The Beatles

interesting Lewisohn interview here. pretty psyched for the book now tbh
http://beatlesexaminer.podbean.com/2013/06/23/twst-39-mark-lewisohn-on-his-beatles-biography/

! will listen

i'm so happy
cuz today i shaved my head
and i'm not sad

There's more of that Lewisohn interview on the guy's own webpage (scroll down): http://www.kenmichaelsradio.com./

All Those Years sounds mindblowing: starting with a 1,000 page book that will be the first of three... !

Trying to imagine what these "wow moments" will be.

Tuesday: John meets Paul

All Those Years sounds mindblowing: starting with a 1,000 page book that will be the first of three... !
― hewing to the status quo with great zealotry (DavidM),

I think the "director's cut" they are releasing UK only at first is actually 2,000 pages!!!

http://www.craigharper.com.au/uploaded_images/yawning.jpg

Party pooper

and knowing what the boys had for breakfast on August 5, 1959 is a PAR-TAY!!

I'll remember to bring a flask of coffee and a sleeping bag if I ever get around to reading it.

My guess is nothing will be as wow as the teenage circle jerk revealed in Paul's book.

i never really feel like i need another beatles book besides the large silver anthology book

This is fun - all of the Abbey Road medley w/isolated vocal tracks:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VrAdX4O1m4M&feature=youtu.be

Let's hear some Carnival of Light, motherfuckers!

I don't care if it's 20 minutes of Ringo dragging a tambourine across the floor, I NEED TO HEAR IT!

Seriously, dunno what the fuck McCartney's waiting for.

Someone made another fake a few weeks ago, this time incorporating "John" saying "Barcelona."

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

http://simpsonswiki.com/w/images/5/5d/Helter_Shmelter.png

http://www.thebeatlesonline.co.uk/thebeatles/Live-At-The-BBC/
NEW PRODUCT
I never downloaded the big ol' complete Beeb Beatles sessions (9 discs?). Is there great stuff that wasn't on the first official release?

In 1994, The Beatles’ Live at the BBC was released to worldwide acclaim - hitting number one in the U.K. and number three in the U.S. and selling more than five million copies within six weeks.
A new companion to The Beatles’ first BBC collection, On Air – Live at the BBC Volume 2, will now be released on 11 November.

On Air’s 63 tracks, none of which overlaps with The Beatles’ first BBC release, include 37 previously unreleased performances and 23 previously unreleased recordings of in-studio banter and conversation between the band’s members and their BBC radio hosts.

In the studios of the British Broadcasting Corporation, The Beatles performed music for a variety of radio shows. On Air - Live at the BBC Volume 2 presents the sound of The Beatles seizing their moment to play for the nation. Thrilled to hear these exciting recordings again, Paul McCartney said, “There’s a lot of energy and spirit. We are going for it, not holding back at all, trying to put in the best performance of our lifetimes.”

On Air Live At The BBC Volume 2
DOUBLE CD ALBUM
£15.99

'Live at the BBC Volume 2' Limited Edition Lithographic Print
ART
£49.99

'Live at the BBC Volume 2' CD & Limited Edition Lithographic Print
BUNDLE
£63.99

that bundle is a fucking DEAL

I have a question about the Beatles:
This is pretty much just anecdotal, but it seems like most people under the age of about 45 who are fans of the Beatles have been listening to them since they were kids? I don't just mean listening to them in sense that pretty much everyone of this age who has grown up in the western world heard a lot of their songs, I mean specifically putting on their parents Beatles LPs or borrowing Beatles albums from their local library or whatever. Is there anyone on ilx who regularly listens to the Beatles as an adult who didn't really listen to the Beatles before the age of, say, 14? Do you think that the fact you first encountered these songs as a kid makes a difference to how you hear them today (if this is when you first heard them)?

I'd say most fans of The Beatles listened to them as kids, unless they were 70 or older.

Although Steve Neive apparently had not really heard them before Elvis Costello gave him some of the early albums. Dunno if he's a fan though. He definitely liked them though.

Is there anyone on ilx who regularly listens to the Beatles as an adult who didn't really listen to the Beatles before the age of, say, 14?

I got into them via my parents' vinyls of Abbey Road and Revolver, must've been about 15.

I was p familiar with albums my dad liked a lot when I was a kid (Beatles for Sale, Rubber Soul, Help), but didn't hear their later stuff (Revolver - Abbey Road) in their entirety until I was about 17.

Age 14 or 15 here again too. Around 1995, just before the Beatles Anthology TV series. I really barely knew their music before that point. I remember having a decent supply of similarly-minded peers as well. So what is it about Beatle music that so lends itself to That Age? Is it the same thing it was in the Sixties - a halfway house between kid-friendly pop (big hooks, clean sounds, fun to sing along) and Weird Music rife with Experimenting, Art-ness and Teenage Anxieties? But then I'd say they should be more of an all-ages thing in that way - you can find points/albums all along their career to hang your hat, wherever you stand on popism/rockism. Maybe it's just that they have so much narrative, or that the shape of that narrative starts to resonate at that age? Just throwing things out there.

I got into them via my parents' vinyls of Abbey Road and Revolver, must've been about 15.

― I wish to incorporate disco into my small business (chap)

These are solidly my two favourite Beatles records to this day, by the way, possibly not coincidentally.

I'm guessing I was maybe 8 when I got into my dad's Beatles records. I went through them chronologically, and for the first year or so I couldn't really get into anything past Revolver because it all seemed too weird. Magical Mystery Tour was the gateway to the hippie-beardie stuff, because it was so goofy. (Though the yellow matter custard dripping from a dead dog's eye freaked me out.) But I think that's why I've never loved Abbey Road and Let It Be the way I love the early and especially mid-period stuff.

But anyway, yes, sure. What I really wonder is how kids hear it now. Like, my kids may have never heard the Beatles, because I just don't play them that much -- and even when I do, it's just one thing among many that they hear. To keep things in perspective, my oldest son is 9. I was into the Beatles when I was 9, and their oldest music at that point was about 16 years old. For my son to be into something of similar vintage, he would be listening to OK Computer.

Is there anyone on ilx who regularly listens to the Beatles as an adult who didn't really listen to the Beatles before the age of, say, 14?

I've probably mentioned it on a thread or two, but the only Beatles album my parents owned was the Yellow Submarine album, so those four or so songs are pretty much all I had to go by other than what I heard elsewhere (Hey Bulldog is still one of my fave songs). I didn't buy a Beatles album until college, at the earliest. In fact, I want to say the only Beatles product I ever owned was a used copy of the BBC sessions, White Album and Yellow Submarine Songtrack. Now I have everything and listen to it pretty much regularly.

Because it's funny, btw, the only Dylan album my parents had was Self Portrait (!) and the only Stones album my parents had was Goat's Head Soup (and it was missing the actual LP). But they had every Bill Cosby comedy album!

My wife grew up in a largely rock-free family but one of about 3-4 rock records her parents owned was the white album.
In contrast I grew up with older sibs heavily into classic rock in its 70s heyday but none of them liked the Beatles so the only area of Rock history my wife has an edge on me is the Beatles
My kids mostly hear music via my iPod in the car and there are only about 4 Beatles tunes on it so they don't know them at all, but my daughter loves badfinger so close enough I guess

my dad told me always to tell the Beatles to fuck off

and did they?

2 down

It seems like I was maybe overestimating how young people tended to be when they got into the Beatles? When I was a pre-teen (late 80s to mid 90s) they seemed very much part of a kids canon to me? Like, I was aware of Ringo primarily through his narrating Thomas the Tank Engine, I had a Rupert the Bear book that tied into McCartney's Frog Chorus, I'm pretty sure we sang Yellow Submarine and Octopus's Garden at a school assembly...
The first Beatles album I listened to was my parents cassette copy of the Beatles Ballads, I think I was about 8 or 9 and would listen to it on repeat for hours. Maybe some of this list is UK specific, or specific to a certain time in the UK? I don't think the Beatles Ballads was issued in the US for example.

i had a spell of intense-ish Beatles listening in my v. early teens based around some two-part early tapes doc on the BBC i think. plus teachers used to beat you over the head with that shit. my brother had a couple of budget comps aping the red and blue albums, i liked the early R'n'B clones and "Hey Bulldog", still ok with that stuff mostly.

parents had no interest in them whatsoever, used to come across them at other kids' houses more often.

mainly i think they were never central to any narrative of music that i was interested in pursuing

"mainly i think they were never central to any narrative of music that i was interested in pursuing"

I was definitely into the Beatles a long time before I was 'into' pop music per se, when I did start getting into music as a teenager and constructing a canon of what I thought was 'good/cool music' there wasn't much direct connection to the Beatles, although I still listened to them a lot and didn't like them any less.

I think part of the appeal of the Beatles for me at that age was that they did seem to fit into this kids canon, but at the same time there was something mysterious about them, and I think part of the reason that I would spend so long listening to them was that I was trying to understand it, work out what it was about.
Another important bit of Beatles stuff for me when I was kid was my mum's old copy of the Beatles chords for guitar book, with illustrations by Alan Aldridge:

http://eil.com/images/main/The+Beatles+-+Complete+-+Guitar+Edition+-+BOOK-214226.jpg

http://cs1893.vk.me/u725329/99607456/x_7ea9d6c5.jpg

i think Simon and Garfunkel filled this slot for me as a pre-teen

i was a 1 kid: 9th grade christmas present, during one of the periodic generation-indoctrinating marketing blitzes. this was also p much my introduction to music outside, like, holst, or bond songs, so it's that stuff that i associate with childhood. the beatles were an adolescence gateway: songs about girls and depression. DC otm re: the narrative, which was an early introduction to People Growing Up. the later stuff (abbey road, "two of us") was almost frighteningly sad to me for this reason. listened to almost nothing else for basically a year; consumed everything w/out much attention paid to chronology (this was also the heyday of napster). abandoned them suspiciously quickly after a girl i liked (who'd for a while had no choice but to love them, because her boomer parents had a houseful of ghastly paraphernalia) embarked on a punk phase and told me as gently as she could that the beatles were "too soft". to the extent that that memory lingers i guess i do think of them as entry-level. i don't put them on very much now except for "she said she said" or "hey bulldog" but when i do they're still pretty immediate.

I was aware of them as a little kid, but didn't get properly into them until I was 14, when I pinched the (2) albums my dad owned off him (Pepper and Mystery), and then bought up the others myself.

I tracked down (for myself) the Monkees DVD where Tim Buckley closed one of the episodes, and I played it for the kids, they enjoyed it a lot.

I then found The Beatles' "Help" DVD, and again I played it for their entertainment, as reported on in the thread "So, should I let Amber and Alice see the Beatles' "Help" film?;

At this point, they thought The Beatles were a follow-on from The Monkees, in fact I remember Alice singing "Hey hey we're the Beatles" at one point.

Since then, I hadn't really made a point of getting them 'into' The Beatles, but Alice, being the musical one, has made a point of learning all there is to know about them (and has given chapter and verse to various music teachers about the specifics of the "Twist and Shout" session..)

the only person my age I know who's REALLY into the Beatles had parents from Liverpool who loved them. He genuinely rates Kula Shaker which is a bit wtf for a 23 year old. He's already married though.

I had a phase at about 12 when I thought 'This Boy' was the deepest shit ever recorded (lol) and that was it. I think apart from listening to And Your Bird Can Sing on YouTube a few times, I've never actually put a Beatles song/album on out of choice.

Grew up w a bootleg of Yellow Submarine on VHS, and I remember talking about it on the bus to school and stuff. I was way into it. Must have been 5 or 6. That tape also included Magical Mystery Tour! And we had another one (that I didn't find until I was a teen) that had The Compleat Beatles with Malcolm McDowell narrating.