The career of The Beatles can be retrospectively examined as a checklist of where divine providence has had to step in and shake things up to make sure that things were supposed to be going the way they were supposed to go. There should be no doubt that The Beatles were a special band, and it is remarkable what these four lower class boys from Liverpool England had been able to accomplish in such a short period of time, simply because they had been given the chance. The four Beatles were certainly the cause of the amazing music they recorded along with the help of producer George Martin. Yet, look at the decisions made for them, which had to happen in order for The Beatles to become the superband they were able to realize in their own time.

Paul McCartney had to be coerced by a friend into attending a church fete in the Summer of 1957 where he first met John Lennon. The band began playing in Hamburg Germany with John Lennon's best friend Stuart Sutcliffe playing the bass. It was Lennon's insistence to have Sutcliffe in the band, yet on a fateful Spring day in 1962 Sutcliffe died on his way to the hospital for a brain hemorrhage. The band had been signed to EMI's Parlophone label a month later. The Beatles were unable to hold on to a permanent drummer for much of the time they played in Germany, yet they found a good drummer named Pete Best, which they were happy with. Yet when EMI signed The Beatles, it was their new producer George Martin who insisted that they fire their drummer and replace him with someone else, this is when Ringo came in to the band in the Summer of 1962. The band as it should be was finally together, from this time on there were other forces on their way to break up the Beatles.

John met Yoko Ono in 1966, and Paul met Linda in 1966. Their manager Brian Epstein died in 1967, and Allen Klein took his first meeting with John Lennon a year later in 1968. Now the opposing forces that forced these four together were in place to pull them apart. When Lennon had quit the band in 1969, they had just had their record contract renegotiated to give them higher royalties per record sold by their new manager Allen Klein. Allen also had to promise EMI that The Beatles would deliver two more albums per year up to 1976. The record company and the fans would have to settle for reissues and greatest hits albums instead of new Beatles music. One of the by-products that had resulted from this agreement were the two first Anthology records called 1962-1966 and 1967-1970, which were released in the Spring of 1973.  

What I like about this album 1962-1966 is that it thoroughly chronicles the music of The Beatles for the first half of their musical output. It's not just the singles here, but a couple of songs from each of the records. This is an ideal way to start learning about The Beatles, and indeed many folks have done that when this was first released. The band had progressed with each and every album they released, although it may not seem so apparent to some as 1967-1970 easily illustrates. Yet these early songs from 1962 like Love Me Do and Please Please Me, we hear not only a more simple and innocent-style of lyrics, we also have a dominant Lennon influence. For this anthology, they chose the early single version of Love Me Do, initially released in October of 1962. There were two versions recorded, this one was the version with Ringo Starr on drums as opposed to the album version with session man Andy White behind the drums. There is also the limitation of mono, which EMI was unfortunately still recording in at the time. Please Please Me was influenced by a Roy Orbison song that Lennon liked. The two songs are kind of similar early rock and roll, although Please Please Me had seemed a bit more polished. From Me To You, sounds a lot like Please Please Me as the band had tried to do their best to score a number one record in the US, by utilizing the same formula and just trying to improve on it. I do like that they used the stereo version of this song as it sounds slightly more dynamic than the original. She Loves You wraps up the first part of this era of the Beatles. It is the best of the bunch, and with the rebellious "Yeah, Yeah, Yeah" in the chorus, it was guaranteed to make the preteens wild with delight.

With I Want To Hold Your Hand, there is an audible difference in their musical genre, as they base the song around a couple of riffs instead of a melody resulting in a heavier sound for the band. For me, it is both a pinnacle in their musical style up until that time and also their utmost disposable track ever written. This song, like the songs before it have a very dated sound to it, probably due to the fact that the "British Invasion" copied this early style a year or two later. I Want To Hold Your Hand was definitely a game changer for the band giving them higher success and even more confidence. With the new year, the band had a soundtrack for the first film A Hard Day's Night, and the band matured even more so, mostly due to the change of equipment in the Abbey Road studios, mainly a four track recorder rather than the dual-track. The band added different instruments to their recording sessions, not having to remain the four-piece line up do to the restrictions of dual-track recording. England's top studio was finally catching up to American recording practices and The Beatles were taking advantage of this. Musical scholars still argue over the first chord struck in the intro of John's A Hard Day's Night, mainly due to the multi-track technology they had at their behest. The drums and bass now have a slightly more prominent feel within the track, which gave the band a heavier sound. A Hard Day's Night is a prime example, as well as Paul's Can't Buy Me Love.

Their songs from their second soundtrack Help! are spread across the end of disc one and the beginning of disc 2. With songs like Ticket to Ride, it seems apparent that Ringo Starr was more aware of his drum sound coming to the fore as his drumming begins to become much more imaginative. And with Paul's gentle acoustic ballad Yesterday, perhaps he becomes aware that his songs tend to have organic beginnings as this one was literally dreamed up one night.  The hard rocker Help! starts off the second disc continuing the songs from the soundtrack, which is followed by another of John's You've Got To Hide Your Love Away to finish the songs from that album. Bob Dylan heavily influenced this acoustic gem, and I suppose I hear a more monotone Lennon vocal against his prominent acoustic guitar strumming.

During this period (1962-1966) there were songs written by guitarist George Harrison as well as the force behind the huge selling singles (Lennon & McCartney) but you wouldn't know this from this compilation. Harrison had written a handful of some pretty good tracks in this era, yet none were included maybe due to the limitations of space back in 1973 when this was first released. For this remastered version of the 1962-1966, it would have been nice if they would have extended the tracklisting with a few more songs, which could include one or two Harrison songs such as Taxman or If I Needed Someone.  Having said that, I still love the chronological format here as they go from album favorites to singles and this repeats over and over.

The songs included are very skimpy with the contributions from 1966, including only three; Paperback Writer was the single from that year, written by Paul McCartney. It's another of their heavier songs again revolving around a catchy riff played on a distorted guitar. The band only released one new studio album that year, Revolver, and representing this album are two more McCartney songs, Yellow Submarine and Eleanor Rigby. Yellow Submarine is another song inspired by a dream Paul had had, it turned out to be a child-like limerick which he had given to Ringo Starr to sing the lead vocal on, another stroke of good luck, or genius depending on how you look at it.

So, would these two greatest hits/anthology double albums have been released if it weren't for Allen Klein's new record deal with Parlophone? Most likely, as there was another reason why they were released. There was an American record company called Audio Tape Inc, that were selling a four-record set called Alpha Omega. They even advertised their product on TV and radio somehow (here's what the cover looked like - http://beatlesite.tripod.com/alpha.jpg). EMI thought that they would counter that with a superior product that the fans would rather buy. That's how these two double albums came about, around a year later.

As far as the sound quality, this remastered 2010 version of 1962-1966 is comparable to that of their 2009 remasters, in fact they're probably pulled from the same source as the ones from last year. It is a big improvement over the 1987 original CD releases, yet nowhere near what could have been done; listen to the Anthology sets or Let It Be...Naked for a real sonic improvement. Also there is Love, and the American Capital releases that sound out of this world as well. Should you buy this, especially if you already own the version from 1993? That's up to you, I debated, and when the price was cut to $14 on release day, I made the purchase. The packaging looks great as the mini-vinyl look will never get old. The thirty-page booklet is filled with lyrics, photos and an awesome review of The Beatles career up to this point written by Bill Flanagan. I am a Beatles fan that needs everything that is released, yet I have to admit that this was the first release that truly felt like a rip-off as it was unnecessary.



The Beatles
1962-1966
Length: 62:47
Released: 04/19/1973 (10/19/2010 on remastered CD)
Rating: 4 stars
the Songs: 
 1.   Love Me Do
 2.   Please Please Me
 3.   From me To You
 4.   She Loves You 
 5.   I Want To Hold Your Hand
 6.   All My Loving
 7.   Can't Buy Me Love
 8.   A Hard Day's Night
 9.   And I Love Her
10.   Eight Days A Week
11.   I Feel Fine
12.  Ticket To Ride
13.  Yesterday
14.  Help!
15.  You've Got to Hide Your Love Away
16.  We Can Work It Out
17.  Day Tripper
18.  Drive My Car
19.  Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)
20.  Nowhere Man
21.  Michelle
22.  In My Life
23.  Girl
24.  Paperback Writer
25.  Eleanor Rigby
26. Yellow Submarine

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Recommended: Yes