The Beatles

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.

they were definitely part of the kids canon for me, all my friends liked the early beatles stuff when we were 10 or 11. we sang "i want to hold your hand" at our school's spring concert.

when i was 14 or 15 i really, really got into them. probably the first band that i just plunged into and checked out albums and books from the library and totally immersed myself in them. they were fun and accessible and also had a weird, mysterious druggy vibe that captured my fascination. i started smoking pot a fairly young age and i was blown away that "walrus" had the chant at the end that seemingly goes SMOKE POT SMOKE POT EVERYBODY SMOKE POT EVERYBODY SMOKE POT that freaked me out but also seemed really cool

btw i just shut down my brain to anyone who says that the walrus chant is saying something else. i don't care if i'm wrong, to me it will always be SMOKE POT SMOKE POT EVERYBODY SMOKE POT EVERYBODY SMOKE POT

Ha, I didn't hear it like that until I was in college, and I'd first heard "Walrus" when I was 6. I did ask my mom what an acid trip was, though (having read Lennon's quote about writing the first lines on an acid trip).

We learned a lot of Beatles songs in primary school, Yellow Submarine and Octopus' Garden were definitely in our songbooks. And I learned a lot of the popular songs from watching the Beatles cartoon on tv, iirc they would play an animated clip of the songs and have a bouncinig-ball singalong type thing

then in high school a friend made me a copy of Sgt Pepper, and another friend had this weird Reader's Digest collections of Beatles cassetes, like 6 of them that had all the songs. We got mum the blue and red compliation sets on CD for her birthday, and those became a household staple most weekends.

To be completely honest I spent most of my life only knowing the hits. I hadn't really listened to that many complete albums except Pepper til the re-release campaign, and then I started gobbling them up.

I think boomers hadn't yet infiltrated education when I was in grade school. The idea of singing Beatles songs in class, or at an assembly, would've garnered reactions from some parents and teachers along the lines of "You let our kids sing commie drug music!"

We sang Yellow Submarine and When I'm 64 in primary school, maybe a few others I'm forgetting.

Oh and my class once did a dance routine to Maxwell's Silver Hammer. It got quite violent as you can imagine.

RIP Jackie Lomax:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KT7HMdUEBI4

That song rules so hard. Wish the George version wasn't so savagely lo fi.

Yeah, isn't it great? I first heard this on the radio once in the mid-80s; there was a dj on the big Chicago FM rock station who would play relatively obscure stuff like this from time to time. It blew my mind, sounding like a white album outtake that was better than 1/3rd of the white album.

Octopus's Garden was definitely in circulation - thanks to its position on Raffi's One Light, One Sun (1985). I'm pretty sure I never understood it as a "Beatles song" until I heard Abbey Road as a teenager.

I just heard about 'A Toot and a Snore' bootleg:

"Lennon was producing Harry Nilsson's latest album, Pussy Cats, when Paul and Linda McCartney dropped in after the first night of the sessions, aka "the Jim Keltner Fan Club Hour", at Burbank Studios on 28 March 1974. They were joined by Stevie Wonder, Harry Nilsson, Jesse Ed Davis, May Pang, Bobby Keys and producer Ed Freeman for an impromptu jam session.
Lennon was in his "lost weekend", separated from Yoko Ono and living in Los Angeles with Pang. Although he and McCartney hadn't seen each other in three years (and lashed out at each other in the press), according to Pang they resumed their friendship as if nothing had happened. The jam session proved not very productive musically. Lennon sounds to be on cocaine and is heard offering Wonder a snort on the first track, and on the fifth, asks someone to give him a snort. This is also the origin of the album name, where John Lennon clearly asks: "You wanna snort, Steve? A toot? It's goin' round". In addition, Lennon seems to be having trouble with his microphone and headphones.
Lennon is on lead vocal and guitar, McCartney sings harmony and plays Ringo Starr's drums (Starr, who was recording with Nilsson at the time but not present at the session, complained at the next day's recording session that "McCartney always messes up me drums!").[2] Stevie Wonder sings and plays electric piano, Linda McCartney is on organ, Pang plays tambourine, Nilsson provides vocals, Davis is on guitar, Freeman (who was producing Don McLean in the neighboring studio) fills in on bass, and Keys plays saxophone.[3]
The events of this night are intriguing to Beatle fans as it is the only known instance of the former songwriting team playing together between their 1970 formal breakup and Lennon's murder in 1980. Aside from informal, special occasions such as weddings, collaborations of more than two ex-Beatles were rare after the band's bitter 1969-70 split, especially between Lennon and McCartney, whose conflict was the most pronounced and long-lived of all the post-split infighting."

haha that recording is so shite they NEVER find a groove

and yea they're all coked out of their minds

i've heard a bit of the AB Road bootleg (100+ hours of audio from the Let It Be sessions, from the video reels i think) and damn it sounds fun. stuff like paul demoing "oh darling" (solo piano). and i love hearing beatles talk.

Yeah, I've heard a bunch of that as well. George was OBSESSED with "I Shall Be Released."

I think I've heard some of that; they rehearse "She Came In Through The Bathroom Window" and Lennon provides running commentary ("Protected by a silver spoon" "a bloody spoon, bloody spoon, bloody spoon"). It's interesting, but doesn't seem like it would stand up to multiple listens.

Actually, it might be from Let It Be...I think they rehearsed a bunch of Abbey Road during those sessions.

yeah, that boot is awful -- it's one of those releases that kind of defines how obsessive Beatles fans will latch onto anything unreleased. Having Stevie Wonder on it is almost like a joke by god

lennon seems like a bro, offering toots

the nilsson documentary on netflix is great but a real bummer :(

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SE49bsxGTFM#t=45

Turntables and the Beatles who loved them: http://www.capitol6000.com/recordplayers.html

Tom Ewing via Ned Raggett:

Somewhere there's an alternative universe where the boomers spent as much emotional and financial effort on protecting the 60s' political gains as they did in this one on making sure people still knew who The Beatles were.

why should we accept at face value this idea that the persistence of the Beatles canon is a Baby Boomer conspiracy? why shouldn't we blame Generations X & Y for the undoing of these political gains?

I actually think that the cash spent on reversing the (possibly overstated actual) political gains far, far outgrosses Beatles-related spending.

why shouldn't we blame Generations X & Y

because nearly all the Democrats who made this possible are boomers, led by the Clintons.

blame boomers for the politics but each new generation p much discovers/advocates the beatles for themselves, I know that's a cliche but I've seen it happen 100x