Off The Beatle Track

This is the third in a series of posts in which I choose tracks from The Beatles’ U.K. albums that could have been released as singles in England.

Post 32: Could-have-been singles, 1965-66

Post 25: Could-have-been singles, 1963-64

Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967)

No singles were released from Sgt. Pepper, though, as George Martin later recounted, he wished that Strawberry Fields Forever and Penny Lane had appeared on the album.¹

The best Sgt. Pepper track, A Day in The Life, might not have been a strong single. It has more of an FM vibe than an AM vibe. I’d argue that the two strongest single candidates are the second and third tracks on the album, With a Little Help From My Friends and Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds,² later released as singles by Joe Cocker and Elton John, respectively.

Let’s give Ringo his first solo A-side³ and make With a Little Help From My Friends the single.

Magical Mystery Tour (1967)

The Magical Mystery Tour album that has become Beatles’ canon wasn’t released in the U.K. in 1967; instead, a six-track double EP accompanied the Boxing Day TV film.

One of those six tracks, I Am the Walrus, had already been released as the B-side to Hello Goodbye in November. Among the five remaining tracks, probably only the title track and The Fool on the Hill would merit consideration as a single.

I’ll take The Fool on the Hill.⁴ But I’ll also point out that Magical Mystery Tour was The Beatles’ only movie title track not released as a single.

The Beatles (1968)

I’ll choose one single from each disk of the double album.

The candidates from the first disk include Back in the USSR, Dear Prudence, Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da, While My Guitar Gently Weeps, Blackbird, I Will, and Julia. Having already released Revolution as Hey Jude‘s b-side in 1968, could The Beatles have released Blackbird as a second dose of social awareness?

I’m very tempted to choose While My Guitar Gently Weeps from disk 1, but like A Day in the Life, I think George’s song fits better on FM radio. I’m going to bypass Paul’s Back in the USSR, Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da, and I Will and select John’s Dear Prudence.

Disk 2 isn’t as strong, single-wise, as disk 1. The best options are Birthday, Everybody’s Got Something to Hide Except Me and My Monkey,⁵ Sexy Sadie, Helter Skelter, and Savoy Truffle. For the first time in this exercise, I’m stumped. There doesn’t seem to be an obvious single on disk 2, so I’ll close my eyes and choose Everybody’s Got Something to Hide Except Me and My Monkey.

What singles would you choose from 1967 and 1968? Email me at beatletrack@gmail.com.

1. 60 years later, I believe that releasing the Strawberry Fields Forever/Penny Lane single was the right choice, given that it’s probably the greatest two-sided single in the history of rock music. ↩︎
2. Lovely Rita would have been fun, too. ↩︎
3. The previous year’s Eleanor Rigby/Yellow Submarine was a double A-side. ↩︎
4. Confusingly, Sérgio Mendes and Brasil ’66 released The Fool on the Hill as a single in ’68, and it reached the top ten in the US. ↩︎
5. John adds “for” before “me” when he sings the title. ↩︎