Beatles Album Of The Week: Yellow Submarine

[AKA]

Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to our week-long celebration of what is regarded by many as their least favorite Beatles album. This is going to be a slow week…

On January 13, 1969, The Beatles released the soundtrack to their new animated feature, Yellow Submarine. While the album did include four unreleased songs, the rest of Yellow Submarine is comprised of filler. To be more precise, we are given two previously-released tracks and a complete side of George Martin's score from the film.

Here's the tracklist:

Side One:
Yellow Submarine (Lennon/McCartney)
Only A Northern Song (Harrison)
All Together Now (Lennon/McCartney)
Hey Bulldog (Lennon/McCartney)
It's All Too Much (Harrison)
All You Need Is Love (Lennon/McCartney)

Side Two:
Pepperland (Martin)
Sea Of Time (Martin)
Sea Of Holes (Martin)
Sea Of Monsters (Martin)
March Of The Meanies (Martin)
Pepperland Laid Waste (Martin)
Yellow Submarine In Pepperland (Martin)

We would have been much better off with a four-track EP.

Richie Unterberger of the All Music Guide says:

The only Beatles album that could really be classified as inessential, mostly because it wasn't really a proper album at all, but a soundtrack that only utilized four new Beatles songs. (The rest of the album was filled out with "Yellow Submarine," "All You Need Is Love," and a George Martin score that held little appeal to rock listeners.) What's more, the four new tracks were little more than pleasant throwaways that had been recorded during 1967 and early 1968. These aren't all that bad; "All Together Now" is a kiddieish singalong, "Hey Bulldog" has some mild Lennon nastiness, and Harrison's "It's All Too Much" is highlighted by some tidal waves of feedback guitar. It would have been far better value if it had been released as a four-song EP (an idea the Beatles even considered at one point, with the addition of a bonus track in "Across the Universe," but ultimately discarded).

Previous albums:
Please Please Me (1963)
With The Beatles (1963)
A Hard Day's Night (1964)
Beatles For Sale (1964)
Help! (1965)
Past Masters Volume One (1988)
Rubber Soul (1965)
Revolver (1966)
Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967)
Magical Mystery Tour (1967)

See also:
The Beatles (1968)
Let It Be (1970)
Past Masters Volume Two (1988)
Abbey Road (1969)

Beatle Facts

[AKA]

To mark the debut of Yellow Submarine on DVD, Apple Records released a re-tooled soundtrack on September 14, 1999. Dubbed Yellow Submarine Songtrack, the album featured new stereo mixes of every Beatles song featured in the film, with one exception (“A Day In The Life”).

Yellow Submarine Songtrack contained fifteen tracks::

1. Yellow Submarine (Lennon/McCartney)
2. Hey Bulldog (Lennon/McCartney)
3. Eleanor Rigby (Lennon/McCartney)
4. Love You To (Harrison)
5. All Together Now (Lennon/McCartney)
6. Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds (Lennon/McCartney)
7. Think For Yourself (Harrison)
8. Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (Lennon/McCartney)
9. With A Little Help From My Friends (Lennon/McCartney)
10. Baby, You're A Rich Man (Lennon/McCartney)
11. Only A Northern Song (Harrison)
12. All You Need Is Love (Lennon/McCartney)
13. When I'm Sixty-Four (Lennon/McCartney)
14. Nowhere Man (Lennon/McCartney)
15. It's All Too Much (Harrison)

Certainly a better song lineup than the original Yellow Submarine soundtrack. Here's is The All Music Guide's Stephen Thomas Erlewine's review of Yellow Submarine Songtrack:

Admittedly, the soundtrack to Yellow Submarine wasn't one of the highlights in the Beatles' catalog, so providing an official alternate version of it is no big deal. It only contained four new songs — two of which were written by Harrison, which indicates how seriously Lennon and McCartney took the project, if their enjoyable throwaways ("Hey Bulldog" and "All Together Now," respectively) didn't provide enough of a clue — plus two previously released songs ("All You Need Is Love," "Yellow Submarine") and a side of George Martin instrumentals from the film's score. The Beatles never assembled a slighter album while they were active, so it wasn't a sacrilege when their organization decided to assemble a "songtrack" — a soundtrack that featured only the songs in the film, not any of the instrumentals — to coincide with the re-release of the film in 1999. In a way, it's an improvement on the soundtrack since it eliminates dead weight and strengthens the original six songs with nine songs featured in the movie ("Eleanor Rigby," "Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds," "Sgt. Pepper," etc.). It's a little jarring not to hear the songs from the soundtrack in a different order on the songtrack, but ultimately the record is entertaining, if a bit familiar. That's not the case with the sound, though. The Beatles (or their managers or their company, since the three surviving members feel as curiously uninvolved with the songtrack as they did with the soundtrack) have decided to make this the first remixed CD in their catalog instead of simply producing a new remastered tape. The differences are slight but never really an improvement, making this an enjoyable but unnecessary addition to the group's catalog.

[musicradio77]

I have both the 1969 LP with the George Martin arragements on the other side and the re-tooled soundtrack on CD featuring 15 songs from the film. A few cuts are from the landmark 1967 album "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" and some from the "Magical Mystery Tour" album. I actually loved the movie though. It reminds me of Disney's "Alice In Wonderland".

[AKA]

Alternate versions of songs from Yellow Submarine:

Beatles:
"Only A Northern Song"
-Edit of takes 3, 11, and 12, 1967 - The Beatles Anthology 2

[AKA]

Stealing Steve M.'s thunder, for one week only:

Various Yellow Submarine covers:

All Together Now - The Muppets and Harry Smith(!)
Hey Bulldog - Toad The Wet Sprocket
It's All Too Much - Journey

[Steve M.]

I chose "Hey Bulldog" for its great boogie feel (even though it was edited out of most copies of the film before being restored in 1999), though "It's All Too Much: has some great Velvet Underground-style effects!

Journey covered "It's All Too Much?" As Johnny Carson would say, I did not know this!

[Steve M.]

Originally posted by BrooklynGuy78
I actually loved the movie though. It reminds me of Disney's "Alice In Wonderland".

Yellow Submarine is the greatest animated film of all time!!

[Steve M.]

Originally posted by AKA
We would have been much better off with a four-track EP.

Here's the lowdown on that EP mentioned in the first post. As fate would have it, the Beatles considered releasing a Yellow Submarine EP. On March 12, 1969, while Paul was off getting married, an Abbey Road engineer complied a master tape for an EP to run at LP speed featuring the four new songs plus "Across the Universe," long since finished and mixed but still awaiting issue on Spkie Milligan's World Wildlife Fund charity album in March 1969, as a bonus track. The EP, as noted, was never issued.

[Steve M.]

The back cover of the U.K. version featured Tony Palmer's review of the White Album from the London Observer, in which he declared the Beatles to be the greatest composers since Schubert. The U.S. version's back cover featured liner notes that were an embarrassingly bad attempt to ape John Lennon's nonsensical prose style, written by Capitol boss Dan Davis.

This album marked the first time "All You Need Is Love" appeared on an album in the U.K. or in stereo anywhere. As with A Hard Day's Night and Help! (the British editions), the title song opened side one, and a second song released as a single closed side one.

"Hey Bulldog" is the only new song not recorded during the Sgt. Pepper or Magical Mystery Tour sessions. It was recorded in February 1968 during the "Lady Madonna" sessions.

George Martin re-recorded the score for the album in October 1968.

The movie was released in July 1968 in Briain, but it was released in late November 1968 in America, just before Thanksgiving, to capitalize on the Christmas movie season.

[AKA]

Originally posted by Steve M.
Journey covered "It's All Too Much?" As Johnny Carson would say, I did not know this!

Yeah, it was in their prog-rock, pre-Steve Perry days.

[Crapple]

Another fun fact:

"Only A Northern Song" is presented in mock-stereo, even on the CD release. (A mono mix with highs in one channel, lows in the other). It was finally remixed into proper stereo for the "Songtrack."

[Crapple]

I vote for "Hey Bulldog."

And I think I'm the only one who enjoys Martin's score.

[Penny Lane]

I read in one of my many Beatles books that Paul wanted to write a children's song so he came up with "All Together Now". My granddaughter loves that song! He was right!

[Penny Lane]

Originally posted by Steve M.
Yellow Submarine is the greatest animated film of all time!!

Yup!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[laceyinthesky]

I chose "Only A Northern Song."