THE BEATLES
A Hard Day's Night (1964)
Parlophone/Capitol
Produced by GEORGE MARTIN

Asking people their favorite Beatles album is a cruel thing to do. It's a loaded question. My favorite is the White Album, but a given cut might have no active participation from one or more band members, so it's more an amalgam of random shit strung together than a Beatles album. Then there's RUBBER SOUL, perfect in almost every way, but even it doesn't seem "better" so much as "different" to what came before. A HARD DAY'S NIGHT is something really special. They'd never record with this enthusiasm again, and they'd never fill an entire album with Lennon/McCartney songs again.

"Lennon/McCartney," of course, is an in-name-only attribution. All but three of the songs on A HARD DAY'S NIGHT are John's work. This creates an interesting paradox... the album is worlds away from the movie that gave birth to half of it. Richard Lester's film is about community, confusion, imprisonment, and freedom; the album is about one man's demons. A HARD DAY'S NIGHT is Lennon's real primal-scream record.

The eponymous track flies through you like a bullet train, opening the album with a thunderous guitar chord and Lennon's desperate-man-in-love theme. It's a decided evolution from "She Loves You" and "I Want to Hold Your Hand." It adds something like pure charisma. Lennon gets by on similar arresting tactics for the swinging "I Should Have Known Better," girl-group shuffles "Tell Me Why," and "When I Get Home," all with stinging vocals that seem to prove Lennon's commitment to his material. No manufactured pop star who didn't give a shit could sing the way he did in a million years.

What's more, there was a truth in these songs, a resignation but also a bracing desire to hope. "If I Fell," his most naked love song aside from "Don't Let Me Down," is in many ways the centerpiece of the LP. It often feels like these songs exist in a medium where they cry out, begging to be heard and understood. Lennon is deadly... articulate, sexual, brilliant, and seemingly always on the brink of devastation, destruction. His voice is the Beatles' best asset by a longshot... it expresses so much that is inexpressible, in songs like "When I Get Home" that could easly be slight and forgettable without him. Alas, not one song he sings here isn't wonderful.

The voice isn't everything; as if to prove it, "I'm Happy Just to Dance with You," written by John but sung by George, comes flying out. It speaks volumes that it offers the same intensity in a voice that is, at best, not even a thousandth as good as John's. This is a song I come back to frequently. It roars with movement and one leans against the cracks, knowing something's hidden in there and waiting for it to show itself. The payoff is on Side Two.

Lennon seems liberated completely on the non-film songs. Sounding genuinely bitter on "You Can't Do That," he keeps the mental anguish rolling on three of the best rock songs of all time. "Any Time at All" one-ups the uncontrollable engine of the title track by heading somewhere with it. It is possible to lose oneself forever in the guitars on this track, and it's the Beatles' most raggedly delicate rocker, bleeding from all corners. "I'll Cry Instead" is so eloquent, sad, witty, and personal it's hard to believe it comes from one of Lennon's songs and not either of his books. A country riff backs Lennon's sighing heartbreak clown routine, wailing out words about coming back and showing 'em all that he knows aren't true, and making them that much more moving as a result. It's impossible to hear this today and not be stunned.

"I'll Be Back," the album closer, covers the same kind of territory, but the Beatles have saved the best for last. The melody is John at his peak, and his singing is something you can't explain, especially since the darkness and light of his lyric humanizes mindsets that we can't explain any more easily. There simply isn't a flaw to be found here... the restraint hides the grandly affecting statements backing the song up. The Beatles sound just magnificent.

And although his single "Can't Buy Me Love" doesn't amount to much in these surroudnings, Paul winds his way skillfully through a set that threatens to overshadow him entirely. You know "And I Love Her," you love it, and you probably know "Things We Said Today." Paul's lyrics here -- though clearly more indirect -- are a close match for John's in "I'll Be Back," and the cloudy hop of this gorgeous song is irresistible.

With the music business in the palm of their hands the world over, the Beatles lost none of their vitality. Their strengths are intact, refined and perfected, and this is the crown jewel in a fine career, a record of unparalleled grace and understatement, a set of songs that, like the film, brims with life. Rock & roll has never been so gloriously beautiful while retaining the strength of its core. A HARD DAY'S NIGHT is indispensable.