The Beatles

Tomorrow's "Strawberry Fields Forever" is outstanding.

Hm, can’t remember hearing that one.

That whole album is really good. Cool band.

That album is great but the cover is the lamest thing on it!

Suggest other thread for bands not the beatles

Caetano Veloso made some pretty good covers on his Joia and Qualquer Coisa albums, of Help, Elanor Rigby, For No One and Lady Madonna. As a bonus, if you haven't heard it, Joia is one of the greatest albums ever, period.

Ah, it was in the RS 70 interview that Lennon talked about "Help!" :

"I don't like the recording too much; we did it too fast trying to be commercial... I might do I Want To Hold Your Hand and Help! again, because I like them and I can sing them."

LOL @ "trying to be commercial", you were in The Beatles for fucks sake!

Charlotte Dada's "Don't Let Me Down" (1971, Ghana) is about as good as Beatles covers get:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T7-JrLuAaFY

the eternal battle: charlotte dada's version of "don't let me down", or marcia griffiths' version? i'm on team griffiths, but they're both great.

since that link to the other thread from 2005 showed up i've been making serious progress on my list. the 2005 poster had some great shit going on - i filled up half my gaps on "with the beatles" with his suggestions - but there are resources out there now that there just weren't back in '05. there are covers of "glass onion" besides arif mardin's! shitty jazz covers are the bane of anybody looking for beatles interpretations. the secret weapon? power pop, obviously. absolutely killer live track of "old brown shoe" by the laughing dogs... _nobody_ does old brown shoe...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N8CU2Oc7a3c&feature=youtu.be

i'm still arguing with myself over whether to use the bats' "tell me why". on the one hand it's great, but on the other hand it sounds a _lot_ like the "duck tales" theme...

crap, youtube link fail. whatever, you should be able to google it (and it's worth finding).

I'd suggest Colin Newman's version of 'Blue Jay Way', that's another song that nobody does and I believe that's why he did it.

Colin Newman's early 80s solo work has a lot of tracks that have, now that you've made the connection for me, the relaxed dread and haze of Blue Jay Way.

Though, thankfully, they're much better.

i'm not a big fan of "not to" - even the wire tracks on it i prefer in the dodgy live versions from "turns and strokes", etc. i went with a youtube cover by a baroque musician named daniel mantey. it's not as good as his take on "trans europe express", but i find that hurdy gurdy really brings out the droney quality of the original song.

Looks like June of '64

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e6r523MsuUk

^ This is pretty great. Surprised they haven't cashed in an properly released that. Love how loud Lennon's guitar is in the mix.

yeah great footage and sound, not overwhelmed by the screams

it's a bummer some of the footage doesn't match though! (like ringo invisibly rocking out on "she loves you" 5 minutes in)

That's the other band's drum set sitting there!

oh, duh! that does make me feel better!

well 50 years have come and gone since 1967 and "Carnival of Light" remains unreleased. So it's now in the public domain, right?

maybe a mod should change this thread title so it's clear if it's about the band or the album

You mean the White Album?

it's obviously about the album. Although officially named The Beatles everyone just calls them 'the white band'

Average?

Distinctly.

If something wasn’t released it can’t be in the public domain, can it ?

The copyright extension release thread (w/r/t EU copyright law)

https://66.media.tumblr.com/7da9f7083016c4d9134a4a0b3bd73aab/tumblr_py4owqLs8H1r4y7nzo1_1280.png

Don't think I can buy any theory with only one Paul, sorry

you'e overlooking dilfman

"forbidden beatles" is an amazing phrase/caption

sad that www.thebeatlesneverexisted.com appears to be gone

Hey, how about those Beatles?

Anyway, I've always been fascinated by the concept of "Beatlesesque," which is to say, music that sounds like the Beatles without sounding *like* the Beatles. That is to say, there are elements to the music that bring to mind the Beatles without directly ripping off a specific Beatles song, which implies there are really identifiable traits to the Beatles music that can be imitated. I was talking to a friend about ELO, for example. Of course they sound *like* the Beatles, but what is it about them exactly that sounds like the Beatles? My friend figured at first it was about the chord progressions. The Beatles, he noted, especially early on, ingeniously discovered a bazillion variations of the doo wop chord progression, which ended up a lot of (music nerds correct me) V-IV-ii progressions. But more conspicuous was those descending, kind of sneering Lennon-y wall of backing answer vocals that you hear in songs like "Turn to Stone." (Or, hey, in Billy Joel's "My Life," or lots of Aimee Mann, or Sam Phillips, etc.) You hear those backing vocals, and you immediately think of the Beatles. But what specific Beatles song or songs are they aping? We were kind of stumped.

Stuff like the 1-2-3-4-5-6-7 part from the end of "You Never Give Me Your Money"... "Because" "Carry That Weight" etc.?

The Beatles

The strings on "I Am The Walrus".

A couple of years ago I was asked to drum on some covers of songs from the King's X album "Please Come Home Mr. Bulbous," which were described to me as "Beatlesesque."

"Marsh Mellow Field," for example, does sound in places like a pastiche of Sgt. Pepper stuff, but without copying any specific song. And it isn't really the chord progressions. More the texture: a combination of guitar jangle plus expansive 'verby vocals with a sort of dreamy slurry Lennonesque treatment in the second half of each verse.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0LWgoFyWv5Y

I was not familiar with this music and I had no love for it, but I was able to muddle through the project and move on with my musical life.

I still keep thinking specifically of those Jeff Lynne backing vocals, on ELO albums but also the things he produced. Yeah, they are very much in the slurry Lennon vein, but what's the best John Lennon example of the slurry Lennon backing vocals?

Or maybe because it is so conspicuous, the Beatles breakdown in Billy Joel's My Life. Sounds like The Beatles, but what Beatles song does it sound like? What is it referencing, specifically?

Another side road we went down is that when people rip off the Beatles or do something that is Beatlesesque, they are generally talking about John Lennon, or maybe George Harrison. I can't think of any acts that particularly sound like Paul McCartney. Squeeze?

I thought years ago that Beatlesque pastiches were often more indebted to Harrison's songs, partly because he's a more formulaic writer, and hence easier to emulate. Minor-key descending chord progressions, melodies that are catchy but not as complex as Paul's, major/minor key changes but nothing too out of the ordinary. One example is "No Myth" by Michael Penn (which features slide guitar as well).

I think of Nilsson as the first songwriter to emulate McCartney's writing in particular, as opposed to the Beatles in general. Emmit Rhodes did too, around the same time, and his voice sounds like Paul's as well.

A striking Lennon-in-'67 emulation is "Baron Saturday" by the Pretty Things.

As for Beatles songs with nasal John backing vox - "You Won't See Me", "Paperback Writer", "Taxman", "She Said She Said"...

Around the late '90s and '00s, there was a lot of good music inspired by the Beatles' mid-'60s records, and that definitely extends to McCartney's work and his own ideas on those records. Fountains of Wayne, Apples in Stereo (that wasn't meant to be a pun, was it?), Jay Bennett-era Wilco, the Flaming Lips, etc.

TBH, I'm not an ELO fan or a Billy Joel fan - obviously they loved the Beatles and consciously looked to them for inspiration, but there's also a lot about their music that's unique theirs that I never liked.

*uniquely theirs

Some of the Fiery Furnaces’ songwriting (and Matt F. solo) has been compared to McCartney, but I guess more post-Beatles McCartney.

I like ELO, but I'm not Billy Joel fan, yet in "My Life" it's about as blatantly Beatles-y as it gets.

xposts Yeah, for sure, lots of example of Lennon backing vox, but I'm thinking not of general Lennon vox but very specifically of the kind of sliding answer vocal Lynne resorts to all the time in ELO. Is its root ultimately mostly just in "Because?"

To post another example I alluded to earlier, Aimee Mann. Take a (lovely) song like "Save Me."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=72fDsC2kX7g

About as "Beatlesesque" as it gets, for lots of reasons: Mellotron, that bass, the chords, the guitar solo/electric lead part. But also those same sneering Lennon answer vocals in the chorus at around the two minute mark.

Funny, I never thought about it, but I guess a lot of Billy Joel owes a lot to Macca.

What about the backing vox in the last verse of "Hello Goodbye"?

Two blatantly Beatlesque songs come to mind: In My Own Time by the Bee Gees and What in the World by Dukes of Stratosphear.

Both definitely seem like they're aping Lennon's style with the vocal melodies, while also trying emulate Paul's bass playing.

There is an AI generated “Beatles” album. It is not good. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yZu24pddzwk