The Beatles *sigh*

[JohnMill]

Forgive me for interrupting such a great conversation, but I'd like to join in by listing the top songs on each core Beatles record, just for fun:

1. Please Please Me - Twist and Shout (awesome cover! Beats the Isley Brothers' version easily!)
2. With the Beatles - Little Child (I'd go with Money but The RS version is so much better, Mick really rocks there)
3. A Hard Day's Night - either I Should Have Known Better or Things We Said Today, can't decide. (btw, I think the cover art of the album is one of the best by any artist)
4. Beatles for Sale - What You're Doing. Such a beautiful singing by Paul!
5. Help! - Tell Me What You See, hands down. It's my all-time fave Beatles song! (if we talk about the North American release, then it's the title track)
6. Rubber Soul - tough choice between What Goes On (sweet vocs by Ringo) & Norwegian Wood.
7. Revolver - Eur. And Your Bird Can Sing / Amer. Got to Get You Into My Life
8. Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band - With A Little Help From My Friends. So wonderful & friendly!
9. Magical Mystery Tour - Penny Lane (if you asked me 3 years ago, it'd be "The Fool on the Hill"). Generally, MMT is my favorite ever record by the group & honestly, every song except All You Need Is Love is great here!
10. The White Album - Piggies (lovely benign melody & vocals by George combined with funny pig sounds). Though Helter Skelter is very cool! I'm also a huge fan of Wild Honey Pie - gotta love some quirky stuff with creepy vocs.
11. Yellow Submarine - March of the Meanies. Nifty suspicious orchestration.
12. Abbey Road - Maxwell's Silver Hammer, full stop. Yet... the alternate highlight of the album is Here Comes the Sun, imo George's best achievement within the band. Absolutely stunning song!
13. Let It Be - Get Back. No wonder Paul still performs this rocking number in concerts.

Mind that some of the selections are done in comparison with the other tracks from respective albums & as individual cuts I won't listen to them. Especially Little Child, Twist and Shout & March of the Meanies.

Small note about Billy's daughter: from reading the stories about her, what she likes etc., I think she beats out even our friend EgoHanger. He posted that he's been digging the old music since 3 or 5 y.o. But he never mentioned he tried to play piano chords or drummed at such a young age. So, Jaymie is the coolest music-oriented child!

I never thought I would see someone pick Little Child or Tell Me What You See as favorites. When we still had an oldies station up here, they played deep into the Beatles catalog, but never those two. When I am out doing my solo acoustic thing, I can play pretty much any Beatles song and people know them - songs that were never singles, but they're part of everyone's consciousness now, I can't think of any other band I can do that with.

In terms of composition, "Little Child" is a contender for being the nadir of Beatles songs.  The performance is another matter entirely with the highlight being John Lennon's exceptional vocal and harmonica.  "Tell Me What You See" is another matter entirely.  I remember the first time I heard it was on a record called "Beatles VI" (damn good record by the way) and it immediately struck me as being different than any other Beatles track I had heard previous.  It has this real haunting quality to it and J&P's vocals on it are superb.  I also like the keyboard bit that is somewhat accentuated throughout the track.  Nice track.

[Summer_Days]

3. A Hard Day's Night - If I Fell. My personal favorite song by anyone, anywhere, anytime. Period.

Helluva favorite song to have, that's for sure.

And with Yellow Submarine, all you really need to hear are 'All Together Now', 'Hey Bulldog', 'It's Only A Northern Song' and 'It's All To Much', the four newer songs that only appeared on the soundtrack. Otherwise, Yellow Submarine soundtrack is just made up of other Beatles songs from other albums and George Martin's score. Lennon's 'Hey Bulldog' is especially awesome.

Ah what the hell:

Please Please Me - 'Please Please Me', their first truly classic single. Ear candy pure and simple.

With The Beatles - 'It Won't Be Long', a really great tune from John, one of the most underrated Beatles songs ever.

A Hard Day's Night - 'If I Fell', such a beautiful, amazing tune. If it weren't for 'Strawberry Fields Forever' and 'In My Life', this would be my favorite Beatles song.

Beatles For Sale - Either 'No Reply' or 'Eight Days A Week'. I can't decide.

Help! - 'You've Got To Hide Your Love Away', one of John's early triumphs. Wonderful.

Rubber Soul - 'In My Life', which is fantastic, but man 'Norwegian Wood' is a close second.

Revolver - 'Tomorrow Never Knows'. Genius.

Sgt. Pepper - 'A Day In The Life' of course, the zenith of the album by far. Spectacular song.

Magical Mystery Tour - Well, with the fuller album version on CD, it's 'Strawberry Fields Forever, my #1 favorite Beatles song. Otherwise, I'd say 'I Am The Walrus'.

The White Album - 'Dear Prudence'. Simply sublime.

Abbey Road - 'Something', obviously. One of the best love songs ever written.

Let It Be - 'Across The Universe', a stunning song, and Phil Spector's overdubs actually work well on this track.


You'll note that, with the exception of Abbey Road, my favorite songs on each album are always John's songs. That's not really an accident since John Lennon is my favorite Beatle and he's second only to Brian Wilson as my favorite musical visionary.

[Jay]

Here are two photos that aren't near as common, one showing a '65 show where it was one of the very few live shows Lennon ever played with his Sonic Blue Stratocaster, and with McCartney playing the usual later Hofner bass:



Lennon for that tour and anything afterward would more often play the Epiphone Casino on stage.

And this is a somewhat rarely seen backstage shot showing Paul holding the left-handed Fireglo finish Rickenbacker bass which we were discussing. He took it along on tour as a backup instrument, as far as most people know there are no stage photos of him playing that bass from this time. It would become his main studio bass, though, after Paperback Writer. Notice he is wearing the Hofner bass, and that George is tuning his Gibson SG while his Casino sits on a chair. Lennon is wearing his Casino, and holding his Gibson J-160E which still has the original finish:

Whoa! I've never seen a picture of John in concert during the Beatles era playing a Fender!!  I've only seen him play a Rickenbacker or what I think is an electric Gibson, but I may be thinking of the Casino(I can't quite remember what it looks like). I'm thinking of the guitar that John played during the Budokan 1966 shows.

[JohnMill]

You'll note that, with the exception of Abbey Road, my favorite songs on each album are always John's songs. That's not really an accident since John Lennon is my favorite Beatle and he's second only to Brian Wilson as my favorite musical visionary.

John Lennon was amazing to say the least.  It's been said that at the time of his passing that his best days were long behind him but I couldn't disagree more.  One of the things that makes his death so tragic in fact is that I fully believe he was heading into another renaissance period in his career.  He was finally beginning to enjoy making music again and I think a lot of the music he was working on in 1980 was easily some of the best music he made in the last decade of his life.  I believe for instance that "Real Love" would've been a proper hit for either Lennon or The Beatles at some point during the eighties and it's unfortunate that Lennon was never fully able to realize the song in the way he intended it.  The same goes for "Grow Old With Me" and countless others from this period.

You know one of the saddest things about John Lennon's legacy is how he has become exactly how (according to Paul McCartney) he feared he was going to become once he died.  Macca has stated a few times now that Lennon feared being canonized and made into "Martin Luther Lennon" and unfortunately that is exactly what has happened.  I understand that Lennon believed heavily in promoting peace, non-violence and campaigning for the issues he was passionate about.  But this only represents a very small period of time in his life relatively speaking.  Unfortunately slogans and songs such as "Give Peace A Chance", "All You Need Is Love" and "Imagine" have all but dominated any discussion of John Lennon since the man's passing and while those are great songs and beautiful ideals, John Lennon as a human being should not be defined by those songs alone.  In fact, I believe the way John Lennon's legacy is currently being represented in pop culture will eventually lead to him becoming remembered or more appropriately pigeonholed as a symbol of if sixties idealism and counter culture alone and not for the amazing songwriter he was.  Hippies, the peace movement and other images of the sixties are already being parodied in contemporary press and thus being made to appear that they didn't mean as much as they did to the generation who lived through those years.  I would hate to see John Lennon's legacy added to the list of things to parody or pigeonhole as the years roll along but I fear this process has already begun.

[Jay]

Since Billy likes Helter Skelter so much, I figured I'd do him a solid and post the original mono mix, which is considerably different than the stereo mix. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zz92iBUKvvw 

[alf wiedersehen]

Since Billy likes Helter Skelter so much, I figured I'd do him a solid and post the original mono mix, which is considerably different than the stereo mix. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zz92iBUKvvw 

I find the stereo mix to be better. Any mix that gives me 50 more seconds of this song is favorable 
I'VE GOT BLISTERS ON MY FINGERS

[♩♬🐸 Billy C ♯♫♩🐇]

You'll note that, with the exception of Abbey Road, my favorite songs on each album are always John's songs. That's not really an accident since John Lennon is my favorite Beatle and he's second only to Brian Wilson as my favorite musical visionary.

John Lennon was amazing to say the least.  It's been said that at the time of his passing that his best days were long behind him but I couldn't disagree more.  One of the things that makes his death so tragic in fact is that I fully believe he was heading into another renaissance period in his career.  He was finally beginning to enjoy making music again and I think a lot of the music he was working on in 1980 was easily some of the best music he made in the last decade of his life.  I believe for instance that "Real Love" would've been a proper hit for either Lennon or The Beatles at some point during the eighties and it's unfortunate that Lennon was never fully able to realize the song in the way he intended it.  The same goes for "Grow Old With Me" and countless others from this period.

You know one of the saddest things about John Lennon's legacy is how he has become exactly how (according to Paul McCartney) he feared he was going to become once he died.  Macca has stated a few times now that Lennon feared being canonized and made into "Martin Luther Lennon" and unfortunately that is exactly what has happened.  I understand that Lennon believed heavily in promoting peace, non-violence and campaigning for the issues he was passionate about.  But this only represents a very small period of time in his life relatively speaking.  Unfortunately slogans and songs such as "Give Peace A Chance", "All You Need Is Love" and "Imagine" have all but dominated any discussion of John Lennon since the man's passing and while those are great songs and beautiful ideals, John Lennon as a human being should not be defined by those songs alone.  In fact, I believe the way John Lennon's legacy is currently being represented in pop culture will eventually lead to him becoming remembered or more appropriately pigeonholed as a symbol of if sixties idealism and counter culture alone and not for the amazing songwriter he was.  Hippies, the peace movement and other images of the sixties are already being parodied in contemporary press and thus being made to appear that they didn't mean as much as they did to the generation who lived through those years.  I would hate to see John Lennon's legacy added to the list of things to parody or pigeonhole as the years roll along but I fear this process has already begun.

That's weird...you quoted the response to my post yet it showed up under my name...that's weird

[♩♬🐸 Billy C ♯♫♩🐇]

Since Billy likes Helter Skelter so much, I figured I'd do him a solid and post the original mono mix, which is considerably different than the stereo mix. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zz92iBUKvvw 

I find the stereo mix to be better. Any mix that gives me 50 more seconds of this song is favorable 
I'VE GOT BLISTERS ON MY FINGERS

Oh no...it's good, but the stereo is much better. That awesome guitar part during the verses is buried in the mix

[Jay]

The mono mix has always confused me. They faded it right before the fade out-fade in part, right? But if you listen very closely to the end, the bass is playing the same riff you hear right as the song is fading back in again on the stereo version.

[Jay]

You'll note that, with the exception of Abbey Road, my favorite songs on each album are always John's songs. That's not really an accident since John Lennon is my favorite Beatle and he's second only to Brian Wilson as my favorite musical visionary.

John Lennon was amazing to say the least.  It's been said that at the time of his passing that his best days were long behind him but I couldn't disagree more.  One of the things that makes his death so tragic in fact is that I fully believe he was heading into another renaissance period in his career.  He was finally beginning to enjoy making music again and I think a lot of the music he was working on in 1980 was easily some of the best music he made in the last decade of his life.  I believe for instance that "Real Love" would've been a proper hit for either Lennon or The Beatles at some point during the eighties and it's unfortunate that Lennon was never fully able to realize the song in the way he intended it.  The same goes for "Grow Old With Me" and countless others from this period.

You know one of the saddest things about John Lennon's legacy is how he has become exactly how (according to Paul McCartney) he feared he was going to become once he died.  Macca has stated a few times now that Lennon feared being canonized and made into "Martin Luther Lennon" and unfortunately that is exactly what has happened.  I understand that Lennon believed heavily in promoting peace, non-violence and campaigning for the issues he was passionate about.  But this only represents a very small period of time in his life relatively speaking.  Unfortunately slogans and songs such as "Give Peace A Chance", "All You Need Is Love" and "Imagine" have all but dominated any discussion of John Lennon since the man's passing and while those are great songs and beautiful ideals, John Lennon as a human being should not be defined by those songs alone.  In fact, I believe the way John Lennon's legacy is currently being represented in pop culture will eventually lead to him becoming remembered or more appropriately pigeonholed as a symbol of if sixties idealism and counter culture alone and not for the amazing songwriter he was.  Hippies, the peace movement and other images of the sixties are already being parodied in contemporary press and thus being made to appear that they didn't mean as much as they did to the generation who lived through those years.  I would hate to see John Lennon's legacy added to the list of things to parody or pigeonhole as the years roll along but I fear this process has already begun.

That's weird...you quoted the response to my post yet it showed up under my name...that's weird

That's not the first time that's happened. I've seen stuff under my name, but it's another persons post. Confused the hell out of me the first time I saw it.  

[Jay]

Major holy sh*t moment: I just now realized where Duff Mckagan gets his thick, crunchy sound from.

[zachrwolfe]

‍

[♩♬🐸 Billy C ♯♫♩🐇]

God...to have seen them live back then must have been incredible. That photo gave me goosebumps for some reason.

[MBE]

Reading this thread, it's always neat to discover a "new" band even if they aren't new. I went through this with Pink Floyd and Syd Barrett in 2011-12.

[Jay]

I think what did it for me was Strawberry Fields Forever, and I Am The Walrus. Of course I had heard the "hits" like She Loves You, and I Want To Hold Your Hand, but it was something about the Pepper and Magical Mystery Tour era that planted the seed of curiosity, to use a really bad analogy/cliché. 

[guitarfool2002]

I wanted to do this one first, on the topic of those short-lived psychedelic paint jobs they added in the summer of '67, and which can be seen in the clips like "Magical Mystery Tour", the "All You Need Is Love" and "Hello Goodbye" videos, etc. The only paint job to have survived and remains intact as far as I know is George's "Rocky", the matching Sonic Blue Strat to Lennon's which is still owned by the Harrison estate and is something of an icon among guitar freaks.

I had mentioned Lennon's Gibson J-160E acoustic/electric getting a pysch paint job: This happened in or around June 1967, pretty much when they all did the same thing. This was also a "matching" guitar to George's, as there are some staged photos of John and George receiving them at a music shop:











These of course became their main stage and studio acoustics for years to come. What you don't see as often is a photo of Lennon's guitar with the psychedelic paint job. Not only were they not touring, obviously, but the film and video from that time usually showed John playing a Martin acoustic, and I'm unaware of any Abbey Road studio shots of Lennon recording with the painted up guitar.

The only photos I'm aware of came from a series of photos showing John's home studio for a magazine article. There is one color shot:



And the other B&W:




Those who have certain Beatles bootlegs will know of the series of home recordings and comedy bits Lennon would make with guests like Ringo, where they'd use various taped sounds in John's Mellotron and build skits around them, like nightclub acts, lounge singer skits, etc. Some of these skits would end up in a more polished form on a song like "You Know My Name", and some of John's Mellotron's tape loops would show up on songs like that Spanish guitar intro on Bungalow Bill, and rejected mixes of tunes like "Flying" with the big-band outtro ending with a show-biz "Yeah!". But a lot of these ideas started in this exact home studio setup, with him simply playing certain keys on the Mellotron and recording them.

Note John playing the famous Mellotron in this one, as well as the bank of tape machines where he'd record his demos and the various skits:




The psychedelic paint job on this guitar didn't survive, as mentioned before Lennon had it sanded off and the guitar went back to a bare-wood natural finish, and can be seen in clips like the Bed-In where he's recording Give Peace A Chance. This exact guitar was eventually on display at the Rock and Roll Hall Of Fame. For whatever reasons Lennon did not use the guitar in its painted form all that much, or at least wasn't filmed or photographed with it after it got the paint in June '67.

[JohnMill]

God...to have seen them live back then must have been incredible. That photo gave me goosebumps for some reason.

Eh you probably wouldn't have been able to have heard yourself think given their audience.  If you are talking about experiencing the mania aspect of it all, then yes I'm sure it would have been an incredible experience.  However more times than not Beatles live performances were lousy.  There are some exceptions but especially on the big tours of America for example, the insanely large crowds they played to, the fact that technology hadn't advanced so that they themselves could hear what they were playing and the fact by the end of their touring years they themselves didn't really want to be onstage anyhow more times than not made for some lousy performances. 

[alf wiedersehen]

God...to have seen them live back then must have been incredible. That photo gave me goosebumps for some reason.

Eh you probably wouldn't have been able to have heard yourself think given their audience.  If you are talking about experiencing the mania aspect of it all, then yes I'm sure it would have been an incredible experience.  However more times than not Beatles live performances were lousy.  There are some exceptions but especially on the big tours of America for example, the insanely large crowds they played to, the fact that technology hadn't advanced so that they themselves could hear what they were playing and the fact by the end of their touring years they themselves didn't really want to be onstage anyhow more times than not made for some lousy performances. 

What would you say is the "best" Beatles show?

[pixletwin]

I would love to have seen them performing in the Kaiserkeller. One of their really wild shows.

[JohnMill]

God...to have seen them live back then must have been incredible. That photo gave me goosebumps for some reason.

Eh you probably wouldn't have been able to have heard yourself think given their audience.  If you are talking about experiencing the mania aspect of it all, then yes I'm sure it would have been an incredible experience.  However more times than not Beatles live performances were lousy.  There are some exceptions but especially on the big tours of America for example, the insanely large crowds they played to, the fact that technology hadn't advanced so that they themselves could hear what they were playing and the fact by the end of their touring years they themselves didn't really want to be onstage anyhow more times than not made for some lousy performances. 

What would you say is the "best" Beatles show?

Well John Lennon went on record as saying that the show The Beatles performed in Stockholm in October of 1963 was their best live performance aside from the stuff they did in Hamburg that wasn't recorded (not to be confused with The Star Club material that was recorded and subsequently released in the nineteen seventies).  Most of the Stockholm performance is on "Anthology 1" and Lennon is right as it is a great performance as not only are The Beatles in top form here but this performance captured the band before Beatlemania effectively ruined almost every attempt to capture a recording of the band live in concert. 

There are other shows worth checking out all of which have been officially released in some form or another over the years either on LP or VHS.  Things like "Hollywood Bowl 64'', "Shea Stadium 65'" and "Tokyo 66'" are all worth checking out for their individual merit(s).  There have also been rumors as to one of the projects Apple has in the pipeline is a DVD/Blu-Ray compilation of live performance footage shot throughout all of The Beatles tours.  So we'll see.

[Summer_Days]

JohnMill, is it this October '63 Stockholm show (performed in the studio)? :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FE1vKRrtVXI

[Heysaboda]

Well John Lennon went on record as saying that the show The Beatles performed in Stockholm in October of 1963 was their best live performance aside from the stuff they did in Hamburg that wasn't recorded (not to be confused with The Star Club material that was recorded and subsequently released in the nineteen seventies).  Most of the Stockholm performance is on "Anthology 1" and Lennon is right as it is a great performance as not only are The Beatles in top form here but this performance captured the band before Beatlemania effectively ruined almost every attempt to capture a recording of the band live in concert. 

There are other shows worth checking out all of which have been officially released in some form or another over the years either on LP or VHS.  Things like "Hollywood Bowl 64'', "Shea Stadium 65'" and "Tokyo 66'" are all worth checking out for their individual merit(s).  There have also been rumors as to one of the projects Apple has in the pipeline is a DVD/Blu-Ray compilation of live performance footage shot throughout all of The Beatles tours.  So we'll see.

You are right John the Stockholm show is outstanding.  But there were only 5 tracks issued on Anthology 1 and I believe another 3 or 4 tracks were left off.  It is simply criminal that the Beatles/EMI/Apple have not issued this show in its glorious entirety!

[♩♬🐸 Billy C ♯♫♩🐇]

I think what did it for me was Strawberry Fields Forever, and I Am The Walrus. Of course I had heard the "hits" like She Loves You, and I Want To Hold Your Hand, but it was something about the Pepper and Magical Mystery Tour era that planted the seed of curiosity, to use a really bad analogy/cliché. 

Oh my God yes. SFF is so hauntingly beautiful and the production is 30 years ahead of its time.

[♩♬🐸 Billy C ♯♫♩🐇]

God...to have seen them live back then must have been incredible. That photo gave me goosebumps for some reason.

Eh you probably wouldn't have been able to have heard yourself think given their audience.  If you are talking about experiencing the mania aspect of it all, then yes I'm sure it would have been an incredible experience.  However more times than not Beatles live performances were lousy.  There are some exceptions but especially on the big tours of America for example, the insanely large crowds they played to, the fact that technology hadn't advanced so that they themselves could hear what they were playing and the fact by the end of their touring years they themselves didn't really want to be onstage anyhow more times than not made for some lousy performances. 

The clips I've seen from Shea on You Tube were ace. But yeah I meant being there with all that energy. At the start of this thread I mocked Beatlemania yet now I get it fully.

[LetHimRun]

God...to have seen them live back then must have been incredible. That photo gave me goosebumps for some reason.

Eh you probably wouldn't have been able to have heard yourself think given their audience.  If you are talking about experiencing the mania aspect of it all, then yes I'm sure it would have been an incredible experience.  However more times than not Beatles live performances were lousy.  There are some exceptions but especially on the big tours of America for example, the insanely large crowds they played to, the fact that technology hadn't advanced so that they themselves could hear what they were playing and the fact by the end of their touring years they themselves didn't really want to be onstage anyhow more times than not made for some lousy performances. 

The clips I've seen from Shea on You Tube were ace. But yeah I meant being there with all that energy. At the start of this thread I mocked Beatlemania yet now I get it fully.

Welcome to the dark side. You will now enjoy conversing with many Beatles fans but there is always the backlash from those who when you bring them up will roll their eyes and proceed to tell you why they aren't that good.