I used to wonder why, but now I think I know the answer: They were good. They were very good, even. But they weren't THAT good. That is, when I wanted music that challenged me and that reflected a certain social or political posture, the Beatles ceased to be serviceable.
Piero Scaruffi gives a terrific review of the history of the Beatles. He talks about the Beatles/Beatlemania phenomenon while also discussing the other artists and cultural forces around them. His account is scathing at times, and he goes off the deep end on a few occasions, but for the most part he's dead-on -- and it's a freakin' revelation.
The Beatles sold a lot of records not because they were the greatest musicians but simply because their music was easy to sell to the masses: it had no difficult content, it had no technical innovations, it had no creative depth. They wrote a bunch of catchy 3-minute ditties and they were photogenic. If somebody had not invented "beatlemania" in 1963, you would not have wasted five minutes of your time to read a page about such a trivial band.I think "no creative depth" goes too far, but on the other hand we don't need to buy into the corporate myth of their infinite creative depth.
The Beatles were not gritty enough for Scaruffi. They were not adventurous enough in their compositions or in their musicianship. Yet the Beatles produced a great number of songs of very high quality, and they certainly did cover a range of attitudes and subjects, even if they weren't first. The Beatles clearly enjoyed developing new sounds, new styles, and new subjects. Each record sounded and felt different from its predecessor. To me, that's pretty cool.
Jefferson Airplane had a few great songs but then self-destructed. Hendrix was done after Electric Ladyland. The Beach Boys, the Byrds, the Grateful Dead, the Velvet Underground, Frank Zappa, and so on -- their gimmicks all wore off, sometimes very quickly.
The Beatles were more malleable, more adaptable than most acts. And they always had melody. Scaruffi, however, is unimpressed.
Every one of their songs and every one of their albums followed much more striking songs and albums by others, but instead of simply imitating those songs, the Beatles adapted them to a bourgeois, conformist and orthodox dimension. The same process was applied to the philosophy of the time, from the protest on college campuses to Dylan's pacifism, from drugs to the Orient. Their vehicle was melody, a universal code of sorts, that declared their music innocuous. Naturally others performed the same operation, and many (from the Kinks to the Hollies, from the Beach Boys to the Mamas and Papas) produced melodies even more memorable, yet the Beatles arrived at the right moment and theirs would remain the trademark of the melodic song of the second half of the twentieth century.To me, what stands out about the Beatles next to these other artists -- the Kinks, the Beach Boys, the Mamas and Papas -- is the fact that the Beatles were consistently able to put together whole albums of good and polished songs. Earlier, I implied that Beatles songs ceased to be particularly challenging at a certain point. But the polish of the songs included both nuance and layering. Beatles songs tended to throw in plenty of rewarding nuggets: an intersting bass line, a sound effect, a harmonization. I don't think any artist was as aware of details as the Beatles.
And the Beatles had four different lead singers. A Beatles song could draw from any one of the four members. With a group like the Kinks, it was Ray Davies we ALWAYS got. With the Beach Boys, it was ALWAYS Brian Wilson. Not so with the Beatles. We got enough difference in the individual personalities of the songwriters to have our interest maintained on an album.
It also bears mentioning that John and Paul not only had terrific voices, but they had better voices than most every other act and so-called "innovator" out there. I always thought Lennon had the more emotive voice while Paul's was more pleasant. Nevertheless, both men had strong and flexible voices - they could get a range of sound out. In terms of pure vocal ability, I think only folks such as Marvin Gaye, Aretha Franklin, Smokey Robinson, and maybe a few others of that time period can be considered on par.
Another characteristic that made the Beatles distinct was their intelligence. As a musical act, they evolved and even disbanded when they felt the act was finished. Many artists don't change as much as the Beatles did, and many don't quit at the right time. The Beatles were very smart musically and commercially. They depended on melody as their music changed, and they depended on their enormous popularity as their look and image evolved.
So, great to read. Shocking to consider.
I spotted the charlatans long ago. Never could understand their popularity. Their songs were some combination of insipid, pretentious, or trivial. Give me the Beach Boys. or the Stones, or the Moody Blues any day. Heck I'd take Lawrencd Welk over the Beatles.
ReplyDeleteAYY
totally off topic:
ReplyDeleteLarry have you heard of the proposition that Jews have a gene for atheism.
Hitchens in his debate with Rabbi Schmuley certainly said so.
It would certainly explain the astronomical rates of perpetually manifesting atheism seen even in the religious fringes of Judaism, in contrast to how nobody else seems to be able to produce such a healthy population of disbelievers. Atheism grows and then dies in differing rates with every group, except for the Jew. Why is that?
Nope, never heard that. On the other hand, I know a rabbi who has said that all Jews have an inborn love of God. He was citing a work from the 19th century that also made this point.
ReplyDeleteI really don't know and don't care about rates of atheism in various groups. However, atheism is growing most everywhere in the world. Obviously, some theocratic countries make it very difficult for freedom of thought and exchange of ideas and criticism, Nevertheless, even in those places, reason will eventually win out if the religious can just keep their hands away from the nuclear buttons!
I'd appreciate it if in the future you could keep your comments on-topic.
Wow, someone who finally agrees with me on this!
ReplyDeleteI love the Beatles - don't get me wrong. Musically, though? Talented, but not immensely so.
I'm a Stones kinda gal, anyway.
"I'm a Stones kinda gal, anyway."
ReplyDeleteSo am I, except for the gal part.
http://larrytanner.blogspot.com/2009/01/my-music-retrospective-rolling-stones.html
I reject your assertions about those other artists, though - especially the Dead and Zappa.
ReplyDeleteThe Dead had a following for 30 years and blended dozens of genres to literally invent the concept of a 'jam band'. As for Zappa, the man was a virtuoso composer who continued to push the envelope musically and otherwise until his death.
Neither of these were what I would call 'gimmicks'.
I'll recant a bit on Zappa, but I always thought the Dead were strictly pedestrian, more important for what they supposedly represented - hippie counterculture, etc. - than for their music.
ReplyDeleteI don't think anyone who listens to the band seriously can say that.
ReplyDeleteGlad I got you thinking, though.
"I don't think anyone who listens to the band seriously can say that."
ReplyDeleteFair enough. I used to have several cassette tapes of Dead concerts back in the day when my car had a tape player. I currently own no Dead CDs.
I'll gladly take a recommendation if you've got one.
NONE?!?
ReplyDeleteOy vey!
Actually, I'd love to recommend some material to you. If you're comfortable in doing so, call me and I'll let you know which albums/shows I think you'd appreciate.
I'd like to continue this music-centered discussion, but it has been revealed to me that a certain blogger friend of ours has begun lying about me and my Abba yet again. That, and I have to do homework and help Mom get ready for Shabbos.
To understand my love for the Dead, I would suggest you read Da'as Hedyot's interview of me. Feel free to email/call me for musical suggestions.
Tova,
ReplyDeleteThat's a very interesting story, and I sense the personal connection that the GD have for you. How great that you got to be interviewed like that.
In my life, jazz holds that special place. My dad was and is a fan of the cool jazz played by folks such as Miles Davis, Dave Brubeck and the MJQ.
I can tell you'll make a fine academic if that's the route you choose.
The total ridiculous garbage Scaruffi says about The Beatles is totally inaccurate!And what the posters have said especially anonymous is *SO IGNORANT*too! As The All Music Guide says in their excellent Beatles biography "That it's difficult to summarize their career without restating cliches that have already been digested by tens of millions of rock fans, to start with the obvious,they were the greatest and most influential act of the rock era and introduced more innovations into popular music than any other rock band of the 20th century."
ReplyDelete"Moreover they were among the few artists of *any* discipline that were simultaneously the best at what they did *and* the most popular at what they did." THey also say as singers John Lennon and Paul McCartney were among the best and most expressive in rock.
Also on an excellent site,The Evolution of Rock Bass Playing McCartney Style by Dennnis Alstrand,Stanley Clarke,Sting,Will Lee,Billy Sheehan,George Martin and John Lennon are quoted saying what a great,melodic and influential bass player Paul has always been'
And Wilco's John Stirratt was asked in Bass Player which bass players have had the most impact on his playing and the first thing he said was, Paul McCartney is one of the greatest bass players of all time,if you listen to what he was tracking live in the studio it's unbelievable." "With his tone and musicality he was a huge influence,he covered all of his harmonic responsibilities really well but his baselines were absolutely melodic and inventive."
And in an online 1977 Eric Clapton interview,Eric Clapton In His Own Words he says that there was always this guitar game between John and George,and he said partly because John was a pretty good guitar player himself.He played live with John as a member of John's 1969 Plastic Ono Band.
And there is a great online article by musician and song writer Peter Cross,The Beatles Are The Most Creative Band Of All Time and he says that many musicians besides him recognize Paul as one of the best bass guitar players ever.He too says that John and Paul are the greatest song composers are among the 2 greatest singers in rock and that John,Paul and George were all excellent guitarists and that George is underrated by people not educated about music but that ERic Clapton knew better,he also says that both John and Paul played great leads as well as innovative rhythm tracks.
John Lennon co-wrote,sang and played guitar on one of David Bowie's first hits Fame in 1975.Brain May,Ozzy Osbourne,and Liam Gallagher and many more call The Beatles The Greatest Band Ever.
Also on MusicRadar Tom Petty,Joe Perry and Richie Sambora in What The Beatles Mean To Me all say how cool and great they thought The Beatles were when they first saw them on THe Ed Sullivan Show in Februar 1964 when they were just teen boys,Richie was only 5.Tom Petty said he thought they were really really great.
Robin Zander of Cheap Trick said he's probably one of the biggest Beatles fans on the planet.Brad Whitford of Aerosmith said that a lot of that Beatles influence comes from Steven Tyler's collaborartion with Mark Hudson both whom are absolute Beatles freaks and he said I guess the goal is to try and emulate probably some of the best music of the last 50 years which has to be The Beatles.
Your comment amounted to nothing more than "nuh uh, look these people like them". What a joke!
DeleteI recently read an online article that had an interview with Ernie Isley of The Isley Brothers about a recent tribute to Jimi Hendrix,in which he says that Jimi played for The Isley Brothers & lived with them & that they & he were fans of The Fab Four from the moment they all watched them on The Ed Sullivan Show in February 1964. I always thought that Jimi was only a later period Beatles fan,I knew he played Sgt.Pepper live the weekend it came out,& he played Day Tripper live also,& several people on different message boards said that when he was asked where the direction of music was going,he said ask The Beatles.
ReplyDeleteAnd George Martin himself said in an online interview I found around 2002 said that he has worked with many different music artists but that he has never known or worked with anyone as brilliant as The Beatles!
ReplyDeleteHe says in his biography All You Need Is Ears refutes that he was the one who had most to do with The Beatles music. He admits most of the ideas came from them.
And if anyone ever reads the excellent book,The Beatles Recording Sessions by Mark Lewisohn which is a very detailed music diary of of every recording session in their amazing only 8 year career, which has interviews with their recording engineers,tape operators,George Martin quotes,and a very good interview with Paul in the beginning,they would see how truly creative,and innovative especially John and Paul were in the recording studio and that most of these great musicial ideas came from them.
George Martin was also once inerviewed on a rock station Beatles program and he said what is clearly obvious and true, John Lennon and Paul McCartney were incredibly talented people(and he said it like he still couldn't belive it.), they both were extrodinarily talented song composers and great singers.And notice how Ringo working with George Martin for 8 years didn't turn him into a brilliant song writer like John and Paul,and George Martin has produced many other music artists but non of them have had as much critical acclaim,success or popularity as THe Beatles!
Also, classical composer Leonard Bernstein called John and Paul the greatest composers of the 20th century so did Elton John on a 1991 CBS Morning news show,he was asked who he musically admires and he said you can talk about your Rogers and Hammerstein but for the quanity of quality songs that Lennon and McCartney wrote in that short period of time,he said he thinks they were the greatest song writers of the 20th century.Brian Wilson said this too on a 1995 Nightline Beatles tribute show. The Beatles are in the Vocal Hall of Fame and The Song Writing Hall of Fame and they were awarded about 20 prestigious Ivor Nevello awards as great singers and song writers in just a remarkable 8 year recording career,John and Paul won the first one in early 1964!
ReplyDeleteThe Beatles are in The Vocal Hall Of Fame,The Rolling Stones are not,& John Lennon & Paul McCartney are both in The Song Writing Hall Of Fame & they won an Oscar for their film scrore of their Let It Be film.
Also in an excellent Beatles book Ticket To Ride by Denny Somach where so many other well known popular respected rock musicians and artists are interviewed about The Beatles praising them including Jimmy Page,Brian Wilson who says he's always loved The Beatles. And Brian Wilson called John & Paul the greatest song writers of the 20th century on a 1995 Nightline Beatles tribute show,(which had on music artists from every type of music,a young black jazz musician,a middle aged black opera singer,Steve Winwood,Meatloaf,and classical violnist Isak Perleman,who said he plays his children Bach,Beethoven Mozart and The Beatles)and he played With A Little Help From My Friends on the piano and he said he just loves this song. He also said that Sgt.Pepper is the greatest album he ever heard and The All Music Guide says in their Beach Boys biography,that Brian had a nerveous breakdown after he heard it. Brian also said that when he first heard The Beatles brilliant 1965 folk rock album Rubber Soul he was blown away by it.He said all of the songs flowed together and it was pop music but folk rock at the same time and he couldn't believe they did this so great,this inspired him to make Pet Sounds.
ReplyDeleteJohn Lodge and Justin of The Moody Blues are interviewed in this book and Bill Wyman and Ron Wood says how The Rolling Stones became good friends with The Beatles in 1963 after John and Paul wrote 1 of their first hits,the Rock n Roll song,I Wanna Be You're Man.
Ron Wood was asked what his favorite Beatles songs and he said there are so many apart from the obvious like Strawberry Fields I Want To Hold Your Hand is one he said he used to like a lot ,and he said he really loved We Can Work It Out.He also says that The Beatles used to have a radio show every Friday where they played live and spoke and he would never miss an episode. He said infact whoever has the rights to those shows should dig them up,because they are incredible.
Justin Hayward says that the album he always really loved ,and he said it was when they started experimenting with chord structures ,was A Hard Day's Night.He says they began to move away from the standard 3 chord thing and just went into more interesting structures .He said A Hard Day's Night was the album for him and their song If I Fell was the song.He said it started in a different key to how it ended up,and it's a beautifully worked out song and that there are some songs on that album that were very emotional and evocative. He said that for everybody just starting to write songs as he was,it was a real turn on and eye opener.
Not only did The Beatles give The Rolling Stones one of their first hits with their rock n roll song I Wanna Be Your Man,and they wrote it right in front of them and Keith Richards and Mick Jagger were impressed and like wow how can you write a song just like that and it motivated them to start writing their own songs.
ReplyDeleteAnd as I already said The Rolling Stones were good friends with and fans of The Beatles.
Mick Jagger was at 4 Beatles recording sessions and Keith Richards was at 2 of them with him.Also Mick Jagger was such a big Beatles fan that in May 1967 when The Beatles were redording their song Baby You're A Rich Man he came there and stood on the sidelines to watch and listen to them recording it. His name is also on the tape box and he likely sang at the end verses.
Also Mick Jagger said that Keith Richards loved The Beatles and loved their beautiful melodies and harmonies and that Keith and Brian Jones tried to equal them but he said Brian couldn't sing good enough!Charlie is obviously envious with sour grapes,The Beatles remastered albums sold much more 40 years after their break up than The Rolling Stones remastered albums and they are still together! The Beatles have the best selling album of the last decade with their CD 1.
And Brian Jones played the saxaphone on the strange Beatles song, You Know My Name Look Up The Number and he and Mick Jagger's girlfriend at the time Marriane Faithful contributed sound effects on the song Yellow Submarine.
As this guy Sal66 who has also posted on sites debunking ignorant cr*p about The Beatles has rightfully pointed out, The Beatles wrote,played and recorded I Feel Fine (which The All Music Guide says has brilliant,active ,difficult guitar leads and riffs) in the Fall of 1964 which was the first use of feedback guitar on a pop rock record and it also had a prominent guitar riff throughout this very good song almost a year *before* The Rolling Stones's Satisfaction came out.
And on John's great Norwegian Wood recorded in the Fall of 1965,George Harrison was the first to play a sitar on a pop rock song and it was released on their great album Rubber Soul in December and then in May 1966 The Rolling Stones song Paint It Black came out with Brian Jones playing a sitar!
And in Paul McCartney's authorized biography Many Years From Now, Mick Jagger's former girlfriend singer Marriane Faithful says that she and Mick used to go over to Paul's house a lot and hang out in his music room. She said he never went to see them at their house they always went to visit him because he was Paul McCartney.She also said that Mick was intimidated by Paul but that Paul was totally oblivious to this.
Paul also says in this book that he turned Mick on to pot in his music room and he said which is funny because a lot of people would assume it was the other way around.
On afan site for the rock group Yes, called, Yesfans.com ( who are also big Beatles fans themselves and they recorded and played live several Beatles songs and member Rick Wakeman did a whole Beatles tribute album in 2000) they had a topic called Are The Beatles Overrated? from 2004-2008 and over 74% of the Yes fans voted the first choice, No Of Course Not They Were Not Overrated How Can You Even Ask This Question.
ReplyDeleteAnd one of the Yes fans posted in early 2008," The Greatest Band of all time overrated? Phuck no!"
And another Yes fan quoted him and said I second what he said! Another Yes fan quoted his own post from a year before when he had said he thought The Beatles were overrated and he now quoted his old post with an I'm stupid emoticon and he said how could I have been so stupid,of course The Beatles are not overrated.
Also, guitarist Frank Marino of the hard rock group Mahogany Rush said in several online interviews that he hates The Rolling Stones but he likes The Beatles,Jimi Hendrix,and The Doors etc. And Dave Navarro of the rock group Jane's Addiction said in Guitar World in 1991 and 1996 that he has always hated The Rolling Stones and he will never play one of their records.
Also there used to be an online interview
with Rolling Stones drummer Charlie Watts from a 1973 Magazine called Zig Zag,and the interview was called,The Drinking Man's Rolling Stone. He says in this interview that The Beatles and The Rolling Stones were a lot alike as people and were friends. He also said what made The Beatles so great is that they made one great single and great album after the next!
NME.COM
ReplyDeleteHOME
NME News
Bob Dylan talks of Beatles friendship
Legend admits: 'I'm in awe of McCartney'
May 16, 2007
Bob Dylan has spoken in depth about his longstanding friendship with The Beatles and his particular bond with George Harrison.
Talking to Rolling Stone magazine, Dylan talked freely about Harrison’s struggle to find his voice within the songwriting collective of John Lennon and Paul McCartney.
"George got stuck with being the Beatle that had to fight to get songs on records because of Lennon and McCartney. Well, who wouldn’t get stuck?" he asked.
Dylan highlighted the writing talents of Harrison, saying: "If George had had his own group and was writing his own songs back then, he’d have been probably just as big as anybody."
Speaking against popular belief, the singer also denounced any rumours of competitiveness towards Lennon and McCartney, asserting, "They were fantastic singers. Lennon, to this day, it’s hard to find a better singer than Lennon was, or than McCartney was and still is."
Nodding his cap to McCartney in particular, Dylan concluded: "I’m in awe of McCartney. He’s about the only one that I am in awe of. He can do it all. And he’s never let up... He’s just so damn effortless.
The Rolling Stones also wrote quite a few soft sentimental pop kind of songs,Lady Jane,As Tears Go By,Rubey Tuesday,Angie,Wild Horses,Waiting On A Friend and the 2 dreadful disco imitations,Miss You and Emotional Rescue. At least when Paul McCartney did a disco like song,Good Night tonight it was good interesting sounding music!
ReplyDeleteAnyone saying, I hate The Beatles,The Beatles suck & or they were ever a "boy band" is totally ignorant!
ReplyDeleteAs a poster Reverend Rock who is a Reverend and a rock musician and a big Beatles fan said on a classic rock site a few years ago,that anybody who knows The Beatles history knows it's ludicrious to even suggest that The Beatles were ever a "boy band"!
And true boy bands don't play their own instruments,(they only sing and dance),they don't write tons of critically acclaimed,popular,classic songs including many great rock songs and The Beatles wrote more than a few great rock songs in their early days,boy bands don't revolutionize popular and rock music,are very innovative,creative & prolific as The Beatles were,and don't have their songs the most covered in music historty by everyone from jazz,classical,Motown,rock,and even heavy metal recording and playing their great timeless music.
Boy bands also don't have academic musicologists doing serious studies and analyses and praise of their music,like university of Penn graduate AlanW.Pollack who did an 11 year detailed analyses of every Beatles song and his study is online,and shows how The Beatles used unusual,interesting and even complex chords even in their early songs from 1963 and 1964.As Bob Dylan,Roger McGuinn and in December 1963 The London Times musicologist William Mann,all pointed out too.
They also don't have musicologists like university of Michigan music professor and musician Walter Everett who wrote the 2 volume,THe Beatles As Musicians:Th Quarry Men Though Rubber Soul, and The Beatles As Musicians:REvolver Through Anthology.And British musicologist,classical composer and music professor Willifrid Mellers 1973 book,Twilight Of The Gods;The Music Of The Beatles which was the first serious music study of their music,and he also wrote about Beethoven,Mozart,and Bob Dylan.
Boy bands also don't have award winning music professors teaching college courses like award winning music professor and classical composer Dr.Glen Gass who has been teaching a course on what brilliant composers they were and a course on rock music since 1982 at Indiana University School of Music.
They don't write hits for other artists as early as 1963, like THe Beatles did for BillyJ.Krammer and The Dakotas,Celia Black,Peter and Gordon,and a rock n roll song,I Wanna Be You're Man given to The Rolling Stones which became one of The Rolling Stones first hits,and which they wrote right in fron of them and Keith Richards and Mick Jagger were impressed and were like,wow how can you write a song just like that and it inspired them to start writing their own songs.
The Rolling Stones were good friends with The Beatles and Mick Jagger was at 4 Beatles recording sessions and Keith Richards was at 2 of them with him.
Boy Bands also don't have musicians(of course not they don't even play their own instruments!) such as Stanley Clarke,Will Lee,Billy Sheehan,Sting and Wilco's John Stirratt call their bass player,one of the greatest,melodic and influential bass players ever as they said about Paul McCartney. Nor do they have Eric Clapton call a pretty good guitar player as he said about John Lennon and was a member of his live 1969 Plastic Ono Band.
Boy Bands also don't have popular respected rock artists and musicians call them The Greatest Band Ever like Brian May of Queen,Liam Gallager of Oasis,and Ozzy Osbourne(who also has been a huge Beatles fan since he was a teen,he even picked She Loves You as 1 of his favorite songs in Rolling Stone a few years ago) call The Beatles The Greatest Band Ever,and on a musicians site MusicRadar What The Beatles Mean To Me by Tom Petty,Aerosmith's Joe Perry and Bon Jovi's Richie Sambora saying how they became fans as teen boys and Richie was only 5 after they saw The Beatles in February 1964 on The Ed Sullivian Show,and said they were really great and cool and they inspired them to become rock musicians.And Aerosmith's Brad Witford says a lot of The Beatles influence comes from Mark Hudson and Steven Tyler (who he says are both Beatles freaks)and that he guesses that the goal is to try and emulate probably the best music in the last 50 years which has to be The Beatles.
ReplyDeleteBoy bands don't have The Byrds Roger McGuinn say he thinks they invented folk rock using unusual chords and arrangements for pop rock music in 1963 and 1964,and that they invented folk rock without even realizing it which is what Roger says about The early Beatles. Boy Bands don't have Roger McGuinn say he bought a 12 string guitar soon after he saw George Harrison playing one in the Beatles great movie A Hard Day's Night,and he played Beatles music in clubs in the mid 1960's.He says he loved their music from the start,and Ron Wood says in The Beatles book, Ticket To Ride by Denny Somach,Kathleen Somach and Kevin Gunn, whrn he was asked if he can name any favorite Beatles songs, he says he's got so many he said apart from the obvious like Strawbwerry Fields ,I Want To Hold Your Hand is one he used to like a lot,and he said the one with the harmonium,We Can Work It Out he said ahh,I loved that one.
Ron Wood also says he never missed an episode of a radio show The Beatles used to play live on and spoke on every Friday and he said infact whoever has the rights to those radio shows should dig them up,their incredible.In this book Bill Wyman also talks about their friendship with The Beatles after meeting them in 1963 and how The Beatles gave them one of their first hit songs,I Wanna Be You're Man.
(In this book so many music artists are interviewed including Roger McGuinn who said after he was asked what his first impression of The Beatles music he just loved I Want To Hold Your Hand and She Loves You after he saw them on TV playing live with all of the screaming girls going after them and everything,he said he just loved that stuff and went out and bought their album took it back to his apartment and learned all the songs and started playing them at coffee houses.
Brian Wilson says in this book that he has always loved The Beatles! Boy bands don't have Brian Wilson,Elton John and classical composer Leonard Bernstein and so many others call 2 of their singer song writers,the greatest song writers of the 20th century as they called,John Lennon and Paul McCartney.etc etc
what about KURT COBAIN-Beatlemaniac!
DeleteWhat about CSN@Y and their favorite song -Blackbird!
Keith Richards best friend ,Gram Parsons was obsesed by the Beatles trying to make a cosmic rock.
Who did not cover one of the Beatles songs from Stone The Crows,Frank Zappa and the Mothers to U2,Oasis or Siouxsie and the banshees...Pish...Breeders!
Also there is an online interview with Roger Daltry,Roger's Journey With The Who in The Sun and he was asked if The Who had screaming girls at a certain point,and he said after Can't Explain they did. He said it was the sreaming teen girl era every band had them on their way up.He said it was fun at first but the trouble for a performer when you are that young and inexperienced is that you start to judge your performances on the amount they scream,he said it's nonsense which is why Lennon gave up. He also said that The Who's manager turned their image overnight from scruffy rockers to Mods.
ReplyDeleteIf you still insist the false ludicrous claim that The early Beatles were ever a "boy band" then you are just further proving the title of this topic,your stupidity.When The Beatles played live in 1963,64,65 & 66 they only had 100 watt amplifiers,no feedback monitors so they couldn't hear themselves sing and play,plus the screaming crowds and that's why they gave up touring.
George Harrison says in The Beatles Anthology video series,that for their August 1965 Shea Stadium concerts, special 100 watt amplifiers were made and that they went up from only 30 watts before. Given how limited and primitive the sound systems were then,it's amazing they sounded as good as they did live.
Former Kiss guitarist Bob Kulick who produced the heavy metal album Butchering The Beatles, said he saw The Beatles in concert in 1966 and he said he could hear parts of Baby's In Black & Paperback Writer and they sounded amazing.
A guy Steve from Canada said on Artist Facts,that he saw The Beatles live in 1966 and The Stones in 1996(and the sound systems by then were a zillion times better!) and he said don't get me wrong,The Stones were great but they were no match for The Beatles and he called The Beatles The Greatest Band Of All Time.
And a guy said on a message board in September, said that he too once wrongly believed that the early Beatles were a boy band like The Back Street Boys,until he got out of 7th grade.The Beatles started out playing 8 hours a night in the sleazy strip clubs of Hamburg Germany,taking speed pills to stay awake,wearing tight black leather jackets and pants,smoking and cursing on stage,and had sex with so many young women groupies including the strippers in those clubs,they were successful there. They also played successfully in the Liverpool Cavern Club for years.They also had sex with tons of women groupies many who were underage teen girls.
Even many fans of The Rolling Stones who are also Beatles fans, said on several Rolling Stones message boards,and Beatles fans said this on Beatles fan boards,that THe Beatles cleaned up image was a total fake one created by their manager,and that they know that The Beatles were just as wild as The Stones with sex and drugs in their personal lives and were friends who hung out together.
And I don't want to be on bad terms with anyone on here, and I'm not trying to bother anybody ,but I really am just trying to debunk this totally inaccurate ridiculous unfortunately common myth that The Beatles were ever a boy band,they were a great *ROCK n ROLL* band from the start!
John and George especially hated Beatle Mania,and George says in The Anthology series,that it took a toll on their nervous systems,they had no life either trapped in hotel rooms most of the time. They wanted to be popular & successful as every band does,but they didn't want or ask for the hysteria.John says in his 1975 Tomorrow Show interview that the screaming wasn't doing the music any good,and that things would break down and nobody would know.
The Beatles sound great on their live roof top January 1969 concert in The Let It Be Film, and the sound systems had improved by then,(although still very limited compared to today's) and there were no more screaming crowds.
Rooftop concert with I've got a feeling and Mccartney's singing-ufffffffff!
DeletePaul was playing guitar and writing songs at 14 and he started soon after his beloved nurse and midwife mother Mary died of breast cancer,and he wrote the beautiful song Let It Be after he had a real seeming dream where he saw her alive again and she told him to just accept things as they are.He says in his authorized biography,that when he woke up he thought how great it was to see her alive again.
ReplyDeleteJohn was writing deep heavy poetry when he was a kid,and he started writing his own songs at age 17 not long after he met Paul and was impressed that was writing his own songs. Paul wrote the very pretty song,I'll Follow The Sun at age 16. They didn't know at this age they would make it big and they weren't making a penny from it then.
It's most of The Beatles songs and albums that are GREAT AND TIMELESS! And as a smart Beatles fan poster Ed Sullivan said on PopMatters:Meet The Beatles Again a few months ago,"I don't know anyone who has ever considered the Stones version of "Man" (he means The Beatles song The Rolling Stones covered, I Wanna Be Your Man) to be on the same level as The Beatles recording." " Played back-to-back and he says as it is on The Beatles Anthology DVD,probably just to prove this point, Mick Brian and Keith are utterly laughable compared with the polish and energy of Ringo and his musical brothers." " This comparison becomes doubly true for the distinction between The Beach Boys version of "Rock & Roll Music and what is presented on Beatles for Sale. The Beatles are obviously in a class by themselves.''
ReplyDeleteI have heard The Beach Boys version of Rock and Roll music & it's not rocking at all! The Beatles version really rocks & John's rock vocal is almost as incredible as his Twist and Shout rock vocal recorded in only 1 take when he had a very bad sore throat from a cold,& his Money rock vocal is great too!
He is so right,on YouTube they showed The Rolling Stones version of The Beatles I Wanna Be Your Man and they showed The Beatles version and one poster said that The Rolling Stones were piss poor,and a guy who is a huge Rolling Stones fan said he admits The Beatles version is better.A guy in his mid 20's from France said The Rolling Stones version put him to sleep,but that The Beatles version is faster and more rocking.
Several other people said this too,and I noticed this as soon as I saw it in my excellent Beatles Anthology video series,seeing and hearing The Rolling Stones version and The Beatles version was like going from rhinestones to diamonds! The Rolling Stones on the limited 30 watt amplifiers sound almost like a bad bar band.
Bob Dylan ,Roger McGuinn of The Byrds and music critic William Mann of The London Times as early as 1963 and 1964 pointed out that even in early Beatles songs like She Loves You and I Want To Hold Your Hand had unusual and interesting chords and they arranged them.
ReplyDeleteAnd as early as late 1963 a music critic Richard Buckle in The London Times called John and Paul the two of the most briliant composers since Beethoven after John and Paul composed the music for a ballet Mods and Rockers.
And John and Paul wrote one of The Rolling Stones first hits, I Wanna Be Your Man in late 1963 right in front of them. And Keith Richards and Mick Jagger were impressed and said wow,how can you write a song just like that and it inspired them to start writing their own songs.
John Lennon and Paul McCartney were such amazingly talented singer song writers that they were already writing hit songs for other artists as early as 1963 when their own song writing success was getting off the ground,besides The Rolling Stones,they also wrote hit songs in 1963 for Billy J.Krammer and The Dakatos,Celia Black,and Peter and Gordon etc.
Paul wrote his first song at age 14 and was playing guitar,John wrote heavy deep poetry but didn't start writing songs until he met Paul and was impressed that he wrote his own songs,and he too started to write his own songs at age 17,and they wrote together and never stopped from then on.Paul wrote the very pretty song I'll Follow The Sun at only 16!
The Beatles (especially John and Paul as singer song composers were brilliant!) and they were *NOT* "average " musicians(yeah sure when they first started playing in clubs in Hamburg Germany before they had played 8 hours a night there and played in the Cavern for years starting in 1960-1962 they were average) John,George and Ringo were all very good and Paul Paul McCartney was and is rightfully considered one of the best rock bass players including by many well known accomplished bass players and rock artists,and he's always been a very good multi intstrumentalist and can play just about any instrument very well!
ReplyDeleteEven, Ozzy Osbourne said in an online 2002 Bender Magazine interview that The Beatles Are The Greatest Band To Ever Walk The Earth. He's been a huge fan since he's been a teenager and he says not loving The Beatles is like not loving oxogen! The Rolling Stones were very good friends and fans of The Beatles and Mick Jagger was at 4 Beatles recording sessions and Keith Richards was at 2 of them with them. Also,The Beatles even wrote one of The Rolling Stones first hits with the song, I Wanna Be You're Man in late 1963. As for the other inaccurate comments that some people say The Beatles didn't even stay together for 2 decades, well they didn't have to because they did about 50 years worth of innovative, creative, diverse, prolific great critically acclaimed popular songs and albums in just a remarkable 8 year recording career.
The Beatles are in The Song Writing Hall Of Fame & The Vocal Hall of Fame, and As The All Music Guide says in their excellent Beatles biography, "So much has been said and written about The Beatles and their story is so mythic in it's sweep that it's difficult to summarize their career without restating cliche's that have already been digested by tens of millions of rock fans, to start with the obvious, they were the greatest and most influential act of the rock era, and introduced more innovations into popular music than any other rock band of the 20th century." "As voсalists John Lennon & Paul McCartney were among the best and most expressive in rock and the groups harmonies were intricate and exhillirating."
And music critics as well as brilliant classical composer Leonard Bernstein called John & Paul the most brilliant song writers of the 20th century when they were still a band . As for The Beatles playing live, they sounded pretty good playing live considering that when they were playing in 1963, 1964, 1965, and 1966 the sound systems back then were very limited and primitive, they only had 100 watt amplifiers, no feedback monitors so they couldn't even hear themselves play and sing, yet they amazingly played in tune and in sync anyway, and at the August 1965 Shea Stadium concert which was the first big outdoor rock concert with over 55,000 fans, they were plugged into the PA system that they announce baseball games with plus the screaming crowds drowing out their great music! Can you imagine The Rolling Stones and The Who playing on these very limited primitive sound systems? They wouldn't have sounded much better! Thats why they gave up touring, because they were serious music artists, composers, and musicians and they wanted their great music to be heard and valued. It would be like Beethoven playing on these limited primitive sound systems and screaming crowds! Also they were now writing music that was too complex to reproduce on stage at that time.
On the roof top concert in The Let It Be Film, they sounded great, because by January 1969 the sound systems had improved somewhat(although not anywhere near the 1970's, 1980's, 1990's and especially today's!) and they had changed and people had changed so there were no more screaming crowds so they could be heard. When I was a teenager I met 3 people who saw The Beatles in concert two of them were teachers who saw them in 1966 and he and she told me they were great,and my cousin saw them at age 16 at The Baltimore Colsieum in 1964 the year before I was born, and she said they were great.
ReplyDeleteFormer Kiss guitarist and grammy winning producer Bob Kulick who made the heavy metal Beatles tribute album Butchering The Beatles last year, says in an online interview, that he saw The Beatles at Shea Stadium in 1966 and that he could only make out pieces of the songs because of the screaming, but he could make out the songs Baby's In Black and Paperback Writer and he said they sounded amazing! He also calls The Beatles The Greatest Rock Band Ever! George Harrison at only age 14 would stay up playing his guitar until he got all of the chords exactly right and his fingers were bleeding! And One of The Beatles engineers Geoff Emerick says that in early 1966 when The Beatles were recording John's song I'm Only Sleeping, George Harrison played backwards guitar the most difficult way possible even though he could have taken an easy way,and it took him 6 hours just to do the guitar overdubs! He then made it doubly difficult by adding even more distorted gitars and Geoff says this was all George's idea and that he did all of the playing!
The 1992 Rolling Stone Album Guide calls Paul a remarkable bass player and rightfully calls John & Paul the 2 greatest song writers in rock history! Both Phil Collins and Max Weinberg both Beatles fans and both praise Ringo's drumming and Phil Collins says that Ringo's great drumming on A Day In The Life can't be repeated even by him! Also on Rankopedia The Beatles are # 1 Greatest Rock Band,# 1 Greatest Most Innovative Rock Band,John &Paul are # 1 Greatest Rock Song Writers, John &Paul are on The Greatest Rock Male Vocalist list, and Paul McCartney is # 2 after John Enwistle as Greatest Rock Bass Players, John Paul Jones is # 6, and Bill Wynman is # 20! And on Digitaldreamdoor where many musicians post,The Beatles are # 1 Greatest Rock Artists,John &Paul are # 1 Greatest Rock Song Writers, they are both on The Greatest Rock Male Vocalists list, and Paul McCartney is # 8 out of 100 Greatest Rock Bass Players, John Paul Jones is # 21, and Bill Wynman is # 95! George Harrison is # 30 On The Greatest Rock Guitarists out of over 100.
ReplyDeleteAlso check out Keno's Classic Rock n Roll Site he also runs a Rolling Stones &John Lennon fan site. And he made a Top 10 List and voted and the fans voted. He voted John &Paul # 2 after Bob Dylan as Greatest Rock Song Writers, the fans voted them # 1! He voted Paul McCartney # 2 after John Entwistle as Greatest Rock Bass Player, the fans voted Paul # 3. He voted John Lennon # 2 after Keith Richards as Greatest Rock Rhythm Guitarist, and the fans voted John in a tie with Jimi Hendrix and Brian Jones at # 4 ! He voted John Lennon # 1 in a tie with Elvis as Greatest Male Rock Vocalist and the fans voted John # 1, he voted Paul # 6 and the fans voted him # 7.
Ken says Damn The Beatles were one great group in his review of The Beatles album 1967-1970, and he also says that John on Get Back showed why he should have played lead guitar more often because he did such a good job! He also said that John on their hard rocking great 1968 single Revolution,played one of the first and best acid guitar parts.And he also said that John played a pretty good slide guitar on George's For Your Blue. And he says in his review of The Beatles 1962-1966,that if you don't love or at least like The Beatles and their music than you are not a true rock fan and more than likely will never get it.
And in 2001 VH1 had a panel of well known musicans and music critcs, that voted The Beatles The Greatest Rock Band Ever, and in 2004 Rolling Stone did the same thing and several people said on message boards that Rolling Stone had a recent pael poll like this and The Beatles were voted # 1 again and for darn great reasons too! Nobody created as much innovative, creative, quality,critically acclaimed, popular diverse songs and albums in such a short amazing period of time as The Beatles and thats why most people know that The Beatles Are The Greatest Rock Band That Ever Was Or Will Be!! And A Hard Day's Night is a great pop rock album!
Many people have said about The Rolling Stones ,that their albums have a few good or great songs but the rest is filler.
ReplyDeleteBut a radio host who was a former DJ once said that The Beatles are one of the only if not only bands that almost all of their songs were great including the album tracks that weren't released as singles.
On a message board discussion some years ago about what bands and artists people consider overrated,quite a few said The Rolling Stones and some said The Beatles or both,and a guy said if you ask almost anybody in the music business they will tell you that The Beatles were the Greatest Band Ever!
I once spoke to a rock DJ about The Beatles and even though he said they aren't his favorite,he said nobody can say that The Beatles weren't great,he said especially John Lennon and Paul McCartney as song writers.
And I once spoke to another rock DJ who is a huge Beatles fan & who has hosted a 2 hour Breakfast With The Beatles radio show for over 20 years & I said that The Beatles work in the recording studio described in details in The Beatles
Reording Sessions by Mark Lewisohn,is so impressive & brilliant & he said oh it's the work of genuises. I said how can anyone not recognize what extraordinary singer song composers John Lennon & Paul McCartney were? And he said oh you can ask anyone in the music business & they will tell you that.
Many people on different message boards have said the only Rolling Stones song they like is Paint It Black, my first cousin who is a head hunter helping people find jobs,she used to an accountant,and when she was 21 a huge Rolling Stones fan she also had The Beatles Revolver album in her bedroom.
ReplyDeleteWhen The Rolling Stones did their Steel Wheels tour in 1989 I asked her if she still liked The Rolling Stones and she said no,but the same year at her wedding shower my male and female cousins were talking about The Beatles who we all love,and my cousin Randi said Oh I love The Beatles.
And when I was going to Paul McCartney live for the first time in 1990 and I was very excited about it,I was going on about how great he,John and The Beatles were and she said OK,I said you said you love The Beatles too and she said hey bottom line they were genuises!
Also,
ReplyDeleteI have never heard The Beach Boys played on any classic rock stations only oldies stations but my classic rock station plays a lot of Beatles. Infact a 48 year old DJ who is a huge Beatles fan has hosted a 2 hour Sunday morning radio show,Breakfast With The Beatles for 7 years now.
Even The Beatles early music had a much harder electric guitar sound than The Beach Boys and all of The Beach Boys radio hits were beach surfing music.
When The Beatles wrote, played and recorded John's great early rocker, You Can't Do That recorded in February 1964, Paul's great blues rocker from the Fall of 1964, She's A Woman, John's I Feel Fine with a prominent rock guitar riff and the first recorded use of feedback guitar,and Paul's screaming hard rocker especially for the times I'm Down from mid 1965, what were The Beach Boys writing? Beach Surfing hits!
And on a Bob Dylan fan site Expecting Rain posted last year nobody on there liked The Beach Boys except 1 person,and most said they never liked The Rolling Stones that much either,but many said they think The Beatles were the most,innovative,creative,and prolific band ever and that it is amazing how much great music of all different styles they wrote and played, and recorded in just an 8 year recording career.
Even some people who say they have never been much of a Beatles fan say that it's an angry rant,a big pile of bullsh*t and that he's an idiot.And that he made most of this up!
ReplyDeleteHe also claims that The Beatles often copied The Beach Boys. When in fact what he doesn't tell people is that Brian Wilson says that when he heard The Beatles great album Rubber Soul in late 1965 he was so blown away by it and he said that this inspired him to make the Pet Sounds album.The All Music Guide
s Beach Boys Biography also says Brian Wilson had a nerveous breakdown after he heard Sgt.Pepper.
He lies when he claims no contemorary musicians and music artists ever spoke highly of them when Bob Dylan, The Rolling Stones, ,Roger McGuinn, ( classical composer Leonard Bernstein,Elton John, Brian Wilson who called John and Paul the two greatest song composers of the 20th century!) Ozzy Osbourne calls The Beatles the greatest band to ever walk the earth, Brian May of Queen calls The Beatles the best band ever as does Liam Gallagher of Oasis etc etc.
Max Weinberg and Phil Collins both praise Ringo's drumming including in The Beatles.
And a Beatles fan said that what Scaruffi wrote about The Beatles is the worst hatchet job he's ever read and that it's filled with inaccuracies. Many people say he made most of this up. I read a post from a fan Tim on a message board a few years ago who posted that he only read part of it and that that Scaruffi Beatles article is a horror and that he didn't want to ever read that garbage again. I emailed him two years ago and he wrote me back and he said yeah Scaruffi's entry on The Beatles is really bizarre.
Another guy said on another board that what Scaruffi says about them can easily be refuted.Another guy said on Rate Your Music that he finds Scaruffi's opinions about The Beatles really ignorant and he said he was even much of a Beatles fan.
Another guy said that just another example of Scaruffi's Beatles ignorance(and he gave detailed examples of how innovative and inventive they really were) in his article and he said,and what a totallt erroneous,fictional jaded article it is
And the only reason that I posted all of this information is because I'm so sick of this kind of ridiculous inaccurate ignorant garbage being said about THe Beatles all over the place for years now like Scaruffi's terrible inaccurate Cr*p.
ReplyDeleteI have been a huge highly impressed Beatles fan(specifically a big John and Paul fan) since I was 11 when I got my first Beatles book for my 11th birthday,I started collecting their albums at age 9,and I had every great album by age 13,I was born after 1964 too.
My father had a lot of different music in the house and was a big Bob Dylan fan and had many of his albums,he also had a Peter Paul and Mary album,a Leonard Cohen album and Herb Alpert and The Tijuana Brass albums which I liked even at age 4.I also had my own radio at age 9 and I listened to a lot of music.
My sister 4 years older had an even bigger diverse music collection, and she always loved The Beatles too.She bought Paul McCartney and Wings great 1975 rock album,Venus and Mars when it came out in 1975 and she said years later it's one of the best rock albums she ever heard and that it's unique and she knows no album like it and it is a great album.
When I was 9 I had a teacher in library class play The Beatles great rock album Abbey Road on a little record player and she said they were genuises.When I was 11 my music teacher asked us to guess who he was talking about when he said they were genuises and they wrote about 200 mostly popular acclaimed songs and many great albums in just an 8 year recording career,and I already being a big fan guessed it exactly right and said,John Lennon and Paul McCartney,The Beatles and he smiled and said yes thats right!
I'm really very happy to say that most people I have known throughout my life recognized they The Beatles specifically John and Paul were brilliant singer song writers and very good musicians.The only Beatles haters I ever knew were 14 and 15 year old boys in school and one of them became a huge Beatles fan on his own.
A guy I was friends with for many years who lived down the street and was 2 years older was a big fan too and he also liked Frank Zappa and his brother who was 10 years older than me had a big music collection and he loved The Beatles too,so did his mother and sister.I once spoke with their stepfather about how John and Paul are rightfully widely rearded by most people,most rock and music critics,and many other well known respected rock musicians and artists as 2 of the greatest song writers of the 20th century and he said I think so too.
Below is part of a Beatles review by a Epionions reviewer.
ReplyDeleteHome Epinions Music Please Please Me by The Beatles
Please Please Me by The Beatles
Overall Rating:
20 consumer reviews
Lowest Price: $5.90
at Amazon Marketplace
Back to All Reviews About the Author
The Beatles Debut - Please Please Me
Written: Apr 28 '06 (Updated Sep 28 '09)
Product Rating:
Pros: Good Debut
Cons: Only eight original songs
The Bottom Line: The Birth of The Beatles, well in the UK anyway.
scapp70's Full Review: Please Please Me by The Beatles
and now a word from Scapp70 straight from his Beatles Soap Box
Are you a Beatles fan? Are you a Beatles nut? Are you insane for The Beatles? No? Yes? Well, I am - I'm not sure if you noticed. One of the duties of being a Beatles fan, which should really be a non-existent duty, is defending The Beatles. The Beatles were and are the greatest band in history, yet oddly not everybody knows that. The people that do not know that The Beatles are the greatest will more likely than not, argue that they aren't. It is the same thing as debating politics with a person who is not informed of the arguments, yet they passionately will tell you how you're wrong. Does that mean that any person who argues that The Beatles are not musical god-men, that they do not have all the albums and therefore do not know the position and the reasons why The Beatles are the greatest? Yes, I say to you - YES!
If you as a Beatle fan have to argue that an album like say The White Album or Abbey Road are not five star albums, just sit and be quiet and let them talk. They will soon give hints of their Beatle un-savviness. For example, they may say that Sgt Pepper is a concept album, does any real thinking Beatles fan think that? They may say something as silly as Paul McCartney's bass playing ability is any less than stellar, or even worse...mediocre. Do we have ears? What are we comparing The Beatles to? Phish? U2? '90s College Music? What or who is out there who is better? The Beatles are not kings of the musical hill, they are an island unto themselves.
So far no one has been able to come close to what The Beatles have accomplished. The Beatles were not just pioneers with each new release, The Beatles were amazing songwriters, fine musicians, forward thinkers and they are pretty funny too. Any other musician or musical group who would wish to accomplish the magnitude of what The Beatles had done in just six years would need a magical pocket watch that stops time. Six short years includes thirteen albums, four movies, and three world tours, enough singles to fill up two CDs and not to mention they changed the face of pop rock with each new release.
When the Beatles broke up, each member had varied success, some more than another. No matter how successful The Beatles were individually in the 70s and 80s, and no matter how great the songs were during these times, it was apparent that the four guys still needed one another in order to change the world every six months as they did in the sixties. So even if the uniformed debater tries to come across as musically intellectual by praising dopey bands from the 90s that no one has ever heard of, just remember theyre still just uninformed. They try to mask their unsavvy musical taste by pointing to pointless music that you had never heard of.
and now… the music that changed pop culture
Sorry about that above, I have just been reading a lot of negative things about The Beatles in print and online lately. It’s just so wild, but I guess when you are as big as The Beatles, there is bound to be some negativity out there.
Google pictures of Jane Asher especially when she was young,she was a beautiful red haired blue eyed British actress and she was in her first film at age 5.
ReplyDeletePaul met her when she was only 17 and he was 21 and she said John,Paul,George Ringo and their friends to their hotel room for a drink and she said in Hunter Davies great authorized biography The Beatles that orginally came out in 1968,that they all couldn't believe she was a virgin and she lost her virginity to Paul when she was 17 or 18.
He lived in her house with her parents from 1964-1966 and then they bought their own house when she was 20 and was 24 and they lived together until the Spring of 1968 when they had been engaged to marry for 7 months and lovers for 5 years,Jane came hom to early from touring with her theatre company to surprise Paul and she found him in their bed with another woman having had sex with her and Jane left him for good.
Paul wrote a lot of great beautiful songs about her love songs,And I Love Her,Things We Said Today,Here There And Everywhere,his great late 1964 blues rocker,She's A Woman and songs,We Can Work It Out,For No One,You Won't See Me and I'm Looking Through You he wrote about his arguments with her about him wanting her to give up her acting career and devote herself to him,and she refused because she had been acting since she was 5 and she loved it and didn't want to give it up.
Jane Asher was one of the stars in the 1966 Michael Caine film Alfie and she played one of the beautiful young women Alfie is sexually involed with.
John Lennon also co-wrote,sang and played guitar on one of David Bowie's first hits in 1975,Fame. David also invited John to play guitar on David's version of John's beautiful Beatles song,Across The Universe.
ReplyDeleteBy the way,I am a very creative artistic person myself,and I have a very good ear for music.I started writing stories with illistrated little drawings when I was 4,I wrote a book from paper folded over and stapled when I was 8 about the harms of polution with drawings to demonstrate it,and I was a very good drawer even when I was only 8,9,10 and 11,I drew great very detailed pictures in magic markers of swans,clowns,fish,butterflies,ducks a raggedy ann doll and flowers.I can't even draw as good now as I did then.My mother was an artist who went to art school for several years and she even sold some of her sculptures in a few local galleries.She also drew in charcoal pencil and pastels great too.
I went to an art and music camp when I was 14 and I started to write a lot of poems instead of stories many people said some of them were very good and I wrote a lot of essays about different issues starting when I was 18.I think it's a lot of I have always been such a big Beatles fan,they were extremely creative,artistic talented people.
I'm not saying that all creative talented people love The Beatles though but it's not a coincidince that I do.
The Beatles are rightfully widely rearded by most people,most rock and music critics,and many other well known respected rock musicians and artists as 2 of the greatest song writers of the 20th century and he said I think so too. My step cousin who was born in 1958 saw Paul & Wings in 1976 & he said The Beatles probably were The Greatest Band Ever & my first cousin who was born in 68 (he & his 2 brothers,parents& sister have always been fans)said when I asked him when he was 23 if he still liked them,he said best band that ever was.
ReplyDeleteHe told me that when he was at the British Museum where Lennon & McCartney's song lyrics are in a glass case next to Sahkespeare,Dickens,Wodsworth & Keats everyone was like forget them lets go over to the Lennon & McCartney lyrics.
Pete Townsend along with John Bonham, John Paul Jones and David Gilmore played on 2 songs on the last Wings album Back To The Egg that came out in 1979 . They also all played with Paul and Wings in the last Wings concerts in December 1979.
ReplyDeletePete Townsend also along with Phil Collins who is also a big Beatles fan since he was 13 in the concert scene in the Beatles film A Hard Day's Night, played on Paul's 1986 album Press To Play.
And I have found over 50 former Beatles haters on different message boards who are now big Beatles fans,many call them The Greatest Rock Band Ever and most say they now think they were brilliant song writers. I didn't communicate with these people, but they said in their posts that they hadn't even heard most of their songs and albums,and had inaccurate misperceptions of them like the ridiculous one that they ever were a "boy band." Which besides knowing even most of their music and knowing their history knows is totally false.
Last year a musician posted on some message board about the new John Lennon biography, and he said watch The Beatles Anthology video series and learn how truly immensely talented this band was.
Most people don't hate The Beatles in the first place and people don't usually go from hating a band to loving them, so it just goes to show how great and timeless their music really is/was!
I once found a post a few years ago of a 35 year old musician in Jamaica who said on his blog that when he was younger and a big Who fan he used to think The Beatles were overrated, but that he did a 300 degree turn around and he said he now truly believes that The Beatles were the greatest rock band ever.
I just noticed I made a few typing mistakes. And I meant that even a guy who said he finds Scaruffi's opinion's on The Beatles really ignorant and manipulative and he said he's not even much of a Beatles fan.
ReplyDeleteAlso, The Beatles not only wrote so many great timeless rock songs,but so many beautiful acoustic ballads,even as early as on their great early 1964 A Hard Day's Night album,John's beautiful If I Fell, I'll Be Back and Paul's beautiful And I Love Her and Things We Said Today.
ReplyDeletePaul McCartney says in his authorized biography Many Years From Now, that 12 years after his beloved mother Mary who was a nurse and a midwife died when Paul was only 14 and his brother only 12 from breast cancer within a month of being diagnosed,he had a realistic vivid dream where he saw his mother alive again and she told him to just accept things as they are.
Some people including Paul himself say he subconciously wrote Yesterday 3 years before he wrote Let It Be also about his mother's death.Especialy when he sings the words,why she had to go I don't know she wouldn't say, and how he sings I said something wrong and he longs for yesterday when she was still living and all of his troubles seemed so far away,and he's not half the man he used to be, and wants to find a place to hide away,and how there is a shadow hanging over him and yesterday came suddenly. Like Let It Be it's a sad song especially for an extremely talented,great looking, very successful 22 year old rock artist to write.
He said when he woke up from this dream(where he saw his dead mother Mary )he thought how wonderful it was to see her again,and that's what he wrote the beautiful song Let It Be About,it's his dead mother Mary who comes to him in his times of trouble in his hours of darknes speaking words of wisdom Let Be.
John Lennon's beautiful song Julia on The Beatles great rock album,The White album is about his mother Julia who gave him away at 5 to be raised by her older sister,and when John was 17 just when John was getting close to her she was killed in a hit and run car accident by a drunk off duty cop while she crossed the street in front of the house John lived in,he was at her boyfriend's house waiting for her.
Also John Lennon wrote the lyrics to the great song A Day In The Life while he was reading the coroner's report in the news paper of Tara Brown's death who was a Guiness heir and a good friend of theirs(Paul met him first in a London club and he was closest to him,and he introcuded him to John,George, and Mick Jagger,Keith Richards and Brian Jones met him through them and became friends with him too) who was killed at the age of 21 in his sports car crash in December 1966,his girlfriend was in the car and had minor injuries.He would have inherited 1 million $ if he had lived to be 25.
ReplyDeleteStill relevant after decades, the Beatles set to rock 9/9/09
ReplyDeleteStory Highlights
9/9/09 a big day for The Beatles
"Rock Band" video game and remastered albums both to be released
Apple Inc. expected to make "music-related" announcement the same day
Expert compares The Beatles to Picasso, says their music will endure
By Doug Gross
CNN
(CNN) -- "Number nine. Number nine. Number nine."
The repetitive refrain from one of The Beatles' most mind-bending journeys into psychedelia -- "Revolution 9," the audio pastiche from "The White Album" -- is now serving as the backbeat of a big day for the biggest band in rock 'n' roll history.
On Wednesday -- 9/9/09 -- remastered versions of the Beatles catalogue will be released, giving listeners what the remaining members of "The Fab Four" say is the closest reproduction ever of how their music sounded in the studio.
The same day, the video game "The Beatles: Rock Band" is set to be released by Harmonix. Modeled after the already popular "Rock Band" game, and closely supervised by The Beatles and their estates, the game lets players sing and strum along on a huge list of Beatles classics over scenes ranging from Liverpool's Cavern Club to their final performance on a London rooftop.
And on top of that, there's rampant speculation that a planned "music-themed" announcement by Apple Inc., also scheduled on 9/9/09, could involve the supergroup.
The Beatles are one of a handful of groups whose music has never been approved for sale by Apple's iTunes, and the timing of the announcement has fueled speculation that could finally change -- or even that specialized Beatles iPods, like the ones sold in 2004 loaded with U2's music, could be in the works.
It's a remarkable amount of buzz for a band whose roots stretch back nearly five decades. And it's a clear sign, observers say, that through time and a multitude of cultural shifts, the group's hold on the public's imagination has endured.
"People are still looking at Picasso. People are still looking at artists who broke through the constraints of their time period to come up with something that was unique and original," said Robert Greenfield, a former associate editor at Rolling Stone magazine who has written about the band. "In the form that they worked in, in the form of popular music, no one will ever be more revolutionary, more creative and more distinctive than The Beatles were."
Research shows that more than 40 years after their last public performance, Paul McCartney, John Lennon, George Harrison and Ringo Starr's music remains as interesting to young people now as it ever was.
A Pew Research survey released last month showed that 81 percent of respondents between ages 16-29 said they liked The Beatles. Eleven percent said they dislike the band and only 4 percent said they have never heard of them.
By comparison, current rockers Coldplay received 39 percent positive responses, with 45 percent saying they'd never heard of them. Forty-two percent said they like hip-hop star Kanye West.
"To put this in perspective: Try imagining young adults back in the 1960s putting the big jazz bands of the roaring '20s at the top of their list of favorites," the survey reads. "Not very likely."
Walter Everett, professor and chairman of music theory at the University of Michigan, said his students know The Beatles catalogue as well today as they would have 30 years ago.
© 2009 Cable News Network
Still relevant after decades, the Beatles set to rock 9/9/09
ReplyDeleteExpert compares The Beatles to Picasso, says their music will endure
By Doug Gross
CNN
(CNN) -- "Number nine. Number nine. Number nine.
He said the cultural phenomenon that was The Beatles -- the frenzy-inducing early concerts, the furor when John Lennon said the group was "more popular than Jesus," the pre-Internet obsession over "Paul is dead" rumors -- made them something more than just another rock group.
"They were just idolized," said Everett, who has written several books on the band. "It was a musical revolution, but [also] the hair, the clothing, their attitude about the establishment, their support of everybody, young and old alike, to try to understand each other at a very difficult time.
"Some of that message endures."
But at the heart of the phenomenon, experts agree, is the music. From the charming, school-boy bop of "I Want To Hold Your Hand" to the blistering assault of "Helter Skelter," the songs, they say, were just that good.
"The point is how great the music is," Greenfield said. "It isn't about the fact that The Beatles were willing to practice and get better at what they did -- it was the fact that that band contained at least two-and-a-half geniuses [Lennon, McCartney and, at times, Harrison]."
Wednesday's announcements -- and, in Apple's case, possible announcement -- show that the minders of The Beatles legacy are keeping up with how today's music consumers behave, said Bruce Burch, director of the University of Georgia's music business program.
"A lot of bands and artists have been slow to embrace the fact that technology is driving the industry," Burch said. "Their music is not going away and this is a step for them for their music to come into the 21st century."
EMI, which will be releasing the remastered recordings, has been famously protective of The Beatles brand and music. Digital reproductions like MP3s have lower sound quality than albums or compact discs -- one of the reasons they've been slow to embrace iTunes.
But if an announcement on that front is coming, Burch said, it would signal an acknowledgement that such quality-control concerns may be obsolete for the majority of the music-buying public.
"It's just a different audience out there," he said. "They're used to listening on ear buds. The sound quality, in some cases, maybe isn't' as important to them."
Everett said that, even with all of the news expected Wednesday, the Beatles music will no doubt remain popular for decades to come -- meaning more new wrinkles are almost certain.
"There's still more that can be done," he said. "Who knows where technology may be in another 10 years? We may have holographic images."
And regardless of how it's delivered, no one's expecting another band to ever eclipse the four lads from Liverpool who would go on to shape popular culture the world over.
"There will probably be another artist that comes along and captures the imagination," Burch said. "But it will never be like The Beatles."
© 2009 Cable News Network
As The Rolling Stone Album Guide said,not liking The Beatles is as perverse as not liking the sun. And Ozzy Osbourne said not loving The Beatles is like not loving oxogen. And a guy who runs Keno's Classic Rock n Roll Site and who runs a Rolling Stones and John Lennon fan site says in his review of The Beatles 1967-1970 Red Album damn The Beatles were one great group and he said in his great review of The Beatles 1962-1966 Red album, that if you don't love or at least like The Beatles and their music then you are not a true rock fan and more than likely will never ever get it.Billy Joel said you can't like music & dislike The Beatles.
ReplyDeleteThey are all *so* right,if you dislike music with beautiful melodies & harmonies,great singing by John & Paul,a lot of creative quality to their music,& very good musicianship, especially their beautiful melodies & harmonies,then you don't like music!Or you are deaf.
He also says that John Lennon showed on Paul'
s rocker Get Back why he should have played lead guitar more often because he did such a good job of it. He also said he played a pretty good slide guitar on George's For Your Blue and he said John also played one of the first and best acid guitar parts on his great rocker Revolution.
The Beatles revolutionized popular and rock music and were very innovative,prolific and creative,more than any other group. And their great timeless songs are the most covered in music history by everyone from jazz musicians,classical,Motown,rock,pop and even heavy metal recording and playing their great timeless music.
ReplyDeleteMany academic musicologists and music scholars have done serious studies,analyses and praise of their great timeless music,like university of Penn gradutate musicologist Alan W.Pollack who did an extensive 11 year detailed analysis of every Beatles song.He says he hadn't even listened to The Beatles in 20 years until they came out on CD for the first time in 1987.He demonstrates they used as many as 9 chords in many of their early songs,& that they were complex in the way they were arranged,& Paul's great rock song on Abbey Road,You Never Give Me Your Money,has as many as 21 chords.
And university of Michigan music professor and musician Walter Everett who wrote the 2 volume,The Beatles As Musicians:The Quarry Men Through Rubber Soul and The Beatles As Musicians:Revolver Through Anthology.And British musicologist and classical composer and music professor (who is dead now)Willifred Mellers 1973 book,Twilight Of The Gods:The Music Of The Beatles,and he also wrote about Beethoven,Mozart and Bob Dylan.
And award winning music professor Dr.Glen Gass who has been teaching a course on what brilliant composers The Beatles were and a rock music course at Indiana University School Of Music since 1982.Dr.Gary Kendal's Beatles course is the most requested at North Western university ,university of California also has one and Oxford university had a recent Beatles course.
How many serious music scholars and award winning music professors are teaching and writing serious academic works studying and prasing what "brilliant" composers The Rolling Stones or other rock bands were?
The Beatles are the Most Creative Band of All Time By Musician & Song Writer Peter Cross
ReplyDeleteBACKGROUND HISTORY:
The first musical bands originated in New Orleans among black musicians who have traditionally been the innovators. The first jazz record ever recorded was by The Original Dixieland Jazz Band in 1917, and of course they were white because racism always rears its ugly head to hold black people back. But during the Roaring 20's, young white people couldn't resist the dance beat laid down by the black jazz bands. Fletcher Henderson, a black man, became the first band leader to achieve national fame possibly because he featured Louis Armstrong on trumpet. Duke Ellington, a classically trained musician, brought a level of style and sophistication to jazz that hadn't been seen before. But it wasn't until 1935 that jazz bands with a "swing beat" achieved national attention due to Benny Goodman who I think was the best clarinet player ever to blow air into that instrument. Benny also had the good sense and taste to bring the first great drummer, Gene Krupa, into his band.
When rock and roll exploded into human consciousness during the early 1950's, black musicians like Bo Diddley, Little Richard, Chuck Berry, and Smokey Robinson pioneered the way, but a white DJ named Alan Freed is believed to have coined the term "rock and roll". The first real rock and roll record was "Shake, Rattle and Roll", written by Jesse Stone who was black and recorded by Big Joe Turner who was also black but it wasn't a hit. The first big hit rock and roll record was "Rock Around the Clock" written by James Meyers and Max Freeman of obvious ancestry, and that one catapulted Bill Haley and his Caucasian Comets to stardom. During the 1950's and early 60's, there were countless "do wop" groups, rock groups, singers and songwriters but until The Beatles hit the charts, there had been very few bands which contained talented songwriters. The vast majority of jazz and rock bands recorded songs written by songwriters who were not performers, with occasional exceptions like Duke Ellington and Buddy Holly. As time goes on, it's increasingly clear that Lennon/McCartney songs are brilliant classics which will never be forgotten. Now here's why The Beatles are the most creative band of all time:
1.BEST EXAMPLE OF FORM CONTENT
As I sit here writing this at the keyboard of my computer facing the unique and colorful Beatles poster in my bedroom, I'm aware that I have been directly and indirectly inspired by John Lennon's music as well as by the way he lived his life offstage. Squarely in front of me is a full color poster of all four Beatles standing in a heavenly-like flower garden at about the time of the Abbey Road album. Paul is angelic in his pink suit with a white laced shirt. John is enigmatic peering out from the background. George is charismatic staring directly into the camera from the lower right. Ringo is on the left with a stylish blue suit and his pink ruffled shirt. I always wished I could dress like those guys but obviously there's a bit of a problem with a money differential there. Surrounding this gorgeous poster which I have never seen elsewhere are my 45 speed original Beatles hit records, including I Want to Hold Your Hand, She Loves You, Please Please Me, Twist and Shout, Can't Buy Me Love, She's A Woman, Yesterday, and of course, Hey Jude.
Web page design copyright 1996 © , text copyright 2005 © Peter Cross
BACKGROUND HISTORY:
ReplyDeleteAnd surrounding all that is a chain of 1-1/2" long orange flicker flame lights which are the most beautiful and unique Christmas lights I've ever seen. I chose to decorate the wall directly in front of my work station this way because, as I've written elsewhere on this site several times, The Beatles were my major musical influence and having them on the wall in front of me inspires me to write web pages like this one. I was also among the millions of people who were inspired by how The Beatles were actually living their off stage lives. The Beatles' music creatively stimulated millions of people to change the way they were living, and The Beatles behavior encouraged people to have fun by trying new life style experiences. That's what I call a perfect example of FORM = CONTENT. In this case it means that the creatively and masterfully varied music The Beatles were producing (form) embodied the real life styles which each of the four Beatles were living (content), together as a band as well as separately as unique individuals.
2. BEST SONGWRITERS
This should be self-evident, but just because Paul McCartney has the title of the most popular songwriter in history doesn't necessarily make him the best songwriter in history. The qualities which do make both Paul and John the best songwriters in history go beyond writing the greatest number of catchy classic songs. "Catchy" means that their melodies and lyrics are instantly memorable. "Classic" means that they stand the test of time. But both Paul and John wrote very sophisticated melodies that moved beyond the simple groups of 2, 4 and 8 patterned phrases used by almost all other songwriters. John and Paul's melodies soared, floated, cascaded, dived and peaked with true dynamics, naturally following the syllabic lyric patterns - but not always. Sometimes the melodic and lyric patterns were independent of each other, almost counterpoint in nature, and as a songwriter, they never ceased to astonish me with their brilliance and originality. In the beginning, their lyrics were simple and their songs were simple love songs. But they soon began exploring new territory by writing about subjects that hadn't been covered before. Inspired by Bob Dylan, they wrote true poetry with feeling and depth, using evocative and unusual words. Rubber Soul marked the beginning of their evolution as mature songwriters, Revolver was a break-out album, and Sergeant Pepper was an historic landmark album in terms of new and innovative songwriting as well as production. Every song they wrote was significantly different from the last one even though each song had their unmistakable sound.
Most songwriters are only average players on their instruments, but John and Paul are both sophisticated guitarists who were able to integrate their playing into their songs and even into their song structure so that the "licks" they played became as catchy a part of their songs as the choruses and verses. Blackbird and Dear Prudence are only two examples of songs which couldn't possibly be written by any other songwriter because of the guitar playing which forms an integral part of the song structure. In similar fashion, Lady Madonna is the best example of a great song which derives from the unique and beautiful bass part which only Paul could possibly have created.
Average songwriters achieve the catchy quality by repeating a phrase endlessly or by beating a chorus to death. John and Paul found countless ways to be memorable without ever overly repeating something. The only time they repeated something over and over again for a long time was in Hey Jude, and what they chose to repeat is so gorgeous that one can only wish they had never ended the song.
Web page design copyright 1996 © , text copyright 2005 © Peter Cross
The Beatles are the Most Creative Band of All Time By Musician & Song Writer Peter Cross
ReplyDeleteBACKGROUND HISTORY:
The Beatles were my biggest musical influence and I used to think, "If I could write just one song that's as good as John and Paul's worst song, I'd be happy." People tell me I accomplished that goal and they say one good example is John is Alive, which is my sincere tribute to Sir Lennon.
3. BEST SINGERS
Even Ringo could sing when he got a little help from his friends who lived in the yellow submarine. But to say that Paul and John are two of the best singers in rock and roll is to state the obvious. Combining John, Paul and George created the best harmony vocals the world has ever experienced. Even their two part harmonies were unusual, catching us all by surprise on their first hit record with the fast harmony melisma in the chorus of I Want to Hold Your Hand. John had a knack of placing a unique low harmony line underneath Paul's high melody line so as to form a second melody which created unusual harmony effects. He did that right from the beginning in the verses of She Loves You. Both Paul and John could blast out screaming rock and roll (i.e. Long Tall Sally and Twist and Shout), and both could break our hearts with touching, deep feeling ballads (i.e. Yesterday and Julia). There seems to be no end to their emotional vocal range, and John even explored the heights of vocal psychedelia in songs like She Said (Revolver) and Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds.
4. MOST CREATIVE PLAYERS
Paul brought a new style of melodic playing to the bass guitar, reaching a new high of creativity on Sergeant Pepper with a level of sophistication never heard before. Many other musicians besides me recognize Paul as being one of the best bass guitar players ever. George is underrated as a lead guitarist by people with average or below average musical knowledge or ability, but most guitarists (including Eric Clapton) know better. George's strength is in melody, pure and simple. It would be difficult to find a George Harrison lead which is not melodic, and each of his leads has a strong beginning, a stronger middle and a well defined ending. In fact, that's Eric's definition of what makes a good guitar lead. George continually developed new guitar sounds for each Beatles song. John and Paul are also excellent guitarists and both recorded great leads as well as innovative rhythm tracks. All three of the Beatles guitarists may lack showy technical fireworks but they make that definition of guitar mastery irrelevant by overwhelming the senses with creativity, style, and pure melody. The exact same thing can be said about John and Paul's keyboard playing. Ringo may be underrated as a drummer by the public but he is not underrated by other professional drummers. Ringo mastered the art of drum sounds. No drummer has ever recorded so many different sounds on so many different sounding records. Ringo invented a new style of slow drum playing, epitomized on A Day in the Life and Strawberry Fields Forever. John said many times, "Ringo has the best back beat in the business" and the successful studio drummers understand why John was correct.
Web page design copyright 1996 © , text copyright 2005 © Peter Cross
5. TOTAL CHARISMA
ReplyDeleteA good definition of charisma needs to include "an unusual ability to influence people and arouse devotion" and "a personal attractiveness which enables a person to influence others". No musical group prior to or after The Beatles features true charisma emanating strongly from the entire group as well as separately from each member. The Beatles stunned the world with their photogenic quality, their charm, their bubbling and lovable personalities, their cuteness and their unique style. Even before The Beatles achieved fame, people in Liverpool were imitating their haircuts, the way they dressed, the way they behaved, and the way they lived. Such a simple subliminal message about smoking marijuana got communicated to all the hippies who were waiting to happen without actual words ever being spoken. The Beatles had a lot to lose by being explicit on that subject, but they successfully avoided trouble by keeping it very subtle while at the same time clear enough so that we all got it. The Fab Four kept changing their styles rapidly, almost with each album cover, and soon the message became one of explicit spiritualism. After visiting India, The Beatles introduced eastern mysticism and meditation to the Western world for the first time through the mass media. John's long saga with internal angst, drugs, spiritualism, politics, personal battles, and ultimately his marriage to Yoko played out like a movie the whole world got to watch in fascination. Paul's happy life with Linda, George's great focus on meditation, and Ringo's equanimity throughout were all perfect examples of the power, the truth, and the effectiveness of true charisma.
6. SEXUAL AURA
Need I say it? Ask the millions of girls who were screaming and fainting at the very sight of them. "The Boys" didn't move like Elvis or dance like Mick, they just stood there shaking their "mop top" heads around, smiling, laughing, and looking gorgeous as they performed great music and that was it. On their first visit to America, some enterprising weirdo from New York City managed to cut up the hotel bed sheets The Beatles had slept on into 1" square pieces, and these things were actually sold to girls over the public airwaves by adult DJ's on the AM radio stations who should have known better. The Beatles phenomenon went way beyond the rock and roll sex star status that had been seen before. Teenage girls in uncountable numbers fell in love, their hearts to be trapped, their heart strings to be continually plucked, and ultimately, their hearts to be broken by the unobtainable object of their love. Worshiping a star from afar? Infatuation? Obsession? Not real love? For many of them, it was their first experience feeling love for a man/boy. Whatever it was, it was very real to all of them, and we all soon understood that The Beatles were The Real Thing.
That's why I call The Beatles the Most Creative Band of All Time. They were The Real Thing. The Creative Zenith. The high point on the bell curve of musical history.
Web page design copyright 1996 © , text copyright 2005 © Peter Cross
Home www.alstrand.com
ReplyDeleteIntroduction
How Did He Become An Icon?
1966
Post Beatles
Thanks
Pre-1963
1967
Five String Taste
Influential Bass Players of the '60s
1963
1968
Driving Rain
Large Scale vs. Small Scale Basses
1964/1965
1969
What Do Others Say? contact the author Bibliography
My thoughts on Paul's playing on John's songs
WHAT DO OTHERS SAY?
George Martin
" There's no doubt that Lennon and McCartney were good musicians. They had good musical brains, and the brain is where music originates - it has nothing to do with your fingers. As it happened, they could also play their own instruments very well.
And since those early days they've all improved, especially Paul. He's an excellent musical all-rounder, probably the best bass-guitarist there is, a first-class drummer, brilliant guitarist and competent piano player."
Sting
" It's hard to separate McCartney's influence on my bass playing from his influence on everything else-singing, songwriting, even becoming a musician in the first place. As a child, I would play my Beatles albums at 45 RPM so I could hear the bass better. He's the Guvnor."
Will Lee
" Growing up in Texas in the early '60s I was so obsessed with the Beatles' music that I didn't feel like a fan, I felt like I was in the Beatles. About the same time I switched from drums to bass I became aware of who gave the band its charm and personality, from visual tunes like "Penny Lane" to the group's repartee with the press. It was the same fellow who was able to take a poor-quality instrument like the Hofner bass and create magic on it. I especially dug Paul's funky, Motown-influenced side, evident in the bass line from Everybody's Got Something to Hide Except Me and My Monkey," or even in the syncopated part from "A Day In The Life.
Paul's influence on bassists has been so widespread over numerous generations that there's no denying he's in everybody's playing at this point. We're all descendants. He played simple and solid when it was called for. But because he had so many different flavors to add to a song, he was able to take the instrument far beyond a supportive role. Paul taught the bass how to sing."
Stanley Clarke
"Paul definitely had an influence on my bass playing, not so much technically, but more with his philosophy of melodic bass lines - especially as I hit my teens and the Beatles' records became more adventurous. On tracks like "Come Together," the bass line WAS the song. I've always liked that. The only other person I knew of who was doing that was James Jamerson. That was one of the reasons I was inspired to write "School Days": so I could just play the bass lines and people would hear a whole song.
I had the honor of being contacted by Paul through George Martin to play on Tug of War, and I also appeared on Pipes of Peace [both on Capitol]. Paul was very nice. He asked me to show him how to slap. During Pipes we got a groove going in a studio jam, and it ended up making on the album as "Hey Hey." He graciously gave me a co-writing credit, and it's still a thrill to see my name next to his above the music in the song book."
Home www.alstrand.com
ReplyDeleteIntroduction
How Did He Become An Icon?
1966
Post Beatles
Thanks
Pre-1963
1967
Five String Taste
Influential Bass Players of the '60s
1963
1968
Driving Rain
Large Scale vs. Small Scale Basses
1964/1965
1969
What Do Others Say?
contact the author
Bibliography
My thoughts on Paul's playing on John's songs
WHAT DO OTHERS SAY?
Billy Sheehan
" The reason I got involved with music in the first place was because I saw the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan Show. I watched all the girls going crazy, and I figured this was the best business in the world to be in. Later on, when I got more deeply into music, Sgt. Pepper was a break-through record for me. I must have listened to it several hundred times. What intrigued me was how totally musical every aspect of it was, especially Paul's melodic, fluid bass lines. When my band Talas was starting in the mid '70s, [the Beatles' tribute show] Beatlemania was big, and we used to play entire gigs of just Beatles tunes. I've learned so much from Paul about playing, writing, and playing and singing at the same time that I should probably start sending him checks.
Most bassists get into the flashy players, but I think the reason Paul is often overlooked is that what he was doing wasn't really obvious. It was so brilliantly woven into the context of the songs. One of my favorites is the bass line from "Rain." I still use it to test the low end of an amp. That Paul happens to play bass is a great boon to all of us, because he made us realize that there are no limitations to being a bass player."
John Lennon
"Paul was one of the most innovative bass players ever. And half the stuff that is going on now is directly ripped off from his Beatles period."
Z401: The Music of The Beatles
ReplyDeleteDr. Glenn Gass
Indiana University -- School of Music
An in-depth, song-by-song look at the music, lives and times of this extraordinary group and songwriting partnership. Offered at Indiana University since 1982, the course focuses on the Beatles' music and is aimed at heightening student listening skills as well as fostering a deeper appreciation for the Beatles' remarkable recordings. The music is supplemented by a multimedia course companion that provides biographical information, audio and video clips and a closer look at the Beatles' songwriting and recording process.
Fall 2009
Tues & Thurs 7:00 - 9:00 in Ballantine Hall 013
Instructor: Dr. Glenn Gass,
Grading Assistant: Kelsey McCardle
Required text: "The Beatles" by Bob Spitz
Recommended Text: "The Beatles" by Hunter Davies
Listening: The Beatle albums are on reserve at the School of Music Library and at the Media Center in the Main Library
Click here for instructions on using the on-line reserve listening at the School of Music Library
Listening via Variations2 is also available for use at home (click here for information and for software downloading and installation instructions).
Students will be responsible for knowing all of the Beatle albums, along with the singles collected on the two Past Masters cd's.
Students are strongly encouraged to buy all of the Beatle CD's and have them in your permanent collection.
On 9/9/09 the long-awaited Beatle remasterings will be released making this an ideal time to purchase the Beatle catalog.
COURSE GRADES will be based on four exams, all of equal weight.
No make-ups will be given without a documented and officially sanctioned excuse. Instead, students who must miss an exam will take a comprehensive makeup exam at the end of the semester, following the final exam. This option is also available to students who wish to use the makeup to take the place of a lower exam score (it cannot hurt your grade).
The course grade is determined entirely by the results of the best four scores from the five exams (including the comprehensive make-up). The grading scale is fixed and must remain so in a class this size in the interest of fairness. All requests to "round up" a score or receive extra credit will be regretfully declined. The grading scale is:
A+ = 98%; A = 93%; A- = 90%
B+ = 88%; B = 83%; B- = 80%
C+ = 78%; C = 73%; C- = 70%
D+ = 68%; D = 63%; D- = 60%
Fall 2009 test dates:
TEST ONE: September 29 (Please Please Me, With the Beatles & Hard Day's Night; Spitz chapters 1 - 26)
TEST TWO: October 20 (Beatles For Sale, Help!, Rubber Soul; Spitz ch. 27 - 28)
TEST THREE: November 12 (Revolver, Sgt. Pepper, Magical Mystery Tour, Yellow Submarine; Spitz ch. 29 - 35)
TEST FOUR/Final Exam: Thursday December 17 at 7:15pm in BH 013 (White Album, Let It Be, Abbey Road; Spitz: read to end)
Z401: The Music of The Beatles
ReplyDeleteDr. Glenn Gass
Indiana University -- School of Music
Fall 2009
Tues & Thurs 7:00 - 9:00 in Ballantine Hall 013
Instructor: Dr. Glenn Gass,
Grading Assistant: Kelsey McCardle
Note: the singles from Past Masters will also be included on the exams for the appropriate period.
LAPTOPS, Texting, Twittering, etc. will not be allowed in class. I apologize for this but the use of laptops and online devices of any sort has proven to be too much of a distraction.
Final note: I am no happier about our late exam date than you are, but there is nothing we can do to change it. Please keep it in mind and do not make plans to leave Bloomington until after the exam(!)
Grades will be available via the "Post 'Em" link on our class Oncourse site.
Beatles In London: Summer IU Office of Overseas Studies course
Music in General Studies homepage
Beatle Sites in England:
Glenn's Guide to the Beatles' England website: Beatle sites in London and Liverpool
A video tour of Beatles sites in London and Liverpool (17 minutes long: may take a while to load):
A shorter Beatle tour is also posted on YouTube.com (please view in "High Quality" mode if possible)
Two Beautiful Boys, Mathew and Julian (YouTube video, High Quality mode please)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Some WWW Beatle links:
Glenn's interview with Beatle biographer Hunter Davies
Bill Harry's Merseybeat online. Feedback and suggestions welcome and appreciated.
Another guide to Beatle Locations in London
Info on guided walking tours of Beatle sites in London.
A Liverpool Beatle locations site
The official BEATLES website
George's All Things Must Pass. website
Beatles Discography and Day-By-Day website.
The Beatles Lyrics webpage
Beatle lyrics from rare-lyrics.com
Beatles Number 9 website, a great site for archived interviews, books excerpts, history etc.
The massive Beatles Index site.
Beatle discography site.
Beatles triva quiz site.
Beatle Fan Club Christmas Records.
Beatlelinks
The Internet Beatles Recording Index: a fantastic central point for cross-indexed information about every song
Steve's Beatle Page, with lyrics and song info
Beatlelinks.net: Beatle Internet Resource Guide
The Bootleg Zone, with detailed information about Beatles recordings (and many other bands)
Songsofbeales.com: song lyrics and info
Forever: A Tribute to the Beatles (Beatles Tribute Band)
Give Peace a Chance, a John Lennon Tribute site.
Harmony Central, for chords and other music info for Beatle songs.
The Complete Beatles UK Discgraphby
The Usenet Guideto Beatle Recording Variations
The Beatles Ultimate Experience website
The official Abbey Road Studios website
Beatle City from Merseyworld.com, with Liverpool guides, song lyrics, etc
Beatle song lyrics
Another song lyrics site
Beatles Website, with song links, guitar chords, biographical info, etc.
Beatles London News and Information Service
Help! info website
Beatles Karaoke(!)
Operation Big Beat anniversary celebration, November 2001.
Liverpool Beatlescene International Fan Club
Beatles 64 Liverpool site
Ottawa Beatles Site
Subscribe to the World Beatles Forum, a great newsletter from Canada
RollingStone.com Beatle website
Beatles Portal on PopTopix
The University of Liverpool Institute of Popular Music.
Click here to return to Rock History at IU homepage
Z401: The Music of The Beatles
ReplyDeleteDr. Glenn Gass
Indiana University -- School of Music
Fall 2009
Tues & Thurs 7:00 - 9:00 in Ballantine Hall 013
Instructor: Dr. Glenn Gass,
Grading Assistant: Kelsey McCardle
Note: the singles from Past Masters will also be included on the exams for the appropriate period.
The Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts
A good Hamburg and Astrid site
Helena's site of links
Beatles screensavers
David Rowley's " Story of the Beatles Songs"
Liverpool Books Online
Visit the on-line Beatles Karaoke(!) site
The Ultimate Beatles Archives
Join the Beatles newsgroup (rec.music.beatles)
Alan W. Pollack's Notes On series
The British Export webpage (a Beatles tribute band).
Lennon-McCartney website
Wonderwall website
The July 6, 1957 page
"Help! In the World"page from Spain
Misc Saki posts and facts
Links to some worldwide Beatle homepages
Here, There & Everywhere Beatle links
A great site from Japan, with information on Japanese Beatle releases
The Internet Beatle album (click on song titles)
A good John Lennon site
Beatle magazines and related periodicals
Beatlefest homepage
Some Beatle reference books
University of Liverpool Beatle info site
A virtual tour of Mathew Street, Liverpool
The online Mathew Street Beatles Store
Liverpool tourism info, with maps, etc.
A guide to the real Blue Jay Way
A good page exploring the Paul Is Dead myth.
The butcher cover page (click here to see the butcher cover)
Click here to return to Rock History at IU homepage
Z401: The Music of The Beatles
ReplyDeleteDr. Glenn Gass
Indiana University -- School of Music
Fall 2009
Tues & Thurs 7:00 - 9:00 in Ballantine Hall 013
Instructor: Dr. Glenn Gass,
Grading Assistant: Kelsey McCardle
A listing, with pictures of Beatle stamps from around the world.
Paul McCartney 1984 Playboy interview
An account of meeting the Beatles in 1968.
1989 Good Day Sunshine tour with Beatle site photos
A Beatle travel guide
Liverpool Productions Magical Mystery Tour to England
Glenn's Beatle concert ticket stub, Washington DC, 1966
Click here to return to Rock History at IU homepage
The Music Tank
ReplyDeleteDaily music news, reviews and buckets of our own special green sauce.
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The Beatles: Here, There And Everywhere
Posted on Wednesday, November 25th, 2009 at 10:14 am by Fake
The Beatles: Here, There And Everywhere is a new 3-part radio special, celebrating the best-selling group of the 21st Century in America. The series will air on a huge list of radio station across the US starting this Friday.
The series features The Beatles’ digitally remastered recordings and exclusive new interviews with a variety of artists and producers as they reveal the influence of The Beatles on their individual careers. Listeners will be treated to stories from Brian Wilson, Tom Petty, Dave Grohl, Slash, Jeff Lynne, Ann Wilson, Nancy Wilson, Peter Asher, Jackson Browne, Bob Seger, T-Bone Burnett, Cameron Crowe, Mika, Mark Ronson, Susan Werner, Rick Rubin and Joe Boyd.
Each of the three 48-minute installments of The Beatles: Here, There And Everywhere takes a different thematic approach.
Part One: Meet The Beatles!
Interviews recorded exclusively for this series reveal the impact made by The Beatles’ recordings throughout their career. We hear Brian Wilson of The Beach Boys, Tom Petty, film director Cameron Crowe and Ann & Nancy Wilson of Heart talking about their first-hand experience of The Beatles’ phenomenal 1964 breakthrough in the United States. Dave Grohl, Mark Ronson and Slash discuss the enduring influence of The Beatles’ albums, including Rubber Soul, Revolver and Abbey Road.
Part Two: Ask Me Why
The interviews focus on the various elements within the group that combined to make The Beatles so musically powerful: their strengths as performers – both instrumentally and vocally – plus the brilliance of John Lennon, Paul McCartney and George Harrison as songwriters.
Part Three: The Beatles On The Record
We hear how The Beatles’ music was captured on record with the help of innovative arrangements and adventurous production by George Martin. Some of today’s leading record producers – Peter Asher, Joe Boyd, T-Bone Burnett, Jeff Lynne, Mark Ronson and Rick Rubin – marvel at the dazzling creativity evident in recordings made more than 40 years ago.
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ReplyDeleteThe Beatles: Here, There And Everywhere
Here are the radio stations that will be broadcasting the special. Check your local listings for more info :
KEZA Fayetteville, AR
KGOR Omaha, NE
KJOY Modesto, CA
KMGL Oklahoma City, OK
WARM York, PA
WBBQ Augusta, GA
WBEB Philadelphia, PA
WDOK Cleveland, OH
WHBC Canton, OH
WKQC Charlotte, NC
WLDB Milwaukee, WI
WLRQ Melbourne, FL
WLS Chicago, IL
WLTJ Pittsburgh, PA
WLZW Utica-Rome, NY
WMGQ Somerset, NJ
WMGV Greenville, NC
WRNQ Poughkeepsie, NY
WRVE Albany, NY
WTGB Washington, DC
WYYY Syracuse, NY
KCFX Kansas City, MO
KIHT St. Louis, MO
KIXA Victor Valley, CA
KKFM Colorado Springs, CO
KKPT Little Rock, AR
KKRW Houston, TX
KKSF San Francisco, CA
KKZX Spokane, WA
KSEG Sacramento, CA
KSLX Phoenix, AZ
KTSO Tulsa, OK
KTYD Santa Barbara, CA
KUFX San Jose, CA
KVRV Santa Rosa, CA
WAFX Norfolk, VA
WAOR South Bend, IN
WBLM Portland, ME
WCSX Detroit, MI
WEGR Memphis, TN
WEZX Wilkes-Barre, PA
WFBQ Indianapolis, IN
WGRF Buffalo, NY
WIBA Madison, WI
WILZ Saginaw, MI
WIMZ Knoxville, TN
WKBU New Orleans, LA
WKGR West Palm Beach, FL
WKLH Milwaukee, WI
WKLR Richmond, VA
WLAV Grand Rapids, MI
WMGK Philadelphia, PA
WMMQ Lansing, MI
WMOS New London, CT
WMXJ Miami, FL
WMXT Florence, SC
WNRQ Nashville, TN
WPLR New Haven, CT
WRFX Charlotte, NC
WROQ Greenville, SC
WRXK Ft. Myers, FL
WSFL Greenville, NC
WTUE Dayton, OH
WWFX Worcester, MA
WXKE Fort Wayne, IN
WZRR Birmingham, AL
WZXL Atlantic City, NJ
XHPRS San Diego, CA
KOZZ Reno, NV
WZLX Boston, MA
KBOO Portland, OR
KCPR San Luis Obispo, CA
KCSC Chico, CA
KCUR Kansas City, MO
KGLT Bozeman, MT
KPFA Berkley, CA
KSYM San Antonio, TX
KUCR Riverside, CA
KUOM Minneapolis, MN
KUPS Tacoma, WA
KVMR Nevada City, CA
KXCI Tucson, AZ
KZSC Santa Rosa
WBER Penfield
WBWC Berea, OH
WCWP Long Island
WDCE Richmond, VA
WDUB Granville, OH
WHSN Bangor, ME
WIUX Bloomington, IN
WKDU Philadelphia, PA
WMBR Cambridge, MA
WMUH Allentown, PA
WPRB Princeton, NJ
WRAS Atlanta, GA
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The Beatles: Here, There And Everywhere
Here are the radio stations that will be broadcasting the special. Check your local listings for more info :
WRAS Atlanta, GA
WRFL Lexington, KY
WSCA Portsmouth, NH
KAMP Tucson, AZ
KBLF Red Bluff, CA
KBTB Vail, CO
KCLC St. Louis, MO
KCSC Chico, CA
KEJL Hobbs, NM
KFGL Abilene, TX
KIQX Durango, CO
KLNN Taos, NM
KPFK Los Angeles, CA
KPFT Houston, TX
KRCL Salt Lake City, UT
WFUV New York, NY
WOCM Ocean City, MD
WRLT Nashville, TN
WRNR Baltimore, MD
WRNX Springfield, MA
WRSI Northampton, MA
KSLU Hammond, LA
KSPN Aspen, CO
KTMC McAlester, OK
KUSF San Francisco, CA
KXFM Santa Maria, CA
KYBB Sioux Falls, SD
KYNZ Ardmore, PA
KYSL Breckenridge, CO
WAFN Arab, AL
WAPS Akron, OH
WBWC Cleveland, OH
WBZD Williamsport, PA
WCDW Binghamton, NY
WDIY Allentown, PA
WDNS Bowling Green, KY
WERU Portland, ME
WFMU Hoboken, NJ
WHCL Clinton, NY
WHRV Norfolk, VA
WINN Columbus, IN
WKZB Meridian, MS
WKZE Sharon, CT
WMBR Cambridge, MA
WMHX Harrisburg/York, PA
WMHX York, PA
WMNF Tampa, FL
WMWV Conway, NH
WNCW Spindale, NC
WNHU West Haven, CT
WNKU Cincinnati, OH
WORT Madison, WI
WPHD Elmira, NY
WPRK Winter Park, FL
WPVM Asheville, NC
WQEL Sandusky, OH
WRHQ Savannah, GA
WRPI Troy, NY
WRUR Rochester, NY
WSHK Gray, TN
WSKZ Chattanooga TN
WTMD Baltimore, MD
WUMB Boston, MA
WUTC Chattanooga, TN
WVBO Appleton, WI
WVUA Cottondale, AL
WYCE Grand Rapids. MI
WYMS Milwaukee, WI
KCEZ Chico, CA
KCMO Kansas City, MO
KFGL Abilene, TX
KFRC San Francisco, CA
KGOR Omaha, NE
KIOA Des Moines, IA
KITI Centralia, WA
KKNX Eugene, OR
KLFM Great Falls, MT
KLOU St. Louis, MO
KLTH Portland, OR
KLUV Dallas, TX
KMJ Fresno, CA
KODJ Salt Lake City, UT
KOLW Tri-Cites, WA
KONO San Antonio, TX
KOZY Grand Rapids, MI
KPUR Amarillo, TX
KRNO Reno, NV
KRPL Pullman, WA
KTTH Seattle, WA
WBBG Youngstown, NY
WCDW Binghamton, NY
WEAT West Palm Beach, FL
WFAS Westchester, NY
WGRR Cincinnati, OH
WIXV Savannah, GA
WJAS Pittsburgh, PA
WJLT Evansville, IN
WKNY Kingston, NY
WKXS Wilmington, DE
WLDE Fort Wayne, IN
WMFG Minneapolis, MN
WOCL Orlando, FL
WODB Columbus, OH
WOGL Philadelphia, PA
WPYX Albany, NY
WQXZ Hawkinsville, GA
WRBQ Tampa, FL
WROR Boston, MA
WTHZ Lexington, NC
WTPA Harrisburg, PA
WXKE Fort Wayne, IN
KACV Amarillo, TX
KBAC Santa Fe, NM
KDNK Carbondale, CO
KGSR Austin, TX
KLRR Bend, OR
KMTN Jackson Hole, WY
KOZT Fort Bragg, CA
KPND Spokane, WA
KTAO Taos, NM
KTBG Kansas City, MO
KTHX Reno, NV
KVSF Santa Fe, NM
KYSL Frisco, CO
WBJB Monmouth, NJ
WCBE Columbus, OH
WCLZ Portland, ME
WCNR Charlottesville, VA
WDST Woodstock, NY
WFIV Knoxville, TN
WTTS Indianapolis, IN
WWMM Birmingham, AL
WXPK Westchester, NY
WZEW Mobile, AL
WZGC Atlanta, GA
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Arts/Life
Syd Birrell discovers Beatles in 2009
Posted By WERNER BERGEN , EXAMINER ENTERTAINMENT EDITOR
For most of Syd Birrell's music life it has been about "learning about Bach and how to direct an orchestra," he says.
Sure he knew and heard about the Beatles but it wasn't until a year ago that the director of The Peterborough Singers "discovered" the Fab Four.
Now he's a convert to the extent that the Peterborough Singers will present a concert of Beatles music on Saturday, Feb. 27 at Calvary Church, Lansdowne St. W.
The Singers will be presenting 25 songs in two hours in various combinations including the 100-
MUSIC:Performed by Cosima Grunsky
voice choirs, various smaller ensembles, duets, and solos, Birrell, said in anExaminerinterview.
The choir will also be joined by a full band of musicians: Andrew Affleck -bass guitar, Barry Haggarty -guitar, Curtis Cronkwright -drums, Paul Grecco -keyboard, Rob Bulger - guitar, Doug Sutherland -trumpet, Marlowe Bork -trumpet and Steve McCracken sax/clarinet.
"They're all Beatles nuts," said Birrell. In fact Haggarty recorded an album at Abbey Road, the same studio the Beatles used.
Master of ceremonies will be Mike Melnik, of Kruz-FM, who is also a Beatles nut, said Birrell, who will share Beatles stories with the audience. There will be some special guests who will also share Beatles stories.
Birrell explained a friend in New York City was trying out a new piano in his home overlooking Central Park.
"He put music in front of me...Strawberry Fields,"said Birre
ll. The view included The Dakota where John Lennon had lived and the original strawberry fields of Central Park.
"I got really interested. I find their music incredible. These guys are the Shuberts of the 20th century," said Birrell. "They have really great melodies. They are the greatest composers of the 20th century."
Birrell said he searched the internet for Beatles information listened to their albums like Revolver, Sgt. Pepper and the White Albumfor three months.
"I found their music incredible," he said
The Singers are known for performing classical music and Birrell said in years to come the music of the Beatles will be considered the classical music of the century.
Birrell said the Singers are not trying to replicate the Beatles but we're "celebrating what the songs mean to us."
He said some of the music had to be changed because the audience wouldn't be able to sing along in the keys the songs were originally written in....including Hey Jude.
There will be displays of memorabilia and even trivia opportunities
(Why is Feb. 7, 1964 important?).
Concert facts
What: Come Together! The Music of the Beatles
Who: The Peterborough Singers
When: Saturday, Feb. 27 at 2 p.m.
Where: Calvary Church, Lansdowne St. W., with guest MC Mike Melnik, of KRUZ-FM.
Tickets: $28 (adult and senior) and $10 (students). Tickets available at Titles Bookstore, Emmaus Family Books, Graingers Cleaners, Pammett's Flower Shop in Peterborough, Happenstance Books & Yarns (Lakefield) or call 705-745- 1820 or email singers@peterboroughsingers.com.
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Arts/Life
Syd Birrell discovers Beatles in 2009
Posted By WERNER BERGEN , EXAMINER ENTERTAINMENT EDITOR
(Why is Feb. 7, 1964 important?
Beatles in 1964
January 20: Meet The Beatles LP. (Capitol Records) is released in the U.S. It hits the #1 spot on Billboard chart and stays for eleven weeks.)
January 27: MGM Records releases My Bonnie/The Saints single.
January 30: Vee Jay Records re-releases Please Please Me/From Me to You in the US.
February 1: I Want To Hold Your Hand makes #1 on the U.S. charts selling 2,000,000 records. She Loves You sells 1,000,000 copies in the U.S.
February 3: MGM Records releases The Beatles with Tony Sheridan LP (recorded for Bert Kaempfert in Germany and originally marketed as Die Beat Brothers und Tony Sheridan)
February 5: The Beatles return from Paris.
February 7: The Beatles arrive at Kennedy Airport in New York, aboard Pan Am's Yankee Clipper, flight 101, greeted by some 3,000 screaming fans. New York pop radio stations play Beatles records practically around the clock for days.
February 9: The Beatles make their first appearance on CBS television's Ed Sullivan Show in New York. The network claims some 50,000 applied for 728 available studio seats. They open with All my Loving, followed by Till there was You and She Loves You and close with I Saw her Standing There and I Want to Hold your Hand.
February 11: The Beatles make their first live concert appearance in the U.S. at the Coliseum in Washington, D.C., drawing an audience of 20,000 fans.
February 12: The band gives two concert performances at Carnegie Hall in New York City.
February 16: The Beatles make their second appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show at the Deauville Hotel in Miami Beach, Florida, performing She Loves You, All My Loving, This Boy, I Saw her Standing There, From Me to You and I
Want to Hold your Hand.
From www.Beatles.ws/1964
Article ID# 2465776
THE HISTORY CHANNEL
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The Beatles on Record
Premieres Wednesday November 25 at 10/9c
About the Show
In 1962, an unknown group from Liverpool entered Abbey Road Studios to record their debut single. During the next eight years they created what is arguably regarded as the greatest collection of studio recordings of the 20th century. This special charts The Beatles' extraordinary journey in the studio from "Please Please Me" to "Abbey Road" and reflects on how they developed as musicians, matured as songwriters and created a body of work that sounds as fresh in 2009 as the time it was recorded. Narrated entirely by John, Paul, George, Ringo and Sir George Martin, the documentary features over 60 classic songs, rare footage and photos from The Beatles' archives and never heard before out-takes of studio chat from the "Abbey Road" recording sessions.
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The Beatles Timeline
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MAGAZINE
The Beatles on Record
Related Videos and Speeches
» John Lennon: Most Outspoken Beatle
» Lennon and McCartney on The Beatles
» Paul McCartney on "Paul is Dead"
» Dick Gregory on Lennon and McCartney
» Tom Brokaw: 1960s Musical Revolution
» Ask Steve: 60s Music
» Judith Crist on "Let it Be"
The Beatles on Bio.com
» The Beatles
» Paul McCartney
» John Lennon
» George Harrison
» Ringo Star
That the Beatles mean so much to so many people who make music in so many genres goes without saying. What doesn’t go without saying is what John, Paul, George and Ringo mean to these musicians, who share in their own words the important role the Fab Four have played in their songs and in their lives.
ReplyDelete“The three of us [in Nirvana] grew up listening to the Beatles, then classic rock and punk. Somehow, it all came together.” –Dave Grohl
“I don’t think I could write with John Lennon. He’s too genius … All you [could] do is mess it up.” –Miley Cyrus
“In Dublin we think the Beatles are Irish. There’s a revenge against [the] class system that’s a very Irish preoccupation… Here were the Fab Four spitting out a new vocabulary, that comes from that kind of revenge against the old idea of England that wasn’t inclusive of the working class.” –Bono
“I love the Beatles. What more can I say? I’m not gonna lie to you. I love ‘em. They make me happy. And I think they were the best, and still are.” –Liam Gallagher
I don’t think anybody comes close to the Beatles, including Oasis.” –Brian May of Queen
“I heard ‘Rubber Soul’ one night in my house here in LA, and I was so blown out that I said, ‘I have to record an album as good or better than ‘Rubber Soul.’ If I ever do anything in my life, I’m going to make that good an album.’” –Brian Wilson
“You can’t beat the Beatles. You join ‘em.” –Peggy Lee
“The first [record] I can remember buying was ‘Meet the Beatles!’ at a garage sale for five cents.” –Billy Corgan
“The Beatles really synthesized what I wanted to do. The single biggest moment that I can remember being galvanized into wanting to be a musican for life was seeing the Beatles on ‘The Ed Sullivan Show.’” –Billy Joel
“I bought [John Lennon's] ‘Plastic Ono Band,’ and I listened to it over and over for months. It’s a monumental work of genius… The attitude and emotion of that album are harder than any punk rock I’ve ever heard.” –Lenny Kravitz
“The Beatles were why we turned from a jug band into a rock ‘n’ roll band. What we saw them doing was impossibly attractive.” –Bob Weir of the Grateful Dead
“To be in the same room as the four of them caused me to not sleep for, like, three days.” –Jeff Lynne
“The Beatles defined their own sense of values and honor. They took stances without ever being politically correct. And they did it all with incredible humor… I honestly think that there are certain things in life that help people understand themselves. I think the Beatles are one of those things. They resonate the journey of true selfhood, really.” –Sophie B. Hawkins
“I’m probably the biggest Beatles fan on the planet.” –Robin Zander of Cheap Trick
“A lot of that Beatles influence comes from Steven [Tyler]’s collaboration with Mark Hudson, both of whom are absolute Beatle freaks… I guess the goal is to try and emulate probably some of the best music of the last 50 years, which has to be the Beatles.” –Brad Whitford of Aerosmith
“We looked deep down inside the very core of our souls and there was a little Ringo sitting there. Sure, we like telling people it’s John Lennon or George Harrison, but when you really look deep inside of Soundgarden, there’s a little Ringo wanting to get out.” — Kim Thayil of Soundgarden
“[The Beatles were] the start of the reason why we’re doing a band.” –Vicki Peterson of the Bangles
“How could you not be influenced by the Beatles if you write songs?” –Sean Lennon
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Pearl Jam’s Mike McCready Praises The ‘Phenomenal’ Beatles
But he might not be so good at the just-released ‘Beatles: Rock Band’: ‘I need to work on my skills.’
by Kyle Anderson
Pearl Jam’s Mike McCready (MTV News)
Pearl Jam already have several links to “Rock Band,” as they have made their classic debut Ten available in its entirety as a playable download and will be dropping their forthcoming album.
Add VH1 News to My Yahoo
Backspacer in the same fashion once it’s released September 20. And though founding guitarist Mike McCready has played the game and is excited for the Wednesday (September 9) release of “The Beatles: Rock Band,” he has a confession to make.
“I honestly grew up listening to the Stones more,” McCready told MTV News at the Outside Lands Festival. “But that doesn’t mean I don’t love the Beatles.”
McCready cited the band’s harmonies as a musical development that really inspired him, and he also gave a nod to a classic piece of video. “The concert footage on the roof was probably something that was integral in my growing up.”
The footage in question is the surprise show the Beatles gave in January 1969 that marked the end of the recording of Let It Be and ended up being the band’s final public appearance together. McCready did learn one profound thing from the Beatles. “My manager says you never want to release anything against the Beatles, because they’ll always win,” he joked. “And they should, because they were phenomenal.”
As for “Rock Band,” McCready admitted he needs practice. “I play ‘Rock Band’ with my friends’ kids, and they completely beat me senseless with it,” he admitted. “I feel like I’m holding them back. I try to play the drums, and I just can’t play the drums. I think I need to work on my skills.”
But when Backspacer becomes available as a playable full-album download, McCready said players will be able to develop their skills on a few of his favorite tracks. “I would say try the solo on ‘Amongst the Waves.’ And just rock out to ‘Gonna See My Friend.’ That’ll be fun to jump around to and play. Stomp as much as you possibly can. That’s rock!”
For more on “The Beatles: Rock Band” check out Multiplayer.MTV.com.
This report is from MTV News.
The Beatles
Pearl Jam
The Beatles Rock Band
Remastered Beatles CDs Are A Revelation
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© 2007 My hmphs - StudioPress Theme
On Last FM. The Rolling Stones only had 80 members of their fan group in 2007, The Beatles had over 2,000 which is now over 11,000 and the average age of fans is 22 more guys than girls and they are from all over the world!
ReplyDeleteIn 2006,2007 and 2008 The Beatles were the # 1 most listened music artists on Last.FM and they are very popular on YouTube and Rate Your Music where many male and female fans in their teens and 20's call them The Greatest Rock Band Ever!
The Beatles are still rightfully regarded by most people,most rock critics,and many other music and rock artists as The most creative,innovative,and prolific rock band ever!
As many people even some Rolling Stones fans have said, The Rolling Stones haven't made a great record in at least 25 years or more.I had an 8 track of their Hot Rocks when I was 13,but I was never much of a Rolling Stones fan.
The Beatles wrote *plenty* of great rock songs including hard rock on The White Album and Abbey Road and as many have rightfully pointed out Paul invented heavy metal with his 1968 song Helter Skelter and people have also said John's I Want You She's So Heavy on Abbey road was also one of the first heavy metal songs.
Even in their early days they wrote some great rockers that were very rocky for the times, as The All Music Guide said,in their very good review of Past Masters Volume 1 that they proved they could rock really really hard,with John's I Feel Fine from late 1964 which featured the very recorded feedback guitar on a rock song,and Paul's great blues rocker,She's A Woman also from late 1964,and what they called the peerless I'm Down which is Paul's screaming rocker from mid 1965 which they performed even harder rocking, and screaming in August 1965 at Shea Stadium.
Also John's You Can't Do That from early 1964,is a great rock song, so is Day Dripper,Paperback Writer, And You're Bird Can Sing, She Said She Said,Oh Darling,Hey Bulldog,Taxman, etc!
And the feminist I am isn't happy about this,but if you did your Beatles history, by reading a good reputable accurate bBeatles biography you would learn that they were very wild in their personal lives even long before they became famous and successful, John as a teenager and into his 20s was often getting drunk and into fist fights having sex with women as a teen,John and Paul stole cigarettes,and John was shop lifting things as a teen and Ringo was once a member of a gang with chains.
ReplyDeletePaul McCartney says in Hunter Davies great 1968only authorized biography of all 4 of them,that when he was only 12 he was sneaking into strip clubs,drawing nude women and he said he was the ladd he drew them,and he had sex for the first time at age 15 in 1957 with a much older girl while she was baby sitting.In 1957 most 15 year old boys weren't having sex.He also got another girlfriend pregnant in 1959 when he was 17 & she was 16,his father & her parents wanted him to marry her,& he almost did but then she lost the baby.
THe Beatles were also thrown out of a Hotel room in Missouri in August 1965 because Paul was caught with an underage girl in his room.
In The Beatles Anthology video series there is a black& white filmed news interview with Paul outside his house in June 1967 where the reporter asks him how many times he had taken LSD and he said about 4 times at that point. He also was interviwed in Life Magazine the same time saying that he became a better person after taking LSD and that if our world leaders took it the world would be a better place.
The Beatles took speed pills to stay awake and play 8 hours a night from 1960-1962 in the clubs in Hamburg,wearing tight black leather pants and jackets,cursing and smoking on stage,and having sex with many young women groupies,including strippers that worked in the strip clubs they also played in.
Before Bob Dylan turned them on to pot in the summer of 1964,they also drank a lot of alcohol and they loved Scotch and Coke,and they had *tons* of groupies many were underage teen girls they went to bed with while they were touring.
And Paul did cocaine during the making of sgt.Pepper and they all did LSD and John was addicted to Heroie for a short while.He also posed totally full frontal nude with Yoko on their Two Virgins album and it was banned.
So their cleaned up image was exactly just that,a fake image created in their early days by their manager.
Windy City Wingman Lays Roots With Wilco
ReplyDeleteIn the family tree of alternative country-rock, John Stirratt’s roots go deep. When he got the call in 1993 to take over bass duties from singer/ songwriter Jeff Tweedy in alt-country supergroup Uncle Tupelo, he began a working relationship with Tweedy that led to Wilco, one of the genre’s greatest success stories. It’s a tale marked by multiple personnel changes and high-drama record-label relations—the band was dropped from its label, Reprise, after delivering tapes for what would become 2002’s Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. The making of that watershed album is the subject of Sam Jones’s documentary film I Am Trying to Break Your Heart.
Amid the changes, Stirratt’s warm tone and dynamic fingerstyle and pickstyle attack have formed the foundation of Wilco’s seven albums (including two with singer Billy Bragg), which have ranged from raw and rootsy (1995’s A.M.) to richly textured and intricate (Yankee Hotel Foxtrot). The band’s latest, A Ghost Is Born, witnesses Stirratt at his best, especially on the loping bass-driven single “Handshake Drugs.” Stirratt’s thumpy pickstyle line—played on a flatwound-strung Hofner—forms a balanced countermelody to Tweedy’s throaty vocals. Elsewhere, Stirratt’s playing is more staid and supportive, especially on the driving “Spiders (Kidsmoke),” an homage to Krautrock duo Neu!. With Jeff Tweedy at the helm and Stirratt in the engine room, the Chicago-based six-piece is currently touring with guitarist Nels Cline, drummer Glenn Kotche, keyboard player Mikael Jorgensen, and multi-instrumentalist Pat Sansone. When he is not touring or recording with Wilco, John plays with the Autumn Defense—a band formed with longtime friend Sansone—and with his twin sister in their group, Laurie & John.
Credit: Zoran Orlic
John Stirratt plays half the time with his fingers, the other half with a heavy-gauge Planet Waves pick. When he’s playing fingerstyle, he keeps the pick tucked under his pinkie and ring fingers so it’s easy to access. “I play with my right hand pretty close to the neck,” Stirratt explains, “and when I’m picking, I mute the strings a lot with the heel of my hand. In the studio, I put sponges or Styrofoam near the bridge to mute the strings so there’s no sustain.”
You and Jeff are the only original members of Wilco. How has your playing changed with the various lineups?
We were a four-piece in our previous incarnation, so I felt naked at times. I love having all of the musical information to feed off in this bigger ensemble. With the bigger group, my playing has gotten a lot more melodic, because in a smaller setting, my role is to just hold it down. Now I’ve got more room to move around, and I don’t have to stay on the root as much, because chances are someone else is covering it.
Wilco has always been a band of multi-instrumentalists. Do you ever share bass duties?
On Yankee Hotel Foxtrot and the new album, we had Leroy Bach in the band, and he’s a fantastic bass player—he played on a few tracks, like the ones with bowed upright. In Wilco we’ve always been generous about passing instruments around—I’ve done a lot of the basic tracks on piano or guitar. Having a different voice in the low end from track to track is great. On arabella, my sister and I had a fantastic bass player from Nashville, Brad Jones, on upright and electric. He plays a Gibson EB-2 and a Gibson Les Paul Studio bass through a SansAmp; he’s got a fluid, growly style.
Bass Player is a trademark of New Bay Media, LLC. All material published on www.bassplayer.com is copyrighted @2009 by New Bay Media, LLC. All rights reserved
Windy City Wingman Lays Roots With Wilco
ReplyDeleteWhat is the greatest
strength you bring to Wilco?
I think I can hear what songs need. In learning to be a songwriter and singer first and foremost, I’ve come to realize the bass’s responsibility. Also, Jeff and I have been singing together for so long, I bring a lot of harmony to the band. That’s a big part of it, for sure. Over the years, the harmonies were either written by me or by [former Wilco bandmate] Jay Bennett. He’s an inventive writer of harmony and countermelodies and I learned a lot from playing with him.
Bass Player is a trademark of New Bay Media, LLC. All material published on www.bassplayer.com is copyrighted @2009 by New Bay Media, LLC. All rights reserved
Windy City Wingman Lays Roots With Wilco
ReplyDeleteWhich bass players have had the most impact on your playing?
Paul McCartney is one of the greatest bass players of all time. If you listen to what he was tracking live in the studio, it’s unbelievable. With his tone and musicality, he was a huge influence. He covered all his harmonic responsibilities really well, but his lines were absolutely melodic and inventive. Also, Rick Danko of The Band was a huge influence on me. I love the idea of a bassist providing the high vocal harmony.
What is your favorite song to play live?
“Hummingbird” has great changes, and it’s one of the most inventive pop arrangements we’ve done, so that’s fun to play as an ensemble. On the other hand, there’s “Spiders (Kidsmoke),” which basically has a one-note line for the whole ten minutes. But there’s a whole world of dynamics that I explore with that song. Every stage is different, and by playing with dynamics, you can turn the stage itself into an instrument. It’s fun to see how that song works in different spaces night-to-night. It really has a life of its own.
Bass Player is a trademark of New Bay Media, LLC. All material published on www.bassplayer.com is copyrighted @2009 by New Bay Media, LLC. All rights reserved
You know your music - so do we. THE ALLMUSIC BLOG
ReplyDeleteShe's a Woman
The Beatles
Composed By
John Lennon/Paul McCartney
Song Review by Richie Unterberger
"She's a Woman" was one of the hardest-rocking early Beatles originals, and although it was the B-side to "I Feel Fine," it was almost as big a hit in its own right, reaching number four on the American charts. Sung and primarily written by Paul McCartney, it's a belter that illustrates how the Beatles could be bluesy without writing conventional blues songs that stuck to normal blues progressions. Right from the start, the track has a brash, almost harsh edge, with choppy guitar chords that are more like barks than power chords.
McCartney, too often unfairly pegged as a sweet balladeer, demonstrates that he was also one of the best white rock hard singers of all time with his shrill yet rich, even ballsy, vocal. Certainly his vocal style here betrays a strong trace of Little Richard, but it's unfair to accuse him of imitating or lifting wholesale from his idol. In its confidence and assertiveness, McCartney's high-octane style is most assuredly his own. The basic, R&B-derived melody is effectively counterpointed with one of the briefer Beatle bridges on record, in which the Beatles detour into some non- blues chords and melodies for just a few bars before returning to the main thrust of the tune. McCartney, while devoting most of the words to celebration and praise of his woman, throws in a couple of phrases as evidence that he's starting to think in more sophisticated terms, particularly the line "turns me on when I get lonely" (a very, very early use of "turn me on" slang). There's also the declaration that his love doesn't buy him presents, even though she's no peasant. Peasant's an unusual word to use in a pop song no matter what the era, and McCartney's value of true love over money (as previously also stated in "Can't Buy Me Love") is eternally hip. George Harrison executes a crafty blues-rock solo with a touch of country influence that's, as was his wont, just right for the song at hand. The ending is uncommonly unimaginative for a Beatles track, with McCartney repeating the title phrase several times over a fade; a more basic alternate take exists (on bootleg) in which he extends this section by improvising on that title line for a few minutes. He'd have to wait until "Hey Jude," however, to take that approach to the multi-extended fade onto an official single.
As a rabble-rousing rocker, "She's a Woman" was a natural for the Beatles' live shows; a 1965 version was recorded for their The Beatles at the Hollywood Bowl album, and it was still part of their set on their final world tour in 1966. The most famous, or notorious, cover of "She's a Woman" was done by Jeff Beck in the mid-'70s, employing a voicebox on his guitar to sing-play the lyrics. That version was an FM radio favorite for a while, and subsequently sometimes scorned (as were Peter Frampton's voicebox-heavy tracks) as an example of mid-'70s hard rock excess.
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ReplyDeleteShe's a Woman
The Beatles
Composed By
John Lennon/Paul McCartney
Song Review by Richie Unterberger
Appears On
Year
Album
Length
Label
1964 Beatles '65
2:57 Capitol
AMG Track Picks
No Reply, I'll Follow the Sun, I Feel Fine
196Z Beatles in Italy EMI
1977 Live at the Hollywood Bowl 2:47 Capitol
1984 The Compleat Beatles [Video] MGM
1988 Past Masters, Vol. 1
3:03 Capitol
AMG Track Picks
She Loves You, I Want to Hold Your Hand, I Feel Fine, I'm Down
1988 Past Masters, Vols. 1 & 2 Capitol
1988 The Beatles Box Set [1988] 3:03 Capitol
1988 Ultra Rare Trax, Vol. 1 The Swingin' Pig
1989 Documents, Vol. 2 6:31 Oh Boy
1989 Five Nights in a Judo Arena Swingin' Pig
1989 Hold Me Tight 6:34 Condor
1989 Ultra Rare Trax, Vol. 6 6:32 The Swingin' Pig
1989 Unsurpassed Masters, Vol. 2 (1964-1965) Yellow Dog
1991 British Rock: 1st Wave [video] RCA
1991 I Feel Fine/She's a Woman Capitol
1992 Ready Steady Go!, Vol. 3 [Video] Pioneer
1992 The Beatles Box Set [1992] Capitol
1993 Artifacts, 1958-1970 6:32 Big Music
1993 Compact Disc Singles Collection 3:01 Capitol
1994 Artifacts II 1960-1969 3:19 Big Music
1994 Complete BBC Sessions Great Dane
1994 Live at the BBC 3:14 Apple/Capitol
AMG Track Picks
I'll Be on My Way, Soldier of Love (Lay Down Your Arms)
1996 Anthology 2
2:54 Apple/Capitol
AMG Track Picks
Yes It Is, If You've Got Trouble, That Means a Lot, I'm Looking Through You, Strawberry Fields Forever
1996 Anthology Video, Vol. 5 Apple
1998 Live in Japan 2:52 Walrus
1999 CD Singles Collection
3:01 EMI
AMG Track Picks
We Can Work It Out, Paperback Writer, Strawberry Fields Forever, Don't Let Me Down, I Am the Walrus, I'm Down, Ticket to Ride, She's a Woman, Revolution, All You Need Is Love
1999 EP Boxset 3:05 EMI
2001 Beatles Story CTA
2003 Around the World Import
2004 The Capitol Albums, Vol. 1 3:01 Capitol
AMG Track Picks
I Want to Hold Your Hand, It Won't Be Long, I Wanna Be Your Man, Roll Over Beethoven, You Can't Do That, She Loves You, I'll Cry Instead, Things We Said Today, And I Love Her, No Reply, I'm a Loser, She's a Woman, I Feel Fine
2009 The Beatles: Stereo Box Set Capitol
Budokan Concert VAP Inport
Concerts 1964-66 [DVD]
Unauthorised Live, Vol. 1 Joker
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ReplyDeleteArtist/Group Album Song Classical Work
I'm Down
The Beatles
Composed By Other Links
John Lennon/Paul McCartney All Performers that have performed this Title
Song Review by Richie Unterberger
"I'm Down," the B-side of "Help!," was one of the most frantic rockers in the entire Beatles catalog. The very first line — sung a cappella by the principal writer, Paul McCartney — was about as larynx-twisting an upper-register, non-falsetto vocal as was possible in rock music.
Critics have often noted that the vocal and the song itself are very much in the Little Richard style, and some see it as little more than a rewrite of Little Richard's "Long Tall Sally." It's true there are some similarities between "I'm Down" and "Long Tall Sally," but it's not just a blatant copy. For one thing, there are the great call-and-response vocals between McCartney and the other Beatles, as well as the sudden jerky shifts in tempo in which the instruments periodically stop altogether. George Harrison lets loose with one of his patented bluesy, slightly disheveled, growling guitar solos, and then it's back to a final verse where McCartney really climbs the high notes for emphasis. That done with, it's time for one of the group's more crazed and elongated fadeouts, kicked off by a hair-raising McCartney scream, then settling into more vocal trades between him and the group as well as some wild organ playing by John Lennon. Although The Beatles Recording Sessions tells listeners that seven takes were completed at the session, the song has a wonderfully loose, almost jammy feel.
Listen to the part where McCartney starts the final verse, for instance, and his first line is answered with a lazy, almost diffident guitar sliding slowly up the low notes. Not that it hurts the song any, but there's a contradiction between the mood of the lyrics — ostensibly a guy down in the dumps about being dumped — and the delivery. McCartney does not sound down in the dumps; he sounds like he's having the time of his life, with an energy that's incredibly infectious. "I'm Down" was a great live favorite of the Beatles' mid-'60s shows, as seen in the famous footage of their 1965 Shea Stadium concert, which closed with an especially wild performance of the song. There have not been many covers of "I'm Down"; indeed, for years it was surprisingly hard to hear, as it didn't get issued on a Beatles LP until the mid-'70s. There were a couple of surprising attempts, however, one a live version (recorded in 1966, released in the 1980s) by the 13th Floor Elevators, with Roky Erickson contributing a demented lead vocal that was grating where McCartney's was uplifting. Even more surprisingly, Yes, a group not known for rock-'em-sock-'em party tunes, did "I'm Down" in concert.
Appears On
Year
Album
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ReplyDeleteI'm Down
The Beatles
Composed By Other Links
John Lennon/Paul McCartney All Performers that have performed this Title
Song Review by Richie Unterberger
Appears On
Rating
Year
Album
Length
Label
1976 Rock & Roll Music 2:32 Capitol
1980 Rock & Roll Music, Vol. 2 2:38 Capitol
1988 Past Masters, Vol. 1 2:31 Capitol
AMG Track Picks
She Loves You, I Want to Hold Your Hand, I Feel Fine, I'm Down
1988 Past Masters, Vols. 1 & 2 Capitol
1988 The Beatles Box Set [1988] 2:31 Capitol
1989 Five Nights in a Judo Arena Swingin' Pig
1991 Help/I'm Down Capitol
1993 Artifacts, 1958-1970 2:18 Big Music
1993 Compact Disc Singles Collection 2:33 Capitol
1996 Anthology 2 2:53 Apple/Capitol
AMG Track Picks
Yes It Is, If You've Got Trouble, That Means a Lot, I'm Looking Through You, Strawberry Fields Forever
1996 Anthology Video, Vol. 5 Apple
1998 Live in Japan 3:40 Walrus
1999 CD Singles Collection 2:33 EMI
AMG Track Picks
We Can Work It Out, Paperback Writer, Strawberry Fields Forever, Don't Let Me Down, I Am the Walrus, I'm Down, Ticket to Ride, She's a Woman, Revolution, All You Need Is Love
2001 Beatles Story CTA
2003 Around the World Import
2008 Cartoons Brainmade
2009 The Beatles: Stereo Box Set Capitol
Budokan Concert VAP Inport
Concerts 1964-66 [DVD]
Unauthorised Live, Vol. 1 Joker
Video Scrapbook Encore Entertainment Imprort
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ReplyDeleteYou Can't Do That
The Beatles
Composed By Other Links
John Lennon/Paul McCartney All Performers that have performed this Title
Song Review by Richie Unterberger
As the B-side to "Can't Buy Me Love," "You Can't Do That" was a worthy companion to the more well-known hit, particularly as it was also one of the Beatles' grittiest and hardest-rocking early originals. The track was introduced by a ringing, circular George Harrison guitar lick that marked the first time he played 12-string electric guitar on a Beatles recording — an innovation that would figure strongly not just in the Beatles' mid-'60s records, but also in the development of folk-rock. Rhythmically the song has a funkier, more soulful beat than anything else the Beatles had previously done, perhaps sparked by increased exposure to American soul music as the group began to tour the U.S. John Lennon, in fact, specifically cited Wilson Pickett as an inspiration for the song, although since Pickett had barely begun to record under his own name when "You Can't Do That" was written in early 1964, one wonders if Lennon was influenced by Pickett only in hindsight.
The song had no shortage of dynamite hooks, particularly the insistent stuttering beats at the end of each verse and bridge, the thrilling soulful responsive harmonies that answer Lennon's lead vocal, and the dramatic rising harmony vocals that accompany Lennon on the bridge.
Lennon lets loose with one of his all-time great screams to launch the instrumental break, in which he makes his debut as a lead guitarist on a Beatles record, with crunchy, frenetic riffing that suits the tune well. Listen also for the very end, in which a reprise of the principal 12-string guitar riff suddenly slows to a crawl for the last three notes. Lyrically this is one of the toughest Lennon- McCartney songs, principally written by Lennon , and verging almost on misogyny in its threats to leave a girl if she so much as talks to another guy. There's an underlying note of insecurity, however, in his laments that others will laugh in his face if they see her acting the way she does. "You Can't Do That" was honored with a most unusual cover version by Nilsson a few years later on his debut album, in which he did not so much sing "You Can't Do That" as use its main motifs for the body of a track which interwove brief phrases from other Beatles classics like "Can't Buy Me Love," "Day Tripper," "You're Going to Lose That Girl," and "Drive My Car."
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ReplyDeleteYou Can't Do That
The Beatles
Composed By Other Links
John Lennon/Paul McCartney All Performers that have performed this Title
Song Review by Richie Unterberger
Appears On
Rating
Year
Album
Length
Label
1964 A Hard Day's Night [UK] 2:37 Capitol
AMG Track Picks
A Hard Day's Night, I Should Have Known Better, And I Love Her, Can't Buy Me Love
1964 The Beatles Beat Odeon
1964 The Beatles' Second Album 2:23 Capitol
AMG Track Picks
You Can't Do That, I'll Get You, She Loves You
1976 Rock & Roll Music 2:37 Capitol
1980 Rock & Roll Music, Vol. 1 2:33 Capitol
1988 The Beatles Box Set [1988] 2:37 Capitol
1990 Ready Steady Go!, Vol. 1 [Video] Pioneer
1991 Can't Buy Me Love/You Can't Do That Capitol
1993 Artifacts, 1958-1970 2:38 Big Music
1993 Compact Disc Singles Collection 2:34 Capitol
1994 Complete BBC Sessions Great Dane
1994 Complete BBC Sessions Great Dane
1994 The Making of a Hard Day's Night MPI
1995 Anthology 1 2:42 Apple/Capitol
AMG Track Picks
Free as a Bird, Ain't She Sweet, One After 909, All My Loving, A Hard Day's Night, Leave My Kitten Alone
1999 CD Singles Collection 2:34 EMI
AMG Track Picks
We Can Work It Out, Paperback Writer, Strawberry Fields Forever, Don't Let Me Down, I Am the Walrus, I'm Down, Ticket to Ride, She's a Woman, Revolution, All You Need Is Love
199Z The Get Back Journals VigoTone
2001 Beatles Story CTA
2001 The Beatles Beat: The Beatles Sessions [Bootleg] Odeon Bootleg
2004 The Capitol Albums, Vol. 1 2:40 Capitol
AMG Track Picks
I Want to Hold Your Hand, It Won't Be Long, I Wanna Be Your Man, Roll Over Beethoven, You Can't Do That, She Loves You, I'll Cry Instead, Things We Said Today, And I Love Her, No Reply, I'm a Loser, She's a Woman, I Feel Fine
2009 The Beatles: Stereo Box Set Capitol
It's All in the Mind Y'know Beat
The Beatles, Vol. 3 Beat/Cool Daddy
The Beatles: 16 Superhits, Vol. 3 2:36 Dorado
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ReplyDeleteArtist/Group Album Song Classical Work
Revolution
The Beatles
Composed By Other Links
John Lennon/Paul McCartney All Performers that have performed this Title
Song Review
by Richie Unterberger
As the B-side of "Hey Jude," "Revolution" formed one-half of a worthy contender for the best rock single of all time. As with another contender, "Penny Lane"/ "Strawberry Fields Forever," each side represented one of the best and most characteristic songwriting efforts by Paul McCartney and John Lennon, respectively (even if they were billed to Lennon- McCartney jointly, out of contractual custom). "Revolution" was, of course, quite different in tone from "Hey Jude," one of the group's best ballads.
In contrast, "Revolution" was one of their greatest, most furious rockers, also featuring some of Lennon's most challenging, fiery lyrics. It must first be noted that two entirely different arrangements of "Revolution" were recorded and released. A slow one with doo wop-inspired harmonies, officially titled "Revolution 1," appeared on The Beatles (popularly known as the White Album); the faster and, most would agree, superior version appeared on the B-side of the "Hey Jude" single. The song described here will be the single version, simply entitled "Revolution."
Leading off with a startling machine-gun fuzz guitar riff and a scream, the heart immediately starts pounding before Lennon goes into the first verse. (Trivia note: An obscure 1954 recording by bluesman Pee Wee Crayton, "Do Unto Others," has an opening riff that sounds almost identical to the riff that opens "Revolution." Coincidence, or not?) Combining one of his throatiest vocals and the consistently buzzing, fuzzy guitars, you have one of the most down-and-dirty Beatles tracks ever.
In "Revolution," Lennon seems to be questioning, quite reasonably, the validity of changing the world through violent means. He was setting himself up for criticism from all sides here, particularly in the turbulent year of 1968: the establishment was angered by anyone talking about "Revolution" in any context, while some of the left viewed refusal to overthrow society by any means necessary as a cowardly sellout. Lennon is quite emphatic, however, that when it comes to violence, you can count him out. (Typically, he would sit on the fence on this issue over the years, and in "Revolution 1," qualify his observation by immediately singing the word "in" after declaring that he could be counted out.) Characteristically, optimism prevails in the Beatles' world, even when taking on one of the most explosive subjects possible, as on the uplifting chorus (helped greatly by harmony vocals), when the group urgently and repeatedly reassures listeners that everything's going to be all right. Those reassurances become sing-shouts in the final refrain, though the loud guitar figures in the background imply that everything might not be all right, as does a final near-hysterical repetition of the phrase by Lennon. "Revolution," incidentally, was one of the few Beatles tracks to feature a contribution from an outside rock session musician, Nicky Hopkins, who adds ebullient keyboards to the performance.
Appears On
Year
Album
You know your music - so do we. THE ALLMUSIC BLOG
ReplyDeleteRevolution
The Beatles
Composed By Other Links
John Lennon/Paul McCartney All Performers that have performed this Title
Song Review
by Richie Unterberger
Appears On
Year
Album
Length
Label
1968 Hey Jude [Single] Apple
1970 Hey Jude
3:21 Capitol
AMG Track Picks
Paperback Writer, Hey Jude, Old Brown Shoe
1973 1967-1970
3:25 Capitol
AMG Track Picks
Strawberry Fields Forever, Penny Lane, I Am the Walrus, Hey Jude, Don't Let Me Down, Here Comes the Sun, Something
1976 Rock & Roll Music 3:24 Capitol
1980 Rock & Roll Music, Vol. 2 3:21 Capitol
1984 The Compleat Beatles [Video] MGM
1988 Imagine: John Lennon [Original Soundtrack]
3:22 Capitol
AMG Track Picks
Real Love, In My Life, The Ballad of John and Yoko, Jealous Guy, (Just Like) Starting Over, Imagine
1988 Past Masters, Vol. 2
3:24 Capitol
AMG Track Picks
Day Tripper, We Can Work It Out, Rain, Hey Jude
1988 Past Masters, Vols. 1 & 2 Capitol
1988 The Beatles Box Set [1988] 3:24 Capitol
1989 Ultra Rare Trax, Vol. 5 3:19 The Swingin' Pig
1991 Hey Jude/Revolution Capitol
1991 Unsurpassed Masters, Vol. 7 (1962-1969) Yellow Dog
1993 Artifacts, 1958-1970 3:19 Big Music
1993 Compact Disc Singles Collection 3:22 Capitol
1993 Unsurpassed Demos Yellow Dog
1994 Artifacts II 1960-1969 3:58 Big Music
1994 Revolution Vigotone
1996 Anthology Video, Vol. 8 Apple
1999 CD Singles Collection
3:22 EMI
AMG Track Picks
We Can Work It Out, Paperback Writer, Strawberry Fields Forever, Don't Let Me Down, I Am the Walrus, I'm Down, Ticket to Ride, She's a Woman, Revolution, All You Need Is Love
199Z The Get Back Journals VigoTone
2000 Imagine: John Lennon [Japan] 3:24 EMI
2006 LOVE [Bonus DVD] 2:14 Capitol/Apple
2006 LOVE 2:14 Capitol/Apple
AMG Track Picks
Drive My Car/The Word/What You're Doing, Strawberry Fields Forever, Within You Without You/Tomorrow Never Knows, While My Guitar Gently Weeps
2008 LOVE [Special Edition] EMD Int'l
2009 The Beatles: Stereo Box Set Capitol
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ReplyDeleteAbbey Road
The Beatles
Artist
The Beatles
Album
Abbey Road
Rating *****
Release Date
Sep 26, 1969
Label
Capitol
Genre Styles
Pop/Rock
Album Rock
Rock & Roll
Pop/Rock
British Psychedelia
Psychedelic
Sunshine Pop
Prog-Rock/ Art Rock
AM Pop
Hard Rock
Moods Themes
Whimsical
Naive
Elegant
Sophisticated
Cheerful
Freewheeling
Complex
Brassy
Fun
Romantic
Bittersweet
Sweet
Refined/ Mannered
Brash
Laid-Back/ Mellow
Hypnotic
Intimate
Self-Conscious
Lush
Energetic
Passionate
Road Trip
Reflection
Summertime
Housework
AMG Album ID
R 1525
Review by Richie Unterberger
The last Beatles album to be recorded (although Let It Be was the last to be released), Abbey Road was a fitting swan song for the group, echoing some of the faux-conceptual forms of Sgt. Pepper, but featuring stronger compositions and more rock-oriented ensemble work. The group was still pushing forward in all facets of its art, whether devising some of the greatest harmonies to be heard on any rock record (especially on "Because"), constructing a medley of songs/vignettes that covered much of side two, adding subtle touches of Moog synthesizer, or crafting furious guitar-heavy rock ("The End," "I Want You (She's So Heavy)," "Come Together"). George Harrison also blossomed into a major songwriter, contributing the buoyant "Here Comes the Sun" and the supremely melodic ballad "Something," the latter of which became the first Harrison-penned Beatles hit. Whether Abbey Road is the Beatles' best work is debatable, but it's certainly the most immaculately produced (with the possible exception of Sgt. Pepper) and most tightly constructed.
Tracks
Title
Composer
Time
1 Come Together Lennon, McCartney 04:20
2 Something Harrison 03:02
3 Maxwell's Silver Hammer Lennon, McCartney 03:27
4 Oh! Darling Lennon, McCartney 03:26
5 Octopus's Garden Starkey, Starr 02:51
6 I Want You (She's So Heavy) Lennon, McCartney 07:47
7 Here Comes the Sun Harrison 03:05
8 Because Lennon, McCartney 02:45
9 You Never Give Me Your Money Lennon, McCartney 04:02
10 Sun King Lennon, McCartney 02:26
11 Mean Mr. Mustard Lennon, McCartney 01:06
12 Polythene Pam Lennon, McCartney 01:12
13 She Came in Through the Bathroom Window Lennon, McCartney 01:57
14 Golden Slumbers Lennon, McCartney 01:31
15 Carry That Weight Lennon, McCartney 01:36
16 The End Lennon, McCartney 02:19
17 Her Majesty Lennon, McCartney 00:23
indicates Track Pick
indicates a click-through to a song review
Releases
Year
Type
Label
Catalog #
1987 CD Capitol C2-46446
1987 CS Capitol C4-46446
1978 LP Capitol SEAX-11900
1987 LP Capitol C1-46446
1991 LP Capitol 003831
1991 CS Capitol 003834
1978 LP Capitol 119001
1989 LP Parlophone 1042431
2007 CD Toshiba EMI 51122
1983 CD Toshiba EMI 353016
2009 CD Capitol 82468
And by the way I have read some people saying on message boards that they don't think The Rolling Stones were the best technical musicians, and many even some fans have said they haven't done anything good in 30 years, and that their overrated and I have also found many people saying they hate or don't like The Rolling Stones and many people say the only Rolling Stones song they like is Paint It Black! Oh and by the way, in every major poll of The Beatles vs The Rolling Stones, The Beatles always win as # 1 even on sites and message boards that are not Beatles fan sites! And when we look at the solo career comparison of Mick Jagger's and Keith Richards solo careers with John, Paul & George's, the facts are John Lennon's first brilliant solo album, and his second great album Imagine are rightfully critically acclaimed, and I love John's Walls & Bridges album and Paul McCartney's first solo album McCartney is very good, and he played every instrument all by himself at age 27, and he played so many different instruments great! Wings 1975 Venus & Mars is a great rock album too!
ReplyDeleteAnd he and Denny Laine are the only musicians on Paul's great 1973 Band On The Run album, which is critically acclaimed and popular.And he played every instrument great by himself again on McCartney 2 in 1979,& he played most of the instruments on his 1997 Flaming Pie album,& his 2 most recent albums,Chaos & CReation In The Backyard & Memory Almost Full.
And I and many people understandably feel that John Lennon had the best rock voices ever! George Martin said John's voice was one of the best he ever heard, and in May 1967 when The Beatles were recording their song, Baby You're A Rich Man, two recording engineers said they were always fascinated with the sound of John Lennon's voice, and they always wanted to record it live and when they heard him singing this song live they said they couldn't believe how great his voice was and that anyone could sing that well live.
And there are many people on message boards saying they can't stand the sound of Robert Plant's and Mick Jagger's voices, and Bruce Springteen has one of the worst voices I have ever heard, he sounds like he's throwing up to a music backing! I have to turn the radio off as soon as he's on, and the same thing with Tom Petty, he has a terrible nasally bad voice! Bob Dylan has never been considered to have a good voice but I can tolerate him.
Also, The Beatles were *NEVER* a boy band at all not even in 1963, 1964 and 1965, and they were Mostly a Great *ROCK* Band from the start! They started out playing 8 hours a night for two years in a row playing in the sleazy strip clubs of Hamburg Germany wearing tight leather black pants and jackets, cursing and smoking on stage, and taking speed pills to awake, and going to bed with many young women groupies. The cleaned up image was a fake joke that their manager Brian Epstein created which John hated and resented the most.
There were a lot of rough thugs who came into those clubs, and if they played bad live, they would have beaten the cr*p out of them playing 8 hours a night for 2 years! Instead they became the most popular successful group in these German clubs even with all of the competition from other groups from England and Germany! They also played live in The Cavern Club for several years. They worked very hard to get where they got! Their cleaned up image was a fake image created by their manager in their early days.
coachmadddog on The Rolling Stone Rock Daily blog is right Led Zeppelin sucks! I'm not saying they aren't very good musicians because that would be ignorant to deny it,but it doesn't matter because it just means they played their very sh*tty sounding "music" very well!
ReplyDeleteThey are one of the few bands or artists that I can't stand to listen to for even a half of a second,I have to get up off of my chair and turn them off immediately before I smash my 3 year old very good stereo receiver into a million pieces!
I'm not alone in this either I have found many people even many heavy metal fans who hate them too,many of these people have said they hate Robert Plant's often screaching and screaming "vocals",banging around noise with no creative artistic quality,no beautiful melodies and harmonies,some say that a lot of Robert Plant's lyrics are simple like a teen boy wrote them,and that they ripped off many blues riffs from old blues songs.
Rolling Stone was right about not liking Led Zeppelin in the first place,you should have stuck to it!
There is an online interview with John Mendelssohn in rockcritics.com in which he was asked if his feelings about Led Zeppelin 2 had changed,(he gave a bad review to their first album that was published in his college newspaer and Rolling Stone too) and he said certainly not and that he hates it more confidently than he did at the time.He said all that infernal screaching! All of that showing off on the guitar! And he also said all of those interminable versions of Joan Biaz songs! And not a trace of the things he adores(this is what I hate about them too!)melody,vocal harmony,expressive musicianship and intelligence or at least wit.That is everything The Beatles had,even though their early lyrics were simple their chords, and their arrangements,were not,and they always had beautiful melodies and harmonies and creative quality in their music even in a lot of their rock songs
He said that he always believed that for an act to be ultra-delux,it need not only sound terrific but look terrific too as Elvis,The Beatles and the early Who all did.
THere are several FaceBook groups,Led Zeppelin Sucks 1 has over 200 members,& there are also I Hate Led Zeppelin groups on other sites.
And many of The Beatles songs were about sex & drugs,& even a few violent ones like John's Run For Your Life,in which John sings the lines I'd rather see you dead than be with another man, on Rubber Soul which he didn't like himself.In the early -mid 60's you couldn't be as blatant with sex & drug messages or you would be bannec off of the air!
ReplyDeleteThe Rolling Stones became more blatant in those lyrics after the mid 60's,& Paul's song on The great rock album The White Album,Why Don't We Do It In The Road? was as blatantly perverted as can be especially for 1968.Day Tripper from late 1965 was about sex & drugs, so is Happiness Is A Warm Gun,even Penny Lane has a reference to an obscenity Liverpool guys would refer to about a certain sexual activity with Liverpool girls.
A Day In The Life was banned off of the BBC in 1967 because of LSD messages in the line,I'd Love To Turn You On,Paul wrote Got To Get You Into My Life about pot, Dr.Robert was about a real doctor that supplied drugs to his patients,in John's great song Girl on their brilliant 1965 folk rock album Rubber Soul,Paul & George are singing t*t t*t t*t over & over as part of the backing vocals.
John's great 1968 hard rocker Reveloution was overtly political,Paul says he wrote Blackbird about black civil rights. Rolling Stone and others have said John's early 1963 hit Please Please Me was about oral sex etc etc.
Just another of countless examples of Scaruffi's inaccurate distortions & falsehoods about The Beatles,I looked up on Wikipedia many earl-mid 60's Rolling Stones songs,Mother's Little Helper,Time Is On My Side,Get Off Of My Cloud,Rubey Tuesday,Satisfaction,Paint It Black,Lets Spend The Night Together etc,& they are all 2 minutes or 3 minutes & some seconds because before the late 60's and The Beatles broke the rules with the great Hey Jude,songs could only be under 4 minutes to be played on the radio & THe Rolling Stones knew this rule also to have hits too.But this dishonest ignoramous isn't going to tell you that!
ReplyDeleteApparently Charles Manson has decided to comment here.
ReplyDeleteHey, Charlie, d'ya like the "White Album"?
Sorry to comment on an old post- interesting to me at the moment though- here are a few thoughts
ReplyDelete"To me, what stands out about the Beatles next to these other artists -- the Kinks, the Beach Boys, the Mamas and Papas -- is the fact that the Beatles were consistently able to put together whole albums of good and polished songs. "
I strongly disagree- can't speak for the M's and P's as I'm less familiar with their work, but the Beach Boys and Kinks both made REALLY strong albums- Pet Sounds, Today, Sunflower/Village Green Preservation Society. something else are all pretty much flawless.
The Beatles on the other hand- I can't hear 'maxwell's silver hammer', Octopuses Garden as being strong songs- they are giant lapses of taste/quality control. There's a reason someone might choose to listen to say, Nick Drake over Abbey Road...
Even the lauded Revolver has a bunch of filler on it- Dr Robert? And your Bird Can sing- let's not overstate the worth of these songs- they are just 'okay'. Don't get me started on 'white album'.
"A Beatles song could draw from any one of the four members. With a group like the Kinks, it was Ray Davies we ALWAYS got. With the Beach Boys, it was ALWAYS Brian Wilson."
Nope, from the start The Kinks had Dave Davies singing lead, and The Beach Boys were always at worst a 2 singer group - Mike Love and Brian Wilson in the early days, but by '64 all five of them handled lead on different songs. When they added new members in the late sixties and early seventies (Bruce Johnston, Ricky Fataar, Blondie Chaplin) they all took lead vocals as well- so EIGHT lead vocalists.
"I think only folks such as Marvin Gaye, Aretha Franklin, Smokey Robinson, and maybe a few others of that time period can be considered on par."
No offence, but I think you need to listen to more music before making strong claims like that. I mean- what do you think of the vocals on Peppermint Trolley Company albums? Gene Clark? Scott Walker? There's a lot of good music out there, and the more I listen to personally, the more I realise the Beatles were just sort of 'okay'- but very well hyped.
Anon,
ReplyDeleteYou need to read more carefully.
First, I talked about consistently being "able to put together whole albums of good and polished songs."
Your point is well taken on the Kinks. They had a series of really great albums in the mid to late sixties. I used to own them.
However, the Beach Boys could do a great album and then one that sucked. They were less consistent from album to album.
But I talked about good and polished. Part of the charm of the Kinks was that they were not so polished.
I'll grant you "Octopus's Garden" as a weak song, but I liked "Maxwell's" for its campiness.
Second, you mis-read this: "A Beatles song could draw from any one of the four members. With a group like the Kinks, it was Ray Davies we ALWAYS got. With the Beach Boys, it was ALWAYS Brian Wilson."
I'm not talking about singers but songwriters. Ray was always the driving force of the Kinks. Brian was always the driving force of the Beach Boys.
You then say: "No offence, but I think you need to listen to more music before making strong claims like that. I mean- what do you think of the vocals on Peppermint Trolley Company albums? Gene Clark? Scott Walker? There's a lot of good music out there, and the more I listen to personally, the more I realise the Beatles were just sort of 'okay'- but very well hyped."
No offense taken, but I dare say I have listened to much more of that music than you. If we're talking matters of taste, then I'm sorry I don't agree with your high opinion of those other vocalists.
I'm more or less with you on your last point. I see the Beatles as more than OK. In fact, I think it's hard to argue that they were a great band with some fine albums. They certainly had some important albums, even if people exaggerated the albums' quality and originality.
Note: The Beach Boys had a roster of multiple lead singers including Mike Love, Carl Wilson, and even Dennis Wilson.
ReplyDeleteNote: The Beach Boys had a roster of multiple lead singers including Mike Love, Carl Wilson, and even Dennis Wilson.
ReplyDelete