George Harrison Named Some Beatles Albums He Hated
TL;DR:
- George Harrison liked The Beatles’ albums Rubber Soul and Revolver.
- He was not a fan of other albums like Yellow Submarine, Yesterday and Today, and Please Please Me.
- John Lennon had his own take on the band’s discography.
George Harrison said each of The Beatles’ albums had highlights. Despite this, he had some harsh words for a few of the Fab Four’s records. On the other hand, John Lennon said he liked some of the band’s albums more over time.
George Harrison said some of The Beatles’ albums were ‘just awful packages’
The book George Harrison on George Harrison: Interviews and Encounters includes an interview from 1977. In it, George was asked which of The Beatles’ albums he revisited. “I liked when we got into Rubber Soul, Revolver — each album had something good about it and progressed,” he said.
George wasn’t a fan of every Beatles album. “There were albums which weren’t any good as far as I was concerned, like Yellow Submarine,” he said. “We put all the songs together into an album form — I’m talking about the English albums now, because the States we found later that for every two albums we had, they’d made three because we put fourteen tracks on an album, and we’d also have singles that weren’t included on albums in those days. They’d put the singles — take off a bunch of tracks, change all the running order and then they’d make new packages like Yesterday and Today, just awful packages.”
George Harrison said some of The Beatles’ older records suffered from terrible stereo
In the same interview, George discussed the technical aspects of The Beatles’ early work. “Those old records weren’t really stereo,” he noted. “They were mono records and they were rechanneled.
“Some of the stereo is terrible because you’ve got the backing on one side,” he said. “In fact, when we did the first two albums — at least the first album — which was Please Please Me, we did straight onto a two-track machine.”
John Lennon had a more positive view of the Fab Four’s early albums as time went on
The book Lennon on Lennon: Conversations with John Lennon includes an interview from 1969. In that interview, John also discussed what he thought about The Beatles’ albums. In it, he said the band used to make albums, listen to them, and then forget about them. He said he would listen to the band’s entire catalog of albums in sequential order leading up to The White Album but that would take far too much time.
John said he used to be embarrassed by the Fab Four’s early material. By that point, he no longer felt that embarrassment. John thought each of the band’s albums was valid and he didn’t regret making any of them. He preferred some individual tracks over others, but he embraced all of the band’s work because it reflected the band at different points in time.
George had a harsh reaction to some of The Beatles’ albums but John was softer on the Fab Four.
