The Beatles' Solo Careers Poll - Voting and General Discussion Thread

"junior's farm" fuckin' rocks

also i really fell in love with "deliver your children" tonight

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EMvtzQ8AYPs

what do you mean?
was thinking if I could do a ballot with a weighted top 10 and then the rest unweighted

but I guess artist polls perhaps don't work that way

"Your Way" by McCartney is a very charming little tune

I'm quite enjoying London Town. The ballads ostensibly written for or about children are spooky, while the adult ballads sound as if they were written for or about kids.

lol i think i'm finally done with wings and i just hit 100 tracks

Also: I realized that "With a Little Luck" is the let's-just-spoon-together soft early draft of "Press."

man "how do you sleep?" is such a meeeeeannn slow-burn of a song. marred only by the sense that at least as far as we get on record, the grievance is remarkably petty: you think his songs are kinda cheesy? well, okay, so do i sometimes, but idk if he should really lose any sleep over it...

even the real explanation is kinda silly. who gets their feelings hurt by a song like "too many people"

John Lennon.

i imagine it's possible that a paranoid/drugged-out lennon took macca's barbs as being far deeper than intended - the "piece of cake" suggesting he is a money-grubbing phony and not a Real Committed Activist And Artist. whereas paul was probably just eating cake that day and said "aha, now there's a song in that!"

also i finally got the playlist DL'ed on my phone and man it rules. so great to go from "how do you sleep?" to "love comes to everyone" to "i'll give you a ring."

huh, "ever present past!" this is nice!

listened through Brainwashed again recently, nice album, but the song that really stands out is the devastating "Stuck Inside a Cloud," which is finds George trying to reconcile his spirituality with his deteriorating physical health. i mean, the whole album tries to do that, but "Stuck Inside a Cloud" is the most effective.

huh, "ever present past!" this is nice!

― noel gallaghah's high flying burbbhrbhbbhbburbbb (Doctor Casino)

He plays every instrument too

paul was probably just eating cake that day and said "aha, now there's a song in that!"
haha idd

"Too Many People" is an ideal example of Addled Paul. Who else would get his wife to help him scream PIECE OF CAKE?

who gets their feelings hurt by a song like "too many people"

maybe he took it as another dig at Yoko. too many people in the studio, one too many

shiiiiit "mindtrain" rules

how have i not heard yoko's plastic ono band record? this is amazing!

ddue waht

shiiiiit "mindtrain" rules

number 1 yoko song on my ballot. as good as anything CAN ever did

“mindtrain” is huge

keep taking those mindtrains

the Ringo-John rhythm section is so good. probably not that far off from the "noisey tuneless" jams they reportedly did after hours while during the later Sgt. Pepper sessions. some of those were recorded and never released so that is prob something to look forward to...

i agree w Turrican in thinking Yoko was a revitalizing force particularly for John. her art background and Fluxus philosophy gave a structural foundation and a focus to John's more experimental tendencies. before they met, his home recordings were either beautiful ambient mellotron pieces or gaudy faux reggae almost meta-exotica (something that wouldn't really happen until the 90s). the latter is amusing to some but is also a window into completely indulgent, drunken belligerence.

a lot of '66/'67 home recordings were made by John and Ringo on 4 track after some wine or whatever, of them pretending to be at a cocktail lounge serving drinks and singing to guests. i suppose in its own way this was a way of parodying the "mindless consumer" culture of their parents, a well many of that generation would return to again and again (Nilsson's proto braggadocio hip hop "All My Life").

after Yoko joined the picture she had a tempering effect on him. she brought in generative writing/recording processes: the recording of "Revolution" was all about repetition, about droning on this one idea, using that feedback to create some new idea. Neu! is cool because they will just play one chord the whole song, and by repeating that one chord, they find variation in the chord, they can play it quieter, or softer, or louder, or ringing, or with arpeggios, etc. these things that have to be planned in advanced if it is more technically complex material (see Paul) can be improvised on the spot.

it is like meditating, by trying to focusing on one thing (nothing) we are flooded by spontaneously created worlds. all kinds of wonderful things are naturally generated out of necessity of continuing to perform, continuing to create. it is perhaps a different way of creating/experiencing art, a more futuristic, programmatic way. certainly it informed their viral/marketing strategy, the constant press conferences, the "War Is Over" memes, guest spots, live appearances, etc. it was like a livestream or something, just continuously producing (and based on real life) before they took their sabbatical for love of their child.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5L5vvS1pOD4

has this ever been sampled? if not then someone get on it.

high on my ballot, dope song

i love the drums-and-vocoder breakdown in "Goodnight Tonight".

song is a jam

wings ranked:
band on the run
london town
back to the egg
venus & mars (i like this record but don't *love* it, who can say why)
red rose speedway
wings at the speed of sound
wild life

shouts out to stand-alone wings singles "junior's farm," "goodnight tonight," "girls' school" and "c moon"

from my no. 1 and 2 i guess i think that wings were at their best when the sense of them as "band" either had or was in the process of completely falling apart lol

and "Sally G"!

and "Daytime Nighttime Suffering"!

i wanna make a 12 minute techno track out of the annoying synth figure in "temporary secretary" tbh

also there is no doubt in my mind after this project that paul is the funkiest beatle

and "Wonderful Christmastime!"

also, the easily overlooked but crucial pre-wings non-album single: "Another Day" / "Oh Woman Oh Why"

lol that's an xpost, was not submitting Wonderful Christmastime as funk

although..........

"oh woman oh why" is on my ballot. love unintelligble screamy paul xp

Nah, never liked that one.

i haven't seen the entire Gimme Some Truth doc (available in shitty quality on youtube), about the making of Imagine, but both of these clips are gripping. as with the Let It Be film, yoko's influence on John and interaction with the others is both really interesting and painful to watch, at times. i agree with the posts above about how her positive artistic influence on John. in general, i can imagine both her and john as huge sources of creative gravity, pulling each other in new directions. yoko is a fountain of ideas in these clips.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WivoeUdSB8k

You can see John getting irritated with her near the end of the recording of "Imagine" (he stops a runthrough and says "Yoko why don't you go in there and listen instead of being there?", since she was 2 feet behind him.) but then, she also suggested that he use the iconic white piano.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p9067LQORNQ

the second one, showing the making of "how do you sleep?" has all sorts of interesting moments, like john playing george an early version and smiling and laughing during at some of the particularly cutting lines. it also shows how different the song could have turned out - elements of the nastiness of the song are present from the beginning, but john was also trying to push a sort of lighter, bouncy reggae edge to it as well. one of the reasons the final result is so good is because it be both nasty and bouncy, so it's fun to watch those separate strands come together here. i really should just watch the rest of the film.

because it be both nasty and bouncy

this was a typo but let's just roll with it

1. my bad if this is addressed above…but I am struck by how quickly George's slide style —an utterly distinctive tone throughout 1970 to his death— suddenly emerged. It's not on White album, not even on "Old Brown shoe" or 'Something" where he does play slide, but that tone hadn't been refined. It seemed to appear fully realized on ATMP…or does anyone hear it beforehand?

2. re: "oh yeah, we just jammed it out! peaceandlovepeaceandlove!!! Don't imagine that many contributing here are stern people, but for the past five years or so, the below clip has been a persistent meme therein… herewith, Ringo's passive aggressive peace and loving…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eAU0l7325w0

you know who probably loved "temporary secretary"? trent reznor

It seemed to appear fully realized on ATMP

imo this is the most fuckin mystical thing

wings ranked:
band on the run
london town
back to the egg
venus & mars (i like this record but don't *love* it, who can say why)
red rose speedway
wings at the speed of sound
wild life

― flamenco blorf (BradNelson), Thursday, May 24, 2018 5:35 PM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Not too far off my current ranking:

1. Band on the Run
2. Venus and Mars
3. Back to the Egg
4. London Town
5. Red Rose Speedway
6. Wings at the Speed of Sound
7. Wild Life

1. my bad if this is addressed above…but I am struck by how quickly George's slide style —an utterly distinctive tone throughout 1970 to his death— suddenly emerged. It's not on White album, not even on "Old Brown shoe" or 'Something" where he does play slide, but that tone hadn't been refined. It seemed to appear fully realized on ATMP…or does anyone hear it beforehand?

this is correct. Even on "Sour Milk Sea" he's still playing stinging lines.

aw I love Brad and Turrican's reconciliation

I've always rated George highly as a guitarist - yes, he has his limitations but was always tasteful in his playing... like Ringo was on the drums! His playing seemed to take a huge leap forward between 1968-1971.

man "sister, o sister" is cool. also props to whoever upped the wonderwall tracks and "simply shady.". this playlist has been such a rewarding listen as a result of these and other such thread picks.

realized "oh yoko!" may end up top 20 for me.

also, the ringo tracks, even the ones i myself picked out, sound considerably better spiced into the mix, just like ringo on a beatles record. "snookeroo" is great fun, especially right after "ski-ing." (i've apparently had my playlist running in order by song title, which more or less amounts to shuffle in this case.)

one lennon-contributing cut i'm obliged to give a shout-out: elton's cover of "lucy in the sky." it gets a bad rap but imo it's a fun listen, and fascinating as it replaces the late-60s psychedelic investigation of childhood's forgotten mysteries and magic, with the mid-70s coke-fueled endless party....