Off The Beatle Track

I became a Beatles fan in the summer of 1976, when I was 12. I’ve tried to piece together the chain of events that led to my fandom, and here’s what I’ve determined: I must have heard Hey Jude on the radio and decided that I liked it. It was probably among the first songs that I associated with The Beatles. Our local library had a copy of the Hey Jude album available to check out. I borrowed it, listened to it many times, checked it out again, and eventually bought my own copy. I’ve been hooked ever since.

The songs on Hey Jude are an undeniably great though weird collection of tracks. I have a theory, though, about why the album works (beyond the obvious reason, which is that any collection of Beatles’ tracks is bound to impress). But first, a short diversion on the dubious origins of the Hey Jude album.

Dexter and Klein, together again. sort of, for the first time

Hey Jude was released in February, 1970 (between Abbey Road and Let It Be), in several countries, including Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Japan, Mexico, Spain, and the U.S., but not in the U.K. It seems to have been designed primarily for the U.S. market. It’s notable in that it represents the indirect intersection of two of the scoundrels in The Beatles’ story: Dave Dexter Jr. and Allen Klein.

Dexter was the Capitol exec who rejected the early Beatles’ singles for U.S. release and oversaw the repackaging of their U.K. albums into U.S. versions. Someone needs to write a book about Dexter’s influence on the first two generations of U.S. Beatles’ fans. If, after hearing I Want To Hold Your Hand, you expect to hear I Saw Her Standing There next, then you grew up listening to Meet The Beatles!

Track listing

Dexter didn’t have a hand in compiling Hey Jude. But his ethos of deconstructing U.K. releases and reconstituting them into his own own mad creations is all over it. Ostensibly it’s a collection of tracks that hadn’t been available on U.S. albums.

1. + 2. Except that first two tracks, Can’t Buy Me Love and I Should Have Known Better (both from 1964), appear on the U.S. version of A Hard Day’s Night–which was a United Artists, rather than a Capitol, release. Dexter left them off the Capitol release. I guess some fan in 1970 was pleased to finally own a Capitol versions of those tracks. I guess.

3. +. 4. The next two tracks were from the 1966 single Paperback Writer b/w Rain. Don’t get me wrong; these are great tracks, and in the pre-Red album era, it would’ve been great to find them on an album. And though only two years separate them from the opening tracks, the gap between I Should Have Known Better and Rain demonstrates how much The Beatles had matured in two years.

5. Next up is Lady Madonna (1968). Missing, of course, is its B-side, George’s lovely The Inner Light. Remember that this album contains only 10 songs. Omitting George’s B-side (though another George B-side appears later) seems unnecessary.

6. + 7. The B-side Revolution closes side 1 so that its A-side, Hey Jude (1968), can open side 2. To recap: Can’t Buy Me Love appears on the same side of a Beatles’ album as Revolution.

8., 9., and 10. After Hey Jude, the last three tracks are all from 1969: Old Brown Shoe (the B-side to the last track on the album), Don’t Let Me Down (the B-side to Get Back), and The Ballad of John and Yoko.

Why it works, despite itself

Before the 1962-1966 and 1967-1970 collections, before the Anthology albums, before 1, Hey Jude did an admirable job a representing the span of The Beatles’ career from 1964 (when most American fans first saw and heard them) to 1969 (the last year they recorded together).

Of course, it had its flaws, as I’ve pointed out: two tracks had already appeared on a U.S. release, while The Inner Light, Misery, There’s a Place, and You Know My Name (Look Up the Number) wouldn’t appear on a U.S. album until 1980’s Rarities. Removing the two Hard Day’s Night tracks and adding these four would still only mean 12 tracks on the album.

Would Hey Jude have been improved if it had opened with There’s a Place and closed with You Know My Name (Look Up the Number)? Send your thoughts to beatletrack@gmail.com.