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

and chris bell's "i am the cosmos" sounds like ATMP

Ehhh i wouldnt go that far

i had never heard it before but uh i guess surprising no one here i kinda love the ultimate soft rock hits collection that is george harrison's self-titled record

― flamenco drop (BradNelson),

"Your Love is Forever"!

xpost hmm, the instrumental breakdown esp. sounds a lot like harrison, but i guess ymmv. just read that it was mixed by Geoff Emerick at George Martin's studio, too!

there is a *lot* of Beatles (and Harrison in particular) in Bell's stuff but the sound of "I Am the Cosmos" is not the Spector Holy Mtn of Sound on ATMP, it is much rawer and ramshackle and more limited in scope. Which is no fault of his own, Bell didn't have the resources George did.

i guess this is a little challopsy in the beatles solo careers poll thread, but i kind of wish they never ever would have met up with phil spector

and i suppose paul would agree with me, at least

oh god "awaiting on you all" is the best song anyone ever made let alone a beatle

yes how dare he show up and produce/mix/shape the two best solo Beatle albums

xp

yeah i mean it's possible to acknowledge that those albums are good and also note the possibility of those same songs/albums turning out very good in a different way with a different producer.

I can't imagine who that would be tbh

some funny Lennon anecdotes about Spector:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2vqX_BoUULY

I mean in 1970 there's really no other producers in George and Phil's league in the rock world - maybe Brian Wilson, but he obviously wasn't going to be getting a lot of work done with the Beatles at that point lol

from what I understand Spector didn't really have much to do w/POB, right?

he mixed it!

his influence is pretty apparent on some tracks (like the echodrums on 'Well Well Well')

couldn't imagine all things must pass without the spectoral shimmer

as far as which other producers would be better, i dunno, but there had to have been other producers who wouldn't have covered all the tracks in reverb and strings. again, i love POB and ATMP and Imagine and Spector's sound is very much a part of those records, but i don't think everything would have fallen apart if someone else was in the room. to believe that they only would have been good with Spector's touch is to elevate him above all his peers in a way that i don't think he necessarily deserves

"awaiting on you all" is the best song anyone ever made let alone a beatle

I had it #5 overall on my ballot, first of nine songs from the album.

I gave Venus and Mars another couple spins over the weekend and imo it's not a fantastic album by any means. As usual for every tune that's appealing it's almost immediately offset by something that's gratingly awful. "Magneto and Titanium Man" is going on the low end of my ballot, "You Gave Me the Answer" can go die in a fire, "Listen to What the Man Said" is a pretty good single but then it's marred by that shitty saxophone noodling. "Rock Show" is so boneheadedly literal I can't really appreciate it.

xp

"Awaiting On You All" would be my number one, but for a certain song that I know other people aren't going to vote for/actively hate

"You Gave Me the Answer" is incredible.

to believe that they only would have been good with Spector's touch is to elevate him above all his peers in a way that i don't think he necessarily deserves

I direct you to the ILX Producers poll, which Spector won by a deservedly wide margin, he really is that special

xp

i think "spirits of ancient egypt" is cool

and come on, "letting go"!

Producers, Recording Engineers and Studio Wizards: POLL RESULTS

I came across as unduly harsh there, the good stuff is good, the bad stuff is bad and it's about evenly split imo

xp

is Paul the funkiest Beatle? I kind of think so. I feel like the other three didn't get how funk rhythms work, not to the extent Paul clearly does anyway.

"Your Love is Forever"!

― morning wood truancy (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, May 21, 2018 3:15 PM (fifty-three minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i'm surprised at how much i absolutely love "here comes the moon"

I think either George Harrison or Gone Troppo is the best of those four late seventies, early eighties Dark Horse label albums.

pretty stoked to have the harrison s/t lined up for my evening listening. never heard any of the records in between 'material world' and 'gone troppo.'. hopefully it will be a nice change up from the ringo slog (tho i still have hopes for 'old wave')

re: funkiness: i could be way off but i do get the impression he was more actively listening to current pop... the braille dedication to stevie wonder on Red Rose Speedway being one indicator.

"Remember Love" is sweet, ... kind of reminds me of a Velvet Underground ballad. Surprised Wes Anderson hasn't picked it up for one of his soundtracks.

Is Ronnie Spector's Tandoori Chicken actually eligible? I love it and would put it in my top 20 but not sure if it belongs in here.

living in the material world feels real loosely glued together

"give me love" and "don't let me wait too long" are jams though

"don't let me wait too long" is so slept on. if they'd stayed together and it was on a beatles album every beatles fan would love that song. maybe not "here comes the sun" level but it'd be a thing.

Yes tandoori chicken is eligible (george played on and produced it), i am voting for it

Xp

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

― Westworld more like Worstworld right? (Phil D.), Friday, May 11, 2018 3:50 AM (one week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

these songs both rule

Man i wish the the george/phil/ronnie spector album had been finished, can totally imagine her killing it on "You".

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Try_Some,_Buy_Some

i've rly been enjoying having an excuse to dig into a lot of solo beatles stuff i'd either never heard or hadn't listened to in more than a decade. went through a bunch of 70s paul in the car this weekend and i actually dug a lot of it much more than i expected. ram isn't as underwritten as i'd remembered, and back seat of my car probably rates as one of my favorite solo mccartney tracks now. (the moment when he suddenly bursts out "we believe that we CAN'T be wrong!" gives me chills, just so perfectly timed.) red rose speedway is a frustrating album because i feel like it's so close to being one of his best -- big barn bed, get on the right thing, single pigeon are all good -- but everyone is otm about that damn medley! it's as if paul was so confident (after abbey road) that he could make a great medley out of anything that he barely bothered writing any real songs at all.

oh man! i wonder if ronnie's version of "you" still exists? now that i remember it, the song sounds perfect for her.

Would love to hear that also. I should have voted for "You," now that I think of it...

what's so bizarre is that red rose speedway was intended was a double album! i'm one of its defenders as a nice little collection of diversions and oddities - basically a better-produced and slightly more-completely-written wild life - but no wayyyy was there another platter's worth of good material. "country dreamer" and "i lie around" are both good, i admit, and the cover of "tragedy" is okay, but that's about it and none of those really demand inclusion. b-sides almost by nature.

harrison s/t is off to a great start. i always liked "love comes to everyone" and this lush, almost LA sound on "not guilty" is working shockingly well. i know the beatles take on anthology by heart so it's interesting to hear it softened up and sanded down, and yet still sounding great.

the harrison s/t is pretty great, i've decided. at the v least i think it's much better than living in the material world

i just love that sound/period. there's some touches on "here comes the moon" that remind me a lot of paul simon on still crazy and one-trick pony. or the opening few seconds of "wino junko," actually.

same. it's a lovely production

oh man and "blow away" is on this too! yeah i'm totally sold on this album, i mean at this point side two could be garbage and it'd still be better than living in the material world. i've always found "faster" sort of laughable since catching the video once randomly in the early 00s... i mean he just looks so lost in that outfit, and having "he's the master of going faster" as your centerpiece line is a tough sell imo. but in the context of this album i'm noticing and enjoying the lushness of the production more, and it's not hookless.

man this thread! I never thought I'd see one where GH >>>> LITMW

As a production I prefer the latter -- there's a tightness to the arrangements and a newfound fluidity to George's playing -- but GH has "Love Comes to Everyone," which has been stuck in my head for the last two weeks. Talk about an effective use of the soft rock disco bounce -- a sound I've critiqued enough in my Worst Songs Ever series.

as far as which other producers would be better, i dunno, but there had to have been other producers who wouldn't have covered all the tracks in reverb and strings. again, i love POB and ATMP and Imagine and Spector's sound is very much a part of those records

John and Yoko insist -- take it with a grain of salt -- that they did the actual producing while Spector got the balances right. I suppose it depends on what you think a producer does or whether you agree with them. They've played it pretty straight as far as assigning credit goes.