I love everything about this album, from the hasty
introduction by Ed Sullivan to the constant scream from the fans which never
lets up.It’s a shame this album has never been released on CD - there seems to have been enough pressure for Parlophone to release the LP back in 1977, but this must have been regarded as a mis-step somewhere along the way as it now seems to fit strangely outside the official cannon of Beatles recording.
To my ears, this LP is just as important as any of their studio albums - if only as a historical document of the shows during the height of Beatlemania. The 2009 studio remasters would have been a great opportunity to clean the recording up a little bit more and place it alongside the other albums.
It’s incredibly short at only 33 minutes, but this is in line with the running time of their albums at the time. I love how they start Twist And Shout on the middle-8, and instead of playing the whole song with that section as the starting point, they quickly end it after a minute and twenty seconds, as though they had simply come into the song halfway through.
The liner notes by George Martin add a nice touch, writing a short history of how he was approached to revisit the recordings and produce the record. The only sour point is mention of the current teen heart-throbs of the late 1970s, The Bay City Rollers, courtesy of a comment from Martin’s daughter.
Hit: Twist And Shout
Hidden Gem: Help
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