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

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.

that's pretty clear from the Let it Be film

Yup, this is essentially why I can't understand the type of Beatles fan that slags off McCartney's solo career. Abbey Road is considered one of the best things they ever did, yet it has more in common with what Paul was doing with Wings on Band On The Run and Venus and Mars than it does with Imagine or any Harrison solo record you could name. I definitely think that McCartney had a lot to do with the arrangements and production of Lennon's and Harrison's songs on Abbey Road.

I mean, god, I don't want to come out and say that Paul McCartney was The Beatles, but he definitely the dominant ingredient during their most revered period.

eh my most revered period is '65-'67

He was the dominant ingredient then, too...well, maybe not '65, but '66 and '67 definitely.

welll sorta - he provided the framing devices for Sgt Peppers and MMT but let's face it those devices are p stupid. John was writing better songs (for the most part) and still pushing the band in various directions

Yeah, I mean, McCartney contributed more, but his contributions weren't as significant as, say, "A Day in the Life".

But Lennon was veering on being a barely-there acid casualty by '67, and it seems unlikely that any of his best stuff would've been as fully realized without McCartney's chirpy cheerleading.

it seems to me like the Beatle-rot didn't really settle in w Lennon until the end of the White Album, after which his attitude seems to be m/l "fuck it"

It's acknowledged by every bio – John Lennon too – that Paul led the band from '68 onwards. John had checked out; George was miserable but the misery inspired the greatest songs he'd ever write.

Yeah, I mean, McCartney contributed more, but his contributions weren't as significant as, say, "A Day in the Life".

Which he wrote part of.

Right, yeah, maybe not the best example. He also came up with the orchestra-glissando idea to join the two songs.

Maybe "Tomorrow Never Knows" is a better example -- he played bass and one of the tape loops, but nothing more.

Paul's admitted several times that for years John was the leader, the one they were in awe of and all, as he put it, a little in love with.

john's sudden burst of creativity in late 1969/1970 -- "cold turkey," "instant karma," the POB album -- is all the more amazing because he hadn't given much of a shit about almost anything he'd played on for more than a year.

he played bass and one of the tape loops, but nothing more.

I don't know how many tape loops there are on the track, but if I'm not mistaken, he did all of them.

hmm

Five different loops were used in Tomorrow Never Knows: a seagull noise; actually a distorted recording of Paul McCartney laughing, an orchestra playing a B-flat chord, notes played on a Mellotron's flute setting, and a distorted sitar; best heard in the instrumental break following the lines 'It is being, it is being.' George Martin recalled, "We did a live mix of all the loops. All over the studios we had people spooling them onto machines with pencils while Geoff did the balancing. There were many other hands controlling the panning. It is the one track, of all the songs The Beatles did, that could never be reproduced: it would be impossible to go back now and mix exactly the same thing: the 'happening' of the tape loops, inserted as we all swung off the levers on the faders willy-nilly, was a random event."

it would be impossible to go back now and mix exactly the same thing: the 'happening' of the tape loops, inserted as we all swung off the levers on the faders willy-nilly, was a random event."

which prompts the question, who did the stereo mix, and how was it done? The timing and loops aren't identical to the mono (and supposedly first) mix, but they're fairly close. Did engineers take notes on the mono mix and do their best to recreate it for stereo? Did the Beatles do two run-throughs, one mono and one stereo?

As I understand it, Paul McCartney put the tape loops of 'Tomorrow Never Knows' together at home before the recording of 'Tomorrow Never Knows' took place, but they'll have been mixed live by The Beatles into the track, as there was no automation then.

when Ringo dies McCartney will finally be able to take credit for everything

(being facetious but I do kinda wonder sometimes about how Paul's "last Beatle standing" schtick has distorted narratives about the band)

All of this stuff was known about long before Lennon died, not sure what McCartney has said since to distort any 'official' narrative.

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

The main criticism I remember from the Roy Carr hatchet jobs on the Harrison solo albums, apart from the weak singing and songwriting, was the humourless preachy self-righteousness and all round sourness - I've never heard so much of a second of any of them btw!

not sure what McCartney has said since to distort any 'official' narrative.

eh he's p relentlessly self-promotional and sometimes I suspect some of it is revisionist. I mean we all know he wrote "Yesterday" by himself, trying to retroactively get his name first in the songwriting credit is just the kind of dick move you might expect of an egomaniac - also the Let it Be "Naked" thing etc.

xpost:

Well yeah, there's a lot of Harrison's solo stuff which just isn't all that fun to listen to, especially when he gets stuck in mid-tempo mode.

George is occasionally funny, tho not so much in the 70s