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Beatles Timeline: 50 years on

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    #101
    Beatles Timeline: 50 years on

    Penny lane every time for me too

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      #102
      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.

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        #103
        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.

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          #104
          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..

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            #105
            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.

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              #106
              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.

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                #107
                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.

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                  #108
                  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.

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                    #109
                    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.

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                      #110
                      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.

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                        #111
                        Beatles Timeline: 50 years on

                        Crossed with VA there.

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                          #112
                          Beatles Timeline: 50 years on

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

                          Kids.

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                            #113
                            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).

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                              #114
                              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.

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                                #115
                                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.

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                                  #116
                                  Beatles Timeline: 50 years on

                                  I hadn't thought of that. They were a household name since Beatlemania, but a concerted commercial process did indeed commence at the point of Anthology. Whilst I now own the DVD set which I really enjoy, I do remember feeling it was all a bit much at the time. Free As A Bird and Real Love, I didn't and don't like. I resented having these presented to me as The Beatles, which they weren't, and felt they were disrespectful to John Lennon.

                                  Let It Be... Naked is legit in my book as it's recorded by all of them, together and in the same sessions as the released version, just without Spector. They both stand.

                                  1 and Love and anything connected with Cirque du Soleil are just flogging a horse that will never die.

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                                    #117
                                    Beatles Timeline: 50 years on

                                    I guess that can serve a purpose if it helps to educate the younger generation. I remember that, as a callow youth during the early and mid 90s, my perception of 60s and 70s music was in large part determined by whether my dad liked it (good) or my mum (bad). My dad never really played their music (he was always more of a Stones/Cream fan), whereas my mum used to attempt songs like Michelle on her guitar. So that was that.

                                    However, when the anthology was released and there was a sudden glut of airplay (including Free as a Bird) I suddenly got to hear a load of tracks that I never had before, and appreciate they might have been about more than just "sad" 2 minute rock and roll numbers.

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                                      #118
                                      Beatles Timeline: 50 years on

                                      My reading of the story is that George had financial troubles in the early 90s (due to a film company collapse) so started to consent to all these Macca-led legacy concepts that he had previously derided.*

                                      The elephant in the room is what Lennon would have felt about all this. I seriously doubt that the above releases would have got past his veto.

                                      *Source: You Never Give Me Your Money: The Beatles After the Breakup by Peter Doggett.

                                      Sales: Biggest selling album act, definitely. Unfortunately today the concept of "sales" has been rendered ludicrous by downloads and streaming. If we exclude those dubious measures, I don't think anyone will ever catch The Beatles on purely physical over the counter sales of albums, no matter whether the timeframe starts in 1963 or 1994, although there was maybe a time in the 80s when Michael Jackson was closing in.

                                      Singles: how can anyone know, frankly, but I suspect that Bing Crosby had already become impossible to catch by the late 1940s, and that Elvis, Beatles, Rihanna, Jacko, Mariah Carey, etc will always trail Crosby by a mile.

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                                        #119
                                        Beatles Timeline: 50 years on

                                        I have just listened to the Pepper remix. The standout is the crescendo in A Day In The Life, which now sounds as revolutionary again as it must have done in 1967. McCartney's bass and Ringo's drums now sound immense - the chemistry between them drives the album. I could do without the chatter at the beginning and end of the alternative takes; it's going to make that 2nd CD more annoying than it needs to be. Penny Lane at the end of CD2 is another stunner; Strawberry Fields has existed in multiple forms on Youtube and Anthology 2 down the years and can't be improved or diminished by remixing: it is what it is.

                                        Biggest surprise is that I now like With A Little Help From My Friends more than I ever have before. It's just a warm, welcoming song perfectly executed. When I'm 64 can't really be redeemed but it would be a mistake to skip it; it is part of the album's experience and McCartney's character, genius or no.

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                                          #120
                                          Beatles Timeline: 50 years on

                                          Even though it's only about my eighth favourite Beatles album, I might find buying this hard to resist. And I will listen to it all once and then put it on the shelf and listen to it again in about 20 years, if CDs still work then. I really shouldn't waste the cash. Like SD says, who the hell wants to listen to 'When I'm 64' ever again?

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                                            #121
                                            Beatles Timeline: 50 years on

                                            It's like buying a DVD of your 8th favourite film by, say, Hitchcock or Fritz Lang, with various extras. You will watch it once every 20 years but somehow feel you needed to have it in the house.

                                            I suppose if you're interested in production, it's interesting to compare and contrast the various mixes and remasters, and some fans can do their own mixes from the various versions.

                                            But regarding When I'm 64, you can't polish a turd.

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                                              #122
                                              Beatles Timeline: 50 years on

                                              So as of now it really was fifty years ago today.

                                              Been waiting to do that.

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                                                #123
                                                Beatles Timeline: 50 years on

                                                Good for you, Sits.

                                                Would've been terrible if you'd missed that one.

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                                                  #124
                                                  Beatles Timeline: 50 years on

                                                  Just found out on Twitter, through @RockWalkLondon, that the debut album by David Bowie was released 50 years ago today!

                                                  http://ksassets.timeincuk.net/wp/uploads/sites/55/2015/05/2013bowieddavidBowie600g080313.jpg

                                                  http://www.teenagewildlife.com/Albums/DB/back_us_mono.jpg

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                                                    #125
                                                    Beatles Timeline: 50 years on

                                                    Playing the Sgt. Pepper record right now in honor of this milestone. The opening four tracks still can make me so very happy.

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