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

keep taking those mindtrains

the Ringo-John rhythm section is so good. probably not that far off from the "noisey tuneless" jams they reportedly did after hours while during the later Sgt. Pepper sessions. some of those were recorded and never released so that is prob something to look forward to...

i agree w Turrican in thinking Yoko was a revitalizing force particularly for John. her art background and Fluxus philosophy gave a structural foundation and a focus to John's more experimental tendencies. before they met, his home recordings were either beautiful ambient mellotron pieces or gaudy faux reggae almost meta-exotica (something that wouldn't really happen until the 90s). the latter is amusing to some but is also a window into completely indulgent, drunken belligerence.

a lot of '66/'67 home recordings were made by John and Ringo on 4 track after some wine or whatever, of them pretending to be at a cocktail lounge serving drinks and singing to guests. i suppose in its own way this was a way of parodying the "mindless consumer" culture of their parents, a well many of that generation would return to again and again (Nilsson's proto braggadocio hip hop "All My Life").

after Yoko joined the picture she had a tempering effect on him. she brought in generative writing/recording processes: the recording of "Revolution" was all about repetition, about droning on this one idea, using that feedback to create some new idea. Neu! is cool because they will just play one chord the whole song, and by repeating that one chord, they find variation in the chord, they can play it quieter, or softer, or louder, or ringing, or with arpeggios, etc. these things that have to be planned in advanced if it is more technically complex material (see Paul) can be improvised on the spot.

it is like meditating, by trying to focusing on one thing (nothing) we are flooded by spontaneously created worlds. all kinds of wonderful things are naturally generated out of necessity of continuing to perform, continuing to create. it is perhaps a different way of creating/experiencing art, a more futuristic, programmatic way. certainly it informed their viral/marketing strategy, the constant press conferences, the "War Is Over" memes, guest spots, live appearances, etc. it was like a livestream or something, just continuously producing (and based on real life) before they took their sabbatical for love of their child.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5L5vvS1pOD4

has this ever been sampled? if not then someone get on it.

high on my ballot, dope song

i love the drums-and-vocoder breakdown in "Goodnight Tonight".

song is a jam

wings ranked:
band on the run
london town
back to the egg
venus & mars (i like this record but don't *love* it, who can say why)
red rose speedway
wings at the speed of sound
wild life

shouts out to stand-alone wings singles "junior's farm," "goodnight tonight," "girls' school" and "c moon"

from my no. 1 and 2 i guess i think that wings were at their best when the sense of them as "band" either had or was in the process of completely falling apart lol

and "Sally G"!

and "Daytime Nighttime Suffering"!

i wanna make a 12 minute techno track out of the annoying synth figure in "temporary secretary" tbh

also there is no doubt in my mind after this project that paul is the funkiest beatle

and "Wonderful Christmastime!"

also, the easily overlooked but crucial pre-wings non-album single: "Another Day" / "Oh Woman Oh Why"

lol that's an xpost, was not submitting Wonderful Christmastime as funk

although..........

"oh woman oh why" is on my ballot. love unintelligble screamy paul xp

Nah, never liked that one.

i haven't seen the entire Gimme Some Truth doc (available in shitty quality on youtube), about the making of Imagine, but both of these clips are gripping. as with the Let It Be film, yoko's influence on John and interaction with the others is both really interesting and painful to watch, at times. i agree with the posts above about how her positive artistic influence on John. in general, i can imagine both her and john as huge sources of creative gravity, pulling each other in new directions. yoko is a fountain of ideas in these clips.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WivoeUdSB8k

You can see John getting irritated with her near the end of the recording of "Imagine" (he stops a runthrough and says "Yoko why don't you go in there and listen instead of being there?", since she was 2 feet behind him.) but then, she also suggested that he use the iconic white piano.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p9067LQORNQ

the second one, showing the making of "how do you sleep?" has all sorts of interesting moments, like john playing george an early version and smiling and laughing during at some of the particularly cutting lines. it also shows how different the song could have turned out - elements of the nastiness of the song are present from the beginning, but john was also trying to push a sort of lighter, bouncy reggae edge to it as well. one of the reasons the final result is so good is because it be both nasty and bouncy, so it's fun to watch those separate strands come together here. i really should just watch the rest of the film.

because it be both nasty and bouncy

this was a typo but let's just roll with it

1. my bad if this is addressed above…but I am struck by how quickly George's slide style —an utterly distinctive tone throughout 1970 to his death— suddenly emerged. It's not on White album, not even on "Old Brown shoe" or 'Something" where he does play slide, but that tone hadn't been refined. It seemed to appear fully realized on ATMP…or does anyone hear it beforehand?

2. re: "oh yeah, we just jammed it out! peaceandlovepeaceandlove!!! Don't imagine that many contributing here are stern people, but for the past five years or so, the below clip has been a persistent meme therein… herewith, Ringo's passive aggressive peace and loving…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eAU0l7325w0

you know who probably loved "temporary secretary"? trent reznor

It seemed to appear fully realized on ATMP

imo this is the most fuckin mystical thing

wings ranked:
band on the run
london town
back to the egg
venus & mars (i like this record but don't *love* it, who can say why)
red rose speedway
wings at the speed of sound
wild life

― flamenco blorf (BradNelson), Thursday, May 24, 2018 5:35 PM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Not too far off my current ranking:

1. Band on the Run
2. Venus and Mars
3. Back to the Egg
4. London Town
5. Red Rose Speedway
6. Wings at the Speed of Sound
7. Wild Life

1. my bad if this is addressed above…but I am struck by how quickly George's slide style —an utterly distinctive tone throughout 1970 to his death— suddenly emerged. It's not on White album, not even on "Old Brown shoe" or 'Something" where he does play slide, but that tone hadn't been refined. It seemed to appear fully realized on ATMP…or does anyone hear it beforehand?

this is correct. Even on "Sour Milk Sea" he's still playing stinging lines.

aw I love Brad and Turrican's reconciliation

I've always rated George highly as a guitarist - yes, he has his limitations but was always tasteful in his playing... like Ringo was on the drums! His playing seemed to take a huge leap forward between 1968-1971.

man "sister, o sister" is cool. also props to whoever upped the wonderwall tracks and "simply shady.". this playlist has been such a rewarding listen as a result of these and other such thread picks.

realized "oh yoko!" may end up top 20 for me.

also, the ringo tracks, even the ones i myself picked out, sound considerably better spiced into the mix, just like ringo on a beatles record. "snookeroo" is great fun, especially right after "ski-ing." (i've apparently had my playlist running in order by song title, which more or less amounts to shuffle in this case.)

one lennon-contributing cut i'm obliged to give a shout-out: elton's cover of "lucy in the sky." it gets a bad rap but imo it's a fun listen, and fascinating as it replaces the late-60s psychedelic investigation of childhood's forgotten mysteries and magic, with the mid-70s coke-fueled endless party....

I rate Harrison as one of the guitar greats. Even the most torpid solo song has a heartstopping solo. It's partly why Living in the Material World is a delight to listen to.

living in a material world grew on me considerably over the last few days, which previously i had always thought it was a slog. it is a slog but a really unfailingly lovely one

depressing to read the yoko slander in the comments of those YT videos, but what do I expect?

i have pretty successfully numbed myself to anything a comments section on the internet might contain except yoko hate. i always get mad

Yeah, Yoko hate is just ridiculous.

*sniff* totally, yoko hate is lame.

Living in the Material World has some decent stuff on it - 'Sue Me, Sue You Blues', 'Don't Let Me Wait Too Long', 'The Day The World Gets 'Round' ... I'm not taken with the production - I think Dark Horse (with the exception of George's voice) and Extra Texture sound better, even though as collections of songs they're hit and miss.

simply shady tho?

I like that one.

as far as what i'd save on dark horse, which is far from a perfect disc is :

so sad, bye, bye, love, dark horse and simply shady. seems to have a 3 overall on rym. Maligned album

i found dark horse really difficult to get through

why brad

idk. i don't actually hate his voice when it gets bad, that's not the issue, but the songs are just kinda... shapeless

i might be describing several harrison solo records at once here

my beatle super fan bud has informed me that GH did not play slide on any beatle record… the opening phrase of "something" isn't slide, just sounds like it; JL played lap steel part on "For you blue." It was the Delaney & Bonnie tour which found the former giving GH pointers as such, and he was off to the races.

I too think Living in Mat world is pretty neat; don't like "gimme peace" but like the grandeur without the wall of sound. his shit had a lot of weird chords, time signatures and structures. His singing is awful on Dark Horse.

^ whut

the slide revelation baffled me. dark horse singing is awful because he was sick with the flu - see also pussy cats by nilsson

It may have been better received if George had held off until his voice was back to full strength. George never really had the most pleasant of voices to listen to to begin with, but the croakiness makes the experience far worse.

btw playlist watch - we've got two "take it away"s and two "no more lonely nights"es. happy to hear either of those twice back to back, mind you...

Could they not put off vocal tracking for a month? Always seems a weird excuse for bad vocals.

Dark Horse is bad because the songs are undistinguished too.

ET is awful.

Oh hey Brad glad you like Getting Closer, I adore it and most ppl either haven't heard it or don't like it on the offchance they have

excited to dive into tug of war shortly

MY SALAMANDER