The Beatles' Second Album

by Dave Marsh

The Beatles' Second Album runs only 22 minutes, with just 11 songs - many of which the group didn't write. Despite all that, the album personifies the Beatles: the world's greatest rock'n'roll band, according to well-known rock'n'roll critic and author Dave Marsh. With its overload of rock'n'roll, R&B, and early soul influence, including "Roll Over Beethoven," and "Long Tall Sally", The Beatles' Second Album - the book and the album - offers a great vantage point from which to see the group's enormous impact on pop music and culture.

Marsh breaks new ground by focusing on the Beatles' US recordings and how they evolved from British releases at a time when the two nations' approaches to rock'n'roll production were vastly different.

Genres: Music, Nonfiction

160 pages, Hardcover

First published October 30, 2007

Reviews

[Scott · Rating 4 out of 5]

"The Beatles, bobbing their heads and shouting 'yeah!,' provided millions of us with both an example of a small group that worked [.] and a connection to a much larger group consisting of all the millions who assented to that 'yeah!' Not a small thing, not because it was the 60's and big things were boring, but because we were teenagers, and your teens are a lonely time in life, a time of not-quite-shared secrets and frightfully open vulnerabilities. The songs on The Beatles' Second Album not only speak to that sense of secrets and vulnerabilities, they hint there are ways out." -- page 169

Author Marsh, former editor of the now-defunct Creem periodical and dab hand at rock bios (The Who, Black Sabbath, Springsteen), turns his attention to the quartet of lovable mop-tops with the blandly-titled The Beatles' Second Album. However, this is a situation where you shouldn't judge a book by its appellation. Marsh pens a thoughtful and informative look at the album - specifically, the slapdash-ish American-issued 12-track version (as Great Britain instead received the 14-track With the Beatles, boasting that instantly recognizable b&w cover art of the four floating heads) - and also includes a welcome and affecting bit of sociology along with the great songs. At that time in Fab Four's career and discography circa early 1964 they were still churning out cover versions to help fill a platter, and Marsh argues the choices here (a triple shot of early Motown with 'Money,' 'You Really Got a Hold on Me,' and 'Please, Mr. Postman,'; plus the establishing rock hits of Chuck Berry's 'Roll Over Beethoven' and Little Richard's 'Long Tall Sally') are some first-rate interpretations, showing off those long hours that 'the boys' put in as an overworked and underpaid Hamburg bar band. There's also a fair amount of humor as well, courtesy of American record executive Dave Dexter Jr., who apparently (at least according to Marsh's explanations) made so many wrong-headed decisions and erroneous after-the-fact statements about the band that he likely would have torpedoed the success of a lesser act. As Marsh points out early on this album 'only' had eleven songs or 26 minutes worth of music, but it was one of those releases that shocked a moribund genre back to life, and firmly helped to give it a second act AND pave the way for many other quality British Invasion acts.

[Paul Bryant · Rating 3 out of 5]

I saw another book on the Beatles right there on the shelf in the shop next to 45 others.. I went home and I sat down at my white piano and sang

Imagine no more films, plays or books about John Lennon or the Beatles
It's easy if you try
Nothing to groan at or queue for
No more tickets to buy
Imagine all the people that read books about music
Watching and reading something else instead
Ah, you-oo-ooo - you may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you will join us
And the world will be a slightly better place

But guess what. I bought it and read it.

[Adam · Rating 5 out of 5]

This does what the books in the 33 1/3 series almost without exception fail to do. Exemplary.

[Jason Coleman · Rating 3 out of 5]

Dave Marsh can be a tiresome bully; listen to him on satellite radio sometime, and you'll hear someone who sounds like a left-wing version of Sean Hannity. He can also be a misguided scold—I'll never forgive him for his "debunkings" of Tom Verlaine or Steely Dan. But he's always written lovingly about early rock'n'roll, that is, before it became "rock." In addition to critiquing the eleven world-changing songs assembled here (27 minutes!), the two main threads of this brief study are the Beatles as cover artists and the strange history of their American discography. The former is a terribly under-examined aspect of the group, and I tend to agree with Marsh's assessment that the Beatles took some already pretty great songs and, in most cases, made them even better. As for the way the U.S. label Capitol mangled the Parlophone (UK) albums, Marsh reveals how Capitol exec Dave Dexter, a jazz guy who didn't even like the Beatles, oversaw a program that reconfigured those masterpieces into obtusely sequenced, shorter, often redundant packages. Marsh goes after Dexter as if he's back in the Detroit of his childhood and arguing with his dad at the dinner table. Unfortunately, Marsh relays the story no less than three times, and at great length. Which points to a big problem with this little book: for all its qualities, it is horribly repetitive.

[Lara · Rating 3 out of 5]

There's nothing I enjoy more than a critical review of Beatles music. I have a shelf full of books dedicated to this topic, and so I was delighted to see a new one on the market, especially devoted to one of the more obscure items in the Beatles catalogue. For the uninitiated, for the earlier part of the Beatles career (up through "Revolver"), the album releases in the USA were different than the original releases in the UK. We got fewer tracks per album and so Capitol Records created hybrid albums that took tracks from the b-side of singles, tracks that were cut, and other odds and ends ("Sie Liebt Dich" - the Beatles rock out in German!). This book is a review/history of one of these hybrid albums. I enjoyed it but I expected more from Dave Marsh (Rolling Stone, Creem). There was a LONG discussion of the dude at Capitol responsible for desecrating the albums - yeah, this guy was a tool but I thought the book dwelled on him too much. The book was a quick read and made me want to pull out my Beatles CDs, but I would recommend "Tell Me Why" as a much better version of this kind of review book or "The Beatles Anthology" for overal Beatley goodness.

[Michael Ritchie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting idea for a book: an appreciation of a generally underrated album, especially given that it's one of the bastardized American Beatles albums, put together by Capitol Records piecemeal from various British sources (other albums and singles). Unfortunately, Marsh loses his thread and covers lots of other ground as well. When he talks about Dave Dexter, the man who oversaw the American releases, it's fun to read but it really should have been the core of a separate book. He also talks about Beatlemania, the early American airplay, and the original versions of some of the covers ("Devil in Her Heart" has a particularly good story behind it), but the chapters seem put together at random, and the information he delivers also feels scattershot. I'm not sorry I read it but I wish Marsh had spent more time on constructing it.

[Jrethree · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found this book very interesting, and entertaining. I actually learned stuff about the Beatles that I didn't know, and that is saying something The chapters explaining how the US Beatle albums ended up the way they did were great. Marsh's love and passion for the music comes across on every page. Of course, I did not agree with everything he wrote, and I am glad. I felt like I was having an intelligent conversation with someone who cares as much about this music as I do.

[David Macpherson · Rating 2 out of 5]

Started as an interesting book, but it got lost and confused on how he was telling the story of this album. My biggest annoyance is when he mentioned how other rock critics were jealous when he told them he was writing about this album, and that Greil Marcus tried to take the idea from him. Wow, I get it, he had a brilliant idea, if he says so himself.

[Robert · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really enjoyed learning about the US Recording industry and its impact on The Beatles.