I have had it up to here waiting for the Beatles catalogue to be remastered

the clip of Lennon and Macca sharing a mic and doing Two Of Us in a pepped-up electric fashion is probably the liveliest recording of the last couple of years, aside from some of the medley on Abbey Road i guess. once again it's a bafflingly under-seen bit of footage, and obvs nowt like the version on the record.

Just to echo someone far upthread, the Miles-penned Macca 'autobiog' really is an eye-opening (if partial) vista on the whole Beatles phenom, and a joy to read, as well.

That said, regarding pot I think they started circa Help/Rubber Soul so it may not be the main reason for the change of songwriting/sound.

― AlXTC from Paris, Tuesday, April 25, 2017 7:25 AM (two hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

In the Anthology, Ringo talks about how Help! was impossible to film because of how baked they were the whole time. One scene with all four of them took two days only because one of them would blow a line, and they'd all get the giggles, then another one would screw up a line, more giggles, etc. etc.

I think it would be fair to say the band's enthusiasm was tempered by more complex emotions and a certain amount of ambivalence by the White Album, but it's I'm So Tired that I sing to my daughter at bedtime, not Help!

― Impartial Father (stevie), Tuesday, April 25, 2017 9:17 AM (five hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

That's great and everything, but it was 'Please Please Me', 'She Loves You' and 'I Saw Her Standing There' that they made their name with, not 'The Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill', 'Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da' or 'Glass Onion' ...

They also didn't make their name with "Till There Was You," "Anna," or "A Taste of Honey."

And as for "You know my name" ...

Like, people often forget this, but it's not like The Beatles suddenly clicked into place on Rubber Soul, they were writing huge hits and putting out some ballsy, punchy tracks out 1962-1964, and it's this stuff that led to Beatlemania. I think people just avoid this era because of the cover songs on the LP's, but it wouldn't be difficult or much of a stretch, given how much music they put out in this period, to put together a couple of all Lennon-McCartney LP's from the available material.

xxpost:

Well, uh, technically yes they did, with all of those tracks being on theur first two LP's which sold shitloads.

*their

Like, if Please Please Me or With The Beatles hadn't sold, there sure as hell wouldn't have been A Hard Day's Night - movie or album.

Like, people often forget this, but it's not like The Beatles suddenly clicked into place on Rubber Soul, they were writing huge hits and putting out some ballsy, punchy tracks out 1962-1964, and it's this stuff that led to Beatlemania. I think people just avoid this era because of the cover songs on the LP's, but it wouldn't be difficult or much of a stretch, given how much music they put out in this period, to put together a couple of all Lennon-McCartney LP's from the available material.

― The Anti-Climax Blues Band (Turrican), Tuesday, April 25, 2017 3:48 PM (eight minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Do you find people typically respond positively to you when you tell them things they already know but in a tone assuming they're an idiot and you're bringing some deep deep science to the table?

Then I shouldn't need to point out that this conversation is about The Beatles 1962-1964, therefore it would be silly to stray from that topic, so...

I think at some point today I'm gonna throw together a playlist of just the Lennon-McCartney songs recorded 1962-1964 ... not that I have a problem with the cover songs, which I like on Please Please Me and With The Beatles but not so much on Beatles For Sale or Help! ... some great stuff on Past Masters 1 which would have been great additions to the albums.

the clip of Lennon and Macca sharing a mic and doing Two Of Us in a pepped-up electric fashion is probably the liveliest recording of the last couple of years

oh yeah, definitely, the one where Paul starts it off yelling "Good morning!" i love that version.

I love that version of 'Two of Us' and really wish the final version had sounded like that.

i thought this conversation was about having had it up to hear watiting for the beatles to be remastered, fwiw...

Turrican I love you and you've said lots of interesting things about the Beatles (and solo stuff, and other topics) over the years, but maybe you need to chill on this thread a bit? There's a certain "this is the facts and the way it is" tone creeping into your posts which does remind me of Geir and kinda doesn't encourage a hearty happy music-fan conversation among friends about the Beatles. Maybe I'm misreading you utterly.

Also I don't think anybody, at all, forgets that they had huge hits in their early years...? Those songs and that period are widely celebrated, considered canonical, and take up a tremendous space in the Beatles mythography; as an example I'd cite the Anthology TV series where the first four of eight installments cover the early years + Beatlemania period, with Rubber Soul kicking off part five iirc, and several of the more rockist critical-acclamation touchstones (especially Revolver) getting really shortchanged. I guess the one thing I could say is that with the aging of boomers and the shifting of radio formats, you really don't hear those songs quite as much, but I really don't think anybody who even bothers to get into a conversation about the Beatles doesn't know, or has forgotten, "I Want To Hold Your Hand," "A Hard Day's Night," etc.

I wasn't saying that 'I Want To Hold Your Hand' or 'A Hard Day's Night' were forgotten tracks in any way, not at all... but The Beatles' post-Help! work does tend to get picked over and analysed far more than their Please Please Me to Help! material. While anyone who even bothers to get into a conversation about The Beatles is undoubtedly aware of the existence of their pre-Rubber Soul material, discussions are more likely to revolve around the production on Revolver or Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, or the band "falling apart" on The Beatles, Abbey Road and Let It Be, so in that context the pre-Rubber Soul material does get talked about far less. Even now I hear and/or read the theory that The Beatles didn't get started until Rubber Soul and made their best music from Rubber Soul and onwards and obviously I disagree as, like I said, there's a freshness and enthusiasm to a lot of that material that later Beatles just doesn't have. I think a song like 'I Call Your Name' or 'Any Time At All' is just as fantastic and well written as 'She Said She Said' or 'If I Needed Someone', but the latter two are more likely to be talked about than the former two, because pre-Rubber Soul Beatles aren't as "cool" ...

TBF I may be in a bit of a bubble of Beatles opinion where it just seems obvious that AHDN is a contender for their best album and that there's a lot of iffier stuff on the later records (or at the very least, 'growers' even if they become fave tracks).... which I suppose is probably not the contention of, say, your average kid with an Abbey Road poster in the dorm or whatever. Though I think it is the POV of Allmusic and probably some other outlets that helped shape my own views on this stuff....

But in a way this just takes us around to Rockism 101, and if there's any space where you could take for granted that there's other ways of reading the Beatles, it'd be here. Though some of what you say may still obtain - looking at the ILM Beatles ballot poll (one of those where I have NO idea how I missed it) it does appear top-heavy with later stuff, despite "Ticket To Ride" at #5 - "She Loves You" at #17 is the highest pre-'65 song and "I Want To Hold Your Hand" is, staggeringly, way down at #53. Clearly I need to sit down and read that whole thread...

Also, and this may be stating the obvious, but in a sense it's easier to talk more about the recording of the post-Rubber Soul material because the recording was more involved. Doesn't mean there's not details to admire about all the early songs - I could go on at length about individual arrangements/performances/lyrics from the majority of Beatles songs - but there's certainly less, idk, 'narrative' to an album banged out in a day or in two weeks between tours and movie shoots, where not a lot of alternative approaches to any given song were considered or recorded, than one tinkered over at enormous leisure. Again, that doesn't diminish the music itself, which I think is pretty much stellar.

If it's true that the pre-RS material isn't rated as highly or at least discussed as often — I'm no Beatles historian — I wonder how much of that might be due to their early squeaky-clean image vs. seeing them as proto punks who at least in the Hamburg days were into the sordid the rock n' roll lifestyle well before that sort of thing was widely done.

Yeah - partly because of how popular they were, the o.g. canon narrative ("squeaky-clean lovable mop-tops later bust loose and innovate, with drugs and The Counterculture") is probably still unshakeable for a lot of folks. Though a great many of those folks probably did, and do, prefer the early stuff, the stuff they screamed along to. The more rockist-ready version - "long-haired speed freak basement rockers adopt suits and smiles for two years before busting loose" etc - doesn't have anywhere near as deep of roots in the popular imaginary, but that's understandable given how many people owned Beatles pencil cases, stuffed Ringo dolls, etc...

(There is, very unsurprisingly, a gendered aspect to this iteration of pop vs. rock, re: who was a screamer and who was a skeptic, who was a shallow teeny-bopper and who was a serious music head, etc. Zemeckis's I Want To Hold Your Hand is fun as a cartoon of this. Of course this plays out in time, and portions of their audience were going through very rapid changes in exactly those same years, which is why they so often get held up as precisely tracking the developing youth culture, whether posited as leaders or just some guys caught up in the flow like everybody else.)

i think part of the reason that the later Beatles material is discussed more often is because it has proven to their most influential music. that may not always have been true (i guess i'm thinking of certain early punk/ramones/lennon albums like rock n'roll that directly looked back to 50s/early 60s music), but as time goes by it is much easier to see the connection between today's music and later beatles rather than today's music and early beatles.

or not? (that's my josh marshall-style twist ending)

I guess there might be something to that - reminds me of a discussion we had somewhere recently about R.E.M. and how right at this moment their sound is pretty far from what most young bands would be taking up or exploring or trying to sound like. Doesn't mean they weren't influential at the time, though, or that today's bands don't in any way descend from things they did.

Early Beatles might be a similar case in 2017, where few are aping them, and indeed few going back some years now have been aping them. And yet trends/groups that were very immediately influenced by the early Beatles are very clearly part of larger family trees. At the moment what's coming to mind is the whole Byrds lineage derived from George's 12-string playing in 1964, but of course that just leads me back to R.E.M. so maybe that's not the best example but hopefully this makes some kind of sense. Obviously they were so huge, and prompted so many people to form bands and try things, that their early-years influence might be measured simply on the resurgence and formalization of the "rock band" as the thing to pursue, or the "drummer, bassist, rhythm guitar, lead guitar, and trading off backing-vocal duties" as your basic lineup, etc. Not a singlehanded accomplishment but, I think, a real one. "Guitar groups are on their way out, Mr. Epstein," and all that.

Hmm. Well, personally I think Kraftwerk, soul and funk are more influential on "today's music" than late-period Beatles. There was a point in time where popular music in general was just naturally evolving independently from anything to do with The Beatles and The Beatles were perceived as very much an "old band" - influential, yes, but very much an old band. Now they've been picked over to death to the point where everyone has convinced themselves that The Beatles invented and influenced everything, which is bull. For one thing, all The Beatles did was take what was going on around them, take the bits they liked and then blend it all together to create something else - which is what people were doing before and after them, and no doubt the same would have occurred without them. This goes for both their earlier material and their later material.

it's interesting to look at their studio years cos they are much closer to how people record music now. they ended "Taxman" by copying and pasting the entire guitar solo to the end of the song. this is how a lot of music is made nowadays.

it's relatable. it's not as fun to reminisce about them playing "It Won't Be Long" 17 times in a row, more or less exactly the same each time, hoping to get a perfect full take. nobody records like that anymore anyways. we are much more likely to use post-Taxman editing techniques.

Well, personally I think Kraftwerk, soul and funk are more influential on "today's music" than late-period Beatles.

just so i'm not misunderstood, i was comparing the relative influences of early vs late-era Beatles on ""today's music"" as a partial explanation as to why one of the Beatles' eras seems to be discussed more frequently than the other, and not talking about Kraftwerk or any other artist or genre.

REM: Classic or dud?

^^^ REM discussion I was thinking of is this thread, starting January 2016, but interestingly enough the October 2013 discussion also overlaps with our current thread a lot, including a (rather good!) Turrican post on early vs. late Beatles in re: what happens when a band is just not warmed up and in the groove with each other from playing live.

xxpost:

On things like 'She Loves You', there are entire takes spliced together to create the illusion that they did achieve the perfect full take - you can hear the edits! A lot of music is made like that nowadays, too. The Beatles weren't the only band working in the studio like they did in '66-'68, either - the only difference with The Beatles is that they weren't touring, therefore people thought they invented everything because they were in the studio all the time.

i don't buy the argument that they weren't playing live. they stopped playing in 65-66 because they couldn't hear each other. they went in the studio and, surprise surprise, they could hear each other again. when they were touring they were in airplanes and taxis and interviews 12 hours a day and playing live for under 30 minutes in a stadium with no monitors. during the studio years, they were playing for hours at a time. Ringo would go to a movie premiere and come and playing from midnight until 5am while the band recorded the backing tracks. this is why the albums sound so good. they are well-rehearsed. they work on these songs for hours at a time. live, they can't do that, they can't hear what each other is playing.

their musicianship suffered and this is why they quit playing live. on a studio schedule they could play together for hours at a time. compare this to playing live for 30 minutes a day.

they've been picked over to death to the point where everyone has convinced themselves that The Beatles invented and influenced everything, which is bull

invented no influenced yes. nobody is saying they invented everything. who is saying this? a scarecrow?

you are the only person here saying "people thought they invented everything". who are these people you are talking about? what is their argument? are you saying they invented backwards tape? they went to art school. they knew about Dada and stuff. i don't think they ever claimed to invent anything. they certainly popularized it more than anyone had in pop music until that point.

the Beatles invented music, everybody knows that

before them, radios only played static, people danced to the wind and the birds, and teenagers spent all their money on hard candies and comic books

It's a whole different kettle of fish playing live in front of an audience compared to performing in a sterile studio environment. McCartney recognised this, which was partly why the Get Back project was conceived.

"people danced to the wind and birds" is amazing, thank you

what is "today's music"?

halp i only listen to the Beatles and Rolling Stones

Geir, there, everywhere

Ringo would go to a movie premiere and come

did he sit in the back row and do this?

Did he do it? He invented it according to Lewisohn!

Ringo on the left...

https://uproxx.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/peggy-hj.gif

http://www.beatlesebooks.com/files/1619622/uploaded/yellow%20sumbarine%20premier.jpg

looks ready to pop at the Yellow Submarine premiere

Surrender Ringo

Paul looking very thoughtful there and super interested in the movie always the company man

the canon narrative favoring the later years is a tad sexist imho. "She Loves You" era = silly teenage girls. Sgt Pepper = critics mansplaining the deep meaning of life.

xpost:

Yoko seems to be enjoying it. John and George look furious for some reason.

Keef too.

the canon narrative favoring the later years is a tad sexist imho

you mean the years when Yoko Ono was singing and doing tape loops on a Beatles album

so much to read into that seating arrangement

there are some crazy intricate song structures in early beatles material. put aside the covers for a minute (most of which are amazing btw); not a second time; anna; there's a place; it won't be long ('she loves you' gets a lot of attention for 'starting with the chorus' but it won't be long does the same thing)...those are hard songs to imagine writing.

xposts:

People still give Yoko shit about her relationship with Lennon and the impact she had on Lennon in 1968/1969 etc. - not realising, of course, that before she came along, Lennon was a real mess. If anything, she saved Lennon. The Beatles' break-up in the late '60s was always going to happen.

there are some crazy intricate song structures in early beatles material. put aside the covers for a minute (most of which are amazing btw); not a second time; anna; there's a place; it won't be long ('she loves you' gets a lot of attention for 'starting with the chorus' but it won't be long does the same thing)...those are hard songs to imagine writing.

― akm, Tuesday, April 25, 2017 11:25 PM (two minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yeah, 'It Won't Be Long' has some great use of chords in it... 'I Call Your Name' and 'I'll Get You', too.

Well "Anna" is a cover, but yes.