Best Beatles album openers

drive my car

"A Hard Day's Night"

come together, closely followed by magical mystery tour.

tough b/w "a hard day's night" & "drive my car"

I can't say I like an awful lot of these.

Best opener only takes 3 seconds: CHAANNNNGG! "It's been a hard day's night..."

Try that link again: http://everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=1718612

plumped for Help!

I'm divided between Drive My Car and Taxman.

I Saw Her Standing There. Fucking amazing song and amazing opener.

"Taxman". Lyrics nonwithstanding.

Wasn't (part of) the point of all those Worst polls to poll all the "winners" together to determine THE worst Beatles song ever according to ILM?

We all know that would be a fight between "Mr. Moonlight" and "Maxwell's Silver Hammer", don't we?

I Saw Her Standing There. Fucking amazing song and amazing opener.

― nate woolls, Tuesday, 29 September 2009 09:04

this

"No Reply". Wouldn't have gone with it prior to the remasters, but it sounds fantastic and fierce.

'It Won't Be Long' for me. Open the album at full throttle.

Bearing in mind the job that it has to do as album opener: "Help", with the Hard Day's "CHANNNNG" running a very close second.

Help I guess, but an unexpectedly weak bunch. Closers would be a lot stronger.

Help over No Reply

Hard Day's Night

No-one else considering Sgt Pepper's?

I think I agree with Zelda Zonk tbh.

Help > I Saw Her Standing There > A Hard Day's Night > Come Together > The others.

A Hard Day's Night, with No Reply in close second. All the Beatlemania era ones are really genius though - they were really really good at the breathless opener, just barging right in with a "ONE TWO THREE FAAAA!", a BRANGG!, " ---this happened once before!" or "IT WON'T BE LONG!" As time went on they leaned more on a slight "warming-up" sound eg "Taxman" "Sgt. Pepper's," "Back in the USSR." Those are all great tracks but in terms of announcing that you are already in the midst of action-packed, thrill-powered pop, they're a bit of a step down.

I really love the conspiratorial, slightly sinister shuffle of 'come together' as an opener. it signifies a sly volatility; whispers that anything can happen.

'helter skelter' would have been a better opener for the white album, imo. talk about barging in.

"One, two, three, fuck!"

Let me tell you how it will be, motherfuckers!

I agree with Doc Casino that the best album openers we're on the early LP's.

Dog Latin is crazy for not liking many of these, I mean they pretty much all smoke!

I'll go with No Reply today...

HALP!

Looking at Plasmon's link above, I can't believe the author doesn't mention a straight up Gsus4 chord which is how I've always played it. He/she mentions G7sus4 but that doesn't sound quite right to me...

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I Saw Her Standing There>A Hard Day's Night>Back In The USSR

We all know that would be a fight between "Mr. Moonlight" and "Maxwell's Silver Hammer", don't we?

― Tied Up In Geir (Geir Hongro), Tuesday, September 29, 2009 9:27 AM (2 days ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

http://photos-g.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-snc1/hs274.snc1/10128_144679903577_516053577_2636494_2220024_n.jpg
Maxwell Edison registers his disdain

Voted USSR as the only remaster I've shelled out for at this point is the White album.

oddly looking at this list I gotta conclude a lot of these are not great openers (much less the strongest tracks on their respective albums). Exception: Two of Us. I'm voting for that (Taxman a close second)

XXP: Guess I better watch out for his silver hammer from behind then. :)

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