The Beatles, 5 Great Unreleased Songs

May 11, 2008 by nowhere man

With the successful Anthology project wetting the musical taste buds of fab four fans across the world, we got to wondering what else is left in the vaults at Abbey Road. And here are some of our favorites.

What You’re Doing (take 11) September 30 1964 saw the Beatles record a fascinating version of What You’re Doing. It is very different from the released version, with John and Paul sharing the vocals. There is considerably more electric 12-string guitar and a jump to a higher key for the instrumental break. This has long since been my personal favourite among all of the unreleased archives.

That Means a Lot During the Help sessions, the Beatles spent two days (20th February and 30th March 1965) trying to record That Means a Lot. The song did need some additional work which the fab four never got around to doing. I guess with so much other quality material, as well as non-studio commitments, vying for their attention at the time, it’s easy to see why they didn’t bother. It could have made for a great album track. On one of the takes, John does a superb vocal on the middle eight - singing at the top of his lungs “can’t you see.” We lost a great Lennon vocal moment with the non-completion of That Means a Lot. But there are over two dozen takes (admittedly some of them short edit pieces) in the vaults. The producers of Anthology missed a great opportunity IMHO, when they didn’t edit together a nice composite complete take. Perhaps a Beatles bootlegger will some day remix such a composite take and release it.

Bad to Me (demo) John’s demo, recorded at his home, is very beautiful. It is so innocent and is of it’s time. The song (along with a fair few others in those early years) was given to Billy J Kramer.

World Without Love (demo) The track was given to Peter & Gordon, who went on to have a number one hit with it in the UK. “World Without Love” is a beautiful song. And I think it was far too good a song to give away. It was most definitely far too good a song for the Beatles not to have at least recorded a version of their own. A demo tape exists (or *did* exist) from circa early 1964. The tape was given to Peter Asher (of Peter & Gordon) by Paul. Asher recalls that the demo didn’t have a bridge.

Good Night In Beatles engineer Geoff Emerick’s memoir, Here, There and Everywhere: My Life Recording the Music of the Beatles (co-written with Howard Massey), Geoff mentions that John in mid-1968 recorded a demo of “Good Night” for Ringo. The demo was played back a couple of times in the studio. “It’s a shame that this particular tape has been lost to the world, and that nobody will ever hear the gorgeous way John sang his tender little song,” wrote Emerick. “In comparison, I really don’t think Ringo did the song justice.” I’d love to hear John’s version. The demo most likely no longer exists. The song was far too good to give to Ringo (no disrespect Ringo!)