The cover artwork
Beatles For Sale was packaged in a gatefold sleeve, a first for the group. The front and back covers featured photographs of The Beatles taken by Robert Freeman in London’s Hyde Park.The album cover was rather nice: Robert Freeman’s photos. It was easy. We did a session lasting a couple of hours and had some reasonable pictures to use. We showed up in Hyde Park by the Albert Memorial. I was quite impressed by George’s hair there. He managed to create his little turnip top. The photographer would always be able to say to us, ‘Just show up,’ because we all wore the same kind of gear all the time. Black stuff; white shirts and big black scarves.
The Beatles appeared looking notably weary in Freeman’s photographs, with pale, unsmiling faces frames by their long hair and turned-up collars. The album’s title appeared in a small type size, dwarfed by the EMI/Parlophone logos, with The Beatles’ name nowhere else on the front cover.
Inside the gatefold was a photograph of The Beatles standing in front of a montage of photographs at Twickenham Film Studios, another of the group performing in Washington, DC on 11 February 1964, and sleeve notes by Derek Taylor.
Sleeve notes
This is the fourth by the four. ‘Please Please Me’, ‘With The Beatles’, ‘A Hard Day’s Night’. That’s three. Now… ‘Beatles For Sale‘.The young men themselves aren’t for sale. Money, noisy though it is, doesn’t talk that loud. But you can buy this album – you probably have, unless you’re just browsing, in which case don’t leave any dirty thumbprints on the sleeve!
It isn’t all currency or current though. There’s priceless history between these covers. None of us is getting any younger. When, in a generation or so, a radio-active, cigar-smoking child, picnicking on Saturn, asks you what the Beatle affair was all about – ‘Did you actually know them?’ – don’t try to explain all about the long hair and the screams! Just play the child a few tracks from this album and he’ll probably understand what it was all about. The kids of AD 2000 will draw from the music much the same sense of well being and warmth as we do today.
For the magic of the Beatles is, I suspect, timeless and ageless. It has broken all frontiers and barriers. It has cut through differences of race, age and class. It is adored by the world.
This album has some lovely samples of Beatle music. It has, for instance, eight new titles wrought by the incomparable John Lennon and Paul McCartney, and, mingling with the new, there are six numbers culled from the rhythmic wealth of the past extraordinary decade; pieces like ‘Kansas City’, and ‘Rock And Roll Music’. Marvellous.
Many hours and hard day’s nights of devoted industry went into the production of this album. It isn’t a potboiling quick-sale any-old-thing-will-do-for-Christmas mixture.
At least three of the Lennon-McCartney songs were seriously considered as single releases until John popped up with ‘I Feel Fine’. These three were ‘Eight Days A Week’, ‘No Reply’ and ‘I’m A Loser’. Each would have topped the charts, but as it is they are an adornment to this LP, and a lesson to other artists. As on other albums, the Beatles have tossed in far more value than the market usually demands.
There are few gimmicks or recording tricks, though for effect, the Beatles and their recording manager George Martin, have slipped in some novelties. Like Paul on Hammond organ to introduce drama into Mr. Moonlight, which also, and for the first time, has George Harrison applying a thump to an elderly African drum because Ringo was busy elsewhere in the studio, playing bongos. George’s thump remains on the track. The bongos were later dropped. Ringo plays timpani in ‘Every Little Thing’, and on the ‘Rock And Roll Music’ track George Martin joins John and Paul on one piano. On ‘Words Of Love’, Ringo plays a packing case.
Beyond this, it is straightforward 1964 disc-making. Quite the best of its kind in the world. There is little or nothing on the album which cannot be reproduced on stage, which is, as students and critics of pop-music know, not always the case.
Here it is then. The best album yet – quite definitely, says John, Paul, George, and Ringo – full of everything which made the four the biggest attraction the world has ever known. Full of raw John and melodic Paul; a number from George, and a bonus from Ringo. For those who like to know who does precisely what, there are details alongside each title.
this album is one of their underrated albums…but this album contains a lot of great songs one of them is i’ll follow the sun.
I think the photo foreshadows much of what was to come in the next three years: the end of flower power, a new cynicism, a fear of selling out. Their faces show the weariness which perfectly reflects the album title. “Here you have our next contractual album. Sorry, it was a bit rushed. Not our best effort. We need some rest”.
I agree that the cover tunes seem lackluster, but the original material is far better than they seem willing to admit. In the US, we had them sit over two LPs, but we still love them.,
Great album, I need to pick it up sometime.
I just played this one again, twice, after many years. And I was really taken by many of the songs, including the strong opening 5 tracks, skipping Mr. Moonlight which I’ve always detested, and I especially liked I Don’t Want To Spoil The Party, an early melancholic Lennon number. And adding in Eight Days A Week, Kansas City/Hey Hey Hey, and a few more great covers make this album quite an enjoyable listen. This record certainly gets overlooked unnecessarily.
I’ve noticed quite a few negative references to Mr. Moonlight, which I do like. Its got a powerful vocal. (Listen to John perfect it on the Anthology series. It also points to the fact that even from their early days they were playing a whole variety of different songs from different genres. This could also be said of many of the Beat boom groups from Liverpool. But it was this diversity as much as anything else which would define the Beatles as timeless.
This is probably my least favourite Beatles album (other than Yellow Submarine but that hardly counts). But when you look at each individual song, they’re all great. Not sure what it’s lacking, perhaps it’s just they were still doing covers when they could have filled the album with self-written music. George didn’t have any self-written songs on the album and only sang one, that’s also a downside for me.
I think your right about the covers. In retrospect replacing ‘Moonlight, Words of Love and Honey Don’t with I Feel Fine, She’s a Woman and Leave My Kitten alone , would make it a fine album indeed.
Oh, that time they were forced to record a new album every 6 months between endless tours. That’s physically almost impossible. So no surprise that their middle 60’s albums lack of quality material.
This album gets ragged on for being “war weary”. Actually, I think Help is a better candidate for being tired (but I’ll leave those comments for that page). Certainly it’s not as varied or dynamic as Hard Days Night, but this is a very good album; especially when you add the single to the analysis. Alot is mentioned of the Dylan influence, but I think many of the acoustic tracks are also inspired by the success of the acoustic numbers from A Hard Days Night. Specifically, I believe they were building on the success of “if I Fell” and “I’ll be Back”. I know many of these tracks started out with a full electric line up, but I believe the above mentioned influences made it easy to go acoustic. To my mind they are doing the Everly Brothers and adding the folk/Dylan influence, along with their own awareness of their fantastic ability to sing duets. (Cynthia mentions how many times she and her friends were enraptured by the acoustic duets John and Paul would sing). As to the covers, Everybody and Moonlight are weak, but the rest are great. John dominates the writing, as Paul still seems to be looking for his voice (comparatively speaking); which I don’t think he really finds until Rubber Soul. What your doing is not a very strong track. I rank it ahead of both Help and their first album and MMT and possibly Let it Be (even with Don’t let me Down added). I love Georges 12 string , but it does seem to be getting old on some of these songs.
I really liked this album a lot… the covers and originals. It was an album made in a frenzied time, but you can start to hear the changes that were to be evident a year later with Rubber Soul.
What if the album lineup went like this:
No Reply
I’m a Loser
Baby’s in Black
Rock and Roll Music
I’ll Follow the Sun
Everybody’s Trying to Be My Baby
Kansas City/Hey Hey Hey
Eight Days and Week
Words of Love
Honey Don’t
Every Little Thing
I Don’t Want to Spoil the Party
What You’re Doing
Leave My Kitten Alone
Better? Post modern disc jockeying?
Hey Jerry, looks like you have my habit of mentally resequencing albums or adding unused tracks to see what happens. I do it all the time and my rejigged version of For Sale was pretty much the same except that I think Kansas City would have been a better closer. I agree with inserting Kitten, after hearing it on Anthology 1 I can’t imagine why it wasn’t used. I would have put it at the end of side one. Maybe I’d have switched round Baby’s in Black and I’m a loser too. Otherwise I think you’re spot on with this one. Incidentally, I think Mr.Moonlight sounds 10 times better on the remastered version – it’s come to life.
This album took a long time for me to like, but once I matured with their music & came back to it, I realized how ridiculously strong it is. “I’ll Follow The Sun” was my long time fav, but after really listening I realized “I Don’t Want To Spoil The Party” is one of John’s great performances & “What You’re Doing” is definitely one of the most slept on songs they’ve ever made. Add in “Baby In Black”, which is one of the best Lennon/McCartney combo vocals of their entire catalog, and this album is among the strong of the pre-Studio band years. As a complete work, I’d take it over With The Beatles, Please Please Me & even A Hard Days Night.
Somehow I missed this album as a teenager. But I did manage to acquire the “4 by The Beatles” EP which included “I’m a Loser,” “Honey Don’t,” “Everybody,” & “Mr. Moonlight” enclosed in a nice cardboard cover. The fidelity of this vinyl Capital EP seemed enhanced compared to the other 45 rpm era singles such as “Eight Days”/”Spoil the Party.” I regret my 4 EP was destroyed in my parents’ house fire in 1984. They maintained it in their record rack & enjoyed listening to “Mr. Moonlight.”
Hey guys, you should understand that e.g. in Russia, english words of the Beatles songs were in fact out of side of understanding but almost everything was defined by musical sounds. Probably it is true, with other texts the influence would be less since there is a definite harmony for sounds and words in that songs. Such things as No reply or Eight days were just anthem for youth and everyone heard the words (in Russian) in them which he wants to hear and later they were replaced by Michelle and Girl in a similar manner. To my mind, Beatles for sale is very high in sense of emotional perception if you do not understand words. This concerns also other albums. That’s why the influence of Beatles is such large all over the world even you get no words clear to you.
Always liked this album. Johnny Cash once said that he thought “I’m A Loser” sounded like a Johnny Cash song. One thing about the boys, they were very selective about which cover versions they would release on record, which I always appreciated. Some British groups recorded cover versions that were better left alone (does anyone really wanna hear Mick Jagger sing “My Girl”?). The boys’ versions were usually pretty faithful to the originals, therefore “Honey, Don’t” isn’t plodding, it sounds very much like Perkins’ version. Never cared for “Kansas City/Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey” in any version, not one of Little Richard’s best. The first fade-in on a pop record was Johnny Horton’s rockabilly classic “The Wild One” from 1958, unless someone knows of an earlier one.”No Reply” and “I’m A Loser” are two of my all-time favorite Lennon songs. I don’t think the boys were “war weary” at all. That’s just a tag that was put on this album years ago that stuck for some reason. I don’t think it’s accurate at all.
Update: The earliest fade-in intro on a record that I’m currently aware of is Chuck Berry’s “The Downbound Train” from 1956.
Even more than “Please Please Me” or “With The Beatles”, this album shows the group in transition. The cover versions show where they’ve been, and the new compositions show where they’re going.
right on, Bill. I’d like to see what other bands would have come up with if they had all that the beatles had to do before, during and after this album.
most other groups would be lucky to have this as their best album
On A Hard Days Night John’s contributions dominated, but Paul’s three songs were all great. On this one Paul has only one great song, I’ll Follow the Sun, and John’s middle eight was a high point of the song.
So as much as I like some of the songs (No Reply, I’m a Loser, I Don’t Want to Spoil the Party, Eight Days a Week–I even really like the “plodding” Honey Don’t–overall I agree with the conventional wisdom. Weak Paul contributions + some lame covers = sub par Beatles album.
One thing though–even though I’m not wild about the songs Every Little Thing and What You’re Doing, they both have a bit of a Rubber Soul vibe to me. A forerunner of better things to come.
The Beatles music flipped on this album, recorded just after their meeting with Bob Dylan, since I’ve always been curious which album, song in particular, marked the end of the earlier Beatles “pop” period and entered their “psychodelic” (if you will) period. From what I’ve discovered, I’m A Loser was the very first song of the Psychodelic period, anyone know which song was penned just prior to August 28th, 1964, which would be the ending of the “pop” era?
This is not the beginning of their Psychedelic period Cheeze. This is smack dab in their busy early non-stop touring making hits days. I guess you could say Rubber Soul is the beginning of the huge change, but not this. They were exhausted and short on original material, but still put out a great album.
I’ve always thought the opening three tracks made a very strong opening — they fit so well together.
As I was lucky enough to watch them at the cavern over a hundred lunchtime sessions and saw some of the numbers featured actually live I have no preference but on those mid day sessions I knew, even then, I was witnessing genius and got to know Paul well, he even wrote the. Chords to ’till there was you’ on the back of an old electricity bill envelope for me. John refused but only because he didn’t have a pen, please don’t knock any of their tracks as four hundred years from now scribes will still be saying how lucky w e were
Like the album that followed it Help it is a transitional album and underrated. I received this record in 1978. Along with great covers it has songs showing the ever developing craftsmanship of the Lennon- McCartney team. With the former I just love Kansas City, Rock and Roll Music, Words of Love and Everybodys Trying To Be My Baby. And with the latter McCartneys Ill Follow The Sun is great, but this is an album that is particularly strong for John Lennon compositions. The autobiographical Lennon was really coming to the fore with Im A loser and No Reply and I Dont Want To Spoil The Party are great numbers. Also Eight Days A Week is as catchy as hell and a US number one to boot.
Just adding something to my comments from a few days ago. Babys In Black and Every Little Thing are two other great Lennon- McCartney songs off this album that are outstanding, showing the steady development of their craft so evident on this album.
No Reply, to my ears, has one of the greatest bridges ever both in terms of composition and execution. If I had hairs on the back of my neck, they’d stand up every time I heard it!
There were only two albums in which George seriously threatened Paul’s role
as John’s wingman, those were With the Beatles (which I commented on) and this album, Beatles For Sale. After With the Beatles, Paul made sure to shut down George’s contributions to A Hard Day’s Night, rejecting his original song You Know What To Do. On this album though, George couldn’t be held back.
The credits to this album should read
Lennon-Harrison-McCartney-Starkey.
John is in top form as always. He wrote
No Reply, I’m A Loser and I Don’t Want To Spoil the Party, singing lead on all of them. He also came up with the original idea for Baby’s In Black and collaborated with McCartney on Eight Days A Week.
John even sang lead on Paul’s Every Little Thing. Add that to his covers of Rock and Roll Music and the underrated Mr.Moonlight along with his prominent lead harmony in Words Of Love
Paul wrote 3 songs and collaborated on 2 others, though he only sang lead in I’ll Follow the Sun and What You’re Doing. He also did a mediocre cover of Kansas City and sang harmonies on Words Of Love and Baby’s in Black
George only sang lead on Everybody’s Trying to Be My Baby, but his guitar work is what defines this album, along with John’s raspy voice of course.
His guitar on songs like Honey Don’t
Words of Love, Spoil the Party and I’m A Loser among others is amazing.
So 7 lead vocals for John and 2 duet lead vocals
3 for Paul and 2 duets
1 for George, but prominent guitar parts throughout
And Honey Don’t for Ringo
George’s contributions overall are equal if not superior to McCartney’s. If he had only developed his songwriting skills a little earlier, we could be remembering Beatles history very differently. As it is, Paul’s stranglehold on the wingman spot was tightened by the time of Help!
Having heard Georges Track You Know What to do on Anthology 1 it is clear it didn’t appear on HDN because it wasnt very good.
Announcing your bias doesn’t give you impunity for saying ridiculous things. First of all, the way you frame the contributions of both Lennon & McCartney are telling—citing Every Little Thing and Eight Days A Week as a “Lennon vocals” despite the fact that he and Paul sing together in union for both entire songs. It doesn’t matter that Paul wrote all of Every Little Thing or most of Eight Days A Week… Lennon’s voice is a little louder in the mix so he’s clearly more responsible for the song’s existence.
Also blaming Paul for the exclusion of George’s lousy song shows your serious neurosis. The song was never properly recorded because Ringo came down with tonsillitis, though I’m sure with the way your brain works, Paul purposely infected Ringo in a jealous rage to sabotage George’s brilliant composition. “George couldn’t be held back” … as if the others were trying to hold him back. He wasn’t even a serious songwriter at this point… his only job was to come up with guitar lines.
And speaking of guitar lines, George is not great on this album by any standard—Baby’s In Black is very sloppy playing and nearly all guitar solos (Honey Don’t, Everybody’s Trying, Kansas City) are boring, uninspired country music pastiche. If you put even half of the energy you waste hating Paul toward something more constructive, maybe you wouldn’t be such a partisan dolt.
Have to say though that the opening triple salvo of No Reply, I’m a Loser and Baby’s in Black is as good an opener as on any of their albums. Imagine how good the album would be if it also included I Feel Fine, She’s a Woman and Leave my Kitten Alone at the expense of some of the weaker covers and perhaps What your Doing ( not a great mac a track ). Btw if you haven’t heard the cover of Every Little Thing as covered by prog rock band Yes do yourself a favour and give it a listen. Outstanding , really brings it to life.
My Dad bought me this album on my 14th birthday (1974) he said it was their best one . I didn’t believe him then, I don’t believe him now, I think he will be proved right in the future.
Ah, but what they learned about singing -after listening back to their dreadful vocals at the Decca audition. Right eh? A bit about singing with much more power and grit. John, especially, morphed really into having much more of staying true to his own voice. You know, Pauly, that you keep re-writing history. Well, surely now…just make sure you don’t tell them how we actually wrote our first 3 LPs in Hamburg…
always thought Beatles For Sale was an unusually sloppy sounding poorly-produced Beatles album compared to what came before and after. Tinny sounding, many obvious mistakes left in, some half-baked songs. When I make my list of their best to worst albums, that one is always towards the bottom.
Still, Words Of Love is a deep cut hidden gem that I’ve always liked.
I just played the remastered version for my 14 year old son during breakfast. A very fine, underrated gem. It shows the band’s 50’s influences and Dylan, as well. I still get chills when George hits the chimey intro chords to “Words Of Love”. Your website is awesome!
This after Revolver Is the best of the Beatles.. More so because John Lennon was in the forefront (for a change !)
Before G.Martin and the musiciatians got involved this is the true essence of Beatles.
Been listening to this album nonstop for 5 straight weeks. Every song is incredible–just phenomenal. Such profound balance to all the tracks. Could very well be their greatest LP. Believe it!
On the original UK LP (as reproduced on the CD), track 7 is listed on the sleeve and the label as Medley a. Kansas City b. Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey. So lots of commas, but no hyphens or exclamation marks!
Beatles for sale is an underrated album. The group had a very tight time schedule at that time, with World tour and live performances. This album contains great songs like Eight Days A Week and other great Lennon/McCartney songs. Yes, they did six cover versions of 1950’s Rock’n’Roll songs. But their cover versions of Rock And Roll Music and Words Of Love were greater than the original versions.
Here is my version of Beatles For Sale:
Baby’s In Black
I’m A Loser
Leave My Kitten Alone
Every Little Thing
I Don’t Want To Spoil The Party
What You’re Doing
No Reply
Eight Days A Week
She’s A Woman
I Feel Fine
Rock And Roll Music
I’ll Follow The Sun
Mr. Moonlight
Kansas City – Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey
Words Of Love
Everybody’s Trying To Be My Baby
Honey Don’t
If the Long Tall Sally EP hadn’t been released and those 4 tracks kept back for this album, it would surely have been a stronger record, especially the title track and I Call Your Name.
I guess at the time they didn’t anticipate that they would be struggling for material to fill Beatles for Sale
I just read the whole article, but i didn’t find what i was looking for… It has always annoyed me that i don’t know what the blury things in the foreground are supposed to be! The article says the picture was taken in Hyde Park so i imagine it’s just some bushes, but if so, why are the colours so bright and vibrant? I would just love if someone could confirm what those blured things are… atleast so i can get rid of this “OCD”
It was the first Beatles album I ever bought. It was in the summer of 1983, I was 15 and had just passed my high school entrance exams. I live in Poland and then buying such a record as new, straight from the store, was really something amazing. At that time, in large cities there were Pewex stores, where you could buy Western goods only for dollars. The problem is that for this reason, they were shops mainly for foreigners and for those who came from abroad, e.g. for seamen from merchant ships. At that time, dollars could not legally be bought in Poland. But illegally, for a fairly high price, yes. However, this was tolerated by the authorities. I remember that this album cost $ 7 and it was incomparably more than any Polish albums. I was captivated by its cover. Initially, I was going to buy Rubber Soul, also mainly because of the cover I had seen in the press before, but when I saw Beatles For Sale, it literally mesmerized me. As for the songs from this album, I only knew two songs from the “Rock’n’Roll Music” cassette compilation. When I listened to this album, it turned out that I still know No Reply, which I had recently recorded on a tape recorder, but I had no idea what its title was then. I thought it was some nice piece from the Rubber Soul period. I remember that I really liked Mr. Moonlight. This amazing, dramatic John vocal and Hammond organ part. I’ll Follow The Sun, Words Of Love, and I Don’t Want To Spoil The Party were also wonderful. It was a stereo version of the album, I had no idea then that there was such a thing as a mono version.
Less than a year later, I managed to buy a used album Please Please Me, at the market, this time not for dollars but still expensive. It was already a small collection!
Beatles For Sale is a good and a bit underrated album. I still like to come back to it.
I agree with you about “Beatles for Sale” – it’s underrated. Even the remastered stereo vinyl edition has given me a new appreciation for it and when I got my first CD copy at the tender age of 12 after Christmas just before I started high school, it was frankly an enjoyable album for me.
How do you guys not like Mr. Moonlight that song is so good. I can’t stop myself from singing along everytime I hear it.
It’s important to remember that back in their club days, The Beatles didn’t always get their material from the original source. For example, they didn’t get “Leave My Kitten Alone” from Little Willie John’s original 1959 recording, but rather from Johnny Preston’s 1961 cover version. John & Paul both stated as much in various interviews. Also, on the Star-Club tapes, they do a version of “Red Hot” which which did not come from Billy Lee Riley’s 1957 Sun recording because it was not released in the UK back then (nor was a Billy Emerson’s original). They never would’ve heard it. Their version came via a cover version on a Ronnie Hawkins LP or EP, which is why the call-and-response on their version is incorrect.
I dunno, I just don’t/can’t agree with the critics (nor can I agree with George Martin) that Beatles for Sale is one of the Fab Four’s least-memorable offerings. Call me sacrilegious if you must but, while this is definitely a step back from the triumphant all-original A Hard Day’s Night, I honestly find Beatles for Sale to be better than Please Please Me and With the Beatles. Compared to the original material on the group’s first two U.K. LPs, you can feel Lennon and McCartney both maturing as songwriters and beginning to develop deeper lyrics. For example, Lennon adopts an autobiographical perspective in the first two songs on album, “No Reply” and “I’m a Loser.” It should even be noted that “Every Little Thing” is an early example of the Beatles’ use of non-rock instrumentation on a recording, through the addition of timpani drum over the choruses.
Now let’s get to the cover songs. I only find two of them to be disposable: McCartney’s schmaltzy Hammond B-3 organ on “Mr. Moonlight” and George’s poorly double-tracked vocals on Carl Perkins’ “Everybody’s Trying to Be My Baby.” The rest of the covers, however, are great, like the rip-roaring takes on Chuck Berry’s “Rock and Roll Music” and the “Kansas City/Hey Hey Hey Hey” medley, Ringo’s laid-back charisma on Carl Perkins’ “Honey Don’t,” and the gorgeous three-part harmonies and wonderful 12-string riff from George on Buddy Holly’s “Words of Love.”
I absolutely love this album and I disagree with some of the unwarranted criticism that it has faced over the years.
Yes, they were understandably weary after a busy year and yes, they did have to fill it out with cover versions owing to a lack of time to write a large batch of new songs to record, but even the choice of cover versions didn’t hurt the record or its listening enjoyment, certainly not for me.
It wasn’t like any of them tried to self-produce it, let alone recruited someone like Andrew Loog Oldham, who had no prior experience as a record producer at the time The Rolling Stones began their recording career, but rather, George Martin was there to produce it.
It was also the end of an era in a couple of ways: it is their final album to have all the guitar parts played only by George and John, the last album to feature John playing harmonica until “Sgt. Pepper” (maybe he was just tired of it and wanted to branch out to playing keyboards as a secondary instrument) and their final album not to have any songs written by George (all subsequent albums featured at least two songs by him); however, it holds the distinction of being their first UK release to boast a gatefold cover, so this predated the gatefold to “Sgt. Pepper” by almost three years.
I guess the possible, but not definitive, reason why George didn’t contribute any songs to the album was because he was either a) not interested, b) had none to offer at this point in time, c) had no time to write any or d) he was still working on improving his songwriting craft. This is all guesswork on my part, so I can’t confirm for sure.
“Beatles for Sale” also was the first Beatles studio album that I ever bought on 180g vinyl from my local JB Hi-Fi to replace my old copy and I had previously bought the collector’s edition box set of “Magical Mystery Tour”, which contained the original double EP in remastered form as one of its contents.
I absolutely love this album and I disagree with some of the unwarranted criticism that it has faced over the years.
Yes, they were understandably weary after a busy year and yes, they did have to fill it out with cover versions owing to a lack of time to write a large batch of new songs to record, but even the choice of cover versions didn’t hurt the record or its listening enjoyment, certainly not for me.
It was also the end of an era in a couple of ways: it is their final album to have all the guitar parts played only by George and John, the last album to feature John playing harmonica until “Sgt. Pepper” (maybe he was just tired of it and wanted to branch out to playing keyboards as a secondary instrument) and their final album not to have any songs written by George (all subsequent albums featured at least two songs by him); however, it holds the distinction of being their first UK release to boast a gatefold cover, so this predated the gatefold to “Sgt. Pepper” by almost three years.
I guess the possible, but not definitive, reason why George didn’t contribute any songs to the album was because he was either a) not interested, b) had none to offer at this point in time, c) had no time to write any or d) he was still working on improving his songwriting craft. This is all guesswork on my part, so I can’t confirm for sure.
“Beatles for Sale” also was the first Beatles studio album that I ever bought on 180g vinyl from my local JB Hi-Fi to replace my old copy and I had previously bought the collector’s edition box set of “Magical Mystery Tour”, which contained the original double EP in remastered form as one of its contents.
When I was a kid my brother had the album I remember reading the back cover and it went something like this if some kids ask what the beatles were about just play this record. They specified a year what year was they specified.
It’s in this article in the sleeve notes section: https://www.beatlesbible.com/albums/beatles-for-sale/3/#Sleeve_notes