Artist	Song
The Beatles	Roll Over Beethoven
The Beatles	Please Mister Postman
The Beatles	Act Naturally
The Beatles	Devil in her Heart
The Beatles	I Got a Woman
The Beatles	Money (That's What I Want)
The Beatles	A Taste of Honey
The Beatles	Dizzy Miss Lizzy
The Beatles	Long Tall Sally
The Beatles	Slow Down
The Beatles	Bad Boy
The Beatles	Twist and Shout
The Beatles	Baby It's You
The Beatles	Matchbox
The Beatles	Boys
The Beatles	Hippy Hippy Shake
The Beatles	The Hippy Hippy Shake
The Beatles	Anna (Go to Him)
The Beatles	Rock and Roll Music
The Beatles	Mr. Moonlight
The Beatles	Words of Love
The Beatles	Everybody's Trying to be My Baby
The Beatles	Till There Was You
The Beatles	Honey Don't
The Beatles	Lend Me Your Comb
The Beatles	You Really Got a Hold on Me
The Beatles	Chains
The Beatles	Searchin'
The Beatles	Kansas City/Hey-Hey-Hey-Hey!
The Beatles	Besame Mucho

Comment:

31. Too Much Monkey Business

Egad, another Beatles collection! Hang in there, I have a concept. This is a collection of Beatles covers; that is, the Beatles doing other people's stuff. (Thanks to Bob Seger for the title here.)

From the time they cut their first single, the Beatles were all about doing their own songs, of which there was never any shortage. They gave songs away to pals like Billy J. Kramer and had no need for filler on their albums. And they certainly didn't lack confidence like the Rolling Stones who did covers until they were sure their own stuff worked So why did the Beatles bother with any covers at all? Simple, they were a great rock and roll band and they loved these songs. Their live performances always featured a lot of covers.

The covers say quite a bit about the whole Beatlemania thing. Even by the standards of the early 1960s, none of the Beatles was a great musician. But they were all wildly inventive and they could all sing harmony or lead with ease. No lead guitar player ever played with as little technical skill as George Harrison and sounded so good. His performance in Roll Over Beethoven where he both sings and plays lead is nothing short of astonishing. The Beatles versions of Roll Over Beethoven, Long Tall Sally, Twist and Shout, Money, and Rock and Roll Music are among the best versions ever recorded of those oft-recorded songs. Many other songs like Words of Love, Please Mister Postman and You Really Got a Hold on Me rival or surpass the originals. When the Beatles rocked out, especially when John was leading them, they rocked as hard anyone before or since. You can find Paul's pop instincts on songs like A Taste of Honey and Besame Mucho, although the results were not as satisfying as his own pop songs would be. Ringo would have been right at home on stage at the Grand Old Opry singing Act Naturally or Everybody's Trying to Be My Baby.

The sad thing is that more of the Beatles covers weren't recorded with that fine George Martin production, which is another interesting aspect of the Beatles. How could a producer who made his mark recording stuffy classical music have such dead-on instincts with rock and roll? Granted, Martin quickly recognized the Beatles songwriting talents, but who would think he could tweak the rebellious Chuck Berry and Little Richard numbers so well? At the BBC, the Beatles recorded as many as 16 songs in one day. They frequently played their instruments better than can be found on some of the album recordings of the same songs. It was probably because they were also performing a lot of concerts at the time, but most of the Live at the BBC recordings seem to lack the spark of the Martin recordings. I've included one song from the dreadful Live at the Star-Club set because it does capture the raucous scene that gave birth to the band. They were, after all, a bar band and all bar bands start with covers.

I didn't think a great deal about the order here. There might have been better choices from the BBC but I didn't spend a lot of time listening to it. I'm open to suggestions for improvements. Meanwhile, enjoy!

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