The Beatles *sigh*

[Jay]

That's the incredible thing... the two IMHO greatest rock bands of all time were pushing each other to new heights, and us the listeners were the winners. Can you imagine, though, if Brian hadn't broke down, what he possibly could've done in response to Sgt Pepper? Or, what the Beatles would've done in response to Smile?! It's mind-boggling.

Good album choices John (of course, they're all good )...as of right now, the White Album might be my second favorite after Revolver.

Right now I'm heavily into the 1969 Get Back period, but that might be because of a recent purchase of a 17 disc box set of the sessions.   But on the whole, I'd much rather hear anything from 1966 and on, as apposed to their earlier period(which was awesome in itself, don't get me wrong). Since you really like the "White Album", here's the unreleased complete version of Sexy Sadie(one of my favorite Beatles songs). I won't tell you what's different about it...I'll let you figure it out. The first time I heard it, I didn't know anything about an unreleased "complete" version. Needless to say, when I figured it out it was one of those "Holy sh*t!" moments.   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oifQ8syuy4s

[Chocolate Shake Man]

I love it all but especially the mid-period - everything from Ticket to Ride to Penny Lane is a really exciting period. But, yes, as far as albums go it's Revolver followed by White Album for me too, though Rubber Soul is following close behind.

Was John Lennon influenced by The Beach Boys? Maybe a bit though probably not to the extent as Paul and even then I do think that the cross-pollination has been exaggerated a bit by both sides. You can hear Lennon's influences fairly clearly, whether it was 50s rock and roll, or Motown, or Whiter Shade of Pale, or Bob Dylan, or The Byrds, it's there.

[pixletwin]

My point wasn't that John was influenced by the Beach boys. My point was that he seemed to place them on level of respect that he didn't seem to place other Contemporaries.

[Chocolate Shake Man]

Because he didn't slag them off? I don't think that tells us much. I think it suggests more that they simply weren't significant enough to him to mention.

I recall a press conference in 1966 when they are asked their favourite American group and Lennon quickly rattles off, "Byrds, Spoonful, Mamas and Papas" while Paul chimes in with "Beach Boys" which Lennon doesn't acknowledge.

[alf wiedersehen]

Well, Billy, I'd like to formally welcome you into the ranks of Beatles fandom.

To start you off, here's something everyone has to experience at some point: http://www.truthcontest.com/entries/the-present-universal-truth/beatles.html

Also, Paul or John?

[Gertie J.]

john, no contest.

[♩♬🐸 Billy C ♯♫♩🐇]

I lean more towards Paul, but more because I prefer his solo work to John's. As far as the music from the Beatles is concerned, I can't really say because they played off each other perfectly . I don't think I can really choose! I used to think Paul was just some sappy (but talented) guy, but hearing stuff like Helter Skelter fixed me of that.

[Jay]

You won't think of Paul in the same way after hearing this! Especially the last minute or so.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iMku3xatgAU

[Gabo]

I see Paul more as an experimenter than John. John always seemed to want to be "cool" and "edgy" but Paul allowed himself to write weird genre experiments like Honey Pie, etc. and record homespun albums like Ram, etc.

That said, I idolized John to a much greater extent than Paul during younger years...  It's just the popular consensus that John was "cooler" (whatever that means)

[♩♬🐸 Billy C ♯♫♩🐇]

Same here...I didn't realize Paul was and indeed still is.

Jay- thanks for posting that! Paul seems like a really cool guy in addition to being talented as hell.

[Jay]

Paul McCartney has actually recorded and released a few "experimental" albums as part of a band called The Fireman, I believe. I haven't really looked into them to closely, but I think he's tried some techno inspired stuff. Then there is "oobu joobu", which is a fun journey in itself.  Did you catch some of the links I posted earlier in this thread? They may have been pushed back a page or two.

[♩♬🐸 Billy C ♯♫♩🐇]

Oh yeah...I've checked out every link in this thread...found some great stuff there (thanks again, everybody!)

I knew about his techno project...another reason why Paul is badass.

[Jay]

Paul has some pretty cool unreleased stuff himself. Here's one of my favorite songs he ever recorded, but never released. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UDzhSFibucM

[Jay]

Here's the original politically incorrect and not very family friendly version of Get Back. This makes Helter Skelter sound like She Loves You, as far as pure punk attitude goes. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WEYVOrPRbkw

[♩♬🐸 Billy C ♯♫♩🐇]

Holy hell...even when fucking around they are freaking dynamic.

Ha;f expected to hear 'Let's Go mo'fos!'. The instrumental track is badass as well. Just awesome *)

[JohnMill]

For me musically it's pretty much been Paul McCartney for the past decade or so.  It hasn't always been that way as I definitely went through a John Lennon phase at one point.  However, Paul McCartney has obviously had the longest career of the four with the most musical output.  He also had a flat out amazing band in the seventies called "Wings" which unfortunately will always be obscured due to the fact that most of the general public merely sees them as the backing band for McCartney's seventies output.  But Denny Laine and Jimmy McCulloch were great musicians and until you really get into the "Wings" material you don't realize how superior that band was to every other group of musicians Macca has had touring behind him since. 

As has been brought up in this thread McCartney's output is certainly the most varied of any of The Beatles.  He has collections of experimental music, classical music and has dabbled in almost every genre of music there is (well with the obvious exceptions of rap and other niche forms of music).  Heck he even most recently ventured into "The Great American Songbook" as it were with "Kisses On The Bottom". 

As for John Lennon's solo career: The decade of the seventies certainly brought about some revelations in terms of truly high quality John Lennon music.  Most Beatles fans consider "John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band" a masterpiece and the album the scores of musicians during the grunge movement were trying to make but never quite could.  Quite frankly it's a fantastic album as is it's successor "Imagine".  "Double Fantasy" is also a solid record although somewhat eclipsed in my opinion by the posthumous and hard rocking "Milk And Honey".  The rest of John Lennon's catalog ebbs and flows.  There are some gold bars to be found but also a lot of material which would've easily been elbowed off any Beatles record at the insistence either Paul McCartney or George Martin.  To be fair you can also say the same thing about a number of tracks from Macca's seventies output (namely almost the entire "Wild Life" album).  One thing you do come to appreciate when listening to either John Lennon or Paul McCartney's solo output is what great filters these men were for each other in the sixties.  Both men were capable of writing some great music without the input or review of the other but the absence of John Lennon in Paul McCartney's life in the seventies (and obviously vice versa) allowed a fair share of sub-par material onto their respective solo albums.

I would be remiss at this point not to mention George Harrison who not only is the Beatle I identify with most personally but also in my opinion has the best solo album of them all: All Things Must Pass.  Although to say George Harrison's solo career was uneven would be an understatement, his highs were about as good as anything his two "former ex-wives" ever put out.  I'll always consider Roy Orbison's loss not only a great loss in terms of losing a legend in the world of music but unfortunate in the sense that I believe that "The Traveling Wilburys" were about to do some really great things together including forming their own record label.  As Jeff Lynne once put it "We were feeling so great, had this great band, were going to make tons of records and then Roy died".  Those five guys had a dynamic and synergy that was of a Beatleesque nature.  Just five guys who enjoyed the heck of being around each other, legitimately enjoyed playing on each others records and making music together and it's a shame that Roy Orbison was taken so unexpectedly.  Anyhow George Harrison's solo career is certainly one that is deserving of further exploration by any music fan.  Check out 33 & 1/3 and tell me that "Beautiful Girl" wouldn't have been a major hit for The Beatles if it had been included on one of their later albums?  Quite frankly an amazing song by an amazing man and musician.

[JohnMill]

My point wasn't that John was influenced by the Beach boys. My point was that he seemed to place them on level of respect that he didn't seem to place other Contemporaries.

He was obviously aware of them.  Whether they influenced his music or not is another debate entirely.  Again John Lennon wasn't all that much into production.  He loved straight forward rock and roll and for all of his experimentation with tracks like "Tomorrow Never Knows", "Strawberry Fields Forever" and "A Day In The Life" at heart never ventured much from the fifties rock and roll he grew up with.  His idolization of Chuck Berry was perhaps second to none and he also loved a great deal of Motown music and stuff in that vein.  Dylan no doubt was an influence although as other people mentioned his tolerance for artists like Elvis Presley, Bob Dylan and others began to wane as the years went along. 

Of course one of the saddest aspects of any discussion of John Lennon is where his music would've went had the events of 12-8-80 not occurred.  We know that during his trip to Bermuda with Sean in 1980, Lennon became heavily influenced by the music of Bob Marley and tracks such as "Borrowed Time" and "Beautiful Boy" certainly were influenced by the music that Lennon was listening to at the time.  He was also beginning to occasionally frequent nightclubs at the time and getting exposed to records by acts such as the B-52s.  He also had kind words for Bruce Springsteen's latest record (which would've been "The River") and mentioned that he wished that he had made "Double Fantasy" more rocking like Springsteen's record.  Four years later, "Milk & Honey" would prove to be that rocking record but sadly Lennon wasn't around to see that come to fruition.  He was also writing some fantastic ballads at the time quite possibly some of the best work he had done since the sixties or at least the early seventies with songs like "Real Love" and "Grow Old With Me".  As I mentioned up the chain, "Now And Then" was solid as well although obviously unfinished.  In fact the argument can be made that a lot of Lennon's home demos as aired on the LLT and some found on the "Lennon Anthology" are as fascinating (if not more so) than a lot of their finished works that resulted from them. 

So back to The Beach Boys for a moment, with Sean Lennon being such a fan I wonder if John Lennon had lived, if his son would've eventually gotten him into The Beach Boys in a big way?  Then again Sean like most youngsters of his generation was a huge Michael Jackson fan growing up so...ugh I don't even want to think about that.  The Macca-Jacko experiment was enough for me.

[JohnMill]

Here's the original politically incorrect and not very family friendly version of Get Back. This makes Helter Skelter sound like She Loves You, as far as pure punk attitude goes.

Yeah it's truly unfortunate how watered down "Get Back" and to a lesser extent "I've Got A Feeling" became once the band moved the entire shebang to the Apple basement.  I mean even "Two Of Us" rocked during the Twickenham phase of the project.  Now understandably in order to get these songs up to commercial, releasable standard they had to cast them in the best light (i.e. "Two Of Us" becoming acoustic) but with the possible exception of the final rooftop performance of "Get Back", the song seemed to have lost a great deal of it's luster as the sessions progressed. 

By the way if anyone wants to check out the song that in more ways than one probably inspired "Get Back", check out Jackie Lomax's "Sour Milk Sea" written by none other than George Harrison with every Beatle except John Lennon adding their talents to the backing track.  Quite frankly a fantastic record and one of the ones The Beatles let get away. 

[Jay]

I always really liked the electric version of Two Of Us. It would have been a welcome inclusion on the Anthology tracks, and probably would have been one of the more interesting tracks on the Vol. 3 set, along with "Wake Up In The Morning"(or Because I Know You Love Me So, as it's sometimes refered to). That being said, the acoustic version as seen and heard in the Let It Be movie is probably the definitive version of the song.

[guitarfool2002]

I wanted to comment on the issue of "Free As A Bird", with George Harrison's guitar contribution and a few replies to my earlier post about George's involvement being shaded by his not wanting to be there for the events themselves as much as doing it for the money.

With something like a musical performance, is it as important to base an opinion on what we can listen to and feel a certain way based on what that person did or didn't do leading up to the actual moment where the performance happened, or is it more a case of taking what we each choose to take and feel from that performance itself?

My perceptions on that track were altered significantly by reading what Geoff Emerick had to say about George's guitar on Free As A Bird. He didn't go into that area in his book, yet it was a key point in that magazine interview, that there was a lot of emotion seemingly pouring out of George's guitar during those solos and fills.

So there is Emerick who engineered those sessions, he sat in the same room as George as he played those parts, he set up and dialed in George's sound in the control room, then later mixed it - and he was there basically the whole time watching it.

Now the backstory is that Emerick's book took some heat because of a few harsh observations he had about George in the studio back in the Beatle days. He and George never hit it off personally, and that may shade some of it. Emerick was much closer to and remained close with Paul personally and professionally up to the present, naturally some of that also shades his commentary. But when George did really rise to the occasion and the challenge and do something great, Geoff mentioned that too. So it wasn't all one-sided.

And when someone who had specifically pointed out those sessions where any of the Beatles was in the studio "going through the motions", or seemingly not being intently interested in contributing to what was going on beyond doing a job that day or looking for the payout to come, when he keyed in on something George played on Free As A Bird, it was a genuine expression of emotion that at least Emerick picked up on, remembering Emerick was sitting a few feet away from George as that song unfolded in the studio and saw what was going on in that room, besides controlling those sounds as the head engineer for the project.

I'd focus just as much attention on that as the perhaps negative spin on the whole proceeding being suggested by mentioning George was there for the money, he needed the money, he didn't want to work with Paul but for the payout to come, all of those. They are facets of the story, but would they serve to overshadow the enjoyment of or judgement of the tracks which resulted from those sessions?

If we put all of the backstory of the days leading up to what eventually became a legendary or a moving musical performance, and if there is a negative behind it, it may enhance the story of how it came to be but it shouldn't overshadow the enjoyment or perception of the musical moment itself.

Ultimately we don't know his mindset as he tracked that guitar part for Free As A Bird, and unlike Emerick we were not sitting next to George that day pressing the record button as he played it, so part of my newly found appreciation and emotion behind listening to that guitar work comes from the part itself and the words of the guy who was second only to George that day in making that part happen as we can hear it on the recording today.

[SMiLE-addict]

Even though I've listened to it a zillion times, today I listened to Julia and for the first time ever, noticed that they double-track John's voice (and I think his guitar, too) starting when the refrain begins. I think there's even a section where they start triple or quadruple-tracking.

Odd how you can listen to something a thousand times, but not notice something until listen #1001.

[SMiLE-addict]

Oh yeah...I've checked out every link in this thread...found some great stuff there (thanks again, everybody!)

This is one of the nerdiest Beatles websites I've encountered:
http://www.icce.rug.nl/~soundscapes/DATABASES/AWP/awp-beatles_canon.shtml

[♩♬🐸 Billy C ♯♫♩🐇]

Got my daughter into the Beatles now like I did with her and the Beach Boys last year. I asked her which she likes better. She said she likes the a bit more but both are 'the best singers ever'

[alf wiedersehen]

Got my daughter into the Beatles now like I did with her and the Beach Boys last year. I asked her which she likes better. She said she likes the a bit more but both are 'the best singers ever'

You're kinda leaving me on a cliffhanger with the "she likes the [blank space] a bit more."

[Jay]

I think he did it on purpose.