With the Beatles

• 1. Introduction

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  With the Beatles arrived in British record shops on the 22nd of November 1963. Half a million advance orders had already been placed before a single unit shipped. Eight months had passed since the debut Please Please Me. Producer George Martin and manager Brian Epstein had planned for the band to release two LPs and four singles every year. The second album had to be ready, and it was. Eight original songs sat alongside six covers drawn from American rock and roll and Motown R&B. All of it came together across seven sessions and three months at EMI Studios in London. The album held the UK number one spot for 21 weeks. Combined with Please Please Me, the Beatles occupied the top chart position for 51 consecutive weeks. No other group had ever matched that run. What made those sessions different from the debut, and what EMI nearly prevented from appearing on the sleeve, is where this story begins.

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• 2. The Sessions

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  On the 18th of July 1963, the Beatles returned to EMI Studios in London just four months after releasing Please Please Me. They tracked four covers that day. Two were American R&B standards: Smokey Robinson's 'You Really Got a Hold on Me' and Barrett Strong's 'Money (That's What I Want)'. The others were the Donays' 'Devil in His Heart' (retitled 'Devil in Her Heart' for the album) and Meredith Willson's 'Till There Was You'. That last recording was deemed unsatisfactory and would need to be remade.

  Back in the studio on the 30th of July, the band recorded the Marvelettes' 'Please Mr. Postman'. They also began work on 'It Won't Be Long', the first new Lennon-McCartney song destined for the album. Later that afternoon they added overdubs to 'Money', remade 'Till There Was You' to their satisfaction, and finished 'It Won't Be Long'. The session closed with Paul McCartney's 'All My Loving'. Beatles historian Mark Lewisohn later described it as 'by far his best, most complex piece of songwriting yet.'

  By the 11th of September the band was back at EMI for the next wave of recording. John Lennon's 'Little Child' proved unsatisfactory on first attempt, as did Ringo Starr's lead vocal on 'I Wanna Be Your Man'. That song was a Lennon-McCartney composition they had given to the Rolling Stones, who released it as their second single. Lennon's 'All I've Got to Do' and 'Not a Second Time' came together more readily. George Harrison's 'Don't Bother Me', his first solo composition, was begun that day but left unfinished. On the 12th of September, 'Hold Me Tight', 'Little Child' and 'Don't Bother Me' were all completed, but 'I Wanna Be Your Man' still resisted. On the 30th of September, while the band were on holiday, George Martin added piano overdubs to 'Money' and Hammond organ to 'I Wanna Be Your Man'. The band returned on the 3rd of October for more takes.

  Four-track recording was installed at EMI before the session on the 17th of October. That day the group captured 'I Want to Hold Your Hand' and 'This Boy', the non-album single. They also recorded speeches for a Christmas message to their fan club. 'I Wanna Be Your Man' was finally completed on the 23rd of October, after which Martin began mono and stereo mixing. Final preparations wrapped on the 30th of October. The album was officially done on the 4th of November 1963.

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• 3. The Cover Portrait

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  Brian Epstein invited photographer Robert Freeman to create the cover image after being struck by Freeman's black-and-white photographs of jazz musician John Coltrane. George Harrison later called their second album 'the beginning of us being actively involved in the Beatles' artwork'. He saw it as 'the first one where we thought, Hey, let's get artistic.' The band asked Freeman to take inspiration from photographs their friend Astrid Kirchherr had taken in Hamburg between 1960 and 1962, in which the musicians appeared in half-shadow and unsmiling.

  Freeman photographed the group on the 22nd of August 1963 in a dark corridor of the Palace Court Hotel in Bournemouth, where the band were playing a summer residency at the local Gaumont Cinema. To fit the square format of the cover, Freeman placed Ringo Starr in the bottom right corner, explaining it was 'since he was the last to join the group. He was also the shortest.' Paul McCartney later recalled the pace of the shoot: 'people think he must have worked at it forever and ever. But it was an hour. He sat down, took a couple of rolls, and he had it.' Freeman was paid £75 for his work, three times the fee EMI had first offered.

  EMI raised objections on two counts before the cover could be approved. The original concept was to print the image edge to edge with no title and no artist credit. This went against industry practice and was rejected immediately. EMI also found it unacceptable that the Beatles were not smiling. George Martin stepped in as head of Parlophone and pushed the cover through. The Rolling Stones' self-titled debut, released five months after With the Beatles, became the first album to carry an edge-to-edge cover.

  Music critic John Harris later described the photograph as a 'watershed' design that pushed other acts away from 'the more cartoonish aspects of pop photography'. Harris traced the half-lit technique back to Kirchherr's Hamburg portraits of Lennon, Harrison and Stuart Sutcliffe. He also connected the cover to the music on the record. Chuck Berry's 'Roll Over Beethoven', he argued, was part of a package he called 'a canny repackaging of their early '60s incarnation: Hamburg shorn of Prellies and leather, and sold to their public as a mixture of accomplished rock 'n' roll and art-house cool.' Harris cited Lou Reed's Transformer (1972), Patti Smith's Horses (1975), and various punk rock sleeves as evidence of the cover's lasting influence through the 1970s.

  EMI Australia never received the original cover art. Union restrictions prevented the import of negatives for printing, and a different set of band photographs was used instead. The Beatles discovered what had been substituted only when Australian fans showed them the cover during their only tour of that country.

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• 4. Release and Legacy

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  Parlophone issued With the Beatles on the 22nd of November 1963 with catalogue number PMC 1206. Canada received the album three days later, on the 25th of November, under the expanded title Beatlemania! With the Beatles, issued only in mono. The United States never received the album as a unified release. Its tracks were split between two Capitol Records compilations. Nine appeared on Meet the Beatles! and the five remaining covers went to The Beatles' Second Album. Peter Jones, reviewing the album for Record Mirror, described it as an improvement over Please Please Me. He praised both covers and originals, with Harrison's 'Don't Bother Me' receiving particular attention.

  With the Beatles became the second album ever to sell a million copies in the United Kingdom. Only the soundtrack to the 1958 film South Pacific had reached that figure before it. The record also reached number 11 on the UK singles chart, because at the time British charts counted all records sold regardless of format.

  On the 26th of February 1987, the album appeared on compact disc for the first time, issued in mono only with catalogue number CDP 7 46436 2. US listeners received a domestic LP and cassette edition on the 21st of July 1987. Newly remastered stereo and mono CD versions arrived on the 9th of September 2009 as part of a simultaneous reissue of the entire Beatles catalogue.

  Rolling Stone placed the album at number 420 on its 500 Greatest Albums list in 2003. English writer Colin Larkin voted it number 275 in the third edition of his All Time Top 1000 Albums, published in 2000. Robert Dimery included it in 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die in 2010. A panel of experts canvassed across seven countries for Paul Gambaccini's Top 100 Albums placed it 29th. The South Pacific soundtrack still holds a UK albums chart record the Beatles never matched. It sat at number one for 70 consecutive weeks.

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