tracks on LP: Across The Universe / Yes It Is / This Boy / The Inner Light / I’ll Get You / Thank You Girl / Komm, Gib Mir Deine Hand / You Know My Name (Look Up The Number) / Sie Liebt Dich / Rain / She’s A Woman / Matchbox / I Call Your Name / Bad Boy / Slow Down / I’m Down / Long Tall Sally
Record Label: Parlophone PCM 1001
Producer: George Martin
Released: 19/10/79
Purchased: 1979
IF IT wasn’t for the inverted commas, there would be a case for this album keeping the enforcers of the Trades Descriptions Act In business. All but 3 of the 17 tracks have always been freely available, and they are just different versions of well-known classics.
Like ‘Across The Universe’, appropriately complete with wild-life sound effects, since it originally came from the World Wild Life compilation album. Then there’s ‘I Wanna Hold Your Hand’ and ‘She Loves You’, sung in German but with Liverpool accents. These were the two singles which established The Beatles as a world-wide phenomenon at the back end of ’63 and were released back to back in Germany as a tribute to the group’s Aryan apprenticeship.
So much for the actual rarities, what about the others? If you thought the early Fabs were just a bunch of boy-next-door wimpy types, wrap yer lungs around Larry Williams ‘Bad Boy’, not to mention ‘She’s A Woman’, ‘I’m Down’ and ‘Long Tall Sally’. They might only have been playing through telephone-size speakers in 64/65, but they didn’t ‘alf rock out, mum.
Then there’s the even earlier ‘Thank You Girl’ where there’s no way you can’t keep off the edge of your chair as John and Paul strain to stay in tune. ‘I’ll Get You’, another personal fave, still sounds remarkably contemporary, classed up with a touch of harmonica while those voices are as sweet as ever. This in fact was the flip of ‘She Loves You’, and eight of the other cuts are also B-sides.
Lesser-known classics amongst these Include ‘Rain’, always better than Its ‘Paperback Writer’ A-side and ‘You Know My Name (Look Up The Number)’ a Lennon weird one that came out of the back of ‘Let It Be’ but which might have been off side four of the white double album.
Best of the rest? The rhapsodic ‘I Call Your Name’, the only Lennon-McCartney composition amidst the four tracks (all here) which comprised the ‘Long Tall Sally’ EP and originally given to Billy J Kramer (remember ‘Little Children’?)
Which along with Hugh Fielder’s comprehensive notes just about wraps it up If you’re a person renowned for doing “the right thing” dash out and buy it, providing that is, you weren’t one of the suckers who shelled out fifty-odd notes for last year’s boxed set just to get these “rarities”. (Record Mirror, 20/10/79)
DEPENDS what you call a ‘rarity’. Due perhaps to the impending legate that would undoubtedly axe the output of unreleased Beatles material, demos or bootlegs, ‘Rarities’ turns out to be a slightly inflated pretext. The sole tracks previously unavailable in the UK are the German phrase-book versions of their two monster hit singles (guess which). ‘Sie Liebt Dich’ and ‘Komm, Gib Mir Deine Hand’. Learn the words end be Eurocrat.
At the same, the album’s a tasteful selection, opening with George Martin’s original production of ‘Across The Universe’ for a compilation called ‘Nothing’s Gonna Change Our World’ put out by The World Wildlife Fund. Faster, sparser and with a deluge of harmonies, it comes replete with all the standard hippy embroidery — Granchester Meadows-type wildfowl overdubs and a couple of drippy girl singers, allegedly roped in off the street for the session, who both sound like Mary Hopkin and quite possibly are.
There’s also the relatively scarse but uninspired ‘Long Tall Sally’ EP, which comprises the title track, ‘I Call Your Name’, ‘Slow Down’ and ‘Matchbox’, the latter being an early vocal disaster by Ringo who manages to make the classic line “If you don’t want my peaches, honey, please don’t shake my trees” sound like a paean to market gardening. If you want Beatles’ rock ‘n’ roll, ‘Live At The Hollywood Bowl’ is raw, twice as rare, and you can bust a gut to the boys’ on-stage banter.
The rest consists of B-sides — drawing just attention to the Beatles’ ‘experimental’ use of same — some of which improve with age like the definitive barber shop/beat numbers ‘Yes It Is’ and ‘This Boy’. Others don’t fare quite so well In retrospect. ‘You Know My Name’ sounding like sub-‘Gorilla’ period Bonzos and Harrison’s fearful ‘Inner Light’ coming over like a commercial for biryani.
I’m still holding out for an acetate of Lennon’s mid-’50s garage combo The Quarrymen. ‘Til then, ‘Rarities’ makes for a painless way to pass the time. (NME, 27/10/79)
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