On a heavy Beatles kick, I've listened to SPLHCB, Abbey Road, Revolver and Rubber Soul exclusively for 3 weeks now. Always fun seeing someone's first reaction to their best songs Spoiler
I agree, with Sgt. Peppers right there too. Outside of the Dark Side of the Moon, Beethoven's 4th movement of Symphony No. 9, and a few more, the Abbey Road medley is the greatest music feat for me.
Leaving Strawberry Fields and Penny Lane off Sgt. Pepper was an all time fuck up and it still might be the greatest album of all time.
I guess that happened on most of their albums though. That’s just what they did back then, singles were left off albums. Their non-album singles list is mind blowing.
No singles were allowed on albums, and songs from albums could not qualify as singles. The Beatles had 30 No. 1s without even using a single track from Rubber Soul, Revolver, or Sgt. Pepper’s.
I've had a very slow ramp into becoming a Beatles fan. For most of my life I knew their biggest songs and didn't really feel strongly about them but I watched Get Back when it first came out and I started to dig into them more and more and really dug it but it plateau'd. About a month ago I went to Vegas and saw Love and it picked back up and I'm finally going through the entire catalog. I just finished rewatching Get Back and a few other documentaries and am just filled with a lot of sadness of how things ended and the fact that I waited so long to give them the proper attention that I'll probably never get to see Paul and/or Ringo live, where if I would have been smarter 15-20 years ago I could have easily made that happen. Paul is an outstanding human and he'll still be talked about the way we talk about Mozart/Beethoven long after we're all gone. John will be as well but he wasn't nearly as good of a person as Paul (see the stuff with how he treated Julian and left him out of the will). Ringo would be in the all time blunt rotation, just an incredible vibes guy.
I've mentioned this before, but has there ever been a woman that inspired more love songs* than Patti Boyd? Harrison: I Need You, If I Needed Someone, Something, For You Blue Clapton: Layla, Bell Bottomed Blues, Wonderful Tonight *and 2 rather horrific heroin addictions
Saying Paul is an outstanding human is a bit much, imo. He’s a decent enough person, but he’s also an overbearing, controlling prick. He’s always been good at projecting a positive public persona.
George is my favorite Beatle. All Things Must Pass is the best post-Beatles album for any of them, imo. He also has so many great songs for the Beatles. Really hit his stride on Rubber Soul and then never looked back.
Yeah, I could be wrong but just really impressed with how he treated Linda's kid and how I've seen him behave in interviews. I'm willing to give him a pass on being controlling. I think he has really high standards and expects a lot
Paul was the only one who desperately worked to keep the group together after Epstein died. He was probably the only one who really understood how special what they had as a group was at the time.
None of the Fab Four were saints. Ringo was a raging drunk, George was an OG emo, Lennon was a wife beater and Paul was so condescending and micromanaging in the studio that it made each of the other three leave at various points for a brief period during recording. At the end of the day, Epstein was the only one they all respected and listened to in regards to leadership and after he died, nobody else could fill that void and there were too many egos to harmonize.
Paul did some shady business shit that pissed off the others. While the band was still together, in 1969 Paul bought extra shares of Northern Songs Ltd, the publishing company for Lennon-McCartney songs which they all had ownership in (Ringo and George had very small interests), behind the backs of the others. That move infuriated John as it was apparent that Paul didn’t see them as equals in business anymore. He bought the shares at the advice of his future father in law, who Paul tried to have hired to replace Epstein. Yes, Allan Klein was a terrible choice by the other 3, but it makes sense why they didn’t trust Lee Eastman. Shortly after the band broke up, Paul went to Capital Records and negotiated a higher royalty for himself on the Beatles catalog than the others in exchange for making 6 albums for the label. The other Beatles only found out after John was murdered and sued him as they were so pissed. Remember, there’s no good billionaire. Just some who are less evil.
To be fair, if the other three could have produced six albums worthy of a royalty hike, Capital would have given it to them, too. Most of John's solo LP output was pedestrian (his first two albums are great, the rest was meh until he returned from hiatus to record some really good material tainted by Yoko's contributions), George's quality fizzled after two albums. Ringo was Ringo: Except for his big eponymous album, he never had a hit LP. Paul was the only one producing hits on a consistent basis.
I just heard about these guys, the beetles, and man they’re pretty good, wish I knew about them sooner!
Yes it is I, the person who didn’t just discover the Beatles in their I assume mid thirties who is weird.
Impressive they still went along with it though. Every band I’m in, the more you try to tell someone how you want it done the more they do it their way. I guess I’m not the leader McCartney is
Maxwell Silver Hammer is an awful song and every album I feel like they did had a few clunkers like that and they were always Paul songs
Favorite part of Get Back was how while John may have brought in Yoko, Paul was the one who brought his anvil.
Please put your personal strange aggressive obsession with me aside. This is a thread about the new rock band, the beetles.
Abbey Road was them emptying the clip on anything they had left. The last four or five songs are just snippets strung together like a medley. We really gonna quibble with Maxwell’s Silver Hammer?
i'm gonna need to see a special anvil edition of Get Back with the uncut footage of them trying everything on the anvil to get the right tones out of it.
TIL that EMI records took a bunch of money from Beatles royalty sales and dumped it into a little technology call “computerized tomography”… thanks Beatles, you helped modernize medicine by leaps and bounds without even trying.
john: song sucked. expensive. fuckin’ paul ringo: song took forever wtf george: it was GAY paul: cope!
“Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da” makes “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer” look like “Stairway to Heaven”. Easily the worst Beatles track.
After he hooked up with Yoko, John's output dropped like a rock. For every one song he would write, Paul would have ten and eight of them would be bangers. The other two are like Maxwell's Silver Hammer. I'll take all the good with the occasional not as good.
post-Beatles though what he lacked in prolificacy he made up in quality Woman, Watching the Wheels, #9 Dream, Instant Karma, Out of the Blue, and Working Class Hero are all better songs than anything Paul put out with the exception of Maybe I'm Amazed
Yeah, John went in waves. Plastic Ono and Imagine are great great albums, then he just cratered with NYC and Mind Games, then rebounded with the woefully underrated Walls and Bridges, then ended with a bunch of great songs for Geffen that were held back by the Yoko stuff riding shotgun. Paul has always been a machine and has only occasionally really been inspired, but when John was inspired, few could touch him