The Beatles: Yellow Submarine Soundtrack - 1968

  

This album was a strange affair, finally accompanying the animated Yellow Submarine film. 

It only contains four "new" Beatles songs plus one everyone knew. These were -

Yellow Submarine - Recorded in 1966 and a veteran of the Revolver album and the nation's primary school playgrounds for three years by now. 

Only A Northern Song - a sour, cynical "kiss-off" from Harrison to Northern Songs - The Beatles' publishing company - that dated from the Sgt. Pepper sessions in 1967 and is redeemed by a solid bass sound and some fine drums from Starr (incidentally, it was played by Elvis Costello at 1985's Live Aid concert).

All Together Now - an infantile singalong (adopted on the football terraces for a while) from May 1967, coming after the Pepper recordings and in the middle on the Magical Mystery Tour ones.

From the same sessions came the six minute-plus offering, All Too Much, a feedback-drenched psychedelic and very Lennon-esque Harrison song written by his own admittance while high on LSD (you can tell, but I quite like it - check out the great brass breaks and the brief quote from The Merseybeats' Sorrow). 

Finally there was the bluesy Hey Bulldog, written during the period of the Lady Madonna sessions. Lennon was tiring of acid-addled experiences now, and this song, by far the best of the material on the album, signified the end of that. 

Yoko was in the studio for the sessions for the first time, notably. His compositions for The White Album and beyond were noticeably different to stuff like Rain, I Am The Walrus and Tomorrow Never Knows. 

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