The Beatles Lasting Evidence of Their Passion For American Music
I recently published an article on the Beatles inclusion of American cover songs on their albums, singles and set lists when touring. During their 8 year career, they recorded 189 original songs and 25 cover songs, which accounts for 12% of their total output. By 1965, they stopped recording cover songs but continued to include them in their live show.
My point in the first article was to establish the superiority of their cover releases to the original song. This is obviously subjective, but I supported my viewpoint song by song which I’m not going to repeat. Rather, I’ll provide a link to that article at the end.
This article will probably produce a few surprises for even the most rabid Beatle fans.
Predictably, the early beginnings of the band that became the Beatles were heavy users of American cover music as a live band from the beginning in 1958. The Beatles first album release was Please, Please Me in 1963 in the UK and it contained 6 covers and 8 originals. For an artist’s first album release this amount of original music was unprecedented. Well done lads!
By contrast, their first US album was Meet The Beatles (Capitol Records) which contained only one cover and an astounding 11 originals. I’m certain several readers are wanting to call me out for an egregious misstatement because Introducing The Beatles (Parlophone Records) was their first US album released just 10 days prior to Meet The Beatles. Introducing The Beatles contained 6 covers and 6 originals which understates this new band’s degree of originality. I’m going to steer clear of explaining the legalities that were involved, but Meet The Beatles was their official first American release.
Their introduction to America in February 1964 on The Ed Sullivan Show in which they were viewed by the largest TV audience ever. As stated earlier, Meet The Beatles contained 11 originals, so they had an ample assortment of their own songs to choose from but chose to insert a Broadway musical tune “Till There Was You” as the 2nd song in their 3-song opening set. This was a marketing decision the boys designed to broaden their audience appeal from strictly teenagers.
Here’s that live performance. Please take careful note of 20 year old George Harrison’s sensational job on lead guitar playing live in front of 75 million viewers. I apologize for it’s graininess, but I’m guessing it’s due the very early color TV version. Most of us by far watched it in B & W.
So, their 2nd song performed on America soil was a 1957 adult-targeted Broadway show tune from The Music Man. Interestingly, the composers widow stated her husband’s royalties from the Beatles cover greatly exceeded his own original version.
Let’s move forward 30 months later to the bands 3rd US tour in August 1966. It encompassed 15 days and 18 shows. Unlike any previous American visit, it was overwhelmed with an alarming contrast of both negative and positive press coverage including John’s “we’re more popular than Jesus” comment, bonfires for burning their records, death threats, unrelated urban race riots, Vietnam War undercurrents and the mass murder of 15 people at the University of Texas tower shooting. Additionally, they experienced very serious show stopping crowd control disturbances and KKK rallies outside of their concerts. Sounds like a great way to spend 2 weeks.
The final stop on this circus-like nightmarish tour was Candlestick Park in San Francisco. The baseball stadium was located next to the chilly, windy and foggy San Francisco bay. They took to the stage at 9:30 and played their standard 11 song set consisting of 9 originals, including 5 No1 songs from 1965/1966, along with 2 cover songs.
They opened with Chuck Berry’s “Rock And Roll Music” and closed out what would be their final live performance (ever!!!) with Little Richards “Long Tall Sally”. This song was a long time band favorite which McCartney could rip on, but they had numerous recent No1 original hits from that same period they could have chosen as their finale including “Eight Days A Week”, “Help” “We Can Work It Out” and “Ticket To Ride”. Instead, they chose a cover song.
Sadly, this is the only recording of that final historic performance of “Long Tall Sally”. Due to the tape recorder running out, it’s only about a minute long. His 2014 Candlestick Park concert footage performing the same song [in the same key] is added at the end. Not bad for 72 years old!
That 2014 show was the final event held in Candlestick Park before it was demolished. Only the Beatles knew that there 1966 visit was their final live show.
I thought for fun you might enjoy this June 1966 performance of “Rock And Roll Music” at a Munich, Germany concert. This is 2 months prior to his performance of the same show opener in San Francisco. Just watching them step onto stage and plugging-in makes for an interesting comparison to today’s shows. They could have been at a 1960’s high school talent show. John exudes power on this song.
I mentioned my previous article that compares both their and the original artists versions of cover songs that the Beatles recorded. Here’s the link.
And, I think they would have easily won that talent show.
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