The Beatles in 5 minutes. Al you got to see this.

Edit: Just realized this was posted as a link a few up. Oh well, here it is inlined. ;-)

Yeah I missed the boat on Ringo. I was too much a Who fan. I just figured all drummers would rather emulate Moon, but maybe Keith was not really accessible like Ringo was. Ringo was way less chaotic. More fundamental. Makes sense if you are a drummer to learn his runs vs Moon's. perhaps there is no cooler drum solo than the songs at end of Abbey road. Always blown away by it. Forget the name of it.

Westerly Wood said:

Perhaps there is no cooler drum solo than the songs at end of Abbey road. Always blown away by it. Forget the name of it.

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Coincidentally, WW, the song is called "The End"!

walrus

Zelja said:

He hasn't always quite got the swing of Ringo ...

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True enough. Pretty darn close, though.

Love that he throws in a bit of a super-obscure b-side, just for fun.

walrus said:

Coincidentally, WW, the song is called "The End"!

walrus

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Right! I remember now. Had it as cassette tape and in vinyl. Best part of that album for me, that End. If I was to buy a Beatles album, what one would I restart with? I think Al suggested Revolver or Rubber Soul.

Odd man out here!
Granted, this is an amazing display of talent.
Granted, drums play an important part in any band/group/whatever.

The big however is that I, personally, don't care for drums. Percussion in general does little for me. But that's just me being totally honest, FWIW. :rugby:

Joe

I've always thought of guitars as percussion as well as stringed instruments. Before I could play I could still thwack the strings and thump on the body. I often still play in a strongly percussive style.

I'd start a Beatles revisit with Revolver. IMO their strongest collection of songs.

-Dave-

Can't go wrong with Revolver.

Keep in mind that "Paperback Writer"/"Rain" was the single from the same time frame. But as usual up to that point, The Beatles did not put any singles on their albums, so they are not on Revolver. Fourteen brand new tracks for their fans!

In the UK, anyway - let's not get into Capitol's cannibalization of their albums in the U.S. For the US release of Revolver, three Lennon songs were removed, leaving only 11 tracks!

Luckily, only the original UK versions were released in later years on CD, etc.

walrus

I suppose I can skip over yellow submarine.

Given that The Beatles were into backwards sounds during the Revolver period you can always reverse the whole of Yellow Submarine and listen to it that way!

-Dave-

Assuming the original version of the album with The Beatles only on one side, and not the "Songtrack" release from '99, Yellow Submarine only has four tracks not found anywhere else, but two of them are great tracks - the great riff on Lennon's "Hey Bulldog", and one of Harrison's best songs with the Beatles, "It's All Too Much".

walrus

I love Hey Bulldog! Maybe the last thing they recorded as a cohesive unit. In the Blu-ray restoration of the Yellow Submarine film the sequence featuring that song was put back in. It was missing in the version of the film I saw (first time) in college.

-Dave-

walrus said:

Can't go wrong with Revolver.

Keep in mind that "Paperback Writer"/"Rain" was the single from the same time frame. But as usual up to that point, The Beatles did not put any singles on their albums, so they are not on Revolver. Fourteen brand new tracks for their fans!

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Yeah still have to say Rubber Soul and Revolver represent the last two where they were still a "real" 4-piece rock'n'roll band, still my 2 faves for overall percentage of excellence on the entire album. Everything after had only a 35-50% "love it" rating for me.
Rubber Soul: "Drive my Car" (Ringo's magnificent on that one, btw), "Wait", "Run For Life", "Think For Yourself"
and don't forget the "Daytripper/We Can Work It Out" single from that period too.
Revolver:
"Taxman", "Got to Get You Into My Life", "She Said She Said", "And Your Bird Can Sing".
And those are just the "rockers", but every tune on each of those albums is top 10.
"Norwegian Wood", "In My Life", and another one that gave 'em huge crossover play, "Eleanor Rigby" are from that time too.
The strings on "Rigby" are perfect, not overdone, and complement the feel of the lyrics perfectly.
Revolver ushered in the era of experimental studio techniques like the backward tapes and what many (myself included) believe to be the very first genuine "psychedelic" rock song in "Tomorrow Never Knows, but the experimentation didn't dominate, like all the extra orchestration on Pepper's did.
By the time of "Peppers" they were more like session men showing up to record a track.
The excitement of performing a take as a group that could be felt on earlier albums was missing except in a couple of spots, and it got worse for the next couple of years with a few exceptions, until that last cut on Abbey Road, a fitting climax to their recording career as a group("Polythene Pam" was another one I love from Abbey Road.)
I also love "Hey Bulldog" from Submarine, it was like a return that "golden age", raw, stripped down, John at his rocker best.

Al, the White Album, only 50% like it?

Westerly Wood said:

Right! I remember now. Had it as cassette tape and in vinyl. Best part of that album for me, that End. If I was to buy a Beatles album, what one would I restart with? I think Al suggested Revolver or Rubber Soul.

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It's still a tough call depending on what your tastes are, I much prefer the rockers generally and there are some pretty good ones on "the White Album" too, mainly John's, but there's also a lot of stuff I barely tolerate or don't even listen to anymore on that album.
Try "Helter Skelter" and "Everybody's Got Something to Hide Except For Me and My Monkey", but there's also a long electronic sound/ ambient composition called "revolution #9" that undoubtedly was more entertaining if stoned on acid than if not.
It was, after all, 1968, and the stuff had only been illegal for about a year, which only enhanced its popularity.
Another "miss" on "the White Album" was the wussed out version of "Revolution" compared to the scorching single version which I played daily in that summer of '68.
In fact:

:friendly_wink:
Ah, just saw your question about "only "50", yeah, probably, because I don't think I like any of Paul's stuff on it (not enough to buy on its own anyway), except maybe "Birthday" and "Back in the USSR". "Blackbird" 's actually pretty good too.

adorshki said:

It's still a tough call depending on what your tastes are, I much prefer the rockers generally and there are some pretty good ones on "the White Album" too, mainly John's, but there's also a lot of stuff I barely tolerate or don't even listen to anymore on that album.
Try "Helter Skelter" and "Everybody's Got Something to Hide Except For Me and My Monkey", but there's also a long electronic sound/ ambient composition called "revolution #9" that undoubtedly was more entertaining if stoned on acid than if not.
It was, after all, 1968, and the stuff had only been illegal for about a year, which only enhanced its popularity.
Another "miss" on "the White Album" was the wussed out version of "Revolution" compared to the scorching single version which I played daily in that summer of '68.
In fact:

:friendly_wink:
Ah, just saw your question about "only "50", yeah, probably, because I don't think I like any of Paul's stuff on it (not enough to buy on its own anyway), except maybe "Birthday" and "Back in the USSR". "Blackbird" 's actually pretty good too.

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BAck in USSR, I liked that one about as much as Submarine. Yeah, Paul was too poppy. The song Yesterday would be a fantastic torture technique...
Ok, I will keep an eye out for Revolver and Rubber Soul on Vinyl. When I was a kid, my Dad has two Beattles anthologies, two cassette tapes, one was blue and the other one red. most likely greatest hits. I think I liked the blue one best. I think the Red one was their earlier stuff. I dont remember which color was later stuff, so just flip flop the below if i am mis-remembering...

So I guess I took the blue pill

adorshki said:

By the time of "Peppers" they were more like session men showing up to record a track.

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Ringo is quoted as saying he learned to play chess during "Sgt. Pepper".


And one of the few songs from the White Album recorded as a group was Lennon's "Yer Blues":

The Beatles recorded Yer Blues in a small annex room next to Abbey Road's studio two. The Beatles got the idea from a sarcastic comment made by engineer Ken Scott during the recording of George Harrison's Not Guilty.

"Yer Blues, on the White Album, you can't top it. It was the four of us. That is what I'm saying: it was really because the four of us were in a box, a room about eight by eight, with no separation. It was this group that was together; it was like grunge rock of the sixties, really - grunge blues." Ringo Starr

walrus

I like all the Beatles' stuff, though Revolution 9 is a tough swallow. BTW, YouTube has a more complete version of McCartney's Can You Take Me Back improv than the snippet preceding Rev 9 on the White Album:

https://youtu.be/MWAv0GsLe6g

I'm still hoping to hear Carnival Of Light before I die.

-Dave-

Westerly Wood said:

Ok, I will keep an eye out for Revolver and Rubber Soul on Vinyl.

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In fact the CD re-issues are finally excellently re-mastered, especially Rubber Soul, compared to the original, according to no less an expert than George Martin.
Otherwise, look for the English version of Revolver like Walrus says, to get both more tracks and a better quality pressing.

Westerly Wood said:

When I was a kid, my Dad has two Beattles anthologies, two cassette tapes, one was blue and the other one red. most likely greatest hits. I think I liked the blue one best. I think the Red one was their earlier stuff. I dont remember which color was later stuff, so just flip flop the below if i am mis-remembering...

Click to expand...

Those were all the singles "A-sides" collected together.
Like Walrus explained, they'd released a bunch of songs that never appeared on albums wile they were still "together", and those compilations came out after the breakup to take advantage of that.

Westerly Wood said:

So I guess I took the blue pill

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We'll be here patiently waiting for you to come back down.

Funny Yer Blues intro: https://youtu.be/Iuy-10Ejck4

I am sure we all seen Jagger and Lennon hamming it up before this amalgamation.