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

^^ great post

Another segment of Stephen Colbert's interview with Peter Jackson aired last night and they talked about the effect of watching them try to write songs that we already know, like John suggesting that George just sing "Something in the way she moves, attracts me like a cauliflower" until he can come up with something better. And it's like duh! "no other lover!" it almost sounds like cauliflower and makes perfect sense. c'mon George, it's right there! but then he tries a bunch of other words instead so you don't get the payoff. Still, the interaction between the viewer's knowledge of what eventually happens with what is happening onscreen is key to enjoying it.

OTM x 2 about "Get Back."

Of course as a nerd I love seeing shit like "Jojo Jackson left his home in Arizona" gradually shifting to "Jojo left his home in Northern Arizona" then to the now-familiar "Jojo left his home in Tucson Arizona." Because nothing was inevitable, nothing was inscribed in stone, nothing just emerged fully formed.

Like, if instead it'd been "Flagstaff, Arizona," that's what we would think of as the iconic finished lyric. (Because wtf does Paul McCartney actually know about Arizona? Just TV and movie westerns apparently.)

And maybe in some alternate universe they weren't satisfied with that line and instead kept changing it, and got to "Jojo Belly caught a fever in Pomona," well, then in that universe THAT's the iconic finished lyric.

Contingent history, butterfly effect blah blah blah

(Because wtf does Paul McCartney actually know about Arizona? Just TV and movie westerns apparently.)

Linda attended the University of Arizona in Tucson in 1962. It's all a rich tapestry.

i like how John plays with it too

Sweet Loretta Fat
Thought she was a cleaner
but she was a frying pan

Damn, Tarfumes, I had no idea. I bow to your superior nerdery there

the "Get Back" moment is great, but of course it's just an above average melody over some basic blues chords at that point. To me, the magic comes from McCartney's obsessive arranging once the initial pieces are established. He is super focused on getting all the parts just right and goes over them again and again refining along the way. He even mentions Sgt. Pepper as he's doing this, and indeed, a major reason why that album was so successful is that they spent months getting every little tiny detail just right, taking good songs and then making every last instrumental piece exactly right without ever being too much or cluttering up the overall track. In fact, he seems hyper aware of the fact that each part needs to leave plenty of space for every other part. Scaling things back to make space for everything is a skill that many lesser bands completely lack.

(Because wtf does Paul McCartney actually know about Arizona? Just TV and movie westerns apparently.)

Fortunately twenty years later on "Press" he compensated with his deep knowledge of Oklahoma.

Alfred

The rooftop concert is Mt. Doom.

Ah! Just realized that John's bandaged finger in ep. 2 is foreshadowing!

Paul is Frodo John is Sam George is Gandalf Ringo is. . . Gollum

The bit when Yoko was asking about some classical music sheets, I said "hey, Chappels music shop isn't far from there" but George Martin was "oh, any decent music shop.."

Then someone onscreen must have heard me and said "yeah like Chappels"

You do feel like you're in the room

Billy = Eagles

Xpost

Well, yeah.

(#onethread)

hahaha Billy Eagles is excellent

let it be as good vs bad album has been touched upon in other posts already, but i have to say i agree that it's the beatles at their most derivative after their earlier years. to me, it makes sense, though. they were rushed to record and in band practice you see them play standards and traditional songs all the time. it just stuck and was the easiest thing to do. but i get the feeling they were phoning it in

in the last few days, i've re-listened to let it be naked and original a few times. i know the original's initial release got a lot of negative press because it sounded so derivative, but its overproduction was also considered a weakness. i think its specter/"overproduced" sound actually helps the songs by a huge margin

listening to to naked, you really hear a lot more of the standards mccartney was trying to go for because the sound is so sparse, which is weird because mccartney was the one that pushed for a more stripped down sound. to my ear, it honestly doesn't work if you're playing songs based on standards, unless you want to play standards

but let it be is not my favourite

like others have said, a making of revolver would probably be a million times more interesting musically, but maybe people love all the gossip and drama of let it be instead

I haven't seen any revisionist takes on LIB in any incarnation. The consensus gathers 'round "Two of Us" and "I've Got a Feeling," maybe the title track?

i'm not sure i would call it revisionist, but it seems to get less negative reviews nowadays. i feel like it's also an album that has seeped into pop culture the most, but i don't keep a pulse on that to really say

Evan's post upthread is supremely OTM

"derivative"

I am trying really hard to see that as pejorative when the music is, um, good?

Like, most of pop music is derivative - that is, it comes from somewhere (jazz, blues, R&B, etc.). Pretty much all music is derived.

20th-century rock music wears its influences on its sleeve, as it should.

12-note scale, 4/4 time, four-piece instrumentation mostly, guitars and drums and voices, Western harmonies? Ugh. How derivative.

yeah great post evan.

two of us is one of the few keepers from the LP for me, but after hearing it apprx 97 times in the doc i feel like i dont need to hear it again for a few years

Two of Us, Pony, Universe, Let It Be, Feeling, Get Back all amazing songs. Sure there's filler but even Revolver and Rubber Soul have filler

the other thing is all of those amazing songs I could hear a million times over and over

agree re: Evan's post, particularly the second graf (tho the first one is otm, too). that scene where he finds his way to the beginning of "Get Back" is cool, for sure. but the reaction to it as if we're seeing some sort of once-in-a-lifetime magic is a bit over the top, i think. to me, it just looked like a very familiar process of playing some chords and trying out melodies - how most rock songs come to life. it just happened to turn out to be "Get Back" ... the big difference is that Paul did that hundreds of times.

of course, you can't really say that out loud because it sounds like you think Paul McCartney writing "Get Back" is no big deal or something. it's obviously a big deal, and it was cool, but it wasn't like unearthing some never-before-seen artifact.

i actually thought hearing him plunk around with "Let It Be" while John and MLH were discussing plastic set pieces was more interesting.

Jackson did frame that "Get Back" bit well, playing up how humdrum writing an enduring mega-hit can be w/ Ringo and George half-asleep 8 feet away.

Sweet Loretta Fat
Thought she was a cleaner
but she was a frying pan

it's Loretta Fart

i think its specter/"overproduced" sound actually helps the songs by a huge margin

The same friend *hates* Let It Be ... Naked for the same reason. As if it was Spector that somehow made it bad, and not the fact that it's just not that *great*, at least as far as the Beatles go. Clearly Spector is a huge part of "All Things Must Pass" and Lennon's solo work, too. Hell, his work on "Instant Karma" is what got him the "Let It Be" gig in the first place.

It's probably tied in to the revisionist "what does Specter even *do*" discourse, but just as George Martin had a huge role in the other records, so did Spector in this.

Spector did more than add strings, horns, choirs, etc. He listened to all of the tapes -- with some guidance from Lennon, I think -- to pick out the best or most complete takes for each song.

As a friend noted, it was Spector that rescued "Across the Universe" from abandoned outtake and fleshed it out into a song, and a lovely one at that.

That same take, in a different mix, was recorded before they went to India, and released before Spector got his hands on it.

Clearly Spector is a huge part of "All Things Must Pass" and Lennon's solo work, too.

According to engineer John Leckie and others at the sessions, Spector was barely present for John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band (to the degree that Lennon took out an ad in Billboard that read, "Phil! John is ready this weekend.")

it's Loretta Fart

It's my understanding that he's saying Fat, but his accent makes it sound like fart

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ytXFwhBPdg

This video confirms it

odds on the Glyn Johns mix of Get Back getting an RSD vinyl release with the original cover? I'd buy one.

John suggesting that George just sing "Something in the way she moves, attracts me like a cauliflower" until he can come up with something better.

its always been amusing & fascinating to me how it seems like that was the dominant mode of lyric writing on LIB, just kind of randomly coming up with word-forms that scan nicely, and sometimes it results in completely natural and inevitable-feeling lines like "get back to where you once belonged" and just as often results in wtf clunkers like "you can indicate any boat you row"

replying to ye mad puffin,

yep, totally. i don't hate let it be, but i can say i don't really like it in general

so, by derivative, i just mean it has a song structure that sounds too conventional. take out the fun production, and you're left with a song that resembles classics a bit too much or something too familiar

listening to both versions, i think long and winding road naked vs original is a good example of this. the stripped down version sounds very conventional. the overproduced stuff is trying to do a bit more. but the song itself is ... not very good, in my opinion

ha, sorry, that should be josh in chicago, sorry ye!

And that's the alchemy right there. It's not that Abbey Road is better, a step in the right direction, it's that it's *massively* better.

ts always been amusing & fascinating to me how it seems like that was the dominant mode of lyric writing on LIB, just kind of randomly coming up with word-forms that scan nicely, and sometimes it results in completely natural and inevitable-feeling lines like "get back to where you once belonged" and just as often results in wtf clunkers like "you can indicate any boat you row"

― nobody like my rap (One Eye Open)

but this is how most songwriting works, no? Hurry and put down what you got, finish the rest as you go.

btw the "cauliflower" moment comes off much better than I expected. For years I'd assumed based on transcripts that John was catty and impatient about it; onscreen he sounds like he genuinely wants to help.

from Jackson's film I get the impression that Let It Be as an Album was pretty much an after-thought. It was about the Film and the Concert. George seemed to be the only one bothered about making it into an album.

but this is how most songwriting works, no?

yeah its just funny to see it in action, and the undercooked nature of the LIB material puts it on display a little more (uh) nakedly than you usually get

the "Get Back" moment is great, but of course it's just an above average melody over some basic blues chords at that point. To me, the magic comes from McCartney's obsessive arranging once the initial pieces are established.

This is it - the scene where they're working hard to turn the three-chord rocker into this pulsating, intricately structured rave-up with hilarious lyrics is amongst the most satisfying in the whole thing.

Ringo's military march drum beat is what gives life to Get Back, imo. Without it, you're left with a Steve Miller tune.

ha wow never occurred to how midnight toker "get back" is

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lT2JGBeew00

lol I was thinking Rock'n Me xp

another 70s connection that jumped out at me watching this is that "Isn't It A Pity" is a direct precursor to "Goodbye Stranger" by Supertramp

It's interesting to see everyone interpret the 4 as a mirror of sorts. I don't see Paul being an asshole at all! He's just trying to get the thing together, man. John seems pretty easy going and down for whatever doing his corny British jokes (were Monty Python on TV yet?). Until that Peter Sellers monologue.. then I'm like "woah this is one dark motherfucker."

Paul is pretty pass agg and bossy, I can see why he would piss people off, but also he's generally right, is coming up with tons of classic material, and shaping a bunch of halfassed songs into something decent. Sometimes you have to put up with the bullshit if it means ending up with good material.

Paul is totally Robbie Robertson at this point

also when they are talking about staging this "around the beatles" thing and john starts talking about plastic walls and stuff...it just drives home to me how spinal tap was the most amazingly written movie

It's also interesting that Paul seemed the most concerned about the songs during their recording, but then he was ok with just dumping all the tapes on Glyn to make an album from it and rejected his efforts 3 times. Then he was upset with John and George for giving it to Spector to finish without his consent and publicly hated on the final results. I wonder if he just wanted to bury it or if he was holding out on the hope that they'd come back and re-record the songs the way that he wanted. I guess it all worked out in the end with the naked version and now this movie coming out after John & George had died. He got a lot of mileage out of what he seemed to consider a failed project at the time.

Well, apart from "long and winding" was there anything much wrong with Spector's finished article?