Take a Sad Song and Extract Every Last Ounce of Spontaneity from It: the Beatles Uber-Ballad Poll

Not at all, that was funny!

yeah, that too. he could be both !

I'm not even going to bother listing the chart positions for all of McCartney's singles, but yeah, loads of top ten hits, plenty of UK #1 hits... 'Mull Of Kintyre' was a million seller. Plenty of US hits too, as Alfred already pointed out.

I think to most Americans Paul is the guy singing that weird synthy song playing in every store at Christmas time.

Or the guy who plays the guitar for Rihanna.

One reason Paul had the most successful solo career was that he more or less was constantly recording and playing music, George just stopping playing live in the mid 70s, John had the Lost Weekend and then quit music altogether for half a decade, Ringo doing more movie stuff, etc. It's not like they were all continuously engaging w the music industry on the same level.

'My Love', 'Band On The Run', 'Listen To What The Man Said', 'Silly Love Songs', 'With A Little Luck', 'Coming Up', 'Ebony and Ivory' and 'Say Say Say' were the US chart toppers. Funny how 'Mull Of Kintyre' became a UK million seller, but didn't make #1 in the US. Having said that, 'Pipes Of Peace' was a UK #1 as well.

Ringo didn't stop making music – it just sucked.

Ringo just wanted to play. I always thought he should've spent his post-Beatles years as the drummer in a band like The Band or Moby Grape.

Yeah, George stopped playing live in the mid '70s, but he didn't really slow down on his album output until 1982's Gone Troppo. He released eight albums from 1970-1982, but then only two albums (1987's Cloud Nine and 2002's posthumous Brainwashed) after that.

Of course, Paul was also writing and recording songs that people liked and clearly wanted to buy.

If only all of Ringo's stuff was as good as 'It Don't Come Easy'.

Paul is a hustler (I don't mean this in a bad way fwiw) w a pathological need for approval in a way the others weren't imo

By the way:

It Don't Come Easy (UK #4)
Back Off Boogaloo (UK #2)
Photograph (UK #8)
You're Sixteen (UK #4)

^^^

Four Top 10 hits. That's the same amount of UK Top 10 hits from 1969-1974 as Lennon achieved in the same time period.

(Given that the UK 'Imagine' single was issued in '75, and '(Just Like) Starting Over' was '80)

Also, looking at Harrison's UK chart positions, it would seem that even though he never stopped making albums, the hits had pretty much dried up from 1974-1987.

My Sweet Lord (UK #1)
Bangla-Desh (UK #10)
Give Me Love (Give Me Peace On Earth) (UK #8)

then...

Ding Dong (UK #38)
You (UK #38)
Blow Away (UK #51)
All Those Years Ago (UK #13)

then...

Got My Mind Set On You (UK #2)
When We Was Fab (#25)
This Is Love (UK #55)
Any Road (#37)

for a while in America Ringo was the most successful solo Beatle on the Hot 100.

Seriously? I assume that would have been around the time of the Ringo album, right?

every song between "It Don't Come Easy" and "No No Song/Snookeroo" hit the top ten.

it wasn't even close. George was the biggest solo Beatle as far as album sales until 1973.

Man, Ringo's US singles run from 1971-1975 was nuts:

"It Don't Come Easy" (#4)
"Back Off Boogaloo" (#9)
"Photograph" (#1)
"You're Sixteen" (#1)
"Oh My My" (#5)
"Only You (And You Alone)" (#6)
"No No Song" (#3)

every one of those is songs is at least a B+ or B too.

Holy shit, you guys took to Ringo's solo stuff far more than we ever did, it has to be said!

I'm guessing Paul overtook everyone from 1973 onwards.

Ahah the top 3 most listenned songs for macca on Spotify are :
#3 live and let Die
#2 let it be
And by very far.... #1 three four seconds !
That said it's the live version of let it be.

It helps that McCartney still plays 'Live and Let Die' in his live sets.

Hang on, 'Only Mama Knows' wasn't a single? If there's any track on Memory Almost Full that should have been one. There's some great live renditions of that floating about.

I think I've talked about this here before, but I used to share a flat with a guy who was a complete Beatles fanatic and had hundreds of books on them (this explains why, even though I'm not a Beatles fan, I know shitloads about them). This thread reminded me of it, and I found this post:

Ha Tom, I remember about 30 years ago when I was a nipper and would go to the library and read Roy Carr's The Beatles: An Illustrated Record

Ha ha, is that the one where he goes thru the solo records too? And demolishes all of them, but especially George Harrison. I think he quite liked some of Ringo's albums.

― Dadaismus (Dada), Thursday, 25 August 2005 12:29 (9 years ago)

Oh yeah, there's a lot of Harrison's solo output that I don't really care for. All Things Must Pass, of course, has most of the good stuff, and I quite like Thirty Three & 1/3. Aside from that, his albums seem to be one or two tracks I don't mind surrounded by a lot that I don't care if I never heard again for a variety of reasons. When he gets stuck in his ponderous mode I actually find him unbearable, and that's before we get to his voice, which at its worst I find equally unbearable.

I don't think "My Sweet Lord" is any more "iconic" a Harrison song than "Something" or "Here Comes The Sun", at least in the US.

Ringo was doing a TON of stuff in the 70s, a lot of it movies, a lot of it producing other people and playing with various friends. He started off playing with John and Yoko and Klaus in a proto-krautrock art band. He made a movie with T-Rex and took the photo that is on the cover of glam masterwork "The Slider". He did all those great albums with Harry Nilsson too. His fingerprints are probably on many more classic albums and movies than all the other Beatles combined.

Harrison's solo input I still haven't explored that much. Paul's either tbh, full-album wise. I should sit down with a bunch of them and give them a try, but I think they are the kind of records that grow on you. Beatles records you instantly fell in love with. I did have a tape of George's "Extra Texture" that got a lot of replays in my car. Can't remember a single song on it but I enjoyed it a lot. It took me 20 years to recognize how amazing "Long Long Long" is, feel like George is in general a deep cuts kinda guy.

Harrison's mid seventies stuff is a horror. The guy needed a producer or co-producer. I quite like the Jeff Lynne-produced stuff – whaddya know, he got a Beatles-influenced producer and it worked.

When I read roy Carr's book 25 years ago I thought, "Harrison's stuff can't be as dreadful as Carr describes." Then I found my mom's copies of Extra Texture, Dark Horse, etc. Thirty-Three and a 1/3 is competent studio rock though, and "Blow Away" from 1979 is among his best ballads.

Holy shit, you guys took to Ringo's solo stuff far more than we ever did, it has to be said!

US is kind of lunatic abt the Beatles in a way the UK has never been.

― The Manner of Crawly (Tom D.), Wednesday, June 17, 2015

I think there's gems in a lot of Harrison's 70s stuff (and have had this argument w Alfred before. But it's true he never pulled off another album that sounds as great and hits the highs that ATMP does. I just don't think he could really deal with being a frontman/being in charge of everything for that long, he didn't always make the best decisions. Living in the Material World is good but after that things start to get spotty, with occasional flashes of brilliance.

and man do I love "Cheer Down"

I really like 'You' and 'This Guitar (Can't Keep From Crying)' from Extra Texture, the former is a great riff with lyrics that are quite Lennon-like in their simplicity, the latter has some tasty Moog bass on it. Aside from those two tracks, the best thing about the record is the sleeve, with the eaten away Apple logo and everything.

As for Dark Horse, I suppose 'Simply Shady' could have been a great track if it wasn't marred by the god awful vocals that wreck pretty much the whole thing. The guy really should have known better than to strain his voice when he knew it wasn't up to it at that time and put off laying down the vocal tracks until after he'd recovered from laryngitis.

Ding Dong (ridiculous as it is), Dark Horse, and It Is 'He' (Jai Sri Krishna) are all good imo but yeah his voice was fucked and he should've known better than to rush out product when he could've waited til he was better

Depression permeated many of the songs that Harrison wrote during this period, an issue that was not helped by his continued heavy drinking and cocaine use

huh didn't know he ever went down to the cokehole

...and then doing a tour afterwards with his voice still fucked!

I have this theory that if he'd bothered to wait until his voice was back in shape for that record and tour, the tour would have had better reviews than it did, and Harrison probably may have ended up doing more tours. I think that whole experience wrecked his enthusiasm to tour, but the weird thing was it was kinda his own fault.

Oh yeah, both Klaus Voormann and Pattie Boyd have talked about Harrison's coke use circa Dark Horse. It surprised the hell out of me when I first heard about that, because I'd always assumed he'd given all that stuff up before The Beatles split. But the heavy drinking/coke use is kinda what 'Simply Shady' is about, really. It was around that time that Pattie Boyd left Harrison for Clapton, too.

yeah everything I'd read had seemed to indicate he'd cleaned up towards the end of the Beatles, stopped taking acid, etc.

See that footage on the documentary (part two), he looks painfully thin. Someone should have stopped him..

re "Paul is a hustler (I don't mean this in a bad way fwiw) w a pathological need for approval in a way the others weren't imo"

My flippant half-baked theory about post-Beatle Lennon and McCartney is that Paul wanted to please everyone and often failed; John wanted to please no one and often succeeded.

I still think Tug of War is a pretty good album.

And that Ray Charles Long and Winding Road redeems, ever so slightly, a song I have hated viscerally since 1986 (when it was LOOPED to be long enough for a large high school's graduation procession). Thanks for posting.

Like I said, Harrison was a great producer of other people's records and often his own, but during that coke period his weedy voice and songwriting caught up with him.

Let's not forget: "It Don't Come Easy" is his song, which he was generous enough to allow Ringo sole songwriting credit.

I don't think "My Sweet Lord" is any more "iconic" a Harrison song than "Something" or "Here Comes The Sun", at least in the US.

yeah, I totally agree. That's why I don't think that "post Beatles iconic song" idea really works. it's only "Imagine", eventually.

nah

Don't tell me, Give Ireland Back to the Irish?

My flippant half-baked theory about post-Beatle Lennon and McCartney is that Paul wanted to please everyone and often failed; John wanted to please no one and often succeeded.

Hmm. I think if Paul really wanted to please everyone, he would have made his first solo album a big budget extravaganza instead of what it actually is, and wouldn't have put out records like Wings' Wild Life. Given the amount of freedom that members of The Beatles had to put out whatever the hell they wanted, and it was more than most, then I can only assume that they all made the music that they wanted to make.

Listening to the post-Beatles solo albums, it's apparent to me that Lennon and Harrison both managed to develop their own solo sound away from The Beatles, whereas the difference between Abbey Road-era Paul and '70s McCartney isn't as drastic. It leads me to believe that in the later stages of The Beatles, that a lot of Lennon and Harrison's compositions were going through some kind of McCartney filter - or, in other words, Paul was the biggest driving force behind The Beatles, especially after they quit touring.

The big difference between the McCartney of The Beatles circa 1969 and the McCartney of the '70s is that he didn't seem to work as hard on his lyrics, really. But then, this is the guy that wrote 'She Came In Through The Bathroom Window'.

Just discovered it's his 73rd birthday today!

It leads me to believe that in the later stages of The Beatles, that a lot of Lennon and Harrison's compositions were going through some kind of McCartney filter - or, in other words, Paul was the biggest driving force behind The Beatles, especially after they quit touring.

^^ what happened, basically. He was the leader because John didn't want to be anymore.