The Beatles - Baby It's You

(Apple/Capitol 1995)

Hello 1990s and hello at last to previously unreleased material. The title track has been pulled from the Live at the BBC album, and the other three are exclusive to this particular hunk of wax. Unfortunately, it’s hard to get all that jazzed about the Beatles’ slew of reverent early-period covers – except maybe “Please Mister Postman” – and this EP, all of which was recorded live in 1963 and 1964, is cram-jammed with three of ’em: “Baby it’s You,” “Devil in Her Heart,” and “Boys.” Acoustic ditty “I’ll Follow the Sun” is the lone original on here, and Paul plays it straight; it’s basically a rougher-sounding version of what’s on Beatles For Sale. Which is the problem on all of these songs…they’re too close to the studio versions to be of any real value or interest. EXCEPT – and this is crazy – “Boys,” on Please Please Me a worthless dud of a Ringo showcase, but here a crackling, exciting track with raw vox (both lead and backing) that propel it into ever more rockin’ territory. Yikes! Should’ve been the A-side, and that’s no joke. You know, there’s some food for thought in the fact that every Beatleboy gets a lead vocal on this record; cute, sure, but did Apple politics cause the compilers to leave off better material?

P.S.: Take a gander at the cover photo and notice the lousy retouch the art department attempted. You can see Ringo’s blurry head (from the album cover shot) over the right shoulder of the superimposed, dancing Ringo! Whoops.