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Beatles Timeline: 50 years on

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  • Sits
    replied
    Beatles Timeline: 50 years on

    I stole this shamelessly from the FB alert I received, but fifty years ago this week, the Beatles began recording sessions for Revolver and I was still a one-year-old. Of all the songs to start with, it was this.

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  • G-Man
    replied
    Beatles Timeline: 50 years on

    Well, in 1971 The Beatles released their Everest double album. The tracklisting was as follows:

    Side 1
    Instant Karma (We All Shine On) (John)
    What Is Life (George)
    Maybe I'm Amazed (Paul)
    Every Night (Paul)
    Apple Scruffs (George)

    Side 2
    Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey (Paul)
    Stardust (Ringo)
    All Things Must Pass (George)
    Isolation (John)
    Ram On (Paul)
    Jealous Guy (John)

    Side 3
    Mother (John)
    Wah-Wah (George)
    The Back Seat Of My Car (Paul)
    Hold On (John)
    Love (John)

    Side 4
    Too Many People (Paul)
    Working Class Hero (John)
    Isn't It A Pity (George)
    Junk (Paul)
    How? (John)

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  • Jah Womble
    replied
    Beatles Timeline: 50 years on

    I could also see moments like Maybe I'm Amazed, Helen Wheels and Listen to What the Man Said passing muster, but Lennon might've repented slightly to Macca's cornier moments if only to gain leverage for his own syrupy paeans to Yoko...

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  • Rogin the Armchair fan
    replied
    Beatles Timeline: 50 years on

    If the Beatles had stayed together - in particular as a collaborative writing team - what of their individual 1970s stuff would have been better, or maybe not recorded at all? Surely John Lennon wouldn't have let McCartney get away with "Wonderful Christmas Time" or "Mull of Kintyre", or is that just wishful thinking? On the other hand, both the Live and Let Die theme, and Band on the Run, are good but maybe improvable for some finishing touches, and Jet is so in the Beatles style that it's hard to see it being changed at all?

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  • Rogin the Armchair fan
    replied
    Beatles Timeline: 50 years on

    Ringo remembers

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  • Satchmo Distel
    replied
    Beatles Timeline: 50 years on

    But then the same man writes the middle eight of Getting Better (an admission), the totally open Julia and the apologetic Jealous Guy. And I don't think any other songwriter of the time made that journey from sexist pig to male feminist.

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  • G-Man
    replied
    Beatles Timeline: 50 years on

    Disco Child Ballads wrote: Getting back to Rubber Soul, I was thinking the other day it might be The Beatles album with the dodgiest gender politics. There's some unpleasant misogyny behind a lot of the lyrics on that album (especially Run For Your Life).
    Lennon hated "Run For Your Life". He called it a "nasty" song.

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  • Sits
    replied
    Beatles Timeline: 50 years on

    Other melancholy peaks: Girl, and For No One. The brass on the latter is just perfect.

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  • Wouter D
    replied
    Beatles Timeline: 50 years on

    Disco Child Ballads wrote: Getting back to Rubber Soul, I was thinking the other day it might be The Beatles album with the dodgiest gender politics. There's some unpleasant misogyny behind a lot of the lyrics on that album (especially Run For Your Life).
    The opening track does have a guy trying to chat up a girl, only for her to immediately take over the narrative and relegate him to her chauffeur ("and maybe I'll love you").

    Leave a comment:


  • Disco Child Ballads
    replied
    Beatles Timeline: 50 years on

    Getting back to Rubber Soul, I was thinking the other day it might be The Beatles album with the dodgiest gender politics. There's some unpleasant misogyny behind a lot of the lyrics on that album (especially Run For Your Life).

    Still, 'In My Life' is probably my favourite Beatle song.

    Leave a comment:


  • G-Man
    replied
    Beatles Timeline: 50 years on

    Indeed. Lennon had one up on the other three by growing up in a nice middle-class environment. But, of course, the circumstances of parental abandonment, and then his mother's death just as they were finding one another, created much darkness in his psyche.

    Paul and George suffered greater economic hardships but had more settled homelives, and didn't have those scars. And that often showed in the lyrics.

    Had John written "Eleanor Rigby", he might have had a more cynical go at Father McKenzie than the non-judgmental pathos of Paul's lyrics.

    Leave a comment:


  • Satchmo Distel
    replied
    Beatles Timeline: 50 years on

    The breadth of Revolver is amazing, and all the tracks are packed to the gills with interesting details. Sgt. Pepper is perhaps more self-indulgent but still has these awesome pairings of tracks, such as Lovely Rita/Good Morning Good Morning and She's Leaving Home/Mr Kite. Lucy In The Sky is a track I have to be in the right mood for (it's a poor man's Strawberry Fields) but when I like it, I love it: the spaced out vocal on top of the bass and organ, "taped with a special organ stop sounding not unlike a celeste"; the Alice In Wonderland dreamscape.

    The Beatles seem to be able to be simultaneously gentle and tough, sweet and bitter, rock and pop (and experimental, orchestral or soulful). An extraordinary range of influences but filtered through an acute sense of what to use and what to discard.

    Yes, I think Macca had a lot of melancholy: his mother died young, like Lennon's, and he grew up in a dark period (Liverpool 1942-56).

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  • Come along, Min
    replied
    Beatles Timeline: 50 years on

    A good few of his songs have a melancholy edge, Yesterday for example.

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  • Jah Womble
    replied
    Beatles Timeline: 50 years on

    Rogin the Armchair Fan wrote: Nah,

    Eleanor Rigby

    actually must remain my favourite Beatles track. Was it written by one and sung by the other? It's too melancholy to have been written by "Pipes of Peace" McCartney, surely.
    That's my favourite Beatles tune, too. An extraordinary vignette tied up in just over two minutes.

    And, yep, it was one of Macca's.

    Leave a comment:


  • Rogin the Armchair fan
    replied
    Beatles Timeline: 50 years on

    Nah,

    Eleanor Rigby

    actually must remain my favourite Beatles track. Was it written by one and sung by the other? It's too melancholy to have been written by "Pipes of Peace" McCartney, surely.

    Leave a comment:


  • Rogin the Armchair fan
    replied
    Beatles Timeline: 50 years on

    "A Day in the Life" remains one of the most extraordinary pieces ever made, even compared to everything Prog Rock could throw at it over the next decade, and is possibly my favourite Beatles track.

    Middle of The Road? You must be on rohypnol.

    Can you imagine (no pun intended) "A Day in the Life" being released as a single, in a later era? Versus Bohemian Rhapsody, for example, that came 8 years later?

    Leave a comment:


  • G-Man
    replied
    Beatles Timeline: 50 years on

    They are part of the cultural fibre of the UK and N. America, their songs are your mum's favorites. That's how their aura was built.
    Yeah, mums love to dance to "Within You, Without You" and do their ironing to "Revolution #9".

    When I get bored with Sgt Pepper's, I tend to go back to a post AdC wrote some years ago about the mindblowing impact of the album on contemporary culture. It changed everything, he said. Many, many people of that era, musicians and listeners, said the same thing. It's a good reminder that before "A Day In The Life", there was nothing like "A Day In The Life".

    Knowing every bit of music made in the 1960s does not in itself indicate historical literacy, linus. That knowledge also requires accurate interpretation. On this thread (and arguably also in your previous dismissal of Pet Sounds) you have not offered an accurate contextual analysis.

    Your line of argument in this instance is the equivalent of the Brazilian player Denilson: a player with a cupboard full of tricks but without a useful application.

    Leave a comment:


  • Jah Womble
    replied
    Beatles Timeline: 50 years on

    There were other artists that produced work that arguably competed with The Beatles at their best, but none that so consistently broke new ground with their songs while always remaining commercial and vibrant.

    It's as if none of the other bands from that period had more than one great creative member...
    Well, he said 'genius' rather than merely 'creative member' - there's a substantial difference. Many other bands could boast more than one creative in the pack, obviously.

    But this is another point that feels a little moot, to be honest.

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  • linus
    replied
    Beatles Timeline: 50 years on

    G-Man wrote: The perceptions are correct, though. They belong exactly in the same sentence as Bach on account of the massive influence they had on popular music. You might not enjoy the music, but to ignore or diminish that immense influence is to reveal a certain music-historical illiteracy.
    You can't accuse me of "music-historical illiteracy" though, because my knowledge of music from the Beatles era is quite extensive, literally tens of thousands of titles deep. It's precisely because of this that I refute the notion that the Beatles, were Bach-like musical gods that towered above their contemporaries.

    If anything, it is Beatles fans that are subject to "music-historical illiteracy", and there is a very good example of this in the Satchmo post right above, where he advances the notion that "the Beatles are the only band where you have creative tension between two geniuses". It's as if none of the other bands from that period had more than one great creative member...

    The Beatles were in the limelight like no other band before or after them, so much so that they came to define the era and were the conduit to younger generations to that genre. They are part of the cultural fibre of the UK and N. America, their songs are your mum's favorites. That's how their aura was built. Sort of like how Britney Spears is part of the musical driver of many Y-gen women, or Justin Bieber will be for many millennials.

    That doesn't mean that the Beatles are as crap as Bieber, but they did not become musical paragons through the quality of their work alone, because they had many contemporaries that were at least as good, some of whom were famous, and many who were outsiders that go little or no recognition.

    They were credited for innovations like the invention of the album concept or of psychedelia, when other bands could lay much better claims, like the Misunderstood's 1966 "Before the Dream Faded" album side, or the 13th Floor Elevators who were psychedelic well before the Beatles latched on to paisley and gurus. It is true however that they popularized those innovative concepts, but their work, while the most popular, wasn't the best of the era. Not Bach-like.

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  • Satchmo Distel
    replied
    Beatles Timeline: 50 years on

    It's the only band where you have a creative tension between two geniuses, and a third member who becomes a great guitarist and songwriter. The former is already there on "A Hard Day's Night" (album) whereas George has major creative input on Rubber Soul and Revolver with his Byrds and Indian flourishes and considerable wit.

    Leave a comment:


  • Jah Womble
    replied
    Beatles Timeline: 50 years on

    Well, it was 'highlighted' by that link, rather than 'answered' by it. My point was that MOR is an inspiration that only really came to the fore in the 1970s: The Beatles can be neither considered guilty of it, nor indeed responsible for it.

    The fact that MOR as a genre (if it even constitutes one) might since have enveloped some of Lennon and McCartney's output is neither here nor there.

    Leave a comment:


  • G-Man
    replied
    Beatles Timeline: 50 years on

    Jah Womble wrote: And to dismiss what The Beatles did as 'MOR' shows - at best - a lack of understanding of a term/genre that didn't really exist as an expression at the time anyway.
    That point was already answered with the link to "Tomorrow Never Knows". But if by MOR linus meant unadventurous mainstream rock/pop, then I presume that

    (a) either his knowledge of Beatles music is limited to stuff like "Let It Be" and "The Long And Winding Road", or

    (b) he thinks that the many sonic innovations of The Beatles have been improved upon so much by subsequent generations of experimental musicans as to render them banal. Though I can't think of many songs that sound as innovative (or beautiful) as "Strawberry Fields", even almost 50 yearts after it was recorded.

    Leave a comment:


  • Sits
    replied
    Beatles Timeline: 50 years on

    Just listened to Rubber Soul on the way home. Must be at least a couple of years. The funny thing with the Beatles is, I wasn't especially "in a Beatles mood" but chose to listen to it after the thread update reminded me. I was soon right in the mood.

    In the past In My Life was always my absolute favourite, in fact one of my top Beatles songs of all. Yet today the one which really had the most impact was Nowhere Man. The melody, and the way John sings

    Nowhere man, don't worry
    Take your time, don't hurry
    Leave it all
    Till somebody else lends you a hand


    Ah, heaven.

    Maybe that's part of it - there's always something new.

    Leave a comment:


  • Jah Womble
    replied
    Beatles Timeline: 50 years on

    G-Man wrote: The perceptions are correct, though. They belong exactly in the same sentence as Bach on account of the massive influence they had on popular music. You might not enjoy the music, but to ignore or diminish that immense influence is to reveal a certain music-historical illiteracy.
    Yeah, this. And to dismiss what The Beatles did as 'MOR' shows - at best - a lack of understanding of a term/genre that didn't really exist as an expression at the time anyway.

    Leave a comment:


  • G-Man
    replied
    Beatles Timeline: 50 years on

    Anyway, to mark the 50th anniversary of the release of Rubber Soul last week, here's a mix of cover versions of the albums tracks, in sequence.

    The Humble Pie version of "Drive My Car" is quite remarkable.

    Leave a comment:

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