The Eternal Beatles Discussion Thread - Page 3

Nick_G · 01-06-2002, 12:09 PM

quote:
""No Reply"; I just love that part where John sings "If I were you..." and then the handclaps and Paul's harmony vocals come crashing in. Amazing."

agreed 100%!!!!!

all beatle fans have their fave songs and albums. some of us love "revolver" and others say it's overated. some love the "white album" and others say it overated. some people dismiss the early stuff (which i happen to love more that anything they did after sgt. pepper). when it comes to the beatles, no one opinion is right or wrong. what made them so great was the diversity and style of their music over the years they were together. from the simplicity of "i want to hold your hand" to the complexity of "i am the walrus". and actually if you really listen to some of the early stuff, it was not as simplistic as you may think. just because a lot of it was sweet love songs, there were some great chord progressions and tremendous harmonic vocal structure in a lot of them. try to pick out the vocal harmonies on "and your bird can sing"....quite complex when you give it a real listen. when i was attending music school, the instructors were always squawking about how you can't cross voices in vocal pieces. obviously they never listened to anything the beatles did. their harmonies completely blew out of the water what my instructors were telling me you COULDN'T do!!

no one before them did what they did, and anything after them was just pale comparison attempts at trying to copy them.

MikeAW · 01-06-2002, 01:02 PM

Am I the only one to be listening to the bootleg studio session and live stuff...any thoughts on what you all have heard ?

Jack Gilvey · 01-06-2002, 02:09 PM

Quote:

To me, it may give you more insight and the ability to appreciate more than the layperson...but it gives one just a different perspective to appreciate....not an extratrodinarily authoritative one, in the sense, that a technician's opinion, may have more authority over one person or another.

Almost always "better informed", as I see it.

Regardless of the myriad pages written, I find Abbey Road anything but soulless.

RicP · 01-06-2002, 02:37 PM

Quote:

Am I the only one to be listening to the bootleg studio session and live stuff...any thoughts on what you all have heard

Far from it. I have over 150 hours of material sitting right in front of me. I'd venture to say that I've heard more than pretty much anyone on this forum.

What point are you trying to make? After your first vitrolic post, I don't know if there are many Beatles fans that are interested in it.

For the record, most live Beatles stuff was poor. They didn't have much of a monitor system in those days, so most of the time the band couldn't even hear themselves playing. Couple that with the crowd noise and most live performances were less than spectacular.

Which studio material are you referring to?

MikeAW · 01-06-2002, 02:45 PM

"Am I the only one to be listening to the bootleg studio session and live stuff...any thoughts on what you all have heard ? "

Does Anyone else...please...have or hear this bootleg stuff and want to share your feelings about it, say compared with the finished versions they like ?

Kevin Leonard · 01-06-2002, 04:53 PM

Mike,

Like Ric, I too have a collection of "unofficial" Beatles material, though nowhere near the 150 hours he has! While I'd like to tell you what boots are great and what boots are bad, the forum has an anti-bootleg policy, which I why I stopped talking about it a few posts up.

But to answer your question: there's some great material out there that was not put on the various Anthology sets. But the majority of the stuff out there is just alternate versions of officially released songs, with mild to little difference. I mean, there's only so many takes of "Drive My Car" that one can listen to before they all start to sound the same.

Gary_E · 01-06-2002, 06:41 PM

I learned to play the guitar using a fake book of The Beatles early stuff. Lennon's songs from A Hard Day's Night translates nicely with a small group of players with acoustic guitars, bongos, and a harmonica. Last night in fact, I played I'll Cry Instead with a few friends at a
bar-b-que and it sounded really good.
Beatle songs make many people smile.

-Gary

Derek Miner · 01-06-2002, 08:23 PM

Quote:

Derek, I agree with you about "Abbey Road" it's just edited scraps and leavings of a band, in and pre-occupied with, their own death throes. There is no soul to it.

I wouldn't go THAT far... But I think some of the material on the album is weak in different ways. Not much on side one strikes me the same way as their earlier material. "Maxwell's Silver Hammer" is a song that arguably should never have been recorded. Side two comes off much better. I do adore "Here Comes The Sun" and "Because" And as much as I can enjoy parts of the "Huge Melody" that ends side two, I still prefer my Beatles without show-off solos.

Quote:

there's some great material out there that was not put on the various Anthology sets. But the majority of the stuff out there is just alternate versions of officially released songs, with mild to little difference. I mean, there's only so many takes of "Drive My Car" that one can listen to before they all start to sound the same.

I can understand that, however I do enjoy hearing the evolution of the songs in the studio. (Yes, even to the point of listening to ALL the unused backing track takes of "Help!") The second disc of Anthology 1 has some great samples of this, particularly the changes made to "Can't Buy Me Love" and "Eight Days A Week."

My favorite discovery of the Anthologies was the original take of "And Your Bird Can Sing." I wish they would give us a version without John & Paul's goof-off backing vocal attempts.

And I completely agree with Ric about live Beatles recordings. I could listen to hours of studio outtakes, but I think the live performances on the Anthology discs are more than enough for me.

Kevin Leonard · 01-07-2002, 02:20 AM

Quote:

And I completely agree with Ric about live Beatles recordings. I could listen to hours of studio outtakes, but I think the live performances on the Anthology discs are more than enough for me.

Very true. Ever hear Beatles Live at the Hollywood Bowl? It's basically an album full of teenage banshee wails with an occasional musical sound coming out. Quite glad this never made it to CD; the mix is godawful.

However, if you can find it, I would suggest picking up Live at the BBC. It's a fantastic two-disc set with a lot of great covers (Carl Perkins, Elvis Presley, Buddy Holly, Chuck Berry, etc.) and nearly 60 songs total...though I wouldn't listen to both discs back-to-back; it can seriously try one's patience.

I think BBC is out-of-print, but you can find it in most used music stores.

Tomoko Noguchi · 01-07-2002, 02:50 AM

Amazing that my son, age 11, wanted not only a cd player for Christmas, but also Beatles cds. I got him the Number 1 hits collection, but now he wants me to get him all the cds. He can't stop playing the music.

Jack Gilvey · 01-07-2002, 08:43 AM

Quote:

Very true. Ever hear Beatles Live at the Hollywood Bowl? It's basically an album full of teenage banshee wails with an occasional musical sound coming out. Quite glad this never made it to CD; the mix is godawful.

Hehe, I had that a long,long time ago, and a few years ago I found a mint copy in a used LP store. Certainly not the way you'd choose to record a concert today, but what a fun album. "Sing a song called "Boys" Ringo!"

Philip Hamm · 01-07-2002, 09:58 AM

\'I\'m sucking up juice from the generator!\' - Brian Eno, \"I Fall Up\"

\'I\'m sucking up juice from the generator!\' - Brian Eno, \"I Fall Up\"