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

"Haha, many of the members of Wings were and remain some of the best session guys in the music world."
― a wicked 60s beat poop combo (Pancakes Hackman)

We're getting into the old argument of technique vs. musicianship. No doubt Paul's played with dudes whose chops are much better than Lennon's or Ringo's, but bottom line, there's a huge difference between someone you hire as your ersatz recording session employee and someone whose distinct musical style meshes with yours so intimately they can anticipate your every move.

As far as session work goes, McCartney has great bass technique; I don’t recall too many folks calling him up to lay down some tracks.

Well, Paul never worked with musicians as good as Harrison, Starkey, and Lennon again.

The people who played on "Tug Of War" and "Pipes Of Piece" were way better instrumentalists than George Harrison or John Lennon ever were. Ringo Starr is a great drummer, but he also played on those two albums, that is, the tracks that Stanley Clarke didn't play on instead. Which was hardly a bad replacement.

Hey, wait, I mean Steve Gadd, not Stanley Clarke.

This guy is a way better guitarist than George Harrison, he should have been in The Beatles instead:

http://www.premiumseatsusa.com/concert/Buckethead/images/buckethead_jk02.jpg

lol wackiness

I don't think you can boil it down to mechanics/talent. Not to get all touchy-feely but alot of it was, I dunno, alchemy I guess. Paul practically grew up with John and George...sure not so much Ringo but then again it's a certain kind of alchemy that allows an outsider to fit so well with 3 close friends and stay so well fitted for 10 years. John said to Ringo after he left the Beatles, that he missed the kind of jams where you could give a look and everyone knew where to go. As much revisionism as has gone on since the breakup, it's true to say that a lot of Paul's songwriting was collaborative. Even if John didn't write the lyrics to Hey Jude, he told Paul not to change 'the movement you need is on your shoulder'. Paul goes off into the world to write songs with Linda, or alone, and it's a whole different dynamic. The counterbalance is missing, the competitiveness, the intuition, all the things he had with the Beatles don't go with him when he goes somewhere else.
It's nice to think that they would, given how much he steered the Beatles, but it just doesn't happen that.

Ack. Too bloody wordy and sentimental as per usual.

Nope. Spot on.

I see the idea of counterbalance but I'm not sure you can say Paul's songwriting was collaborative.
It seems clear that by 65 or 66 at most, each one composed alone and presented almost finished songs to the others. of course there are some exceptions.

Maybe. But I think that presentation process was a key part, no matter how brief...seeking that judgement rather than treating it as a finished song is still collaboration of a kind. Hair splitting I know. Where Paul's instincts leaned towards clear language, Lennon's instinct was towards indirect language, metaphors and such...and those instincts, even with a mostly completed song created a push-me-pull-you...I know I keep coming back to this but that line in Hey Jude...Paul was preparing, planning to change it. John said he liked it. And it's a choice that helps the imagery. We've all made it kind of mythological all these years later, but to me that process is huge. Creatively, you always want your stamp on your own work. It's not everyone who would work that way, with a finished song or not. I mean, the Robinson brothers got in HUGE fights because Chris would change Rich's songs around, make verses choruses...that's almost a norm. Collaborative songwriting to me is some kind of weird magic. It doesn't matter about the mix of who writes what, to me it's what that song would look like without the collaboration.

Put that way, I totally agree with you. the presentation part is definitely key and allowing someone to change even details to your work is very important.

yet, about the idea that it's because there wasn't that counterbalance anymore that Paul's output was bad after the Beatles it may be true but by the white album, there wasn't much counterbalance left, it seems. the fact that John hated "Ob La Di" or "Maxwell" and they still made the cut shows that, for instance.

Yeah, but that was the actual reason for the split: John being outvoted on songs that he recognised as perfectly fine Paul songs, but songs he didn't want to be part of himself.

x-post, VegemiteGrrl said it much better than I did earlier. Great bands are about chemistry and technique. The Beatles certainly had chemistry from playing Hamburg dives, endless touring, and countless hours in the studio. Other bands may have been better technically (Cream anyone) but not too many people would claim that Cream were better than the Beatles. As far as the voting process went, by Abbey Road at least, Paul had taken so much control that he got pretty much whatever he wanted. As an example, all the other Beatles hated "Maxwell" but it still got on vinyl anyway. To counter McCartney's influence, Lennon wanted two separate sides; one side of Paul songs and another side of exclusively Lennon songs, a perfect example of the song vetting process breaking down. If you add in the collapsing financial mess that was Apple, Allen Klein, and Paulie's control issues you see why the Beatles broke up.
By the way, I think Cream is quite awesome.

The biggest thing I like in Paul's solo music is actually a thread I see going back into the late Beatle years: this compositional richness and eccentricity that begins with "Your Mother Should Know," "Lady Madonna," "Martha My Dear," etc. I think it's this style that accounts for the popularity of Ram, but I at least hear it here and there in every album, even up to recent things like "Riding to Vanity Fair," "Mr. Bellamy," etc.

(By the way, hello to any old friends reading this. I haven't posted here in a long time!)

oh hey, cool. i remember you, Tim.

Whenever I think of Paul solo my thoughts turn to 'Simply having a wonderful Christmas time'...and then I cry. However, and I kind of hate to say it because it does reveal my own indefensible cheesy streak and I know I'm asking for SBs just saying it...I do love Mull of Kintyre. My mum brought me up on a lot of folk music (Foster and Allen, all that guff)...and it is written in a very traditional style, a la Caledonia, Carrickfergus, that I can't help but kind of love.

I was thinking about the bit in Anthology where Paul talks about the Beatles as "a bit like being army buddies, you always knew that in the end you would have to kiss the army goodbye and go off and get married and act like normal people, etc". And I realized, wait a minute, this isn't what Paul ended up doing at all!

um, yeah he did.

Amongst other things, sure..

"Paul practically grew up with John and George...sure not so much Ringo"

To split hairs a bit, according to the Lewisohn book, the guys recorded with Ringo before they ever recorded with Pete Best. And I'd wager they grew up a lot more during their time together as The Beatles, than in the Quarrymen/Silver Beetles years...

Sure but the three of them predate Pete Best by some years...

hey tim!

regarding who wrote what - in the Playboy Interviews book with Lennon they go into detail about a lot of the collaboration, song by song. a good read.

What's the Lewisohn book called? Amazon carries a lot of books by him, all with different but similar titles.

The one I'm reading is the Complete Beatles Chronicle. Though I guess there's a newer expanded edition than the one I'm reading now. He also wrote that complete recording sessions book which I want but don't have.

iirc the chronicle is the sessions book expanded and with extra stuff so chronicle is the one to get i believe. i don't think there's much missing, if anything from the sessions book that's not in the chronicle. someone will be able to tell us i'm sure.

At the store, the sessions book looks a lot thicker and more data-heavy than the Chronicles book I own. But maybe the Chronicle reissue combines everything into one mega-volume? I dunno...

Is that Lewisohn book available in both mono and stereo?

Hi Tim!

I DLed a PDF of the Sessions book with little effort. Have not read beyond the initial Paul interview yet. Maybe I will look for a file of the Chronicles one as well...

I think VegemiteGrrrl is pretty much spot on as far as songwriting goes. Obviously the competition, the chemistry, the input from the others, it made the songs better, and maybe also the arrangements.
But I still think it's wrong to say that it's much of a matter of the Beatles as instrumentalists. It's more a matter of their creative input as composers and arrangers. Paul McCartney did indeed work with better instrumentalists on those three albums he made with George Martin, and also the two Rockestra tracks on "Back To The Egg". And, yes, they also played better, and they had "feel" enough. But the songs would never get as strong anymore as they were at his best back in the Beatles day.

oh god rockestra hahahaha i forgot about that shit

Chronicles, plus Sessions, is out there, you just have to hunt for it. I love Sessions, haven't read Chronicles yet...

I didn't know about Rockestra... after checking out some YouTube vids, I'm wondering about Paul's competitive streak. Do you think that after the Beatles he was setting out to try and top them? And I don't mean it in a cynical way, but his work after the Beatles seemed to be really reaching for 'new heights'...'everyone will be amazed by this'. But as a counter,I wrestle with that idea, because there is the fact that Paul was creative, was big into arranging, so maybe it's just a logical progression of the creative urge that he would just keep mining new inspirations and idea. Ugh. Okay it doesn't sound like a question now that I've written it down. Grr.

Got Past Masters today. Nick was right...Disc 2 is great! Can't stop listening. On 'Hey Jude' I actually jumped a little when Paul started singing...it's like he's standing right THERE. So great to hear it again now so loud and crisp, and clean. Jesus. And 'Don't Let me Down' brings goosebumps now.

I should probably pick that up tomorrow.

Get thee to the buying place.

All I have left to pick up is Yellow Submarine. They should just rename that fucking thing "Here's 'Hey Bulldog' for 15 bucks". I'm deeply annoyed that those 4 songs weren't included on Past Masters.

So, come the day that the official downloads start, will "Hey Bulldog" get out-of-proportion sales?

I wouldn't be surprised. They should have just released a single w/Bulldog as the A side and It's All Too Much as the B side.

They were gonna put out an EP with the new songs but the record company wanted to sell the public on a full album. It would have been crazy awesome to have the White Album come out followed shortly by an EP!

Can the remastered Hey Bulldog compare to the remixed Hey Bulldog on the Songtrack?

Yeah, exactly. It's not like I'm buying the damn thing for George Martin's soundtrack.

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-ct-bluebeat7-2009nov07,0,5668337.story

A federal court in Los Angeles this week issued a temporary restraining order against a music website that recently had been offering the entire Beatles catalog for downloading at 25 cents per song. The Santa Cruz-based BlueBeat earlier in the week was hit with a copyright infringement lawsuit by EMI's Capitol Records, the group's U.S. label.

The order set back a novel legal argument by BlueBeat that songs produced through digital regeneration are akin to songs performed by cover bands and therefore do not run afoul of copyright law. BlueBeat had argued in court filings that its downloads were legal because the company had created entirely new versions by computer through a process called "psychoacoustic simulations" that makes the re-created songs sound just like the original recordings.

"We analyze them and then synthesize new songs, just as you would read a book and write an article," said BlueBeat Chief Executive Hank Risan. The site's "intention is to create a live performance, as if you are there listening to the actual performers doing the work as opposed to a copy or a phonorecord or CD of the work."

But the court didn't buy it. On Thursday, U.S. District Court Judge John F. Walter sided with EMI. "Plaintiffs have . . . produced sufficient evidence demonstrating that (the) defendants copied protected elements of their recordings," the ruling said. "Indeed, screen shots from BlueBeat's website show track titles with the same names as the plaintiff's copyrighted works..."

god bless santa cruz.

finally got the Mono Box set for Christmas,after a day of listening to PPM, Revolver & the Beatles I have to say it was worth the wait.

will spend more time with it but the overall quality of the packaging and the remastering in general goes a long way to justify the price tag / blatant racketeering.

Including the original dust jackets but using plastic jackets for the CDs is a good example.

not sure I'd feel the same way about a plastic apple with a few lossless rips in it.

I got the mono box for Christmas too! Absolutely OTM about it being worth the wait, and the packaging...putting them out as little mini albums was a very cool touch. An added bonus for me was playing some of the cds for my in-laws on Christmas day, my mother-in-law dancing around the kitchen to Twist N Shout, reminiscing with her husband about dancing to the song on their first date (they're both in their 70's). This is a woman who has trouble walking without a cane, and just the look of sheer happiness on her face as she reminisced over the old songs was SO great.

Good to hear there's someone else to get excited about it with me, a good 3 months after the rest of the world.

I decided that it had to be the stereo box set for my mum, because she was a big fan (even saw them in '63) but hasn't even heard a lot of the later albums. I'd love to join in with your tales of joy - but she, uh, hasn't even taken the cellophane off yet

oh man :/

Ha, it's not as bad as it sounds - I softened the blow by unleashing Beatles Rock Band on everyone in the evening, which is just about the most fun any of us have ever had!

Good to hear there's someone else to get excited about it with me, a good 3 months after the rest of the world.
i'm thinking (hoping) i'm getting this for my b-day in a couple weeks, so I'll be excited along with you. I'll start some new polls.

Count me in - I'm another Mono Box Set Xms recipient - blasted my way through the albums up to Rubber Soul and the first Masters disc yesterday - too much joy. Will be listening a bit obsessively over the next while, obv.

Hey, Tyler, my birthday's in a few weeks, too. What are we getting each other?

If you're going stereo, go for the usb hard drive. The 24 bit flac files are as good as it gets, or at least as good as they've given us so far.