Forgotten gems : The 'B' Side

The B-side is usually a long lost effort after the main event of most musicians’ singles.

A filler that rarely gets a play on most physical copies of singles, the B-Side has become a long forgotten gem.

















I used to love going into Liverpool most Saturdays, on a mission to hunt down 7" singles from a list i'd compiled throughout the week. I would listen intently to the DJ's on the radio, waiting to hear what this wonderful noise was blasting from my radio - getting annoyed when they went straight into the next track without announcing what I had just been listening to.

It's not really an issue nowadays with apps available that enable your phone to pick up what's playing & then decipher what it is, then leading you to an online store where you can purchase it. You need not leave your armchair, which is great - but it's been many years now since i've made that weekly trip into town to seek out singles. In fact, I've not even made a list of music to look for anymore. There's no preparation anymore - everything is instant!


One unexpected treat when getting the shiny new 7" singles home was flipping the disc over & playing the B side. I say unexpected treat when I found that the track on the flip side was actually better than the A side.

Examples such as "Wouldn't It Be Nice" by The Beach Boys which is a jolly little song. But, imagine the amount of people who, after playing that track for the first time, flipped over the single & then heard the B side which is "God Only Knows" and then rarely played the A side again.

Maybe it's because of Paul McCartney playing the Beatles classic "Hey Jude" badly at every given opportunity, but I've always much preferred the B side "Revolution".

Acts often had a special affinity for the other side. This is because B-sides could make a band money.

Publishing royalties from sales were split 50:50 between the A-side and the B-side, so a band like The Sweet, for instance, whose mega-selling glam-rock A-sides of the 1970s were written by their producers Chinn and Chapman, could put their own, less commercial, compositions on the B-side and ride the royalty bandwagon.

Although the era of the vinyl single was the B-side's heyday, it continued through the cassette single (which had a similar "flip" side) and even the CD single (which had so much space that two or three extra tracks could easily be added).

Imagine downloading the Rolling Stones' "Honky Tonk Women". Fantastic in itself but, if you'd bought it as a vinyl single, you'd have taken it home and, after playing it a few times, flipped it over to hear the epic "You Can't Always Get What You Want".

That has to be one of the greatest B-sides of all time, and the thought that, in the age of the digital download, there may be similarly great tracks that I may never hear has me in a cold sweat.

So here's a suggestion: when acts sell a digital single, what about giving away a free extra track – a digital B-side?

There are still many B sides out there that I still discover from time to time & that's part of the enjoyment of being a collector.
Whilst not always better than the A side, there are some that could easily have been another single.
Maybe indecision from bands or record companies led to the Double A Side?

The B's that I enjoy the most;
· You Can't Always Get What You Want - The Rolling Stones (1969 B side of Honky Tonk Women)
· Schoolboy Crush - Cliff & The Drifters (1958 B Side of Move It)
· Revolution - The Beatles (1968 B Side of Hey Jude)
· God Only Knows - The Beach Boys (1966 B Side of Wouldn't It Be Nice)
· Beware Of The Flowers - John Otway & Wild Willy Barrett (1977 B Side of Really Free)

I'd love to hear what your favourite B sides are & possibly discover more hidden gems. Let me know via the comments box or on facebook.