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

It's an interesting debate - how rarefied was the Beatles' exceptionalism?

less than 3 years from "She Loves You" to "Tomorrow Never Knows"

back to the music. i wish the Anthology had gone into their solo stuff. i have always loved this song George Harrison taped with the Remo Four for the Wonderwall soundtrack:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DVRmdrM0Mmg

i'm not so sure about this. when the band broke up it was messy and it was the music industry in the 70's

― AdamVania (Adam Bruneau), Wednesday, April 26, 2017 12:50 AM (eleven minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I'm totally sure about it. Linda joining Paul in Wings and playing keyboards onstage on his solo tours might have drawn the occasional giggle from a tiny group of dickheads, but John working with Yoko actively pissed a lot of people off and offended them and still to this day you hear jokes about Yoko or accusations that she "broke up the Beatles" ... nobody levels that accusation at Linda or any of the other "Beatle wives" ...

There were decades of awful sexist jokes about Linda -- hell, as late as 1989 the "Hey Jude" tape was played all the time by Howard Stern and his equivalents around the US, and was still getting airplay for years afterward.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tape_of_Only_Linda

Yeah, Mick Jagger most famously dragged McCartney for "starting a band with his old lady."

As I said, a tiny group of dickheads. You'd expect that kind of shtick from Howard Stern.

I think that was Keith, Phil...?

I never saw the Complete Beatles. Was it on VHS? Where did people even see it? I remember the rather fancy books though when I was a kid in bookstores and I used to pull those out and look at them all the time

Yeah, it was on VHS... you may still have able to get old VHS copies of it, I dunno. There's portions of it on Youtube, but you'll probably never see it on DVD or anything unless some hardcore Beatle fan has bootlegged it. I think it got a brief cinematic release as well.

*have=be

I think that was Keith, Phil...?

― Οὖτις, Tuesday, April 25, 2017 9:22 PM

Pretty sure it was Jagger because through the time of his death John was bemused by Jagger's attitude.

Yep, it was on VHS; I remember it was one of the first things my family rented when we got a VCR. It was also shown on broadcast tv around 1985 or so (local UHF station in Chicago, at least).

Billy Preston was one of the interviewees, and he should've been in Anthology; true, he wasn't an insider like Derek Taylor or Neil Aspinall, but he's the only artist the Beatles ever co-credited on a record.

xxp

i had the compleat beatles on vhs (and probably still do, in a box somewhere). it's a shame it's no longer available since i remember it being pretty good -- they interviewed allan williams and some other ppl who i don't think made it into the anthology series.

I forget how it was agreed upon, but at some point it was decided that the Anthology was to only feature the three Beatles, Martin, Taylor, and Aspinall. None of their wives or exes were to be interviewed, no Beatle kids, no one else who knew them.

I hadn't thought about The Compleat Beatles in forever. Watching the clips now, I don't know as that I have any fondness for it at all. It seems to present one person's view of a certain event as the truth. Also feels like you're watching the real life version of the Rutles movie.

Compleat Beatles aired on PBS. I taped it and watched it a lot.

The thing I lol about the most is the academic guy who says "Sgt Pepper was the point when their music stopped being ritual dance music and became music to be *listened to*"

"Billy Preston was one of the interviewees, and he should've been in Anthology"

yeah but I think he may have been in the depths of drug addiction plus there was some stuff about him sexually assaulting a boy around this time so maybe no

I don't remember the clip, but it seems like the academic guy is probably Wilfrid Mellers. I do like his Beatles book.

The thing I lol about the most is the academic guy who says "Sgt Pepper was the point when their music stopped being ritual dance music and became music to be *listened to*"

Haha I remember that. I was 12 and I was still like, nope, that's fucked.

Also, Bruce Johnston? He gets kind of a funny line in ("We were sitting around congratulating ourselves for having a lot of hits...and then we heard Sgt. Pepper"), but was he really the only near-contemporary they could get?

The phrase "ritual dance music" has always stuck w me. It says so much, esp w the disdainful way its delivered

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

I'm talking about the critical perception of their earlier work being inferior to their work post-RS. I'm not talking about the Beatles themselves, but the default narrative popularized by boomers (the screaming girl phase of their career was a necessary evil to help them reach the heights of their conceptual work post-RS). Those screaming girls were revolutionaries who stole power from adults, cops and other authority figures. Those screaming girls put the Beatles on stage and my point is that we do a disservice to Beatles history when we gloss over their early albums as simply precursors to Jann Wenner realizing himself.

^^ excellent post

Those screaming girls were revolutionaries who stole power from adults, cops and other authority figures. Those screaming girls put the Beatles on stage and my point is that we do a disservice to Beatles history when we gloss over their early albums as simply precursors to Jann Wenner realizing himself.

^^^ this is a very good way of putting it.

as much as i love the later beatles albums it's a little sad to me that the radicalism/inventiveness of the early stuff has been glossed over. i always think of the famous dylan quote where he talks about hearing stuff like "i want to hold your hand" on the radio and being blown away by how strange and different it sounded.

well put - calls to mind that harry styles quote from the RS feature.

first of all in the future i'd be surprised if anyone is even going to know who Jann Wenner is.

second of all this thread is here, if you guys want to talk about the early songs, go for it, nobody is stopping you.

but lol i'm not going to precursor my stoned observations on "Blue Jay Way" with a review of "AHDN" out of some moral obligation.

Darin otm.

Darin completely otm - that was an excellent post!

Thanks for the otms, everyone!

Adam, I wasn't directing that observation at you - was just trying to clarify my earlier post. And for the record, I love stoned observations on "Blue Jay Way".

yesterday say the Beatles were old and nobody care about them and now we are otming about Rolling Stone magazines from 40 years ago

lol oh yeah np. this is just a confusing thread

I've only seen Let It Be once, and no one really comes off well (save, I dunno, Ringo?). But I remember lots of shots of Yoko just sitting there next to John, silent and staring. I'm sure she was more lively at other times, and tbf John wasn't that far removed from sitting and staring himself - and the band barely coherent as a unit with or without her present. But given she was the only one that didn't have to be there I can see why she makes a good scapegoat.

Well, given that they were used to recording whenever they felt like it and suddenly they were being forced into this disciplined early morning routine in a place that they weren't used to making music in and the band had no idea what the hell they were meant to be doing and couldn't reach a compromise and John and Yoko were on smack then yeah...

Anyway, let's talk about how great 'I Call Your Name' is... the lyrics, the chord progression, the way it goes into a triplet feel briefly, the 12-string guitar work. Let's talk about how lyrically sour Lennon's 1964 work was and how most of his songs actually deal with unhappy/bad relationships... people shouldn't have been surprised at the direction he took on Plastic Ono Band in hindsight ...

"I call your name" with the ska break? Well ahead of everyone, there.

There was also a ska break in "You know my name", but it got cut until Anthol3.

there's a lot of in-studio chatter from the LIB sessions with Yoko joining in, giving suggestions, ideas etc. i mean she seems pretty polite and all but.. jeez i could see how that would get on my tits if it was mine-and-my-mates' band.

xpost:

Yeah, it goes unexpectedly into this triplet feel with the kinda choppy guitar playing you'd find in ska ... it's a pretty neat trick and I often wonder if that was written into the song to begin with or whether it just spontaneously happened during a take and they thought "we'll keep that"

pisces otm, which doesn't excuse the way boomers love to hate on Yoko, that's a different deal. but plenty of bands have experienced the "band member's partner decides he/she gets to weigh in" phenomenon and it's usually a pretty tense thing

they were just jamming like always and recording new songs but the added stress of (1) new studio w bad sound and (2) Paul shoving cameras in your face at 10am and telling you what to play isn't helping. no wonder George quit the band.

Ringo had quit during the White Album sessions, but a lot of those have leaked, and they are playing together in pretty good spirits for a lot of the outtakes. John quit after both Ringo and George. well he threatened to quit, they were all coaxed back, by Paul. Paul ended the band with the press release issues in his debut solo album. blaming Yoko is idiotic.

the narrative is always changing and what may have been true in RS is not anymore. i think kids nowadays see Yoko Ono in a different light. for the Tumblr-centric she is an inspiration and early proponent of politically conscious social media. Yoko Ono was a rare POC public figure activist artist who had massive media attention. she paid for this in many ways, and the John & Yoko albums & films getting omitted from the Beatles narrative is another one of those ways. whatever, print media is dead. today's kids would probably do ok to look at what she and John did in the 70's wrt media press and activism.

'Tell Me Why'
'I'll Cry Instead'
'You Can't Do That'
'I'll Be Back'
'No Reply'
'I'm a Loser'
'Baby's In Black'
'I Don't Wanna Spoil The Party'
'I Call Your Name'

and after that 'Help!', 'Run For Your Life', 'Norwegian Wood' etc.

Trying to tell us something about yer domestic situaton, John?

Paul also clearly in the wrong relationship circa '65: 'The Night Before', 'Another Girl', 'You Won't See Me', 'I'm Looking Through You' ...

Paul also clearly in the wrong relationship circa '65: 'The Night Before', 'Another Girl', 'You Won't See Me', 'I'm Looking Through You' ...

Paul ended the band with the press release issues in his debut solo album.

In the autobiog Paul says John had already told the band he wanted to split the Beatles before the publication of the PR

xpost:

'I'm Down', too!

told the band

this is different than announcing it to the public behind the other's backs!

oh, totally - but in the biog he puts it in terms of merely publicising something the rest of the band had already agree. Obvs the book is self-serving in purpose so take it with a pinch of salt...

I'm Down is so great. The chaotic live versions are crazy.

xpost to Adam:

John ended the band, Paul told the press and for good reason - telling John to keep quiet was partly an Allen Klein business decision, and McCartney did not want Klein to have anything to do with his post-Beatle affairs or Apple. That's why he sued to dissolve the partnership, and he was right to do so. Christ, this is like, all common knowledge.