I have had it up to here waiting for the Beatles catalogue to be remastered

this George blog post is great Alfred. which was the 'George squeezing lemon over McCartney's kumbaya' clip you linked to? the clip in question has vanished from YouTube whatever it was.

The clip with the three survivors from Anthology alluded to upthread.

Thanks!

"so how is it that I have MP3 files of "Carnival Of Light"? I swear it showed up at some point."

that is fake

good to know, thanks y'all

it's probably better than the actual thing though

Should have just farmed it out to ILM, woulda got twelve or fifteen top-notch carnivals of light.

carnival of shite more like: ilx imagines 'carnival of light'

xxp ah right gotcha.

i thought i could detect a faint glimmer of a wry smile around Giles Martin's lips when he was talking about Carnival.. in that q+a last week; there's still a chance that it'll be an Easter Egg on the dvd/blu ray in the box. what a ripping wheeze that would be.

I watched a torrent of Let It Be recently. I know there's very obvious reasons why they wouldn't want to dig it up, but it's still surprising that it hasn't been given some kind of public once-over.

yeah the rooftop gig alone i mean.. it was all filmed. where's THAT polished HD remastered Blu Ray? the 20 minutes in the film is only a taster.

I complained about that upthread. Would really like to see that whole performance.

The luck the Beatles stumbled into was mind-boggling (....)

― Montgomery Burns' Jazz (Tarfumes The Escape Goat), Monday, 17 April 2017 19:14 (two days ago) Permalink

That's the crazy joy of the Lewisohn book. Just vital lucky break after vital lucky break, and that's not even factoring in innate talent.

― Josh in Chicago, Monday, 17 April 2017 19:19 (two days ago) Permalink

I've long thought one of the luckiest breaks the Beatles got was one that didn't seem like a break at all at the time: getting rejected by Decca Records after their audition. Imagine the alternate reality if Decca had signed them: they wouldn't have been produced by George Martin, wouldn't have Abbey Road studio 2 or 3 to record in, wouldn't have Norman Smith and Geoff Emerick as engineers, wouldn't have Ken Townsend to invent automatic/artificial double tracking at John Lennon's behest, and on and on. Maybe they may have found excellent counterparts to these people and entities, maybe they wouldn't have, but it's fair to assume Beatles records wouldn't sound like they do had Decca signed them instead of Parlophone.

We'd probably have "Besame Mucho" as their first single!

That would have been awesome! Way better than "Love Me Do" imo

Also, would Pete Best still have been sacked if they became famous while he was still in the band?

I've long thought one of the luckiest breaks the Beatles got was one that didn't seem like a break at all at the time: getting rejected by Decca Records after their audition.

This is otm. I finally found the quote that lodged "mind-boggling" in my brain relating to their luck (from Revolution in the Head):

All in all, Decca's coolness about The Beatles in January 1962 is quite understandable. Though Mike Smith, the producer who oversaw the audition, had seen the group in action at The Cavern, there was no precedent for signing an act merely because they could whip up their home crowd. The first prerequisite for an early Sixties recording contract was presentability: potential 'artistes' had to be 'professional', i.e., musically competent, groomable, and acquiescent to the demands of their producers who, it was assumed, would select their songs for them from batches circulated by writing teams through the normal channels. Loud, long-haired, and seemingly incapable of desisting from laughter, The Beatles did not meet these requirements. Nor, at this stage, did they have much going for them as songwriters. It didn't help that, while there was nothing wrong with his managerial instincts, Brian Epstein lacked musical judgement. Left to his own devices, he would have been at a loss to develop the group's creativity. Doing that would require someone highly qualified yet unhampered by the hidebound UK studio scene of 1962. By a coincidence so unlikely as to be positively mind-boggling, The Beatles were about to encounter such a man.

One thing I got from that Beatles Big-Book, was that Pete was just the latest one in a series of drummers, that the three Japage's didn't exactly become great mates with.

Ringo was afraid he might get fired in... '64 or '65?

I don't know about '64-'65, but he was always hard on himself. In the Anthology he can't mask his bitterness and loathing of the '66 shows, and how poorly he (and they) played -- it's evident it still stung 18 years later.

He left for a couple of weeks during the white album thinking the others weren't into his playing, and I don't really know what the source of that was, but they all convinced him to come back.

and if the Beatles had been signed by Decca, there might have been no Rolling Stones since the latter were signed by Decca as a reaction to the Beatles' success.
Even considering the Beatles would have been as successful on Decca, I doubt Parlophone/George Martin would have worked well with the Rolling Stones...

xp sorry, still stung 28 years later

xpost Re: Ringo on the White Album, the first time I heard Long, Long, Long, I thought it was Pink Floyd due to his drumming (and the stoner vibe).

Watched Conan O'Brien do a really long interview with Lewisohn on YouTube there and the way he puts it rather than them being lucky, is that what happened by was by no means always going to happen, and that at every point, it almost doesn't happen. I suppose that could be said about any even in historical narrative that you focus on with the same breadth and depth.

Also Conan is a gigantic Beatles nut, which I probably should've assumed from his stint at the Simpsons, but I mean he's really, really, really knowledgeable about them.

btw here's a short playlist of Beatles keepers I compiled for the new year.

ctrl-f savoy truffle Phrase Not Found

Great to see "Boys" on the list; one of Ringo's greatest early performances.

how many of y'all have read Peter Brown's book The Love We Make? sooo juicy, we all know they were speed freaks but good god Ringo stayed up for three days on uppers and his legs gave out on stage, he was wandering around barefoot in the middle of the night totally suicidal. this was in early '64. also how George had the flu really bad the day that they were on Ed Sullivan, and the doctor gave him vitamins but mostly just shot him up with a heroic dose of amphetamines.

They basically subsisted on uppers while in Hamburg. I wouldn't be surprised if George said to the doctor, "That's it? That's all you got?"

god that book is so good... i don't know if it's been scrubbed or sanitized over the years, i was reading a first edition at my parent's house a couple Xmases ago, just fucking great... i think there might've been a bit in there about one of them walking in on John having sex with a transgender prostitute in Hamburg days...

how many of y'all have read Peter Brown's book The Love We Make?

for many kids in the '70s and '80s this was the only readily available bio one could check out of the library

^^^ the first Beatles bio I read. Kinda shitty iirc

it reminded me of the Goldman book about Lennon in terms of salaciousness, but it's got the credibility of a close associate.

the person that book reflects most poorly on is Peter Brown imo

I remember it having this kind of leering, self-satisfied tone, "look at how horrible your precious Beatles really were!" etc. It's not that I'd prefer a white-washed sycophantic bio or anything, but it just seemed particularly vicious, exhibiting a joy in its salaciousness.

Goldman's a total hack, obviously.

Our local library only had Phillip Norman's book and a two volume set by Ray Coleman called John Winston Lennon and John Ono Lennon but the teenage me enjoyed those, dunno what I'd think now.

Read the Goldman book from a local library as a kid, probably the biggest book I'd ever read. A weird introduction to Beatles biography, wasn't til years later I realised how controversial it had been.

I also just read this excellent book contemporary to its publishing by Bill Wyman (who I gather is a old-hand controversialist rock journo rather than the fella from the Stones)
http://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/reading-lennon-mania/Content?oid=872827

*article, not book

Bill Wyman's a great writer - the letter he penned in Jagger's name, in response to Keith's autobiography, is excellent.

I used to read Wyman pretty religiously in the Reader in the '80s and '90s, and his Jagger letter is indeed clever and makes all the necessary points.

But this (from the link above) is complete horseshit:

There are also indications that Goldman doesnt know much about pop music. A case in point is the way he passes along one of John's more farfetched utterances, that groups like the B-52s (and by extension other dance-oriented new wave bands like Talking Heads) were inspired by Yoko's experimentalism in the early 70s. This claim was prompted by the song "Rock Lobster," which Lennon heard once in a disco; it featured squeaks and squeals just like Yoko's. But those were just "lobster sounds," ancillary to the song; Yoko Ono was of little inspiration to the new wave, and a pop-culture "expert" like Goldman ought to know it.

The B-52s frequently mentioned Yoko as an influence, on their work in general and "Rock Lobster" in particular. Wyman's blind spots -- his biggest being just about anything that can be termed "avant-garde" -- often are revealed as rank ignorance masquerading as considered criticism. When he was the co-host of "Sound Opinions" in the mid-'90s, he said of "free jazz," "It's the kind of jazz where everyone plays whatever they want and doesn't listen to anyone else in the group." His co-host (Greg Kot, I believe) shut him down, but not before Wyman further embarrassed himself talking about something he has no experience with and less knowledge about.

Yoko Ono was a major inspiration to the new wave, and a pop-culture "expert" like Wyman ought to know it.

those were just "lobster sounds"

lol apparently this guy knows less about lobsters than music

http://i38.tinypic.com/35d6clt.jpg

"THERE GOES A JELLYFISH!"

the Screaming Lobster of Hope!

i read this thread but for some reason i don't know how to participate

420 thoughts but let me lamely just say that something about the way ringo sings the first lines 'with a little help from my friends', along with the "would you believe in a love at first sight?/yes i'm certain that it happens all the time", brings a tear to my eye in a bizarre way that pretty much zero other pop song does for me. i'm not a huge ringo singing guy or anything, but the quality of his voice perfectly matches the song, and the way the harmonies and lyrical interplays are arranged is an insanely spot-on audio reproduction of the feeling of real friendship. i think it brings the tear because it triggers nostalgia out of nowhere.

sings the first lines IN 'with a little help from my friends', i mean, sorry

;-)

also, you know what other song rules so much that it breaks the rules? 'getting better'. the drumming on that song is unbelievably good, it's the drum equivalent of a riff, no fills, just the exact right parts at all the right times.
i don't know if you can tell but i'm listening to Sgt. Pepper's RIGHT NOW.

Wednesday 29 March
Studio Two: 7.00pm-5.45am

It had already been decided that this song would not merely follow the album's title track but that it would be joined to it, `segued' to use music industry parlance. Hence the song, from
the very first take, began with what — on the LP — sounds more like the end of `Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band', the "Bil-ly Shears" vocal line. Underscoring that line (although the vocals weren't added until later) was a organ piece played by George Martin. Then, into the song proper, Paul played piano, George lead guitar, Ringo drums and John cowbell.

Ten takes were made using this basic rhythm line-up, the tenth being best. This was then converted into take 11 by a reduction mix which saw all four tracks from the first tape merge into one. Ringo's lead vocal — one of the best he has ever recorded — was then overdubbed onto tracks three and four of the song and more overdubs were taped on 30 March.

they recorded until almost 6 in the morning and Ringo drummed for 10 takes then sang the final lead vocal all in the same night. what a badass!

^Lewisohn

the very next day they shot the album cover then went straight back to the studio, working until 7.30am overdubbing the backing vocals and all the additional instruments. so for a lot of that song they may have actually been dressed like they are on the cover.