by Adam Mincks

Created on: November 23, 2010

The Beatles' 1968 animated feature "Yellow Submarine" is deservedly considered one of the great animated films of all-time, a film that deserves to be up there with the greatest of Disney, Pixar, Aardman, and the early animated features of Don Bluth.  With astonishing, memorable psychedelic animation and design, "Yellow Submarine" gave us some indelible images: the Kinky-Boot Beast, the Vacuum Monster, the Blue Meanies, the University of Whales, Jeremy Hillary Boob PhD. (a.k.a., The Nowhere Man), the Sea of Holes, the Apple Bonkers, the Snapping Turks, the Anti-Music Missiles, the Dreadful Flying Glove, and so many more.  Not to mention that it was stuffed front to back with both classic AND new Beatles music.  

So why has the film remained so enduring and the soundtrack lost to the sands of time, the ugly runt of the Beatles catalog litter?  Well, mostly because you can't really call it a de facto "Beatles" album: it features two previously released tunes ("Yellow Submarine" and "All You Need Is Love"), and the leftover scraps of song that the Beatles didn't use on "Sgt. Pepper" or "Magical Mystery Tour".  But the great majority of the tunes, with seven as opposed to the six Beatles songs, are the orchestral score from the film by George Martin.  In this way, the "Yellow Submarine" soundtrack apes the format of the U.S. versions of the "Hard Day's Night" and "Help!" soundtracks: with side one made up of the Beatles songs featured in the film, and side two made up of the music scores from the films.  It also happens to be only UK Beatles studio album that I have never heard until now.  So let's see if it is worthy of the derision that has been heaped upon it all these years.

The album kicks off with the delightful title track, which I went into detail on in my "Revolver" review.  Suffice to say that if there was any Beatles song that would eventually make its way into a children's movie, it would have been "Yellow Submarine".  This is followed by the first George track on the album (both of which are underrated gems), "Only A Northern Song", a "Sgt. Pepper" leftover which opens with a soulful gospel organ, before evolving into a stranger, more psychedelic animal entirely, featuring some discordant, unnerving horns and trumpets (by Paul McCartney no less) which bleat out like Miles Davis in the grip of a terrible acid trip.  The song's sardonic bitterness manages to shine through (or maybe punch through

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