1962-1966 | The Beatles | Best of the Early Years

1962-1966 | The Beatles | Beatles 62

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1962-1966

	1962-1966 The Beatles Capitol, 1993 average customer review:based on 206 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

The closest the Beatles came to a greatest hits package, this document of the early part of their career features hit singles (in chronological order) and selected album tracks, running from "Love Me Do" through the groundbreaking Rubber Soul and Revolver albums. While this may be an excellent intro for beginners, real fans will never be content with only selections, especially when you're dealing with those aforementioned albums. Capitol packages the collection on two discs, copying the original vinyl version--but, of course, CDs hold more music than records did. Still, you do get 26 bona fide classics, so there's no real need to complain. --Bill Holdship

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Best of the Early Years

The Beatles - often called the greatest rock and roll band of all time. It would be impossible to pull off a complete greatest hits collection without including dozens of their songs. The next best thing? The double-sided albums "1962-1966" (red album) and "1967-1970" (blue album).

As a new fan of the Beatles (I was born after the murder of John Lennon), it was this album that first allowed me to fall in love with the Fab Four. Sure, all of their hit songs aren't included. But it is a great introduction to the early years. More comprehensive than the "#1s" album, it features such classics as 'She Loves You', 'Yesterday', and 'Yellow Submarine'.

It's evident on "1962-1966" why the Beatles have become so well-loved. While their early songs don't feature the most though-provoking lyrics, the melodies are downright fun. It's hard to listen to a song like 'I Wanna Hold Your Hand' and not sing along. However, these master songwriters expanded their horizons beyond that seen in Motown; with tunes such as 'Eleanor Rigby' and 'Michelle', they added a bit of continental flavor to mainstream rock.

Wondering what made the Beatles so spectacular? Or looking for a more comprehensive greatest hits collection? Check out "1962-1966". It truly showcases the best of the early years.

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Beatles 62

I enjoy every song! These songs I grew up with so they bring back happy memories of singing these songs on the way home from school.

1962-1966 by The Beatles

If you like the Beatles, and the early Beatles you'll love this CD, as it
contains most of the material and good Beatles songs from that period.
A must have for Beatles Collections.

YOU CAN'T GO WRONG WITH THIS BUT CONSIDER THE "1" ALBUM

A very good compilation, nothing to say about the songs included here. But I think that if you're looking something to start, you can buy this item and the blue album. Another good choice would be the CD called "1", but you wouldn't get some tunes included in this item and its companion (the blue album), but surely a far better sound since the "1" album was given a very good remastering that this compilations lacks, (that's the reason for which I rate this item "only" with four stars) and you will pay less for a single disc compilation. Both choices are here, and each one has its pros and cons, but anyway you can't go wrong with any choice you take.

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Where's the (digital) beef?!?

If you've spent any time burning your own audio CDs (i.e. "Redbook" CDs as they are known in optical media world), then you probably quickly figured out that all 26 tracks will easily fit on one standard CD-R (or, if you know your blank CDs, that'll be a Taiyo Yuden!).

So, why are we "given" two CDs? Easy? So the record company can charge $23 instead of $13.

Of course, the label's reason (read: pandering excuse) is that they are being "faithful to the original release." Since when are COMPILATIONS considered to be "original releases"?? Even classic packages such as Marley's "Legend" merely cherry pick the best (and best-selling) songs from his albums--just as every other "Greatest Hits" or "Best of" disc does.

The VERY least that the label could have (SHOULD) done was to add extra tracks. God knows the Fab Four recorded enough hits and out-takes in order to fill these two discs out with a plethora of B-sides, different takes of classic songs, and sides that were unreleased for one reason or another.

Those of us who pay attention wouldn't be sitting around wondering why so many albums by so many albums lesser groups are jammed to the gills with studio cast-offs, lame live versions and the occasional gem. (E.g. look at the "remastered" version of "Who's Next", a half-baked attempt to "recreate" the failed "Lighthouse" project, whose only notable result was the greatest album the Who and Pete Townshend ever recorded.)

Even scraping the bottom of the barrel (creatively at least) they could slapped an interview onto one of the discs. The remastered version of Tull's "Thick As A Brick" has a fascinating 13-14min interview recorded around the time the album was made.

What serious Beatles' fan wouldn't want to hear a good interview with the group, especially one from the period right before the became The Biggest Band in History, selling more than 170,000,000 records (that's more than Elvis and Barbara Streisand combined!).

Bottom line is:

The great songs are here (most of them anyway, "Twist and Shout" anyone?). The CDs sound is excellent; I'd love to a Mobile Fidelity version!

But this package could have been fully fleshed into something interesting, something perhaps even special. That way the $23 we shelled out for this "two" disc set would have been worth it.

Yet with this Beatles' set we get exactly what we would have paid for in 1967.

Hello, record company executives!! It's 40 years later. Time to get a clue. Instead of taking advantage of the 80-82 mins ea. CD gives them, the label decided to pretend they still had to work within the time constraints, between 45 and 50 mins using both sides.

And they wonder more and more people are downloading more and more music: they can pick exactly the songs they want without what used to be called "filler"--but is nowadays called "hit singles".

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