Rock 'n' Roll Music: The 'cheap' album the Beatles tried to bury

From its garish artwork to the strange mismatch of covers and originals, Rock ’n’ Roll Music is the unloved outlier of the band’s catalogue

In June 1976, the American monthly Phonograph Record Magazine printed a long piece on the parlous state of pop. “Music has been plagued by both the lack of striking inventiveness and visible leadership,” it declared, “and the record-buying public is seeking a cure”. That cure would involve looking a decade or more backwards, with a double-LP compilation of old Beatles material called Rock ’n’ Roll Music. A “million-dollar promotional campaign” would “recreate Beatlemania”, and so the moribund music industry would be saved.

Meanwhile, in the very same issue, the debut album of punk pioneers the Ramones was being praised (“you have to love anything this moronic – the Ramones have managed to turn this style of heavy metal into something that might just be commercial”) and the Sex Pistols’ legendary 100 Club gig was being very favourably reviewed (“they’ll be so popular they’ll hate themselves”). Sometimes the way forward is begging for your attention and you still can’t see it.

Looked at half a century later, Rock ’n’ Roll Music is that rarest of rare Beatles beasts – the unloved outlier. Ignacio Gomez’s artwork is, if not an outright disaster, then certainly an oddity. The front cover shows a hyper-stylised drawing of the band – looking not at all “rock ’n’ roll” – beneath a neon-effect rendering of the title, while the inside is a curdled mess of 1950s clichés (a hamburger, a jukebox, Marilyn Monroe, a glass of Coca-Cola). The music is a collection of the band’s famous rock ’n’ roll covers (Chuck Berry, Carl Perkins, Little Richard) and some of their own “heavier” material (Get Back, Hey Bulldog, Back In the USSR).

Source: telegraph.co.uk/Rob Fitzpatrick

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