General Music Chat

My favorite band, back in the day, as they say.

Not sure if I had a favorite Beatle, I liked them all. McCartney was the writer I liked best, Lennon had more of a tendency to be limited to 19 variations on Three Blind Mice, McCartney was all over the place and could (and did) write hit songs one after another, and after they broke up, he was quoted as saying he only recorded the ones he really liked to play.

Harrison is one of my all time favorite guitar players, a friend once said it best, he did leads that sounded like they just grew there. Most everything he did sounded perfect for the song, I don't think anyone could have been better.

Ringo was a much under rated drummer. Not fast or fancy, but he had a sense of tempo that's hard to beat, looked like he was so relaxed he was about to fall off the stool, and never missed a beat.

Lennon was a good singer and songwriter, I wasn't a fan of his radical personality. On some things, he hit the nail on the head, on others just too radical.

I'm not sure if my favorite album was Magical Mystery Tour, Sgt Peppers or the white album...love em all

McCarthy

Favorite era:

62 - 66

Love all of it, except for stuff like "Lady Madonna" and "Obla Di". Annoying bs.

Solo stuff = Less than the sum of It's parts. Much less.

I have wandered over to the Dark Side, though. The Strolling Bones!

i was and remain a huge beatle fan. they were the perfect storm. partly the timing. but there was never anything close before. and we'll never see anything like that again. they'll never be another group w that many widespread talents.... or who had a bigger impact.

fave albums in no particular order Rubber Soul, Revolver, Sgt. Pepper, Magical Mystery Tour.

i've huge respect for all the members and their contributions. but mac's songwriting always has blown me away w his bottomless wealth of ideas. listen to many of his mid/latter beatles tunes and even many of the commercial Wings tunes and his songs would have three of four very different sections that worked perfectly together. anyone else...that would have been three or four SEPARATE songs! but it was as if he knew he didn't have to worry about coming up w more great musical ideas for the next tunes.

sure, the beatles were packaged in their early days. but i don't hold that against them. they were young and wanting what any young lads want.....to get their name out there, to be popular, and to make some scratch.

but, it didn't take too long for them to outgrow that and pursue their art and their own way on THEIR terms. their press conferences and interviews were often hilarious showing their quick wit and smartass comebacks as they had little patience for inane questions and attacks from the establishment.

then, their was all the things they revolutionized....revamping views about what an "album" was. albums were no longer just collections of songs but instead became a body of work w continuity to it.

then there's their use of the studio as a canvas...no one did that before them.

new recording techniques (like close micing) sprung forward...thanks to engineers like geof emerick who bucked the system at Abbey Rd Studio.

mac revolutionized what bass players could get away with and still serve the song. and though the beatles weren't the first multi-instrumentalists...i think they might be the ones that brought that skill and possibility to everyone's attention.

ringo was an amazing drummer w great feel and he often played very non traditional stuff. no one was doing that before him in the R&R/Pop realm. he had the balls to often play very simple things that perfectly moved things along w/o manly demonstrations of technique. he had no need to prove what a badass drummer he was. points! the list of "A" list drummers who rightly hold his playing in high regard is huge.

Max Weinberg has a book called "The Big Beat" where he interviews about a dozen or so big name drummers. and pretty much to the man....they all give it up for Ringo.

Beatles were my earliest musical influence, from the pre-Ed Sullivan hype (I lived in Canada at the time, so we heard about a lot of the British goings-on) until they got a little too druggy for their own musical good. 'Collaboration' is not a real good term for how L-M "wrote" together. Most of the songs were one or the other of them, with occasionally a piece from each combined.
The world in the early 60s was a very different place from what it is today, and they surely influenced a lot of the changes (not just musical).
Solo stuff
I jumped on Macca's first solo album, and despite its 'home-grown' sound - Macca doing all the parts except for Linda's few harmonies on a small recorder with a lot of bounces, enjoyed the fact that he could do it all himself, even though many of the songs were mediocre at best. Ram was a step up from there, although still rough-edged, it now had some meat and real rock-and-roll to it, and Macca let some other players get in on the action. Nothing after that of his solo stuff ever truly grabbed me, maybe a song or two, but never a whole album.
Lennon - too much f his solo work was hampered by what I considered sloppy recording - chorus on the vocals, out-of-control room sound on piano... There were some gems every once in a while, but I never bought a solo Lennon record.
Harrison - always a mooth player in the Beatles, I think his solo work might have suffered because it wasn't 'edgy' enough. I bought the 3-disc All Things Must Pass as soon as it came out and the first 2 sides had some pretty good tunes, but the 2nd and 3rd discs were so much rambling. Subsequent solo releases had an occasional tune that had the potential to grab the listener, but never a whole album.
Ringo - content to 'keep the beat', which he did solidly for the Beatles, his solo stuff has been boringly 'more of the same' with an occasional good tune penned by others (Photograph, written by Harrison, for example) or comedy song ('The No No Song'). His latest, 'Postcards from Paradise', even though the title song was co-written with Todd Rundgren is another 'formula' album. He continues to tour with a group of 'name/support' musicians, and plays at sheds and smaller venues and keeps the ticket prices affordable - something that cannot be said for Macca.

I think FAB could also stand for "Fabricated".

If you are not familiar with the work of Edward Bernays, again, I would recommend looking him up.
Hard Days Night movie is sort of an interesting insight into the British PR machine and it's relation to the Beatles.

Mott-
Yeah. I'm familiar w/ Bernays. Wasn't he kin to Freud in some fashion? Or his wife was, I can't remember but there is a connection w/ Freud. Didn't the Nazis use some of his ideas when they form the Worker's Socialist Party?

The hype? Hard Day's Night? 12 year old girls pissing in their seats w/ hysteria? Yeah, that was definitely manufactured. That part of the package flies right over my head when I think about their music. And that's one reason I prefer their post-touring/meet Bob Dylan years up thru the psychedelic era.

Favorite Beatle thing? Not from a swooning teenage heart-crush view. From a music standpoint. Not personality, not attitude, strictly from a music point of view. By '65 you could tell who wrote what because the music was changing in several directions (not to mention Harrison's love of Indian music).

Or do you think someone else was doing their material?? (i.e. The Monkees?) Wasn't Nesmith the only real musician in that group?

I can see your Bernays/Beatles connection as a reality considering what happened in the wake of the Beatles but I've never considered it as a plausible explanation for their popularity. But I knew someone was pushing the hype in the beginning. As Artie Johnson would say................

Would you apply the same concept to Elvis? Buddy Holly? Chuck Berry? Carl Perkins?
The Beatles began as a cover band doing their numbers.
Or did it occur when Brian Epstein came on the picture w/ the matching suits and the boots?

I always loved Band On The Run, the Beatles were good, but McCartney really got it goin' on with Band On The Run..

thanks Amos for a very informative and concise analysis.. it's almost as if you could have taken that from BillRas's playbook?.. where is that BillRas anyhow?

the Wal Mart Tour? so NOW we know where the sneakers that get tossed in the dryer come from!

just steer clear of those underground detention centers for god's sake!

(gonna check on whether Purdie is one of the interviewees in "The Big Beat" and if he weighs in ringo)