The Beatles' Second Album

Music

With the massive popularity of Meet the Beatles! and a desire for additional Beatles product as well as an available backlog of some 25 songs yet to be released by Capitol Records, it was decided to compile a follow-up album as soon as possible. The Beatles' Second Album was the first album of the group's work to be assembled by Capitol Records exclusively for the US market — Meet the Beatles! was a reconfigured, abridged version of With the Beatles. Second Album was a poutpourri collection that did not represent the Beatles' output at the time; the end result was an assembly of material from nearly a half-dozen sessions and sources. Capitol compiled the album using additional songs from four different UK releases. Included were the five remaining tracks from With the Beatles. Also included were "Thank You Girl" (the B-side to the single "From Me to You"), the single "She Loves You"/"I'll Get You", "You Can't Do That" (the B-side to the single "Can't Buy Me Love") from the upcoming A Hard Day's Night UK soundtrack, and two new songs, "Long Tall Sally" and "I Call Your Name", both released two months later in the UK on the Long Tall Sally EP. Capitol Records engineers, headed by record executive Dave Dexter, Jr., drenched the stereo versions with echo and reverb to give the songs the sound of a live performance. The effect is more noticeable on the tracks culled from With the Beatles, as those were recorded in two-track stereo. Allmusic said that "The Beatles' Second Album stands as probably the best pure rock & roll album ever issued of the group's music" because the album "avoid[s] any trace of the pop ballads favored by Paul McCartney that usually slowed down the group's other early albums, and the result was the longest uninterrupted body of then-hard rock & roll and R&B in their entire output."

The inclusion of "Thank You Girl" in stereo marked the only stereo version of the song released on any US or UK album for over 40 years, until another stereo version was released on the 2009 remastered edition of Past Masters. The Beatles' Second Album stereo version of "Thank You Girl" was also included on The Beatles Beat, a German LP release, as well as the original 2004 CD issue of The Beatles Second Album included in The Capitol Albums, Volume 1 boxed set. Since echo was added, this version remains a rarity. The Capitol album mix is also unique in that its version contains three additional harmonica riffs — two during the bridge and one at the end. For its US-album debut, Capitol took this stereo version and transferred it into a two-to-one stereo-to-mono mixdown for the mono album release, thus creating an alternative mono mix of the song. The stereo version of "Money" also underwent the same two-to-one stereo-to-mono mixdown, thus creating another alternative mono mix.

For the mono version of "I Call Your Name", the cowbell comes in at the very beginning of the song; the stereo version features the cowbell after the beginning of the vocal. Harrison's opening 12-string guitar phrase is also different between the mono and stereo versions. On "Long Tall Sally", reverb was added to the stereo version. The mono version of "You Can't Do That" is different from the version on UK A Hard Day's Night LP for unknown reasons. Missing from The Beatles' Second Album, also for reasons unknown, was "From Me to You", the single for which "Thank You Girl" was the B-side. The song was only released as a single from Vee Jay Records (re-issued by Capitol in 1965 as a "Star Line" single); it would not appear on an album in the US until the 1973 compilation 1962–1966 (also known as "The Red Album").

In Canada, this could not be The Beatles' second album (Beatlemania! With the Beatles and Twist and Shout had preceded it, making it their third LP), so a slightly different track listing was released to the Canadian market with similar cover art under the title The Beatles' Long Tall Sally. This longer (12-song) Canadian album did not include "Money", "Thank You Girl" or "She Loves You" but instead had "I Want to Hold Your Hand", "I Saw Her Standing There", "This Boy" and "Misery". In 1968, The Beatles' Second Album, The Early Beatles and Meet the Beatles! were released in Canada, though the earlier Canadian LPs remained in print (eventually with stereo mixes) until the CD era precipitated their deletion.

Track listing

All tracks written by John Lennon and Paul McCartney, except where noted. See also: Lennon–McCartney. More than half of the songs on this album are sung by John Lennon. He sings lead on six songs and duets on lead on two other songs.

Charts and certifications

In the U.S., the album sold 1,668,435 copies by December 31, 1964 and 2,051,486 copies by the end of the decade.