’s a simple song about not being able to take your eyes off of a
young, beautiful girl on the dance floor. The innocent and smooth
songwriting is what imbues these songs with such affectionate appeal.
The album goes beyond cookie cutter pop
music, though. A refrain takes place with “This Boy,” a swaying doo-wop
type ballad written by John Lennon. A song later the heightened tempo
is brought back with the rock-tinged “It Won’t Be Long.” More
aggressive, yet just as lively, with McCartney and Lennon shouting back
and forth, “It won’t be long, yeah (yeah), yeah (yeah), yeah (yeah),
‘till I belong to you.”
It’s the transparency and light-hearted themes that allow Meet the Beatles! to
captivate listeners. Instead of the mysterious and grandiose style that
many rock outfits had been offering, the Beatles appealed to the folk
who just wanted to listen to good music and have a fun time while doing
it. There are no 8-minute long anthems or spacey jams on this record. In
fact, the longest song clocks in at 2:50 (“I Saw Her Standing There”).
This modest style of pop music had not
before been executed with the musicianship and songwriting that the fab
four from Liverpool displayed. Screaming girls and radio stations
everywhere earnestly beckoned John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George
Harrison and Ringo Starr’s addictive music. Although Lennon and
McCartney are the primary singers, each member had his moment on the
microphone.
The second half of Meet the Beatles!
contains fewer hits. McCartney softly serenades a cover of Meredith
Wilson’s “Till There Was You,” and the flirty “Little Child” is
constantly accompanied by a harmonica, but compared to the single-heavy
first half, the B-side is rightly given less emphasis.
Meet the Beatles!,
just as any other album by the quartet, wouldn’t be the record it is
without the production and guidance of George Martin. Martin had been
the Beatles’ go-to guy for practically their whole career. In addition
to recording and engineering the record Martin contributed on piano as
well.
Meet the Beatles! may have been
an American impression of the UK release (they had the same cover art
albeit the American version’s blue tint), but it’s shorter length and
single-packed contents made it its own entity that would go on to sell
millions more than With the Beatles.
Meet the Beatles! was a
precursor of what was to come. Although the Beatles’ ventured into many
different musical styles, the fun vibes that radiate throughout this
album set the tone for what people could expect in the coming years from
the band.
The album topped the Billboard Top 200 in less than a month and stayed there until it was usurped by the band’s next Capitol release, The Beatles’ Second Album.
“I Want to Hold Your Hand” spent nearly
two months at the #1 spot on the Hot 100. “I Saw Her Standing There”
and “All My Loving” also made appearances on the charts. In 2012 Rolling Stone ranked Meet the Beatles! as the 53rd greatest album of all time.
This album came before the Beatles
refined their sound and perfected the art of their expansive
songwriting, but their raw talent was enough to turn the heads of
listeners everywhere. They showed that highly infectious pop can come in
the form of radio-ready melody fests like “I Saw Her Standing There,”
or incredibly sensitive and serene love songs like “All I’ve Got to Do.”
The dozen songs on Meet the Beatles! breeze by and leave the listener feeling refreshed and lifted.
Meet the Beatles! wasn’t even
the tip of the iceberg for the Beatles. It was more like them setting
their sales in uncharted waters for the first time. The United States
adored them. Not a year went by that the Beatles didn’t release a record
that eventually went platinum.
Their legacy is one that is arguably
unmatched in the world of rock and roll music. Until they disbanded in
1970 they explored a wide range of musical styles. What started off as
lighthearted pop rock was constantly evolving. Whether it was the folk
tendencies in Rubber Soul, the psychedelic rock of Revolver, the eclectic range of sounds in The Beatles (The White Album), or everything in between, the Beatles not only ruled, but defined the world of rock.
They impacted and influenced the world
of music more than most artists could ever dream of. Every great legacy
has a hallowed beginning, and for the Beatles, Meet the Beatles! was just that.
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