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

loving all these answers to my inquiry, thanks all.

I am, as always, drafting in C. Grisso/McCain's wake, but over the weekend learned that Headquarters was (debuted at?) Number One on the Billboard Charts until Sgt. Pepper knocked it down to Number Two the next week, and there they sat throughout the Summer of Love.

i gave xhuxk a hard time on metabook for burying the lede in his personal best of '63 through '65, where the beatles don't clock in until #32. i'm sure that trashmen album is great and everything...
https://accidentalevolution.wordpress.com/2021/09/17/150-best-albums-of-1963-64-65/

iirc no LPs debuted at #1 until the 70s --- wasn't it a big deal when Elton and Stevie pulled it off? feel like i learned that on ilx somewhere.

when i first got into the beatles around the age of 12 or so i really only knew the stuff up through rubber soul; i still remember hearing "tomorrow never knows" for the first time and finding it genuinely frightening.

greil's essay on the beatles in the big old red rolling stone history of rock book is one of my favorite pieces of writing about them. he writes beautifully about their early sound, and what it was like to first hear them on the radio, or hear them in a coffee shop. he's basically an early-beatles guy; he's always gonna prefer "don't bother me" to "here comes the sun." (i've lost track of the number of times i've seen him mention "don't bother me"!) toward the end of his essay he says something like "out of the last few years, a handful of recordings stand with anything the beatles ever did." a handful!

By not performing live both Dylan and the Beatles lost a lot of youth culture momentum in the late 60s. Lack of US touring is crucial for the Kink's decline in the US in that period, according to critics. So many festivals they all missed (Woodstock and Monterrey but many others too). Cities where they were absent when their rivals were rising.

With tracks like Helter Skelter and Revolution, they helped lay the foundation for heavy metal, but they didn't pursue that direction; their psychedelia was key in building the foundation of prog, but again they didn't really go very far down the long-form instrumental composition for late-night FM radio route. Psych itself soon turned out to be a dead end of ever more goofy bad poetry, weird noises for its own sake, and lack of proper decent musical interest. But it was psych they were good at up to the end and I think that also hurt their standing - the excesses of psychedelic music were all too apparent by the time they released Abbey Road. I think this inability after Magical Mystery Tour to pick a side in the question of "which way forward - back to rock's roots or keep doing the psychedelic experiments" hurt them compared to those who made the 'right' choice (Dylan and the Band, the Stones, CCR) or the psych-metal choice (Who, Zeppelin, Hendrix).

Meanwhile there's a paradoxical oversaturation of cheesy beatles covers in the late 60s. Instrumental covers albums of every conceivable genre. Credible R&B reimaginings but many more not-so-credible light pop covers. I think they were losing the hipsters and this played as much a part as the Honey Pies and Maxwell's Hammers.

xp IIRC, in Stranded's "Treasure Island" discography, Greil more or less included everything they did up until and including The White Album. After that, "Don't Let Me Down" was the only recording deemed worthy for inclusion.

I should add Greil has a strange habit where there's rarely any middle ground expressed in his criticism. When he's casually talking and answering questions, that's clearly not the case, but in a lot of his columns and reviews, a recording is either all that's holy or completely useless.

it's the Californian in him

In Treasure Island, didn't Marcus skip over Sgt. Pepper, or at least included it with serious stated reservations? He has stated that "A Day In The Life" was his only keeper, and even then there several songs they issued both right before and after that he felt were better.

in the 1979 essay i mentioned, he writes very well about the impact that sgt pepper had, and then casually says that most of the music hasn't held up well at all.

xxp it's kind of interesting how that doesn't extend to his politics. A staunch liberal, he actually has no problem supporting centrist or moderate Democrats if that's the only option - no surprise given what he's written extensively and emotionally about the consequences of Reaganism.

A staunch liberal, he actually has no problem supporting centrist or moderate Democrats if that's the only option

The opposite.

My mom owned every American Beatles cheapie through 1965. She doesn't own Rubber Soul or Revolver. Then she bought Pepper's and Abbey Road and a few singles in between: "Paperback Wrier," "Hey Jude."

About the same with my mom. Had the singles, Meet the Beatles, Beatles '65... then nothing again until Sgt. Pepper, like all of a sudden the Beatles were cool again. But then it drops off after Magical Mystery Tour with just the Hey Jude singles compilation.

Step-dad had Abbey Road on cassette, which is where I first heard it. Wasn't until the CDs came out that I realized that "Come Together" was the actual album opener, not "Here Comes The Sun".

greil's politics are about as strange as you might expect from someone who wrote a brilliant 500-page book about the situationists but loves jonathan chait and tom friedman and still defends bill clinton against the slightest hint of criticism.

The opposite.

We must be reading different things from Greil. As J.D. mentions, he's passionately defended Clinton (Bill AND Hillary, particularly against Bernie Sanders's supporters), and everything he's written in that area doesn't seem to contradict what I posted.

gtdae, that's a really interesting set of takes, not sure i've ever thought about any of those angles (the significance of not touring, the "between two stools" genre/hipness narrative, and the easy-listening covers = uncoolness narrative)... i'll have to percolate on those.

i wonder if the psych vs roots scenario might be a touch too schematic...? but on the other hand, it would offer some ways of reading their 70s solo work... and why in some ineffable way i've never quite filed them together with the whole rest of the body of Classic Rock. none of them ultimately landed on exactly one or the other (not that anyone had to). i guess paul definitely stayed closer to certain psych tendencies for much, much longer, without going down the instrumental freakout or proggy route in anything beyond a splash of color.

i just realized during the first run through of "old brown shoe" paul is playing george's guitar upside down. legend stuff.

My dad, then aged 40, bought 1962-66 on cassette shortly after its release, and played it in the car all the time. The reason I then bought 1967-70 (aged 11) was that my dad wouldn't, as he said that was when they "went a bit funny" (which I surmised was a) drugs, b) long hair, c) Yoko). There's nothing like the allure of forbidden fruit, etc. (My grandmother was actually quite saddened by post-67 Beatles: "they used to be such nice boys", she once sighed.)

Having got to know 1967-70, but still hearing 1962-66 in the car all the time, I imagined that the band must have cringed with embarrassment at the 1962-64 stuff, and assumed they must since have disowned it all; this was reinforced by the "She Loves You"-quoting outro of "All You Need Is Love", which I read as mockery of their juvenalia.

John's favourite Beatles single remained "I want to hold your hand" to the end.

The opposite.

We must be reading different things from Greil. As J.D. mentions, he's passionately defended Clinton (Bill AND Hillary, particularly against Bernie Sanders's supporters), and everything he's written in that area doesn't seem to contradict what I posted.

― birdistheword, Monday, December 20, 2021

It's a matter of emphasis. I don't see him as any kind of liberal: he's Schlesinger-esque in his defense of centrism.

Xp Contrarily, I think it's a perfectly understandable aesthetic preference to like early Beatles more than late Beatles purely on the basis of how the music hits you.

We do our elders a disservice by assuming they just didn't like long hair and drugs (loads of Boomers loved both). If you genuinely like three-minute pop songs, and prefer them to "Tomorrow Never Knows" or whatever, I think that may well be a perfectly valid de gustibus moment.

But sure, let's caricature the old squares as just not being able to handle the sublime artistry of (checks notes) "Piggies."

the peak of their 3 minute pop songs was revolver though

Sure, loads of Boomers loved both - but once you get to pre-Boomers (like my dad, born 1933) who came of age in the pre-rock era, they were a lot less likely to grasp the "weird" later stuff.

(My grandmother was actually quite saddened by post-67 Beatles: "they used to be such nice boys", she once sighed.)

Apparently your grandmother and Queen Elizabeth were of the same mind.

But did your granny take a triphave a Command Performance at which she rattled her jewels?

My granny took a very hardline anti-Yoko stance. But then she was a thundering racist, God rest her soul.

I thought The Queen loved the "Yellow Submarine" film?

kinda surprised my parents took the time to watch the whole doc, sounds like it definitely opened up some old wounds for them re:"why did john have to go and get so weird?"

Ha ha, John being weird was definitely not my takeaway from the film.

Too busy watching all five seasons of Pinky Blinders

Lmao imagine trying to flex by bragging about watching Peaky Blinders and spelling it wrong, I wonder if Greil posts Facebook memes that are pictures of Tom Hardy with misattributed quotes say shit like "I'm the most loyal person you know, but cross me and you'll unleash the wolf in me" in Impact font

from a 2000 article in time:

George W. Bush also claims to be a big admirer of the Fab Four...However Bush does add a caveat to his appreciation. "I liked their early stuff. They did some good records. But then they got a bit weird. I didn't like all that later stuff when they got strange."

my mum always loved George but still complains about their beards and long hair and them getting “weird”

i guess when all you know is radio pop, the bar for weird is very low

Picturing George W. Bush at Yale or wherever, turning on the TV in his frat after his 17th beer, seeing this:

https://i.imgur.com/xBOsmRb.gif

and going Fuuuuuucccckkk THAT SHIT!

Trying and failing to find a video of Elvis during the jam session part of the Comeback Special talking about The Beatles and The Beards.

Been itching to post this one:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uFNrCSsPpc8

Now, THAT'S what a recording session in 1969 should look like!

Ha!

Complete with James Burton on the Pink Paisley.

that’s lovely.

Love how Tutt digs into that Ringo fill.

enjoyed that video, thanks!

would love to see them then warp time and turn it into "Pink Cadillac," would have mopped the floor with it imo.

Loved the fake-out ending.

That video is kind of addictive.

Mister P...So Addictive

i feel like Elvis is due for the Get Back/Last Dance treatment soon. there has to be enough shockingly great rehearsal tape out there. kids don't know the story.

agree

HBO did a pretty good doc a few years ago

a Get Back studio behind the scenes would be amazing

fewer goofy voices

if i went to see a 'pop' band and they rocked as hard as the Beatles do on Please Please Me thru A Hard Day's Night, i'd feel pretty darn rocked.

― I Am Fribbulus (Xax) (Doctor Casino), Tuesday, 7 December 2021 14:44 (two weeks ago)

what's up guys. I was keeping up-ish, a day or two behind, with this thread and getting totally enthused, but ran out of time to keep track at at this point.

half an hour in to watching, and going back to FP every single one of you maniacs who posted 1,000,000 words about this without saying how insanely hideous the hyper-cropped and computer-animated picture is

Darin's dog video was cool though