Beatles Timeline: 50 years on

[Beatle Simon]

Beatles Timeline: 50 years on

Satchmo Distel wrote: It's a brand rather than an album.

IMHO, The Beatles (TM) have been a 'brand' since '94, starting with 'Live at the BBC'.

Nov '94: Live At The BBC
Late '95 to late '96: Anthology TV series, video release, CD volumes 1-3, Free As A Bird & Real Love single releases.
September '99: Yellow Submarine songtrack
Nov 2000: 1 (joint second selling album of the 21st century with 31 million copies sold!)
Nov 2003: Let It Be...Naked
Nov 2004: The Capitol Albums vol 1
April 2006: The Capitol Albums vol 2
Nov 2006: Love
Sep 2009: The Beatles In Mono
Sep 2009: The Beatles In Stereo
Nov 2013: Live At The BBC vol 2
Sep 2016: Eight Days A Week DVD & CD

and now, there's going to be all the Sgt Pepper 50th anniversary bumpf. Personally, I'd be very surprised, just based on these releases alone, if there has been a bigger selling artist since 1994.

[Various Artist]

Beatles Timeline: 50 years on

Ahhh, 1997 – when 30 years was an almost unimaginably long time over which to look back to the genesis of Pet Sounds at the heart of the golden age of pop music. Now, the equivalent would see a retrospective box-set from the golden age of Stock Aitken Waterman.

[Satchmo Distel]

Beatles Timeline: 50 years on

Giles Martin was interviewed by Mark Radcliffe this week (see Radcliffe & Maconie on 6Music site). The versions they played sounded great because Giles has used the mono master as his template and gone back to the original tracks prior to bounce down, so you now hear Macca's bass and the backing vocals absolutely perfectly. Giles also wanted to capture the fact that the band usually did live takes, not piecemeal takes of each isolated instrument, so you do get that sound of a live band on the backing tracks (as you do with the Wrecking Crew on the Pet Sounds Sessions, which was released by the Beach Boys in 1997).

[SouthdownRebel]

Beatles Timeline: 50 years on

SdR Jr is hearing Revolver for (possibly) the first time. "I'll be glad when this is over".

Kids.

[Sits]

Beatles Timeline: 50 years on

Crossed with VA there.

[Sits]

Beatles Timeline: 50 years on

Well it's hard to dispute since you remember, and I was three. Clearly what those of us who assessed the portfolio retrospectively don't have is the key element of context.

[Various Artist]

Beatles Timeline: 50 years on

That's fascinating, AdC, and rather amazing. For those of us who weren't around/old enough to appreciate Sgt Pepper at the moment it emerged as a phenomenon, rather than just being some sort of ever-present cultural monolith, it's hard to imagine what it must have felt like to witness something like that detonate on the musical landscape. Thanks for sharing.

[Amor de Cosmos]

Beatles Timeline: 50 years on

The reverberations on it's release can't be discounted, even after so much time has passed. It was pretty much universally regarded as the first pop album to stand comparison with the finest historical musical compositions. One or two classical musicians and critics had been making that case since Please, Please Me, but Pepper removed all doubt. It was majestic, ubiquitous and, quite honestly, in terms of immediate widespread cultural acceptance there'd never been anything quite like it, nor has there since.

[Satchmo Distel]

Beatles Timeline: 50 years on

It's a brand rather than an album. I happen to quite like it as an album but not to the point of wanting multiple CDs of sessions, whereas I'd love to hear Revolver in creation, or A Hard Day's Night for that matter.

[Sits]

Beatles Timeline: 50 years on

Although it's almost two weeks before the Sergeant Pepper anniversary I'm seriously considering un-following the Beatles for a while on FB. For the last couple of months it's felt like saturation coverage.

Now it's a great album and all that but they didn't make as much fuss about last year's double whammy, both of which I prefer and I hthink many others do too. I think Revolver in particular was a bigger leap forward.

But it's Sgt Pepper.

[MiserableOldGit]

Beatles Timeline: 50 years on

Sam wrote: I've never particularly liked either 'Penny Lane' or 'Strawberry Fields Forever', oddly. I can appreciate them now, and I'll sing along to them, and I don't dislike them any more, but when I first heard them, along with all the other tracks on the red and blue albums, those two tracks were by a distance the ones I enjoyed the least, and that feeling has clearly stuck with me ever since.

I used to feel exactly the same and although I now appreciate Penny Lane far more that I used to, Strawberry Fields Forever still seems incredibly over-rated. I think with Penny Lane, it had a rhythm and tempo that seemed slightly at odds with pop songs of the time and it still doesn't quite seem a comfortable fit. Strawberry Fields included early use of the Mellotron and supposedly used some tricky splicing, but I didn't think it was anything like the work of genius that some claim.

[Sits]

Beatles Timeline: 50 years on

I've always had that with Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds but just assumed there was something wrong with me.

It's not a later-Beatles-spaced-out-John thing though; I love I am the Walrus and Across the Universe, but of course they're jumping ahead of the Timeline..

[Sam]

Beatles Timeline: 50 years on

I've never particularly liked either 'Penny Lane' or 'Strawberry Fields Forever', oddly. I can appreciate them now, and I'll sing along to them, and I don't dislike them any more, but when I first heard them, along with all the other tracks on the red and blue albums, those two tracks were by a distance the ones I enjoyed the least, and that feeling has clearly stuck with me ever since.

[Outside Agent]

Beatles Timeline: 50 years on

Penny Lane for me too. Every time.

I read the other day that George's Only A Northern Song was recorded in these sessions. Now, I know I would have known this at some point, most likely having read it in Ian McDonald's Revolution In The Head. But thanks to getting older and getting a life, there's plenty of Beatles-related facts that I would previously have known thanks to a devotion to their catalogue, but I just don't study their work with the same commitment any more. I suppose it makes it all the nicer when I come across Beatles-related trivia these days.

[elguapo4]

Beatles Timeline: 50 years on

Penny lane every time for me too

[Various Artist]

Beatles Timeline: 50 years on

Likewise, actually – I mean, I admire SFF and enjoy it, but Penny Lane is just a pure little cracker of a song.

[Sits]

Beatles Timeline: 50 years on

Good save Serge. I was only think yesterday it must be time for something to be happening on this thread, then forgot.

What VA said - amazing. I'm in a minority who prefer Penny Lane to Strawberry Fields which for some reason isn't one of my favourites.

[Various Artist]

Beatles Timeline: 50 years on

Wowzers. And thus, of course, Penny Lane too as they were a double A-side. Listening to both now on the 'Blue Album' as a result of your post, Serge.

This will be the first point in the life of this thread where a Beatles single hasn't/hadn't-50-years-ago gone to Number One in the UK charts, the above pairing famously being held off the top spot by Engelbert Humperdinck's Release Me.

Amazing to read via the Wiki link there how Strawberry Fields Forever was so painstakingly pieced together, apart from anything, which helped give it that remarkable other-worldly sound. It's astounding really that they could knock out things of this quality and then gaily leave them off the forthcoming album, and then it – being Sgt Pepper's – barely suffering for it.

[Beatle Simon]

Beatles Timeline: 50 years on

Strawberry Fields Forever was first released in the UK 50 years ago today!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strawberry_Fields_Forever

[Lang Spoon]

Beatles Timeline: 50 years on

Tomorrow Never Knows still sounds like a cry from the future we never got, even that Chemical Brothers/Eyebrows Gallagher brother "homage" can't ruin it. A more genuinely psychedelic experience than all the sugary queasy music-hall muck on Sgt Pepper's.

Rubber Soul is sharp as a tack and bright as a button, but even their most Forward! songs on it sound total '65.

[Sits]

Beatles Timeline: 50 years on

And just to emphasise that achievement, the "other album" in between was no small undertaking

[G-Man]

Beatles Timeline: 50 years on

It is incredible that Help! came out almost exactly a year before Revolver, on August 6, 1965. The artistic growth in that timespan, during which they toured and recorded another album, is immense.

For those who are interested, here's Revolver in cover versions.

[Beatle Simon]

Beatles Timeline: 50 years on

Happy Birthday, Revolver!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolver_(Beatles_album)

[linus]

Beatles Timeline: 50 years on

And 40 years later, Elizabeth Gilbert was still doing the same westerner seeking enlightenment in Indian ashrams spiel.

[Beatle Simon]

Beatles Timeline: 50 years on

The Beatles' first trip to India on this day:

https://www.beatlesbible.com/1966/07/06/the-beatles-first-trip-to-india/?utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=postplanner&utm_so urce=twitter.com