The Beatles

richardhomer

koneguitarist;426089" said:

Yes I would say they were incredibly influential, and a very talented band, but i Really can't see what all the fuss is about until getting into mid 60's with Revolver and Sgt. Pepper. 

Is this an endeavour to rerun the 'Hendrix' thread?


There were ground-breaking songs aplenty on Rubber Soul (see my earlier post) and plenty of others - Yesterday, You Got To Hide Your Love Away, Hard Day's Night, We Can Work it Out....

stickyfiddle

koneguitarist said:

stickyfiddle said:

koneguitarist said:

Yes I would say they were incredibly influential, and a very talented band, but i Really can't see what all the fuss is about until getting into mid 60's with Revolver and Sgt. Pepper. 

Sure, but the sheer energy on Please Please Me or Help! is just phenomenal. And the quality of the recordings is bloody awesome too, especially for the time, but most of it really holds up now.

Sure, Beatles for Sale is pretty dull but there are classic songs on every single album apart from that one.

The recording quality was pretty poor for the time, listen to Sun and RCA recordings of Elvis for quality, and the energy, yes for uk it must have seemed exciting, but listen to Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis Elvis back in 50's.

It's much later 66-67 that to me they started to come into their own and moving things on, up until then it had pretty much all been done before.

I don't think you could be more wrong there. We're going to have to agree to disagree. 

koneguitarist

stickyfiddle said:

koneguitarist said:

stickyfiddle said:

koneguitarist said:

Yes I would say they were incredibly influential, and a very talented band, but i Really can't see what all the fuss is about until getting into mid 60's with Revolver and Sgt. Pepper. 

Sure, but the sheer energy on Please Please Me or Help! is just phenomenal. And the quality of the recordings is bloody awesome too, especially for the time, but most of it really holds up now.

Sure, Beatles for Sale is pretty dull but there are classic songs on every single album apart from that one.

The recording quality was pretty poor for the time, listen to Sun and RCA recordings of Elvis for quality, and the energy, yes for uk it must have seemed exciting, but listen to Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis Elvis back in 50's.

It's much later 66-67 that to me they started to come into their own and moving things on, up until then it had pretty much all been done before.

I don't think you could be more wrong there. We're going to have to agree to disagree. 

Are you talking about my take on quality, excitement or whether the Beatles got a lot better around 66-67 ?

duotone

mudslide73 said:

She Said She Said and Here, There and Everywhere are two of my toppest ever.

There's a great bootleg called Revolving which has different versions of the songs at various stages of completion. iirc about five takes of And Your Bird Can Sing with different guitars on.

The vocals on Here there & everywhere are wonderful, such a sweet sounding tune. In my life which starts off every Beatles Anthology part is a wonderful track also. Always reminds me of the Anthology whenever I hear it.

imalone

ICBM said:

koneguitarist said:

50 years after the work was created in music, hence Cliff Richard and others still going are complaining.

My mistake, I was thinking of written authorship…

More complex than that, the writing copyright is more like written authorship, so all those Lenon and McCartney credits still keep paying out for a long time. The recording credit clock starts ticking from the recording date, but even when it finishes writing rights still hold.

ICBM said:

koneguitarist said:

Don't get me wrong I love a lot of old music, be it rock, blues, country or pop, but like everything it has a shelf life, and songs such as I am the Walrus, all you need is love and Yellow submarine is for ageing hippies thinking back to their youth and missing what great music is still being created today. 

There's great music being created all the time, and I don't agree that the best of it has a shelf life. The rest does get forgotten eventually… but the Beatles made some of the music from that period which won't be.

I've already said elsewhere I'm not crazy about the early albums either, but people still listen to Bach, so those Beatles songs that are among the most covered pop songs ever are likely to stick with us.

JAYJO

The Beatles are ace and every album is worth the cost of cd at todays prices easily imo. I just wish some of the songs were a bit longer, but maybe thats part of the appeal.

randomhandclaps

Gassage said:

OK-

I get all this but still no-one has ever explained Octopusses' Garden to my satisfaction.

So I defy you to do it (without using the phrase 'bad acid')

According Macca it's was a reference to Yoko's downstairs dreadlocks.  

Samgb

koneguitarist said:

stickyfiddle said:

koneguitarist said:

Yes I would say they were incredibly influential, and a very talented band, but i Really can't see what all the fuss is about until getting into mid 60's with Revolver and Sgt. Pepper. 

Sure, but the sheer energy on Please Please Me or Help! is just phenomenal. And the quality of the recordings is bloody awesome too, especially for the time, but most of it really holds up now.

Sure, Beatles for Sale is pretty dull but there are classic songs on every single album apart from that one.

The recording quality was pretty poor for the time, listen to Sun and RCA recordings of Elvis for quality, and the energy, yes for uk it must have seemed exciting, but listen to Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis Elvis back in 50's.

It's much later 66-67 that to me they started to come into their own and moving things on, up until then it had pretty much all been done before.

Ooh, cant agree with this. The early Beatles recordings sound pretty great. Thats not to say the early rock n roll doesnt also sound great but i think there is a step up to the sound of those Beatles singles. The beginnings of modern music in terms of sympathetic engineering and production rather than just churn it out.

Phil_aka_Pip

Listen to the Love CD by George Martin & son (was his name Guy?) made of remixes of Beatles recordings. The quality of the originals made that CD possible, not just the engineering skills of Messrs Martin & son.

koneguitarist

If you listen to an album by an American artist in mid 50's even before the sound quality and mix is wonderful, the early 60's uk was thin and weedy by comparison. Better studios and engineers in USA at that time, we caught up, eventually. 

Not knocking Beatles, that was the UK sound at the time. Even McCartney sounded so much better as time got on by changing to a Rickie to get more depth to his bass sound.

Listen to Kansas City from 64  

Then listen to Elvis from 55, sound quality ? Sun Records only used one mic!

stickyfiddle

I agree with your example, but Kansas City is a terrible example from one of the weakest albums where they were exhausted and phoned it in. Compare with the first track from the first album and it dicks on Mystery Train.

Longtallronnie

Another consideration when discussing their earlier work is fewer groups were writing their own songs at that time. I think that's part of what made them revolutionary. 

Also, their output in a relatively short time is astonishing considering the progression from RnB beatniks to the studio experimentalists they became. 

Revolver and Abbey Road are my favourites although Sgt Pepper has some awesome songs too. I just never bought into the concept of Pepper Imo Ogden's Nut Gone Flake by Small Faces was far more cohesive as a concept and that was only one side of the album! 

richardhomer

^ Spot on. As I've said before, from When I Saw Her Standing There to A Day In The Life in four years....

koneguitarist

Longtallronnie said:

Another consideration when discussing their earlier work is fewer groups were writing their own songs at that time. I think that's part of what made them revolutionary. 

Also, their output in a relatively short time is astonishing considering the progression from RnB beatniks to the studio experimentalists they became. 

Revolver and Abbey Road are my favourites although Sgt Pepper has some awesome songs too. I just never bought into the concept of Pepper Imo Ogden's Nut Gone Flake by Small Faces was far more cohesive as a concept and that was only one side of the album! 

I do think that's the biggest point about the Beatles, having 3 good songwriters, plus 3 vocalists (and Ringo).

Although I am not a fan, I do appreciate the Beatles as a great band, once they hit their stride by 65-66 they showed what they were capable of. Writing such beautiful songs such as Something and For no one, yet some of the accolades thrown at them I feel is over the top. 

Same with Elvis at his best he still did a lot of shit, how much of that was down to his manager we will never know. 

One thing that has come out of this is that I will start listening to the albums, ,,,,,,,,, if I can buy them cheap enough!

Danny1969

The early recordings are certainly lacking low end and punch, mainly cos Abbey Road engineers were forbidden to close mic things like drums and brass, to do so could mean risking your job. Once they were successful however the Beatles could pretty much do what what they wanted including picking their own engineers and those engineers were allowed to close mic instruments and also experiment sonically, over driving the mixing desk and putting vocals through Leslie.

Abbey Road Studios tape machine were behind the times too, not only didn't the Beatles get 8 track to very late on in their careers the Abbey Road tape ops weren't even in the control room so communication for overdubs was an awkward affair. The Beatles were so dissatisfied with Abbey Road they asked their nut job friend "Magic Alex" to design them a state of the art studio for their company Apple. Unfortunately Magic Alex wasn't very good at building studios and omitted to do some rather important things like  connecting the Live room to the Control room with the necessary mic cables. He did however successfully fit a radio into a toilet. 

I absolutely love every single Beatles song from the first single to the last. I like the early pop tunes, the middle ground with Rubber Soul and the trippy later stuff. I think it's fair to say they are probably the best and most important band of all time