The Beatles' Solo Careers Poll - Voting and General Discussion Thread

this will be a really fun poll to think about. i'm excited to revisit george harrison and see if i can find things to like beyond ATMP and LitMW.

I think Brainwashed is a real nice album.

DOES ANYONE ELSE REP FOR BLINDMAN THE B-SIDE OF BACK OFF BOOGALOO?

Ahem.. Definition of deep cut.

Ballot of 100 tracks? I'll end up going those apple jam tracks, I just know..

I mean, sure "Band on the Run" or "Live and Let Die" are good but ... they aren't *that* great.

personally don't really rate live & let die but it was v cool when all the fireworks went off in the chorus when I saw him live

this will be a really fun poll to think about. i'm excited to revisit george harrison and see if i can find things to like beyond ATMP and LitMW.

― obviously DLC (Karl Malone), Friday, May 11, 2018

I may be the only person on ILM who rates Cloud Nine.

Jeff Lynne-isms aside I am a big fan of the deep cuts like Fish On The Sand and If Just For Today.

Turns out Harrison and Lynne were a better artist-producer pair than any of Lynne's subsequent collaborations.

I may be the only person on ILM who rates Cloud Nine.
no way, it's got "When We Was Fab" and "Got My Mind Set on You"

That's def true - Lynne's strengths as a producer compensated for George's weaknesses as a performer. My only real stylistic complaint about that stuff is how boring/robotic the rhythms could get.

Xp

And while George is the only Beatle who might've credibly moonlighted as a pop producer, by 1987 he'd run out of ideas – Lynne was perfect for him.

Looks like I could end up with six tracks from Ram. We shall see.

brainwashed has some good cuts

100? I can maybe squeeze out 20. Either I'm not that big a fan, or I just haven't heard enough. (Just hits past '70 or '71.) Did double-check to see if George played on Badfinger's "Day After Day," and he did, so I can vote for that.

I'm looking forward to this

can we list George interviews about Paul after 1988

"Blow Away" rivals anything by McCartney for sheer loveliness. Harrison could write a melody.

― morning wood truancy (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, May 11, 2018 12:54 AM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yeah, that's a great song! The frustrating thing about Harrison is that he could come up with the goods, but after he'd exhausted most of his backlog on All Things Must Pass, he stopped doing it so much.

McCartney's post-Beatles catalogue gets the most play out of them all for me for a variety of reasons. Harrison's and Lennon's solo work settles into a bit of a trudge tempo-wise, thankfully McCartney's post-Beatles work avoids this.

Yeah "Blow Away" is definitely a great Harrison number. I'm actually pretty fond of everything on Best of Dark Horse 1976-1989 - introduced me to "Here Comes the Moon," "Crackerbox Palace," "Gone Troppo"... That plus All Things Must Pass and a few things from Living in the Material World ("Give Me Love," "Don't Let Me Wait Too Long") might be all the solo George I really need.

There are a few McCartney deep cuts that I want to rep for and about which I've never seen a lot of talk. They all sound to me like expressions of the depth of his musical background and all in what are fairly mysterious ways for me. "C Moon" is probably the most talked about, and with plenty of good reason. "Single Pigeon," from Red Rose Speedway, is my favorite of the bunch and will quite likely be top ten for me. It's short and quiet, but there's some dark, possibly British, old world thing to it. Also want to mention "San Ferry Anne" from Wings at the Speed of Sound, another short and quiet one with an outstanding arrangement with horns, and "The Pound Is Sinking" from Tug of War, a somewhat over-the-top sectional composition in the vein of "Happiness Is a Warm Gun" and probably just as good.

The three tracks from Gone Troppo that made that Best of Dark Horse comp are all good, but it's missing the best one!

I'm actually pretty fond of everything on Best of Dark Horse 1976-1989

I am too -- I bought it on release and was surprised it wasn't more of a steady seller (it's deleted, I think). I even dig the new songs ("Poor Little Girl," "Cockamamie Business").

I like how it includes album tracks ("Cloud Nine," "Life Itself," "That's the Way It Goes").

Did you ever hear the version of "That's the Way It Goes" that Joe Brown does on Concert for George? It's super nice.

baffled by the lyrics of 'C Moon', i ran across this annotation on genius

C Moon means ‘cool’. If you make a ‘C’ and a ‘Moon’ with your fingers, and put them together, you get a circle, essentially the opposite of a ‘square’, meaning uncool. So, she is C-moon, or ‘cool’ to me(the protagonist of the song.

it's an accomplishment for mccartney that this interpretations makes just as much sense as anything else, but that the song is still so fun to listen to.

Well yeah, hence the lyric "it will be L7" ...

'Single Pigeon' is a lovely tune - one of my favourites on Red Rose Speedway, which I'd put down there with my least favourite McCartney albums.

thirding the love for "single pigeon," which you'd think would have gotten more attention after miguel dropped "drugs." "san ferry anne" is a good album track too, dunno if it'd make my ballot ("warm and beautiful" might).

er the miguel song is "Do You..." obv

i saw aldous harding cover "single pigeon" last year and she introduced it by calling it her favorite song of all time. i was delighted to discover it -- such a simple, quiet, gorgeous song.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cUkzPr_ap9E

I'm going to allow any non-Beatles track that features the appearance of at least Beatle. This means collaborative things like the Traveling Wilburys, Yoko Ono tracks that John plays on, Nilsson's Pussycats, "Badge" by Cream, McCartney + randos collabs etc. are all eligible.

how do ppl feel about the eligibility of the Yoko Ono tracks from Milk And Honey? my understanding is that they were mostly recorded a few years after Lennon's death, so technically don't feature the 'appearance' of any Beatles, but they're part of a collaborative project with Lennon, so I'd be inclined to include them - certainly if stuff like Fly and Approximately Infinite Universe is also going to be eligible?

I was thinking maybe having a collaborative spotify listening playlist would be practical?

https://open.spotify.com/user/betamaxdk/playlist/61os6iMh4h0qY70BawKB5U

oh yeah and I started off by adding Great Day from Flaming Pie, as good an album as Macca ever recorded

'Calico Skies' would be an easy pick from that album for me.

Before I send in my ballot, can someone link to a list of records the Beatles guested on? I've tried various search terms and I'm not getting anything except the reverse, guest appearances on Beatles records.

Nice idea niels!

So long as we're on Flaming Pie, I added "Beautiful Night," which is a little cheeseball but was probably my favorite song on that album when it came out.

(what's the etiquette for this kind of thing? any appropriate limit of 'x tracks per person per album' or whatever? i could sit and add fifty tracks in the next twenty minutes but don't want to blot out the community vibe!)

I was thinking of going through the thread to add all tracks mentioned

I think maybe add tracks you're thinking about voting for, stuff you want to highlight?

I watched the doc about the making of Flaming Pie and Beautiful Night really bangs still, and Macca is massively cheesy.

Great mix of Macca solo stuff here: https://www.nts.live/shows/radio-jiro/episodes/radio-jiro-30th-april-2018

Never heard Goodnight Tonight before - absolutely love it

Beautiful Night is a great composition but the Flaming Pie version really sings, above the older demo, with the presence of Ringo on drums and backing vocals. Always a pleasure.

Speaking of Ringo... what're the great tracks there? As a teenager, I read in some record guide (or maybe a Beatles collectibles price guide - my mom dealt antiques) that his first couple solo albums were surprisingly consistent, enjoyable country-western exercises .... but I swear all I've ever seen in the bins are endless copies of Stop And Smell The Roses, Ringo's Rotogravure, Goodnight Vienna, and the hideous Blast From Your Past comp. I've owned the latter two and there's some pleasant, genially inessential but friendly and warm material, kinda basically what I would have wanted out of Ringo post-Beatles. "It Don't Come Easy" is a killer George single. His cover of Roger Miller's "Husbands and Wives" is nice, as is the similarly hangdog "Beaucoups of Blues.". His "You're Sixteen" is a great rendition, shame the song is so gross, but it's probably the best any of them did with that early 70s wave of sock-hop throwbacks. The blowsier "I've partied my voice off with Keith Moon" material ("Goodnight Vienna," "I'm The Greatest," "Back off Boogaloo") makes me smile even if it kinda feels like you had to be there. And " No No Song" - sorry, Alfred! - is a totally charming, stupid Hoyt Axton novelty... like it comes into focus that the millions buying Ringo 45s likely overlapped a great deal with the fans of Jim Stafford, Ray Stevens, and Jimmy Buffett. I like that as a fate for an ex-Beatle, just another humorous AM radio act. Plus Nilsson's lightness on the "ay, ay ay" stuff is a nice vocal foil for our boy.

OK, and "Wrack My Brain" does get in my head sometimes, but oh mannn it's lousy.

Also mannnn the credits on Ringo albums are just a maze of appearances by the other Beatles, songs they wrote for him, songs they wrote *and* recorded for him... seems like despite all the acrimony everybody liked Ringo and vice versa. You almost get the sense from Wikipedia that if legal/drug issues hadn't kept Paul out of the US when the self-titled album was being recorded, that you might have actually gotten a song with all four of them. Macca plays the fucking kazoo on "You're Sixteen" - the only time he and Nilsson were on the same track, I think. (Are Nilsson and Klaus Voormann the only person to have appeared on songs with all four solo Beatles?)

Ram would def win over Plastic Ono Band.

Yoko Ono tracks that John plays on

by 1968 Yoko Ono was as much a part of the band as any of them. in fact by playing with Ringo and John on her tracks, her material ironically has more Beatles playing on it than were on Beatles songs by this time. the last 2 years had everybody do solo stuff. after Abbey Road George was free to work on his own material for once and produce an amazing album. Paul took a vacay on a farm w his fam and made a stoned 4 track diy record. the other half of the Beatles had already started a noise band and were playing for a good year before the Beatles official broke up.

before Abbey Road was even out they had put together a krautrock band focusing on drone rock minimalism and catharsis with "Cold Turkey" and "Don't Worry Kyoko" (the latter possibly the punkest thing the Beatles ever did). working on this music was Yoko, John, Ringo, Klaus Voorman (German art student/designer of Revolver/bassist), and at one point Alan White, who was the session musician originally brought in to replace Ringo for their very first single ever "Love Me Do". Ringo ended up replacing him, in a weird twist of fate.

http://images.45cat.com/john-lennon-plastic-ono-band-cold-turkey-apple-2.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0cR-6usPnNI

i absolutely adore the "Give Peace a Chance" b-side "Remember Love". this should have been on the White Album.

"You and Me (Babe)" is my favorite song on Ringo. Great George Harrison composition.

(Are Nilsson and Klaus Voormann the only person to have appeared on songs with all four solo Beatles?)

Bobby Keys maybe, if he also played on "You're Sixteen", because that would have been his one shot w/Paul.

Checking the credits on my Ringo best of, and apparently Keys is not on "You're Sixteen".

He probably is on A Toot and A Snore w/John & Paul, but that's a boot.

and at one point Alan White, who was the session musician originally brought in to replace Ringo for their very first single ever "Love Me Do". Ringo ended up replacing him, in a weird twist of fate.

They were actually different Andy Whites!

Andy White (Yes drummer)

Andy White (drummer)

Was gonna say, yes.