Say Something Interesting About The Beatles

Go Beatles Go! (I will think of my own interesting thing after a good night's sleep).

Even the recent Eddie Vedder and Ben Harper covers of Beatles songs, Ethan?

The remixed version of Yellow Submarine (came out in 1999, I think) is wonderful. I guess it sorta presages Terry Gilliam's Monty Python cartoon work (as does the cover for the Kinks' Face to Face).

Maybe I'll play them tonight; it's been 10 years easily since I have.

what will it take to finally bring together a beatles reunion?

three more bullets.

And I was thinking about Simon today and all. So what did he say? [Let it be clear I sold _Rubber Soul_ last year and won't have Dylan in the house.]

you make it sound like he soiled the carpet last time.

the beatles are like...beef. they're there. if you want it. but america has made it the center of it's diet. even though it's probably not healthy. and you can certainly do without and never be unhappy.

I think he did.

Jesus you guys are COPPING OUT majorly.

Heavens no, Clark, we're just BORED. I'd rather talk about the Associates anyway.

oh, has anybody made any necrophiliac jokes about George's fresh corpse yet?

(Golly, that sure was offensive!)

I love them. I love that they altered their arrangments slightly every couple of seconds; that they used up their entire supply of dorky obviousness on the "bum BUM" at the end of the bridge of "Love Me Do"; that they thought about their errors and left the good ones in (like the totally screwed-up rhythm on the second verse of "Rain" that I mentioned a few weeks ago). I love how thrilled and forceful their early covers of American and British obscurities are. I love that their failures are from overreaching rather than excessive willingness to repeat themselves. I love that they could put out a single with only one of them on one side and only another one of them on the other side and it was no big deal, it was still the Beatles. I love that they all knew when to sit out or hold back--that they didn't all have to be playing all the time.

How's that?

This is also why the Wu-Tang Clan and So Solid Crew are good. (Still thinking about my contribution).

But, about Tomorrow Never Knows. It is, first of all, the only song that I love with the same passion now that I did the first time I heard it. Second (and this is certainly connected to the first), this is the only song I can think of that I can listen to in any of the number of ways I've learned to listen to music and still sound good. It was first of all about pop-melody perfection, which is the only level I was probably capable of appreciating music at that age. But when I got into the harder/faster/louder aesthetic of punk and metal as a teenager, TNK still sounded good in that context. When I took a modern music class in college and was exposed to the whole Young/Reich minimalism thing, layering/phasing/texturing music, TNR still sounded good in that context. When I got interested in the whole samples/beats aesthetic of techno and hiphop, TNK still sounded good in that context. And when, after a few months of lurking around the ILM/FT world, I started to let myself to become interested in music artists as personalities in a way I hadn't since grade school, this song once again sounded good in that context (encapsulating a great deal of the whole Lennon persona).

I'm just as bothered as anyone else on ILM by the absolute worship of the Beatles that seems to be at the root of so much "informed" music/rock writing. I don't think that the Beatles invented or even anticipated the future of pop music. But this song is pretty damn impressive - it's the only song I can think of that makes sense to me no matter what aesthetic standards I apply.

It's also the only Beatles song upon which my Beatle hating friend was able to bestow the following words of praise: "I can see why someone might like this."

It turned out he’d worked for EMI in the early ‘60s so I immediately asked him about you-know-who. Hearing him talk was a real eye- opener. He absolutely hated them from the very beginning, thought they were total rubbish, and claimed this attitude was shared throughout the company….

“Stupid adolescent music for stupid adolescent girls, that’s what we thought. Of course we creamed it for everything we could because we never once thought it was last more than a few years. If I think about how much money some of the stuff I had my hands on must be worth now….. But they were completely shit, couldn’t write, couldn’t sing, could barely play their instruments, barely qualifies as music, utterly worthless. They had no style, no class, couldn’t hold a candle to the likes of Noel Coward, by-the-way have you ever heard his..” starts singing.

(1)Their enormous success has polarised peoples' views to such extremes...these debates always get heated

(2)I suppose this is George Martin thing, but the quality of production from 1964 (Hard Day's Night) has never been rivalled - it still sounds modern. I find it baffling - they were the only group to lose the big reverb & ringing drums before 1968...four years, to be precise. Even The Action (also George Martin) had the standard mid-sixties sound. It's almost as though GM reserved this quality for The Beatles.

(3)They split up at the right time (cf Rolling Stones)

But it's really GREAT shit, Mrs. Presky!

to gain possession of fleece (which raises the dead) (but this at a cost untouched in movie) one has to KILL the hydra

this allows the high priest of hecate to gather and sew the dragon's teeth = MOST BRILLIANT CUTE SKELETONS in history = punk rock hurrah

beatles set up mirror to american pop cultural exploson allowing US to see itself and JUDGE and VALUE itself (as in a love affair), turning pop into something which csan be shaped and used, not just consumed, something with history and self-awareness and accessible entry points: proof of this on this thread = mt's tirelessly reiterated kneejerk loathing of ALL THINGS ANGLO, for what we get "wrong" about eg Techno (rooted of course in an unspoken fear that it is actually right, and the things he loves have uglier strands and tendencies in them than he can bear)

Beatles = prior gods i'd say of the freaky trigger ethic, that chart pop and major label engagement are fields (potentially) for far more powerful subtle multiple expression (by artists self-acknowledged as collector- fan critic-obsessives) than then politically middlebrow-approved INDIEWORLDS of jazz, r&b, folk etc

The Beatles were the group that set the standard for the pop music canon that has been strangling musical creativity for the last 30 years. They were the group that everybody points to as the best rock group, they are the group that we keep getting banged over the head with on vh1 and rolling stone...I dislike the Canon they signify as much as I dislike them. The major label system and their press wings have never gotten past the beatles.

As for Kneejerk anglophobia, I don't think that is true. What I have a problem with is when the English try to step outside their national character and copy other people's culture and get it wrong. I love Eno/Roxy, I love Bowie, Visage, Japan, Autechre, Factory Records, Slowdive, Baby Ford, and lots of other artists. It is not like I listen to black music all day long.

I just dislike the fact that the worst English music is what English music companies promote the hardest. eg Shasha van oakenweed and the Beatles. I dislike that history is being reshaped into something other than it actually was because the people who control popular culture cannot get over the Beatles and their Englishness. The Beatles are the band that you are supposed to like, and they made the music you are supposed to emulate. I hate the fact that they are shoved down my throat every day, I hate the fact that I cannot say that I never liked them in public without getting weird looks and people saying "buh..buh..buh..but their THE BEATLES!!!"

To me, Kraftwerk hold the place that the Beatles have in most peoples hearts. You will never see Kraftwerk on TV in the U.S. because They did not have handsome smiles, wear beatle boots, or play guitar. Karftwerk were more innovative than the Beatles, but they did not have the signifiers that the Beatles and their record companies used to strangle western culture with.

In Europe, they have sold more turntables than guitars over the last few years. Detroit, Chicago, and NYC might be ugly and coarse, but our House Music, Techno and Hip-Hop are slowing killing your Anglophile necrophiliac Rock and Roll. The only thing Rock has is the lies about the past that are retold everyday in the corporate music press. Rock is all back-catalogue. Rock's golden age has passed, you choked to death on your golden fleece. The Strokes anyone???

Bah. Nonsense. The privileging of a music's "original spirit" is a much more oppressive idea than anything you could reasonably blame the Beatles for. It reeks of the moldy fig, O Kraftwerk fan.

Copying other people's culture "wrong" is sometimes your best entertainment value.

tea and muffins all round!!

Sixties British bands not worth listening to = those who played African-American music well. I.e., anything involving Eric Clapton or Steve Winwood.

Which bunch (if any) "got it right" depends on what the meaning of "got it right" is. Probably irrelevant, in any case.

Good Firesign Theatre ref, Michael.

Another thing that makes the Beatles seem good is the fact that while we now take their songs as Important Canonical Texts, they largely didn't know that at the time -- and to their credit didn't succumb to it toward the end of their career -- and thus their renditions of these Important Canonical Texts are a lot looser and have way more of a sense of humor and humility about them than we get from most modern covers. I realized this while watching Aimee Mann and Michael Penn mince their way reverentially through "Two of Us" on TV last night --- "Two of Us" which sounds singularly half-assed and shambly and laughingly-cobbled-together on Let it Be, "Two of Us" which basically shouldn't be played well, and should basically sound like everyone involved just learned the song five minutes ago but are having a great time getting through it.

Robin C's remarks about "Money" reminded me of this site, which has links to some quite good thought-pieces on 12 Beatles songs and a Lennon.

Rumors about the "Tavistock Institute":

http://www.geocities.com/covertmatrix/tavistock.html

Admit it - you LIKE the beatles, they were (mostly) great!

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxpost why not just say two

The line "Now that I know our view must be right/I'm here to show everybody the light" is some proto-rave messiah stuff, which is appropriate for such a hypnotic and dancey song as "The Word". LOVE LOVE LOVE the way John sings "I'm here to show everybody the light!!!" He has a little bit of a knowing or punk sneer with those words.

Also, for having a one-note-turning-into-dissonance organ solo, this song is definitely my favorite right now.

"Wait!"

Purely for the uncelebrated couplet:

".. and I've been good, as good as I can be"

i.e. he's not been good at all!

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/features/lord-woodbine-the-forgotten-sixth-beatle-2015140.html

In 1958 he was with the All-Steel Caribbean Band, led by a fellow Trinidadian, Gerry Gobin. At the Joker's Club, where the band often played, the musicians noticed two white lads who seemed keen. They were Lennon and McCartney, wide-eyed and restless kids, like many others on rock and dole. The steel-pannists moved to the popular Jacaranda Club in Liverpool 1 and The Beatles followed. Gobin, unimpressed by their music, was initially irritated by these hangers-on. Candace Smith, then Gobin's partner, was also suspicious of them: "Bloody white kids, trying to horn in on the black music scene."

Marylee Smith, Jamaican, 81, used to visit her cousins in Liverpool. Interviewed for this article, she recalled Toxteth's music scene then: "They was there all the time, you know, all the time, like they was looking for some black magic, pushing in, rough boys, unwashed sometimes. Jumping on to the stage, playing the pans like it was theirs. Some of us didn't like that. But the musicians, they didn't mind so much." Woodbine was bohemian, free, left wing, incautious. He even had the boys performing in his strip club. It must have been madly exciting.

In 2008, McCartney recalled those times in Mojo magazine: "Liverpool being the first Caribbean settlement in the UK, we were very friendly with a lot of black guys – Lord Woodbine, Derry Wilkie, they were mates we hung out with."

Is there any likelihood of the Yoko Ono lps being remastered/reissued at any time? I thought they might be included in the Apple reissues of the last few years but I haven't seen any sight of them.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CxU225tW8AE9BjO.png

haha

Warren Wilmer got his wish this year, sort of

Stumbled upon this interesting audio interview from Sept 19 1969 of Paul McCartney plugging Abbey Road with David Wigg for the BBC series Scene and Heard:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Iwas2xM6-M

The following day (Sept 20 1969) Lennon would announce leaving the Beatles. McCartney discusses his interest in possibly playing small clubs (to which he suggests the Beatles do the following day to John's famous "Your daft and I'm leaving..." response.)

ever notice how George is wearing a cowboy hat on the back sleeves for Help! + Rubber Soul and the front sleeve of Revolver? howdy, pardner!

That Shakespeare bloke, total hack, can't hold a candle to Marlowe and Johnson, we all hate him on I Love Elizabethan Theatre

SHIRLEY MOORE otm

Is there ILM consensus on the best Beatles country/country-adjacent song? (original, ie not Act Naturally)

it's probably just because i'm listening to Beatles for Sale (which i've been obsessing over this year for some reason), but i really like "i don't want to spoil the party"

Beatles for Sale is the best Beatles

following that on Beatles for Sale is the glorious "what you're doing", which has the most perfect rickenbacker-style guitar accompaniment. the performance is perfect, which is especially astounding considering that was back when they recorded things in just a few hours.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XswcADHL5zc

I don't want to spoil the party. I'm not partial to C&W pastiches either, but the harmonies on "I still love her" make it special

Good point.

If that’s the Dave Edmunds special in that video, just notice that the related album is streamable.

The vocal performances on I Don't Want to Spoil the Party are really great.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tXvpZwPE_3M