Not Fade Away 1965: You’ve Got to Hide Your Love Away, by The Beatles.
"If the Beatles and their ilk were in fact what the youth of Britain wanted, one might well despair." Paul Johnson, New Statesman, February 1964.
There are things I don’t like about the Beatles. There are. I don’t much care for Ringo’s "comedy" songs for a start. That's not a surprise, I guess. But I'm also not keen on their occasional music hall affectations - a blight on British pop from the Beatles to Blur, let's face it - the Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da tendency you could call it.
And if I'm honest, apart from Here Comes the Sun and the riff on Taxman, I'm not that keen on any of George Harrison's Beatles songs. And I don't like the White Album. Or Let it Be. Or McCartney's sentiment. Or Lennon's hippy acidity. And even most of their early stuff from 1963 and 1964 (for all that I can hear the newness of them, the records all sound too shrill and shallow for my tastes).
I guess, eventually, we can all see the flaws in those we love. And in the end (and the beginning for that matter) the things I don't like are far outweighed by the things I do. The band's humour (I've been reading extracts from Michael Braun's book Love Me Do and it's often hilarious), their ambition, their adventure, their neophilia.
As a kid in the early seventies the soundtrack of our family home - unless my dad was playing his Charley Pride or Marty Robbins tapes - was Motown and the Beatles on the radio. Back then everything the Beatles did sounded great. As I grew older I honed in on what I most liked and why. And what I realised - hardly a revelation - is that in 1965 and 1966 the Beatles were pop Gods. Their sound and vision was developing exponentially and much of what they did in those two years still feels fresh-minted, thrilling, often astonishing.
How to choose then? Personal preference, nothing more. You've Got to Hide Your Love Away - the first all-acoustic Beatles track - is the one I would want to keep.
Maybe this is the nearest I'm going to get to Dylan in this blog. The Beatles were always smart thieves, taking what they found and making it their own. One of the failings of their early years is that their covers of rock and roll and Motown songs too often sound like anaemic versions of the original source. As they went on they retooled and refitted their borrowings, ultimately claiming them as their own.
You've Got to Hide Your Love Away is a prime example. It's a stark, even basic song (listen to Ringo's tambourine) but it cuts deep. Partly that's to do with the lyric. According to Ian MacDonald in his seminal Beatle book Revolution In The Head, it was the singer Tom Robinson who first suggested that the song was a coded reference to homosexuality and John Lennon's relationship with the Beatles manager Brian Epstein. It's a notion that was certainly widespread in the 1980s. But MacDonald argues that Lennon is clearly adopting a persona.
Either way what's most striking in the recording is the grain of Lennon's voice. You can hear anger and hurt and defiance in it. All the man's strengths and failings. In doing so it compliments a lyric that questions the very currency of the pop song - love ("How can she/Say to me/Love will find a way").
Yes, Dylan's Another Side may well be an obvious influence. But this sounds a very British record. Is it too much to say you can trace a line from this through the Smiths to the Arctic Monkeys? Perhaps British indie starts here?
Other contenders
Ticket to Ride, The Beatles
Ooo Baby Baby, The Miracles
The Tracks of My Tears, The Miracles
Papa's Got a Brand New Bag, James Brown
It's Not Unusual, Tom Jones
Subterranean Homesick Blues, Bob Dylan (my favourite Dylan track. Make of that what you will, Dylanophiles)
UK Best-selling single of 1965: Tears, by Ken Dodd
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