The 1981 Beatles Album

So The Beatles had been on a lengthy break, and during this break, Paul/George/Ringo were free to release solo music.  Paul released moderately successful albums and smash hit singles like "Silly Love Songs," "Let 'Em In," "Mull of Kintyre," "With a Little Luck," "Goodnight Tonight," and "Coming Up."  George released two moderately successful albums and had a minor hit with "Blow Away."  Ringo's albums released during this time tanked completely.  His career was in a freefall.  He even released an entire disco album (although I do enjoy a couple tracks off of it).  But never fear.  Our heroes were gearing up to be shining at the fullest of their powers with their 1981 comeback album!

After taking a five year hiatus to take care of his personal life, John goes on a sailing adventure in the middle of 1980 to the Caribbean that reignites his desire to make music again.  On June 22 starting with the song "Welcome to the Bahamas," John begins writing and recording songs for a new album.  During the last half of 1980, George and Ringo are finishing up their set of songs.  In early 1981, Paul was set to write his songs for a Beatles album to be released early in 1981.  However, the horrible death of John Lennon delayed the release of the album until much later in the year.  And this is the album that comforted a grieving Beatles universe.

Track Listing:

1.  (Just Like) Starting Over

2.  The Pound Is Sinking

3.  Life Itself

4.  Woman

5.  Tug of War

6.  Take It Away

7.  Watching the Wheels

8.  Wrack My Brain

9.  Wanderlust

10.  Lay His Head

11.  Beautiful Boy (Darling Boy)

"(Just Like) Starting Over" -- The perfect song to start off an album after a five year break.  This was John's first single off of the 1980 Double Fantasy album.

"The Pound Is Sinking" -- I have no justification for this song's inclusion besides the facts that I like this song a lot and I think it sounds great in between tracks 1 and 3 of this album.  From Paul's 1981 Tug of War album.

"Life Itself" -- A track off George's Somewhere in England.  This track was included on both versions he submitted to the record company.  A beautiful summation of his spiritual state of mind, I think the four would have voted for its inclusion.

"Woman" -- A number two single from John and Yoko's Double Fantasy.

"Tug of War" -- The title track of Paul's 1981 album.  If it's the title track, the argument is that this song embodies the main idea of the album, and so it is an important song to the artist, which is why I include title tracks on these Beatles albums.

"Take it Away" -- A number ten single from Paul's Tug of War.  I was flipping through the channels one day when I was in junior high school, and I stopped on this channel called MTV.  It was the radio all come to life on the TV.  I had reached Nirvana.  I spent the whole day watching it.  I saw the video for this song several times that day.

"Watching the Wheels" -- Another hit single from Double Fantasy.  This song about John's five years away from the music biz easily finds its way to this album.

"Wrack My Brain" -- George wrote this song for Ringo's 1981 album Stop and Smell the Roses.  George also plays guitar on this track.  It reached number 38 on the singles chart.

"Wanderlust" -- I have no justification for this song's inclusion either besides the facts that I like this song a lot and I think it sounds great in between tracks 8 and 10 of this album.  From Paul's 1981 Tug of War album.

"Lay His Head" -- This is a George track that was included on the first version of 1981's Somewhere in England that the record company rejected.  George took this and a couple other tracks off of the record and replaced them with new songs, most notably "Blood from a Clone" which ripped the oblivious record company executives.  George really liked "Lay His Head" and couldn't just throw it away, so later he brought it out to include it as the B-side of the number one single "Got My Mind Set on You."

"Beautiful Boy (Darling Boy)" -- This album ends on the dreamy notes of this John Lennon track he wrote for his son Sean from the Double Fantasy album.  Years later, in an interview, Paul stated that he would like to record some John songs, and this track was one of the songs he mentioned.

1981 Non-album Single:

"Ebony and Ivory" backed with "What's That You're Doing?"

The Beatles have had other famous instrumentalists play on their albums, like Eric Clapton, Billy Preston, and for this project, Elton John, but they had never had a famous singer sing lead vocals on a Beatles album.  Therefore I didn't want to include this number one single on the album, so I decided to have The Beatles release it as a single.  The B-side is the hot funk of "What's That You're Doing?" from Paul's Tug of War that features Stevie Wonder as well.   I wonder if they shared a toot and a snore when they were jamming.