The Beatles
“I don’t know, I don’t really like the Beatles. I only really like music if I can dance to it.” – P.K.
“Well, then, you’re an idiot.” – Me
“So, um…remember when
you were in the Beatles? And…and you did
that album
“OH MY GOD!! WHERE DID YOU GET THAT BROWNIE!!??” – Homer Simpson
Albums Reviewed:
Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band
So, here I am, reviewing the Beatles. I mean, really, what is the POINT of reviewing the Beatles? To me, it seems like a no-win situation. If you give them positive reviews, then DUH, ofcourse you did, because THEY’RE THE FRICKIN’ BEATLES. On the other hand, if you for some reason (I couldn’t possibly imagine any) give them NEGATIVE reviews, then you’re looked at as a complete and total dumbass and shunned by the entire Web Reviewing Community. Ofcourse, I give them positive ones, so I don’t have to worry about that.
Anyway, to me, this is the thing about the Beatles: If you look at all they’ve done, all they’ve accomplished, all the styles and types of music they’ve tried, it looks DAMN impressive, but other bands have also surely done so much, right? I can’t actually think of any off the top of my head, but bear with me. The point is, they essentially did all of it in SIX YEARS, from 1963-1969. Compare that with today, where in that time the average musician will release (maybe) three albums in that span, and probably not progress as much as the Beatles did from Please Please Me to Rubber Soul, which, ofcourse, they managed to do in TWO years. So, for me, that’s the most impressive thing. To go from pop/rock band to folk band to psychedelic band to crazy all-styles-must-be-tried band back to pop/rock band (only more mature) in a six-year span. That’s pretty fucking impressive. And, as a bonus, John, Paul and George wrote some pretty good songs. Not so much Ringo, though, but I quite enjoy “Octopus’s Garden.”
Please Please Me (1963)
Rating: 7
Best Song: “I Saw Her Standing There”
Jesus, what do you say about this record besides “uhhhhhh, it’s the debut?” It’s tough for me to say that a Beatles record isn’t deserving of at least an 8, because I keep waiting for the lightning bolt to come from the God Of Classic Rock and strike me right here at my computer. Despite the 7 that this receives, though, it’s easily the best album I’ve ever heard to be recorded in ONE DAY. Apparently, when the title track became a hit single, the band’s managers smelled the sweet sweet smell of cash, so they herded the guys into the studio, where they recorded the ENTIRE album in a day. At least this is what Stephen Thomas Erlewine tells me at the beginning of his review on the All Music Guide. Is it just me, or has he written like 80% of the reviews on that site? Is there really a Stephen Thomas Erlewine, or is it just some weird super-computer that goes by the acronym “S.T.E.?” What could that stand for? Saucy Telepathic Erection? No, that doesn’t make any sense. See, these are the kinds of things that keep me up at night when I should be studying for midterms.
Anyway, back to the record at hand, and, of the eight originals on here, a few of them show the Beatles at their super-duper fast, fun, and catchy best. The opener, “I Saw Her Standing There,” is easily the best thing here, and it’s also a great way to open up the Beatles “experience,” as it were, with Paul shouting out “one, two, three, four!” at the start. The lyrics amuse me, too, at least having grown up when Nine Inch Nails was acceptable. We’ve sure come along way from “How could I dance with another when I saw her standing there?” to “I WANNA FUCK YOU LIKE AN ANIMAL!!!” Ah, good times. The title track is also excellent, just another catchy-fun pop song. I mean, what the else were they gonna do in 1963? I like the “come on, COME ON, come on, COME ON!” part. That’s pretty cool. “Love Me Do” is the other original that could claim to be a “classic” Beatles song, though the arrangement is as simple as a turd. A lot of the other arrangements on here are also as simple as turds. This is mainly because they recorded the album in ONE FUCKING DAY! I can’t get over how cool that is. Peter Gabriel’s new album took ten years, or 3,650 times as long. I’m willing to bet it’s not as good, too, not that I know a damn thing about Peter Gabriel’s solo career. Anyway, there are five more originals here, and none of them are really THAT memorable for me. When I listen to early Beatles, I like the fast driving-rocker early Beatles, like in “I Saw Her Standing There” or “Please Please Me,” and the rest of the originals aren’t really that fast or driving. Do you want to know a secret, though? “Do You Want To Know A Secret?” is a nice little sort of shuffle. That’s the secret. Oh, you thought I was gonna tell you Lee Harvey Oswald didn’t really shoot JFK? Well, that’s later.
Now, the song that comes after “Do You Want To Know A Secret?” is the stupidest thing on the record, and so by default “A Taste Of Honey” is also the worst of its six covers. Stupid, slow, schmaltzy cover crap. It IS dirty, though, which is cool. “A taste of HONEY! Tasting much sweeter than wine!” Indeed! You RANDY little bastards! Speaking of dumb schmaltzy covers, they also cover a BURT BACHARACH song called “Baby It’s You.” I understand Burt Bacharach is supposed to be cool now that Austin Powers likes him, but the third Austin Powers movie sucked a big fat salami, so that means he’s NOT cool anymore, bizz-natch. Early in the record, there’s a string of three covers, the neatest of which is “Boys,” mainly because Ringo does the vocal, and whenever Ringo does the vocal for ANYTHING, it stops sounding like a rock and roll song and starts sounding like a Sesame Street sing-a-long or something. Ringo would be PERFECTLY suited to sing for one of those dumb “Kids’ Songs” records or whatever they’re called. He’d better have some use, since he’s just the goddamn drummer, and, unlike the other three members of his band, can’t write a song for CRAP. He also says “alright, George!” before the guitar “solo.” Ringo is goofy!
Oh, there’s one more cover on the record, “Twist And Shout,” which is obviously BY FAR the best of the covers (actually the only one I really enjoy, besides the Ringo one, because Ringo’s cool), and which I am now completely unable to listen to without picturing Matthew Broderick on top of a float. Now THAT is one funny movie. Bueller? Bueller? BUELLER? Tee-hee. Oh, and did you know that John’s vocal for it was just a single take? Good shit, that be. Yes indeedy.
Basically, to me, this album proves that the Beatles could just sit down and fart around for a day and still have what came out be catchier and more well-written than just about 99% of all other bands, even if, except for a few songs, it’s really nothing special. But you already knew that. I mean, it’s the (EXPLETIVE) BEATLES, for fuck’s sake!
With The Beatles (1963)
Rating: 8
Best Song: “All My Loving”
Just eight months after their first record, those four charming Liverpudlians plop down record number two, and, zippety-doo-dah, it’s an improvement! There’s the same ratio of originals to covers (8 to 6) as the debut, though the number of covers doesn’t really bother me too much, since it’s STILL just 1963. Do you know how many originals were on the Rolling Stones’ debut album? ONE! Just ONE FRICKIN’ ORIGINAL! Now the eight to six ratio seems pretty good, doesn’t it? Anyway, none of the originals here are as good as “I Saw Her Standing There,” but they’re more consistent, and a whole bunch (instead of just one) of the covers rule ass, so there you go. They’re ALREADY progressing!
And, good for me, they’re progressing towards more consistent fast driving rock. There are no more boring, slow originals like “Misery” here, not at all. “Little Child” features a piano as it’s lead instrument, which I don’t think anything on Please Please Me did, and is one minute and forty-seven seconds of innocent, parent-approved fun. It’s also the FIFTH song on the record, none of which are covers! Unlike the debut, where a bunch of boring, slow covers get stuck at the start, we don’t get a cover here until track six, and, as a bonus, it’s a GOOD cover! “Till There Was You” marks the first example of sappy Paul’s sappy-dappy acoustic balladry, a genre which I usually REALLY like, and this one is no exception. I guess he wanted to try it on a cover first, before he started breaking out the big-time shit like “Yesterday” and whatnot.
Oh, but back to those fun, fast-driving originals. “It Won’t Be Long” tries to do the same thing that “I Saw Her Standing There” did on the first record, and does it, but not quite as successfully, though the alternating Paul and John “YEAH! Yeah! YEAH! Yeah!”’s are cool. My personal pick for favorite track would be “All My Loving,” which has some really neat guitar work from George, though you can’t hear it some of the time because it’s mixed in MONO, ofcourse, since we’re still in the dark ages…er, the early sixties. It’s great, though, and so are the backing “Ooooooooooo”’s during the chorus. It’s amazing that with unlimited recording budgets and veritable armies of corporate songwriters, sugary pop music today can’t produce anything as neat as those “Oooooooooooo”’s. Mainly I think it’s because they’re too busy trying to make fifteen-year-old girls look and act like total whores. Not that I’m complaining! I love the whores! Who doesn’t! Oh BEHAVE, baby!
My horniness aside, now, you’ll remember that a main problem with Please Please Me was that the covers, except for “Twist And Shout,” were stupid, schmaltzy crap. Apparently the band realized this too, and so three of the covers here are the fast, kick-butt “Please Mr. Postman,” “Roll Over Beethoven” (Yes! I want more Chuck Berry tunes!), and “Money (That’s What I Want).” I’d rather listen to “Hey! Wait a minute Mister POSTMAN!!!!” than “A Taste of HONEEEYYY!” even if the latter is dirty, and I’ve already revealed that I’m a pervert. They didn’t completely escape the cover schmaltz, though, as one of the six here (“You’ve Really Got A Hold On Me”) is a SMOKEY FUCKING ROBINSON song. Now, Chuck Berry will always have a place on rock records for me, but Smokey Robinson will most definitely NOT. Blargh.
Whoops, I almost forgot about the other two members’ contributions. I can’t do that, now can I? “Don’t Bother Me” marks the first George Harrison original on record, but he hadn’t really found his songwriting mojo yet. It’s not very good. And Paul and John throw Ringo a bone when they let him sing the HILARIOUS “I Wanna Be Your Man.” Picture a driving fast rock beat underlying fucking RINGO and his Puff The Magic Dragon voice belting out “I wanna be your lover, baaaby! I wanna be your man! Love you like other, baaaby! Like no other can!” LOL. I love Ringo, even if he was just the drummer.
So, this one is basically the same format as the debut, but faster, more rocking, more diverse, and pretty much a general overall improvement. Except they should have left the Smokey Robinson tunes to the Miracles.
A Hard Day’s Night (1964)
Rating: 9
Best Song: “You Can’t Do That”
Another eight month hiatus between records, and this time those four lovable lads send to record stores for immediate distribution a record comprised ENTIRELY of originals (and all Lennon-McCartney tunes to boot)! No covers! In 1964? YES! No covers in 1964! And not just ANY sort of originals, it’s super-happy fun pop! This is most likely the greatest super-duper happy fun pop record I’ve ever heard. Actually, check that, this IS the greatest super-duper happy fun pop record I’ve ever heard. You see, there’s one KEY difference between this album and most super-duper happy fun pop albums recorded today, and that is IT DOESN’T REALLY REALLY SUCK. Maybe you don’t mind stuff that sucks, but I do, and so it’s a pretty important difference for me. Anyway, this record (also the soundtrack to the boys’ movie of the same name, ofcourse), for me, is the culmination of the Beatles’ early innocent happy fun pop period. Bitchin’.
Of the thirteen tracks here, ELEVEN could be described as fast, happy fun. “If I Fell” is sort of a regression to the early Beatles’ stupid schmaltz, and is also the only track I don’t really like. “And I Love Her” is sappy Paul’s first ORIGINAL sappy-dappy acoustic ballad, and it’s superb. There’s some GREAT acoustic pickin’ in the middle, and Ringo bats those bongos really well. I love some bongos every now and then. Now, the rest of the songs here are all uptempo, fast, happy and fun! If you’re in a bad mood, you should under NO circumstances listen to this album, because it’s so fucking happy you’ll want to jab yourself in the eye with a pen. I once listened to this pissed-off, so I know from experience. DON’T DO IT. But if you’re feeling nice and chipper, by all means put it on! “A Hard Day’s Night” and “Can’t Buy Me Love” would be the two songs everyone knows from this record, and when I hear them I always picture black-and-white footage of Ringo, George, Paul, and John being chased around EVERYWHERE by throngs of, um, “excited” teenage girls. I picture that because it’s basically what the ENTIRE movie seems like. But it’s good! It’s a happy fun time! Just like this record! But I’ve made that point enough. I guess I should talk a little more about the music, huh? Well, they’re showing even MORE diversity here than on With The Beatles. Not really with the types of songs they’re writing, but the instrumentation and song structures are branching out little by little. I think I can hear guitar OVERDUBBING in a few places, but I’m not sure. Let me see here…yep, there it is in “Can’t Buy Me Love” for sure. It’s hard to talk about these songs specifically, because as you’re listening to this puppy everything sort of blends into one happy fun pop sandwich. I mean, what else can I say about stuff like “I Should Have Known Better” or “Things We Said Today” besides they’re just a happy good time? It takes repeated listens to pick out the little interesting things that make this record, like the little ascending piano line in the middle of “Any Time At All” that would NEVER have turned up on either of the Beatles’ first two records. I love that little ascending piano line. There’s all sorts of neat stuff like that all over the place here, like the super-fast overdubbed guitar solo thingy in the title track. I LOVE that. Oh man. Good stuff. And the walking bass solo line in the chorus to “I’ll Cry Instead.” That’s a cool bassline.
But one song, to me at least, offers more unique new wrinkles than any of the other tunes here, and that would be “You Can’t Do That.” First of all, there’s the percussion. There’s regular Ringo drumming, with a neat little fill right before John yells “Ooooooh! You can’t do that!” But then on top of that there are BONGOS, which is notable because it’s not an acoustic ballad, where we’d expect them. And then, on top of THAT, they overdub a goddamn COWBELL! I’ve got a disease, and the only remedy is MORE COWBELL! You know, I think this song would be a little better with one thing…and that is MORE COWBELL! Also, during the bridge, George delivers the hardest-rocking guitar solo yet heard on a Beatles record, topped at the end by some phat riffing. It rocks my socks off. And by socks I mean pants. Hoo-ah.
Aaaanyway, if you’re just getting into the Beatles, and are hesitant to get anything pre-Rubber Soul because you think it might be too lightweight for you, pick this one up. Just because something’s lightweight doesn’t mean it can’t be good! And if you hate it, it’ll be over in half an hour, anyway.
Beatles For Sale
Rating: 7
Best Song: “I’ll Follow The Sun”
So, on their third record, the Beatles provided their fans with a super-duper all-original collection of tunes, and seemed to be progressing at a lightning-fast rate. Thus, one would expect even further development on record number four, wouldn’t one? Well, one would be WRONG. This, to me, is the ONLY Beatles record that can be termed a “regression,” as that stupid eight-to-six original-to-cover ratio is back in full force. This didn’t seem like such a bad thing two albums ago, but to follow up A Hard Day’s Night with it…well, not so good. Not so good at all.
See, it wouldn’t be such a big deal if the record, despite the recurrence of all the covers, still kicked ass, but alas it doesn’t, and falls short of their last eight-to-six record, With The Beatles. The band, by this time, was obviously tired of the constant grind of touring, recording, touring, recording, bagging groupies, touring, recording, etc., and this shows up in a bunch of ways. First of all, the record is called Beatles For Sale, for frickin’ sake (hmmm…what are they trying to say THERE?), and they look all sad and depressed on the cover. AWWWWWW! Anyway, besides the sheer existence of six covers, the opening trio of originals all contain MUCH more depressing lyrics than had previously been seen on Beatles stupid happy fun pop records. “No Reply,” “I’m A Loser” and “Baby’s In Black,” according to that ubiquitous Stephen Thomas Erlewine, constitute the “darkest sequence on any Beatles record,” and though good ol’ Saucy Telepathic Erection may be going a bit overboard, they are a VERY stark contrast from just about EVERYTHING on A Hard Day’s Night. Also, none of those three songs are that great, which is another kick in the nuts.
BUT, even though this album is, on the whole, a disappointment, there are two certified bona-fide Beatles classics to be found on it. There’s the super-fun happy “Eight Days A Week,” which belongs on the last album because its so damn good and catchy, and sappy Paul’s best attempt yet at a sappy-dappy acoustic ballad, “I’ll Follow The Sun.” I’m just assuming its Paul here, since here I can’t tell whether he or John is singing, something I can usually do. Anyway, good acoustic pickin’, percussion that sounds like Ringo just hitting a table or something, pretty, melancholy lyrics…yup, all the ingredients for a sappy Paul sappy ballad! It’s superb, really, and the solo in the middle almost sounds like an electric guitar. Paul, electric guitars have NO place in sappy Paul sappy-dappy ballads! SHAME ON YOU!
Nothing else on this record really grabs me like those two tunes, though they DO insert another Chuck Berry tune (huzzah!) for one of their covers, “Rock & Roll Music,” which comes across pretty well, something which “Mr. Moonlight” does not. Neither does “Kansas City/Hey-Hey-Hey-Hey!” in which they were probably trying to rock out like on “Twist And Shout” and “Rock & Roll Music,” but fail. My roommate likes it a lot, though. Good for him. He’s incorrect. We’ve also got a Buddy Holly cover (which doesn’t come off too well either), and TWO Carl Perkins (a.k.a. The Guy Who Could’ve Been Elvis) covers, one of which RINGO SINGS! YES! And, ofcourse, because he’s Ringo, he must announce George’s guitar solo before he does it. “Come on, George, for Ringo one time!” Ringo is SUCH A FUCKING GOOFBALL. The Beatles should have recorded an album completely of goofy throwaways sung by Ringo. I’d give it a 10, easy. Hell, I’d have just let him sing the rest of the songs on the record. Why not? It’s not that great anyway. Just go for goofiness. Anyway, “Every Little Thing” (which was later covered by YES, of all bands…now what the fuck is THAT?), “I Don’t Want To Spoil The Party,” (which is pretty damn good) and “What You’re Doing” (which isn’t quite so much, but has a neat drum intro) are the closing trio of originals to contrast the opening three, and they’re a little better, but still no A Hard Day’s Night. Actually, “What You’re Doing” would’ve been a nice way to end the album, but they decide to stick the second Carl Perkins cover (the one on which Ringo DOESN’T sing…what a waste) at the end instead for some reason. Whatever. I’m just underwhelmed by this album, and this is the only Beatles record that does that to me. I think I’ll go put on Abbey Road now instead.
Help! (1965)
Rating: 9
Best Song: “Yesterday”
Or maybe I’ll go put on Help!! Hey, that was TWO EXCLAMATION POINTS RIGHT IN A ROW! COOL! Anyway, this record, the de facto soundtrack to their second movie, is probably, to me, one of two Beatles albums that could be called “underrated,” if it is at ALL possible to “underrate” a Beatles album. There are still covers, but only two this time (as opposed to TWELVE great and diverse originals!), and as a whole it’s just a HUGE step up from Beatles For Sale. Seriously, I just don’t see how anyone could possibly say that the previous album is as good or better than this one. There’s just no comparison.
I mean, first of all, the titular opening track here kicks the living CRAP out of “No Reply,” and such a pattern of comparative butt-kicking continues for most of this record, except for whatever songs are parallel to “I’ll Follow The Sun” and “Eight Days A Week,” because those songs rule. We’re starting to get more complex and diverse here as well, resuming the process that was completely stagnated by the previous album. There’s an AWESOME keyboard tone I hear in two of the songs here. It’s in the background for “The Night Before” (which fucking RULES, by the way), and then there are some fills played EXCLUSIVELY by this keyboard in “Tell Me What You See,” which doesn’t quite rule except for those keyboard fills. I have no idea why I pick out that particular keyboard tone. It’s such a fucking random thing. But it’s so cool! Ah, heck, so is this album!
And you
know what else is cool? The first decent
George Harrison tunes put to tape! Both
“I Need You” and “You Like Me Too Much” are oodles better than the piece of
junk he contributed for With The Beatles. That song was so mediocre they didn’t let him
put another one on record for THREE albums!
Oh, well. “I Need You” has a neat
echoey-guitar overdub over the main acoustic guitar, and “You Like Me Too Much”
has…oh! IT’S THAT KEYBOARD AGAIN! That’s THREE songs! I forkin’ love that thing. And while George is finally contributing
solid songs, John is trying his hand at acoustic balladry, and he’s doing it
just as well as sappy-dappy Paul! “Hide
Your Love Away” is one of a WHOLE bunch of contenders for best song on this
record, and it took me a helluva long time to pick. The title track, this one, and “The Night
Before” were all contenders. “Ticket To
Ride,” on which the band clearly sounds like they’ve been taking some drugs
(and they were by this point…I mean, have you SEEN the movie Help!? Good GOD.), is a damn good song as well. But, alas, I have to follow the general
consensus and give the nod to “Yesterday,” which you’ve all heard about 100,000
times, and is Paul’s dippiest ballad to date.
And his best. I bet strings like
that on a rock and roll song sounded pretty wild in 1965. Oh, and did you know it was originally called
“Scrambled Eggs?” “Scrambled eggs, all
my troubles seemed to be so far away…oh I believe in scrambled eggs…” I’d say it was a pretty good idea to change
the title, wouldn’t you? I heard this
piece of information on VH1’s “100 Greatest Songs Of Rock And Roll,” which
SUCKED by the way, because it didn’t have “Stairway To Heaven” as its number
one. Stupid VH1. No, really, show Poison’s Behind The Music AGAIN!
I’d like to hear C.C. Deville and Ricki Rockett talk out of their ass
for the FIFTIETH FUCKING TIME. No, Bret
Michaels, I will NOT talk dirty to you!
Fucking Hair Metal asswipes.
Oh, I mentioned before there were
two covers on here, and neither one of them is really that good. I think they’re the two weakest tracks on
here, though they DO let Ringo sing “Act Naturally,” which I think is supposed
to be sarcastic, but since Ringo sings it who the fuck knows. The other is “Dizzy Miss Lizzie,” which is
the closing track on the record, comes directly after “Yesterday,” and was most
likely a blatant attempt to just do ANYTHING to rock out as a contrast to that
song. It’s OK, but I’d rather end with
“Yesterday,” you know, since it’s awesome.
And now, after getting you all hot
and bothered over this album, I’ll finish here by trying to temper your
enthusiasm. Though this is indeed a
very, very good record, it’s by no means on par with the stream of Beatles
classics that would come later, nor is it quite as good as A Hard Day’s Night.
However, along with that other movie soundtrack, it’s probably one of
the Beatles’ two essential “early” period records. Ofcourse, that’s assuming you end their early
period here, which seems to be the general consensus, whether it’s right or
not. And it’s not, but I’ll get to that
later.
Oh, and ofcourse it’s not NEARLY as good as Look What The Cat Dragged In or Open Up And Say…Ahh. I mean, what IS as good as those two masterpieces of pop-metal? NOTHING.
James Hunter (jhmusicman12@hotmail.com) writes:
One of my favorites, really.
"Help" is simply a perfect pop song.
This album makes me want to put down my bad mood frown and get up and shake
some ass. "You've Got To Hide Your Love Away" breaks my heart
because it
reminds me that Brian Wilson ripped off the flute outro thing for the Pet
Sounds song "Caroline No." Oh well. Flute outros kick
ass. You like goofy
Ringo songs? That is basically Ringo's entire career right there!
People
tend to forget that. Grade- A (9 on your system)
Rubber Soul (1965)
Rating: 8
Best Song: “In My Life”
OK, I’m taking a stand. Right here, right now. This record is overrated. OVERRATED. Anyone who links this one to the string of albums that follows it is nuts. It’s more folky than previous Beatles outings, and it’s a bit more mature (obviously), but are you trying to tell me that THIS is the record where the Beatles made The Leap from a really good rock and roll band to the high priests of popular music? I hope you’re not trying to tell me that, because I’M NOT BUYING IT. Yes, I know, there aren’t any covers, but they did that three albums ago, so whoop-de-DAMN-do. When people speak of the “Big 5,” they really should be talking about the “Big 4,” although maybe the fifth was Magical Mystery Tour all along and I’m just an idiot. It’s quite possible. I’m slow.
Now, I am by no means saying that this is not a very good record, because it is (and obviously better than With The Beatles, the other 8 so far). I’m just saying that, in general, it’s not any better than what they’ve done before, just different. First of all, there’s only two (maybe three) songs here whose temple I bow down before and make sacrificial offerings of slaughtered lambs to, “In My Life” (ofcourse), “Norwegian Wood,” and (maybe) “Drive My Car.” And, yes, I realize “Nowhere Man” has really cool lyrics, but I’m not a lyrics guy, and I never have been, so bite me. And even with those exquisite classics, it’s not like they’re THAT revolutionary. Is “Drive My Car” any better than “Help!”? No. If you take out the sitar (which rules, by the way), is “Norwegian Wood” any better or more revolutionary than “Hide Your Love Away” or “I’ll Follow The Sun?” No. Even WITH the sitar, is it any better than “Yesterday?” No. And is anything the Beatles had done up to this point any better than “In My Life?” No, because “In My Life” is one of my all-time FAVORITE Beatles songs, it’s achingly gorgeous, the keyboard solo is just about the fucking coolest thing I’ve ever heard, and it makes me cry sometimes. I guess you could say I’m making an exception there. But that’s the only one. Well, that and the sitar.
Anyway, I guess my general question is this: outside of “In My Life” and the sitar in “Norwegian Wood,” is this record really any better than Help! or A Hard Day’s Night? NO. And, as you can tell by the rating, I think it’s a step down from those two. When I hear “Michelle,” I don’t think it’s genius. I think it’s a good song and I think I HATE French people. When I hear “Girl,” I think that the Beatles really liked to smoke the weed. I mean, John makes a sound like he’s taking a puff DURING THE FUCKING CHORUS. Not that I have a problem with that, ofcourse! When I hear “Think For Yourself” or “If I Needed Someone,” I think that they’re two more solid George songs, but not much better than Hare Krishna Boy’s two from the last record. When I hear “You Won’t See Me,” “Wait,” “Run For Your Life,” or anything else like that, I think they’re cool songs, and they’d be ever better if they stuck in that cool keyboard that was all over Help!, because that keyboard fucking ROCKED. I hope you’re starting to sense a pattern here.
So, now
that you all hate me, I think it might be a good time to lay out my Beatles
philosophy. Now, there are the “early”
and “late” periods, as everyone knows, but, as you can probably guess, I think
the early period ends with this album, and the late period starts with Revolver. However, because I’m so damn smart, I further
subdivide the Beatles’ records into FOUR equal three-album periods. From Please Please Me through A
Hard Day’s Night is the Beatles “stupid happy fun pop” period. Period two, from Beatles For Sale to
here, is their “slightly more mature, but not as fun and happy, and trying to
expand their boundaries bit, but still just a pop band who need to smoke the
weed a little more before they get REALLY good” period. I take pride in how long that period’s title
is. Anyway, Revolver through Magical
Mystery Tour would then obviously constitute the guys’ “psychedelic”
period, even though I realize it’s tough to lump Revolver in with the
two after it. But Revolver’s got
“Tomorrow Never Knows” on it, and if that’s not “psychedelic,” then WHAT THE
FUCK IS “PSYCHEDELIC?” Anyway, the
band’s last three albums would then be their “return to roots” period, which is
my favorite period, by the way. Have you
ever heard
But, you see, I talk negatively to counteract the general critical opinion of this record as one of the greatest records of all time by ANYONE, when in fact it’s not even in the Beatles’ top echelon of albums. If the general critical opinion of this thing were shit, I’d probably gush and gush about how there’s not a weak track on it (and there isn’t) and about how the sitar in “Norwegian Wood” was SO revolutionary (and it was). But since that angle has been beaten into the goddamn ground, what’s the point in praising when I think the praise goes WAYYYYYYY overboard? There is none, and so what we get is a negative review of Rubber Soul, even though the thought of that is probably more offensive than terrorism to people. But don’t worry, I can most definitely say I prefer Rubber Soul to Osama Bin Laden.
Adrian
Denning (mdenster@yahoo.com) writes:
Thank you, thank you, THANK YOU.... for 'only' giving
this an eight. My fave from this set is 'Girl', love
the harmonies. But of course, you are quite right.
'Rubber Soul' is not, and was not - the great leap
forwards. 'Revolver' was. History has become distorted
because the
singles ( seen as a revolutionary move in itself ) and
an altered tracklisting from the
People went out saying The Beatles had made some kind
of genius modern folk record or something, an album
where all the songs hang together. Well, they do, but
so does a lengthy piece of string. Anyway, bravo on a
great site!
James Hunter (jhmusicman12@hotmail.com) writes:
Here comes the warm embrace of Dylan influence. I
believe you
are wrong and that this IS where the Big Change occurred but then again,
this album nearly singlehandedly inspired the creation of Pet Sounds, still
my favorite thing after all this time, so I am going to be biased towards
Rubber Soul anyways. "Nowhere Man" is one of my favorite
Beatles songs.
Grade- A (9)
Revolver (1966)
Rating: 9
Best Song: “Tomorrow Never Knows”
OK, HERE we go. Right HERE is where the Beatles made The Leap. From here on out they might just be the greatest band of all time, though that Zeppelin-loving part of my brain keeps acting up whenever I say that. It’s a constant internal struggle. No matter. When people talk of the Beatles as being “revolutionary” and whatnot, they mean from Revolver on, or at least they SHOULD, goddamnit. And, the thing is, there’s proof of this on the record. The band themselves thought the same thing. You wanna know WHAT the proof is? Well, remember ALLLLL the way back to my Please Please Me review, I mentioned how “I Saw Her Standing There” opens with a gleefully shouted “one, two, three, four?” Well, this album ALSO starts with a “one, two, three, four,” though not gleefully shouted. Instead, “Taxman” starts with some creepy old guy saying it deliberately against a backwards tape loop. The Beatles THEMSELVES are announcing the start of “phase 2” of their career RIGHT HERE, with that weird “one, two, three, four.” Ha!
And
something else completely different from previous Beatles records is that
“Taxman,” the fantastiwastically awesome opening track, is a GEORGE song! Now, Mr. Harrison did have a few decent tunes
to his credit by this point, but he’d never contributed something like
this. Distorted garage-y guitars and
bitter lyrics about paying one’s taxes!
Nice. George REALLY came into his
own, finally, on this record, something further evidenced by “Love You
To.” Now, you thought an acoustic ballad
with a hint of sitar was cool? Well, how
about AN ENTIRE SONG BASED ON THE SITAR, because that’s what we have here. I love George’s Indian music fetish. He wrote some GREAT songs (well, two of them)
with that fetish, his best stuff except for his GODLIKE contributions to
Oh, but enough about George, how about those other two members of the Beatles, John and Paul? They wrote some pretty good tunes as well. Now, did you think that an acoustic ballad embellished with strings was cool? Well, how about AN ENTIRE SONG WITH NOTHING BUT STRINGS, because that’s what we have with the gorgeous “Eleanor Rigby,” one of the most emotionally hard-hitting songs I’ve ever heard. Hey, a sappy Paul ballad that’s NOT sappy-dappy! Imagine that! And sappy-dappy Paul wrote an even MORE depressing song than that one, too, (though not as emotionally hard-hitting…since it’s not as good) with “For No One.” What happened to happy Paul!? WHY IS HAPPY PAUL SO SAD!!!??? Anyway, John’s got his mojo going as well, and contributes two songs for which he SURELY wrote the lyrics under a heavy influence of drugs, “I’m Only Sleeping” and “She Said She Said.” “She SAAAAAAIIIIIIID, I know what it’s like to be deaaaaaaad!” Um...sure, John. *Makes puffing motion with right hand up against pursed lips* Not that there’s anything wrong with that! And, FINALLY, John and Paul wrote a song SPECIFICALLY designed for Ringo’s Thomas The Tank Engine singing style with “Yellow Submarine.” Now, Ringo sounds stupid (but in a good way) singing anything even REMOTELY serious, but who doesn’t get a little hop in their step when they hear “Yellow Submarine?” It’s one of the stupidest, dippiest, happiest songs of all time, and Ringo should start making records where all he does is sing stuff like that. I would buy them SO fast. Shit, did I say something like that before? I think I did.
So, before I continue to repeat myself, let’s move on and talk about the songs I don’t QUITE like as much, which prevent this baby from getting a 10. First of all, amidst all this trippiness and depression (and childish silliness, thanks to Ringo), there’s a double dose of stuff SO FUCKING HAPPY it makes me want to puke with “Good Day Sunshine” and “And Your Bird Can Sing.” They come right in between “She Said She Said” (the trippiness) and “For No One” (the depression) and just ruin the mood of the album for me. Totally. That’s not to say they’re not good songs by themselves, which they are, but I wish the boys had turned down the happy meter just a LITTLE bit. They also could have turned down the happy meter on the horn-embellished “Got To Get You Into My Life,” because that one’s a little too happy also. Not that I’m AGAINST happiness, per se, but my favorite stuff on here is the trippiness, you know, like “Love You To” (a completely sitar-based song could be about the goddamn Cabbage Patch Kids and be trippy) and the album’s closing track, which is an absolute MASTERPIECE.
Ofcourse, I speak of “Tomorrow Never Knows,” which MUST have sounded like the fucking weirdest (in a cool way) thing EVER in 1966, because it sounds like that to me today, in 2002. It’s basically a simple Ringo drum beat repeated over and over again, with John’s completely druggy, nonsensical lyrics (“Just listen to the colors of your dreams”), which half the time I can’t even understand, and then the tape loops. Good GOD, the tape loops. It’s utterly terrifying. Sometimes it sounds like a guitar or something in there (but seemingly recorded backwards), and it’s actually underlined by a persistent sitar drone, but usually it’s just lots and lots of weird sounds. There’s seagulls clattering, and…and…and lots of stuff where I just have NO IDEA what the hell is going on. At ALL. And the last sound we hear is a weird piano line that falls off a cliff. It rules. My fucking god it rules. And it was written in 1966! I can’t stress that enough. 1966! They went from “Please Please Me” to “Tomorrow Never Knows” in THREE YEARS. Yao-za.
Oh, I didn’t even mention “Here, There, And Everywhere!” That’s Art Garfunkel’s favorite song of all time. He told me so on VH1.
James Hunter (jhmusicman12@hotmail.com) writes:
I listened to it yesterday
and I think I might have squeezed every
last drop of enjoyment I can from this album. The songs are carved in my
bones. Every melody, bass note, nook cranny and strawberry in this album
has been memorized by me. This is probably because it was one of the
first
albums I got when I first became serious about music about two years ago.
"Tomorrow Never Knows" still scares the hell out of me. Grade- A (10)
Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967)
Rating: 10
Best Song: “A Day In The Life”
You will not BELIEVE how long I debated the rating for this one here, The Most Famous Record Of All Time. First I was completely anti-hyped, then I was completely anti-anti-hyped, then I just sort of fucked it for a while and listened to Yes records. I finally decided on a 9, originally, but then I listened to it one more time for reviewing purposes, and gosh-DARNIT if I didn’t think to myself “how can I NOT give this one a 10?” And so here we are. Thus, I reluctantly (I try to be VERY stingy with them) give the Beatles THREE 10’s, tying them with Zeppelin for the most, and, looking at the music I currently possess, I couldn’t imagine another band ever snagging that many, unless Radiohead were to put out another masterpiece. They’ve already got two.
Now, even though it gets a 10, at this point the Beatles, temporarily, pretty much cease to be a rock and roll band, and instead become a psychedelic cabaret pop band. Not that it’s a BAD thing. I bet the Beatles could try rap-metal and make it sound good, something no one has yet been able to do. I mean, except for a few songs and parts of songs here and there (“Good Morning Good Morning,” the title track’s reprise, the guitar parts in “Getting Better”) this doesn’t sound like “rock and roll” at ALL. I mean, it’s not even the Beatles! It’s something called “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” whose members wear funny outfits, pose with cardboard cutouts of famous people and play at the Hilton Lounge. They’ve got “the one and only Billy Shears!” who sings that super-duper pop song “With A Little Help From My Friends” and sounds VERY suspiciously like Ringo. And that guy who plays the sitar and sings on “Within You Without You” sounds suspiciously like George, too. Hmmm…oh, silly me! It IS the Beatles! What a clever ruse they’ve pulled! Leave it to George to expose them for who they really are. I mean, what other band would play silly Indian crap like “Within You Without You?”
Actually, “Within You Without You” is most definitely NOT “silly Indian crap.” In fact, it’s genius, and it’s my second favorite song on the album. It sounds like fucking Ravi Shankar or something, with George singing it. I mean, WHAT THE HELL!? But it WORKS! Besides the sitar itself (which George rocks out on, OH yeah), there’s the string parts (which are just creeeeepy and cool) and the funny Indian drums (which I believe are called “tabla,” a fact I know from that Simpsons episode where Apu’s daughter or niece or whatever played something on them at a talent show…now that was funny shit). And at the end of it, there’s the audible sound of people LAUGHING. Apparently, they’re trying to keep up the ruse that they’re playing at the Hilton Lounge, and the high-falootin’ bourgeois patrons think this silly Indian stuff is just a HOOT! Morons.
And there’s all sorts of all other cool stuff on here that is just so goddamn ORIGINAL. What the hell is that instrument in the verses to “Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds?” Whatever it is, it’s frickin’ cool. Also, I can’t 100% confirm this, but I THINK that song is about drugs. Just trust me on this one. I’ve got a hunch. Anyway, “She’s Leaving Home,” despite being my least favorite song on the record, is nevertheless cool because it’s based around a HARP, for chrissake. “Being For The Benefit Of Mr. Kite!” sounds like the soundtrack for a circus, mainly because the lyrics are an ad for a circus John took verbatim and stuck in a song. Or he wrote them to sound like an ad for a circus. Either way, it’s cool. And who, for the love of waffles, EVER thought of basing an entire song around a CLARINET (besides my friend Ellen)? Apparently, the Beatles did, and as a result “When I’m Sixty-Four” is one of my favorite tunes on here. And how about starting a song off with a rooster call? WHY THE FUCK NOT! Hey, let’s call that one “Good Morning Good Morning,” which ends with animal noises segueing nicely into the reprise of the opening title track, which manages to rock out for a minute (and tries to keep up the ruse with crowd noises…won’t fool me!), before segueing, through the clapping of those bastards who laughed at “Within You Without You” just four tracks ago, into my favorite Beatles song of all time, the incredible, orgasmic, indescribable “A Day In The Life.” Frankly, I can’t rationally discuss this song. Some of it’s about shit in the newspaper (“I read the news today, OH boy”), some of it’s about drugs ofcourse (“I’d love to turn you on”), some of it’s about the boring rituals of daily life (“Woke up, got out of bed, dragged a COOOOOMB across my head”), and all of it is brilliant. John AND Paul sing on this one, John first and third and Paul in the middle “comb” part. And at the end the orchestra has an orgasm, then holds a piano chord for thirty consecutive seconds. But, see, the record’s not over at this point, even though you THINK it is. If you’ve got the vinyl (which I don’t, obviously), the band inserted a groove into the record, so the point-thingy (whatever it’s called) gets stuck in it and the same nonsensical bit of conversation repeats OVER AND OVER AGAIN until you want to kill someone. Or you could just manually stop the record. Your choice.
Bitchin’!
James Hunter (jhmusicman12@hotmail.com) writes:
I got this album even earlier
than most everything in my
collection, due to the overwhelming laud and confetti it gets. God it
rules
though. "A Day In The Life"'s string climax gives me the heebie
jeebies.
This album is seriously suffering some unfair backlash as "hype over
substance" and whatnot. Phooey on them. Grade- A (10)
Al Brooks (kerry_prez@yahoo.com) writes:
Someone at another site
(can't remember whose) said
something along the lines of: 'Sgt. Peppers has been
called overrated so often that it has to better than
that.'
Well, maybe so. But still, though Sgt. Peppers is a
very good album it is in fact overrated because so
many have said it is the greatest pop album of all
time, and that it isn't.
There probably isn't a greatest pop album of all
time. How do I rate Sgt. Peppers? I rate the first
five or six tracks (the title song through 'Fixing A
Hole' or 'She's Leaving Home') A+, the rest ('Being
for The Benefit Of Mr. Kite' through 'A Day In The
Life') I give a D.
Now, the whole album is quite well-produced-- Lennon
said "over-produced-- and worth listening to, but
after 'Shes Leaving Home' I shut the album off; have
heard the other tracks one too many times on one too
many evenings.
Magical Mystery Tour (1967)
Rating: 9
Best Song: “Strawberry Fields Forever”
So,
after Sgt. Pepper, the Beatles release Sgt. Pepper 2: The Hodgepodge
of Psychedelicicity! At least that’s
what I call it. The general public seems
to refer to this one as Magical Mystery Tour, so for your sake I’ll just
refer to it as that from here on out, OK?
Anyway, what’s funny to me about this album is that, even though the
preceding one is The Most Famous Record Of All Time, this one actually has more
famous songs on it than The Hilton Lounge Sitar Quartet. I mean, before I actually listened to that
one, I had NEVER heard of stuff like “Being For The Benefit Of Mr. Kite!” or
“Lovely Rita” or “Fixing A Hole” or whatever.
Contrast that with this one. Who
doesn’t know “Strawberry Fields Forever?”
Or “
I’m just
kidding, and ofcourse there’s a good explanation for all the super-famous songs
on this not-so-super-famous album, and that is it’s not even a REAL ALBUM, for
god sakes. The first side is the
soundtrack to some British TV special the band did (which I haven’t seen,
ofcourse), and the second side is five singles that greedy American record
execs slapped on to milk MORE money out of people like me. Bastards.
Now, despite the fact that this record really IS a hodgepodge of sorts
(hence my oh so clever title for it), it does flow together pretty well, though
not as well as, oh, I don’t know, Abbey Road, but NOTHING flows together
as well as that masterpiece.
NOTHING. Anyway, the record has
an overriding sort of slow, murky drugginess which is a contrast to Sgt.
Pepper’s more upbeat, happy drugginess.
Most of this murkiness finds its way onto the slightly uneven first
side. The title track leads us off and
is pretty reminiscent of the last record’s opening, “welcoming us to the show”
and all that crap. It’s catchy as HELL,
though. I love those trumpet
flourishes. Then, here comes the slow,
drugged-out murkiness in FULL force, with “The Fool On The Hill,” which is
cool. I love that flute! At this point the band gets a little TOO
trippy for my tastes, with the next INSTRUMENTAL track. Now, this is understandable ofcourse, since
technically it’s part of a soundtrack, but who the HELL buys Beatles records
for instrumentals? If anyone has ever
purchased this record because it has “Flying” in it, then they probably bought
The White Album because it has “Revolution 9” on it, and therefore that person
would be certifiably insane. Completely
fucking LOONY. Not that “Flying” is bad
or anything, it’s quite pleasant, but I’d rather they leave the mood-setting
instrumentals to Pink Floyd. After this
George goes COMPLETELY off his rocker with “
And the
second side RULES, ofcourse, since it’s the slapped-together-from-five-singles
side. Now, have the Beatles EVER
released a bad single? The answer,
ofcourse, is no, and so every song here rules my ASS. We’ve got the super-duper catchy “Hello
Goodbye,” to start things off, and then the best “double A-side” of ALL time in
the duo of “Strawberry Fields Forever” and “Penny Lane,” the former of which
has the best “re-fade-in” of any song I’ve EVER heard, and the latter…I mean,
who doesn’t love “Penny Lane?” WHO? Find me ONE person (outside of classical music
snobs, who I HATE) who doesn’t adore “
naterules1992@aol.com writes:
Dear Brad,
You might already know this, but Magical Mystery Tour was a
soundtrack, but it wasn't the soundtrack to a TV thing. It was the soundtrack
to the Film "Magical Mystery Tour", directed by the Beatles. See,
they were all really stoned, so they dicided to make the shittiest movie of all
time. It was this phsychidelic mess about a tour bus with all sorts of weird
people on it. All I remember of it (I saw it a long time ago) is that the
people on the bus had some crazy race at one point, the beatles starred as
these really weird magicians, and at one point, at big fat lady eats a shitload
of spagetti.
The Beatles (White Album) (1968)
Rating: 10
Best Song: “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da”
Do you know how many songs are on this album? Thirty. THIRTY songs. And not just ANY thirty songs, mind you, but THIRTY BEATLES SONGS. Now, with that piece of information in hand, I think just about anyone would probably give this record a 10 without even listening to it. That’s what I was inclined to do. However, just for the hell of it, I decided to give this one a whirl…and it deserves a 10 anyway! Ofcourse! THERE ARE THIRTY GODDAMN BEATLES SONGS TOGETHER ON ONE ALBUM. How can you NOT give that a 10?
And another
plus (not that I mind the psychedelic Beatles, mind you) is that the band has
returned more or less to Earth, and decided to take up rock and roll
again. I added that qualifier “more or
less” because, even though technically they’ve ditched most of the
psychedelic-ness, they haven’t really decided what KIND of band they’re gonna
be now, because, on this record, they try EVERYTHING. And when I say “everything,” I mean
everything but rap-metal. That’s
probably a good thing. Anyway, let’s go
through just a few of the styles, shall we?
OK. Now, how about a Beach Boys
knock-off about Russian chicks? Sure
(“Back In The
And, included in everything, are four more nice George tunes, two of which rule mercilessly. Everyone knows “While My Guitar Gently Weeps,” the beautiful ballad Eric Crapton (Japanese pronunciation) guests on. And his guitar really IS weeping, too! Now, not everyone knows “Piggies,” and that’s a shame. A DAMN shame. This is the probably the funniest Beatles song I’ve ever heard, and even if it weren’t funny it’d still be really, really good. “Everywhere there’s lots of piggies, living piggy lives. You can see them out for dinner, with their piggy wives, clutching forks and knives, to EAT THE BACON!” That absolutely KILLS me, every time. George’s two songs from the second LP aren’t as strong, but “Long Long Long” (despite being too damn soft…I can’t hear it!) and “Savoy Truffle” (despite my having no fucking idea what a “savoy truffle” is) are quite good. They’re Beatles songs! Ofcourse they are. And, would you look at that, THERE’S A RINGO SONG! WHAT THE HELL? RINGO WROTE A SONG! “Don’t Pass Me By” won’t put the same jump in your hop that most of the songs on here will, but it’s enjoyable enough, and I still love Ringo’s voice, even if he can’t really sing. It’s better than Geddy Lee’s voice, that’s for sure!
Now, what turns a lot of people off about this album is the number of “stupid novelty songs” or songs that, despite not being novelty songs, are “just stupid.” And there are plenty of them. Looking at the track list, I see “Glass Onion,” “Wild Honey Pie,” “The Continuing Story Of Bungalow Bill,” “Piggies,” “Rocky Raccoon,” “Don’t Pass Me By,” (ofcourse, since it’s by RINGO) and “Why Don’t We Do It In The Road.” And the last four of those are IN A ROW! And that’s just the first LP! I didn’t even MENTION the Ringo-sung-schmaltz of the closing “Good Night” or “Everybody’s Got Something To Hide Except For Me And My Monkey.” Yes, there are a lot of dumb, stupid, novelty songs. To the people who decry their existence, I say “GET YOUR FUCKING HEAD OUT OF YOUR ASS, YOU POMPOUS LITTLE SHIT.” These songs are fun! The Beatles have ALWAYS had a great sense of humor. I mean, there’s a song called “Everybody’s Got Something To Hide Except For Me And My Monkey!” You think a band who’d title a song THAT is trying to be taken seriously? Come on! It’s a great song! “Why Don’t We Do It In The Road” sounds like it was written in about thirty seconds, but it’s a good song! Who else could make a song that OBVIOUSLY tossed-off sound good? Except maybe for The Be Sharps, no one. And THAT is the genius of the Beatles. They could come into the studio with a thousand songs, half of which are stupid little novelty pieces of crap, throw them all on one album without caring if they actually FIT TOGETHER at ALL, and come up with a MASTERPIECE like this. And that’s why they’re the most famous band of all time.
Besides Creed.
Yellow Submarine (1969)
Rating: 5
Best Song: “Hey
Bulldog”
This one receives the only Beatles rating lower than a 7 (and the only one since they became THE BEATLES lower than a 9) on a technicality: it only has four new Beatles songs on it and an entire album side is taken up by George Martin’s orchestral soundtrack glop to the animated stoner movie of the same name I haven’t seen but probably should. As it’s the only Beatles record that is entirely, almost powerfully inessential, I will not spend much time reviewing it. Side A is the actual Beatles songs side, and for the most part it sounds like a half-assed, B-side version of Magical Mystery Tour. It has three great songs on it, and two of them are “Yellow Submarine” (duh) and “All You Need is Love.” As you may know, these have already shown up on previous Beatles albums. The remaining great song, and the only thing that makes this album really worth having at all, is “Hey Bulldog,” a fantastic, sinister little piano ‘n’ cool guitar lines rocker that totally sounds like one of the better songs on the White Album but with Sgt. Pepper production, since the drums are all stuck in one side of my ears and everything. Great bass line, too. Good times all around.
Beyond these, “All Together Now” is a quite catchy little goof singalong track that was clearly written in about 30 seconds, but since this is the Beatles and we’re in the late sixties, it’s at least decent and fun almost by default. “Only a Northern Song” and “It’s All Too Much” are probably George’s two worst contributions to the Beatles canon since he learned how to write songs. They’re exactly like the hazy, boring stuff he contributed to the first side of Magical Mystery Tour, only a lot worse, and I really don’t like either one at all. Then the orchestral stuff is exactly what you’d expect orchestral background music written by George Martin for an animated Beatles film taken from the period when they were all stoned all the time to sound like. There’s a track called “March of the Meanies” and another one called “Yellow Submarine in Pepperland.” None of it is good at all as listening music, but none of it is truly offensive, I guess. I don’t think anyone’s ever bought a Beatles album for George Martin-penned orchestral background music, though, so I’m gonna refrain from a track-by-track synopsis and end this paragraph by saying “there are a lot of violins.”
Don’t buy this album, but you probably knew that already. Just think of it as an obscenely overpriced, extra-long single of “Hey Bulldog.” Then download “Hey Bulldog.”
Abbey Road
Rating: 10
Best Song: “Something”
This is my favorite album of all time. Bar none. Case closed. NEXT SONG!
NEXT…SONG!
If you’ve been reading carefully, this hopefully won’t come as a surprise to you, since I’ve mentioned this record about four or five times for no apparent (until now! Ha!) reason. I mean, this album is just completely, utterly, 100% perfect. There’s not ONE SINGLE THING I would change about it. At all. If for some reason (and it better be a REALLLLY good one) you haven’t sat down and listened to this all the way through, then do it RIGHT NOW. If you don’t have it, go buy it RIGHT NOW so you can listen to it RIGHT NOW. It’s amazing that it’s so flabbergastingly good, too, since the band HATED each other by this point. Yet, somehow, they banded together one last time and came up with this. And I thank them. THANK YOU, John, Paul, George and Ringo.
The first
half of the record is just brilliant.
Every song is great. “Come
Together” is the opening track (you know, “shhhhhhhhoop”), later covered by
Aerosmith (who completely missed the point of a cover, which is not “to copy
the arrangement note for note and not try anything different at ALL,” because
that’s what they did). After this one
comes “Something,” the first of two incredibly, unbearably brilliant George
songs, his two best EVER, and my two favorites on the record. Then we have Paul’s goofy, simple, and
irresistible “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer.”
Now, I ask you, please name ONE OTHER PERSON IN THE WORLD who could take
a song about MURDER and make it as cute as this. Maxwell is BRUTALLY BEATING people with that
hammer, but in a charming way. After
this one there’s “Oh! Darling,” an old-fashioned vocal workout. Apparently John was WICKED PISSED (in a
But you know what? Those first seven songs? They’re just the warmup. They’re the pregame show with J.B., Howie, Terry and Cris. After “Here Comes The Sun,” we head down to the field to join Pat and John for the main event, The Suite. Good LORD, The Suite. The Suite is basically a bunch of random little unfinished tracks about which Paul came up with the idea to splice, cut, and patch them all together with masking tape and toothpicks. And, um, it was a pretty good idea. It essentially amounts to nineteen minutes of total musical PERFECTION.
It starts with “Because,” which recreates that trippy Sgt. Pepper feeling for a bit (with lines like “Because the sky is high, it blows my mind”) before segueing into the first, slow piano section of “You Never Give Me Your Money,” which is utterly GORGEOUS. It continues like this for a short time before morphing into a jumpy piano jig started by the line “out of college, money spent. See no future, pay no rent. All the money’s gone, nowhere to go.” HEY! THAT’S ME IN TWO YEARS WHEN I GRADUATE WITH A USELESS FUCKING CLASSICS DEGREE! After finishing by repeating the silly little line “1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, all good children go to heaven!” a few times, it fades away into bells and crickets chirping for the sloooowwww “Sun King,” which features some neat Spanish-Italian-nonsensical-gibberish (“Quando paramucho mi amore de felice carathon.”). I’ve taken both languages and I can safely say that that translates roughly to “I speak neither Spanish nor Italian.” Then a little drum fill takes us to the first of the strange little people who live on Abbey Road, “Mean Mr. Mustard,” who is “such a mean old man” that “keeps a ten-by-four up his nose.” Then, after Mean Mr. Mustard, we immediately jump to his sister, “Polythene Pam.” “She’s so good-looking but she looks like a man!” Good for her. Then John warns us to “ohh…LOOK OUT!” because “She Came In Through The Bathroom Window.” Who is “she?” Polythene Pam again? She’d better not walk in on me while I’m pinching a loaf. All three of these things are little gems by themselves, and stuck together in the middle of this suite, they’re absolutely brilliant. Once Pam leaves back out my bathroom window, we get a short break in the action (the first since “Here Comes The Sun”) before the gorgeous, orchestral “Golden Slumbers” comes in. Paul’s gonna “sing you a lullaby.” How sweet of Paul! Then, without the listener even realizing it, “Carry That Weight” starts in, with the fab four telling us we can “carry that weight a long time.” How uplifting! Then there’s a horn break which plays the “You Never Give Me Your Money” melody, then a short guitar solo, then a verse of “You Never Give Me Your Money” completely inappropriately placed here, which quickly goes BACK into “Carry That Weight,” which didn’t stop being incredibly uplifting while it was away. Then it segues into “The End,” where Paul yells “oh YEAH! ALRIGHT! Are you gonna be in my dreams…TONIGHT?!” before the FIRST EVER RINGO DRUM SOLO ON A BEATLES RECORD. It’s not long, ofcourse. Ringo’s no Bill Bruford! Then the song comes back, and we get a chorus of “Loooooove you!” repeated over and over while George overdubs guitar solo after guitar solo. This continues for a while until you’re in absolute HEAVEN, at which point it STOPS abruptly. Then, after a little piano fill, comes the famous line that Chris Farley asked about, “and in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make.” And we’re left there as the album ends, completely uplifted and wanting, for the love of god, to LISTEN TO THIS ALBUM AGAIN. But wait! It’s NOT ACTUALLY OVER. Because the Beatles were goofs, they stuck a short little sarcastic political acoustic ditty at the end called “Her Majesty” that runs about twenty seconds and completely kills any emotional epiphany you might have been having. Because they’re the Beatles and they can.
It’s a good thing this was the last record the Beatles made, because how the HELL could they follow it up? How do you follow perfection? You can’t be BETTER than perfect. Not possible! But, thankfully, before they broke up, they left us with this little parting gift. Bless those four Liverpudlians!
Jack
Markowitz (saul9@frontiernet.net) writes:
You said that in Come
Together that John is saying "shhhhhoop." Well, maybe someone's
already told you this, but he's actually saying 'shoot me.' The base line
covers it up, but its another one of those refrences to Paul's death I guess,
just like how the liscence plate of the Beatle on the Abbey Road cover says
'28If', referring to the fact that if Paul was alive, he'd be 28. Oh well.
Also, this is not my favorite album of all time, but I can definatly see why its yours.
I'd have to say that my
favorite albums in order would be OK Computer, Pet Sounds, Sgt. Pepper, and
then
Patrick Skly writes:
You reference George as taking
the the entire solo at the beginning of
Interesting tidbit: Like clockwork, every 5 seconds a different Beatle takes the lead (besides Ringo of course). I believe the order is Paul, George and John each taking 2 solos...the first 5 seconds Paul, next 5 sec George, third 5 seconds John, then over once again.
John lives up to his quote,
"I may not be the best guitar player out there, but I can make it scream
and whale like a motherfucker" since there's not a lot of quick bending
notes in his parts, but he is slamming the shit outta the thing. I was
also surprised at how great a lead player Paul was against George's chops.
ddickson@rice.edu writes:
Yes. Yes. Yes.
Yes. Yes. This is the opinion I've been waiting for.
FINALLY, Mr. Brad, we AGREE on something.
all time. YOU ROCK MAN!!!! You are COOL. And totally FAR OUT.
And RAD.
And BODACIOUS. If you aren't TUBULAR as well, you're at least darn close
to
it.
Dominick
"I’ve taken both
languages and I can safely say that
that translates roughly to “I speak neither Spanish
nor Italian."" Brilliant.
As for the album, it's really fucking good. Really
REALLY fucking good. However, I wouldn't call it my
favourite of all time - for me, that honor goes to
Black Sabbath's "Sabotage". You may commence with
calling me a stupid metalhead.
Let It Be (1970)
Rating: 9
Best Song: “Let It Be”
Now, now, I know what you’re saying. “Wait, Brad, I thought you said Abbey “Genius” Road was the Beatles’ last record? What gives? Why did you lie to us? WHY MUST EVERYONE LIE TO ME?” Well, hold your horses there, Pam, I DIDN’T lie to you. See, this one here was recorded BEFORE Abbey “Perfect” Road, just RELEASED afterwards. The foursome went into the studio to make this record, and Paul thought it might be neat to film the whole process for a movie. Now, THAT was a good idea. NOT. Since everyone hated each other, all of the footage was of the four guys fighting with each other, throwing drumsticks and sitars and whatnot, and so, eventually, they ditched this one, regrouped, and made Abbey “Brilliant” Road. Then, later, somehow Phil “Wall Of Sound” Spector got his hands on the master tapes, added some of his patented overdubs to a few tracks, and released it. I’m assuming one of the band members gave him the tapes. Otherwise, well, that just sucks.
Anyway,
what I call this one is Abbey Road’s Goofy, Drunken Cousin or something,
because it’s very much in the same style, and at times it’s very, very
goofy. John contributes a LOT to
this. Before the first song, “Two Of
Us,” starts, he yells out “I dig a pygmy, by Charles Hawtrey and the Deaf Aids,
Phase 1 in which
Now, musically, this album is pretty much evenly broken up between VERY raw country-rocker things and gorgeous, Spector-produced ballads. Needless to say, when you factor in the jokes and such, this makes for an intriguing listen. The first two tracks, “Two Of Us” and “Dig A Pony,” both fall into that raw country-rocker thingy category, and they’re both damn, DAMN good, especially “Two Of Us.” These both pale in comparison in their “rawness” to the duo of “I’ve Got A Feeling” and “One After 909” that appear early on the second side of this puppy. THIS is the band that was doing “I Am The Walrus” two years (remember, recorded in 1969) ago? They’ve sure gone back to their roots! They also ATTEMPTED to go back to their roots with “I Me Mine,” but instead Spector added a whole bunch of orchestral overdubs that really don’t work. The best part of that song is the “I ME ME MINE!” REAL fast-driving rock section, because Spector left that part alone.
Ofcourse, we’ve also got the serious pop song part of the record, for which Paul produced one of the best Beatles songs of all time, the title track, which you’ve ALL heard too many times to count, I’m sure. How AWESOME is George’s guitar solo in that song? HOW AWESOME IS IT? HOW FUCKING AWESOME! What’s REALLY funny about this record is what surrounds that song. Just to prove that John hated Paul by this point, the tracks preceding AND following it are little sub-one minute jokes. Paul wanted to create this serious mood, and John went ahead and COMPLETELY fucked it all up for him! “Dig It,” which comes before it, is pure nonsense, with John shouting out “Like a roooolling stone! Like the FBI! And the CIA! And the BBC!” Complete silliness. “Maggie May,” which comes after it, sounds like it should have been part of Abbey Road’s little side two mini-opera. It’s about forty seconds long, and features John singing in the MOST cockney British voice possible about “that dirty no-good robbin’ Maggie May!” Way to ruin a mood, JACKASS. I’m just kidding, I like it! I also like “Across The Universe,” another one on which the Spector treatment works. One song on which it does NOT work is “The Long And Winding Road.” Now, I know everyone loves this song, and it’s a good song, no doubt, but the orchestrations go WAY too far. Don’t tell me THAT’S what the Beatles had in mind for the song originally. BULLSHIT.
After this, the record finishes out with its two biggest winners outside of the title track. “For You Blue” is a SERIOUSLY underrated George acoustic ditty. I ADORE this song. “Because you’re sweet and lovely, girl, I love you!” That’s nice. Then we’ve got the original title track (before they changed the title), “Get Back,” which is supposedly performed on the rooftop, but I’m not so sure. Anyway, it rules as much as the title track (i.e. a WHOOOOOLE lot), and features some more Beatles goofball lyrics. “Sweet Loretta Martin thought she was a woman, but she was another man.” Maybe she should be introduced to Polythene Pam. I bet they’d hit it right off.
Anyway, along with Help!, this is probably the other Beatles record that could be called “underrated.” It tends to have a reputation as just “not that good,” and to a certain extent that’s right. It really IS not that good compared to the two records that preceded it. But what ISN’T “not that good” compared to those two albums? This is great record in its own right, not QUITE up to the standards of the last bunch of albums, but nevertheless very, very good. And it would’ve been even BETTER if George Martin had produced it instead of Phil Spector! “Wall Of Sound” my ass. Dipshit.
And now
that you’re finished reading my Beatles page, go get
Andy
Roberts (mail@andy-roberts.net) writes:
Hi,
I read your Beatles review (well, I went straight to your Abbey Road, but then
also read Let It Be)
I just thought you'd like to know a couple of things that came to mind after
reading about your views on The Long and Winding Road (which I agree with
you!)
Phil Spector was brought in by Lennon, after he asked him to produce his
Instant Karma! single. According to an Apple insider, because John was so
impressed with what Spector did, he secretly gave the Let It Be masters to
him, without consulting the other Beatles. Which, as you rightly
expressed
it, 'sucks'.
Paul was certainly not impressed with him. And this peaked with Spector's
treatment of The Long And Winding Road. Paul had intended it to be as
simple
as possible (as you witness on the Let It Be movie) and so was fuming after
hearing the excessive orchestra added on. So much so that during the
Beatles' high court action to split the Beatles' assets, he used that song as
evidence of the other Beatles trying to ruin his reputation! And in a
recent
interview last year, he told a journalist that he intends to "go back to
the
original tape, before Phil Spector got hold of it". However, one
reason for
it being so over-the-top is to disguise John's bass playing being out of
tune!
Let It Be…Naked (2003)
Rating: 9
Best Song: “Let It Be”
For those of you who don't know
what this is (I know when I casually mentioned it to my sister, a huge Beatles
fan, she gave me a look akin to the one I gave Al when he told me he really,
truly was a fan of Sean Paul (WTF???)), I'll give a quick explanation.
Paul wasn't too keen on the original Let it Be album, nor on John's
slipping Phil "Murderer" Spector the tapes. For a while he
couldn't really do anything about this, since the fact that his bandmates were
still alive precluded him from fucking with the Beatles legacy as much as he
probably wanted. Then George died. So the only person to stop Paul
from doing what he wanted was Ringo. And since Ringo had about as much to
do with the Beatles' success as Pete Best and Paul probably has the power to
cut him off from royalties at a whim, it's not like he's gonna do
anything. The first shot in the "Paul now has total control of
everything" game was his changing the crediting of the songs he wrote from
"Lennon/McCartney" to "McCartney/Lennon," a defensible move
(since HE WROTE THE FUCKING SONGS), yet still something that appeared petty and
asshole-ish. And this, Paul's reworking of Let it Be, is the
second. Thankfully, he hasn't actually done anything BAD yet, so I refuse
to become angry at him for any of this stuff (unlike, say, AL, for one), but I
can't help but thing he'll do something retarted soon, especially once Ringo
dies from neck problems due to the stress put on by his gigantic nose.
But anyway, back to the album. What I originally thought it was, and what anyone who's just hearing about it now might think it is, is a rerelease of Let it Be with all the Spector-izations cut out, a looser, goofier, MORE ramshackle version of the record, a true Get Back, like Paul originally wanted to release. This is not the case, hence the title’s not in fact being Get Back. Not that the title it actually has is apropos either, though. Yeah, it's "naked" in that the three songs that Spector let an orchestra fuck up have had the violins surgically removed from their respective rectums, but that's not all Paul did. He changed the running order. He took out the goofy novelty tunes that surrounded the original title track and replaced them with "Don't Let me Down," which really should have been on the original album, since it's better than any of the other really raw rockers ("Dig a Pony," "I've Got a Feeling," and "One After 909," I'm looking at YOU). He tweaked the other tracks, too, including a wholesale reworking of "Let it Be" and a complete elimination of the funny banter that made the original such a fun time (no more "Charles Nelson Hawtrey and the Deaf-Aids!" and whatnot). So huge Beatles fans like me should be pissed at him, right?
Well, no. The original record
was made without his consent, and so he has a right to remake it into something
more like he had in mind, right? Or has in mind now, at least. And
it's not like it's replacing the original. It has a different album cover,
and they're both still in full circulation. If you prefer the old one, I
don't think Sir Paul would really give a crap. He just prefers this
one.
But which one
do I prefer? At this point, after much deliberation, I still have no
fucking clue, actually. First off, the ramshackle fun randomness of the
original has been lost by the deletion of all the goof-off stuff. The
running orders are a wash, and I don't even know why he bothered to even do
that. John's saying "I hope we passed the audition" works as the
closer to the original, and the title track works as the closer to this, Paul’s
more serious, more polished version. The improvement is that, on a purely
mathematical, song-by-song basis, this record is just obviously better, due
again to the de-Spectorization of three of the tunes. "I Me
Mine" is the one you'll probably notice least, since Spector only
assfucked half the song and left the hard-driving rock chorus alone, and the
difference in quality between the two tunes is small enough that you probably
won't even care, but I like the backing organ over the backing orchestra and
the acoustic guitar playing that little lick in there over, again, THE ENTIRE
FUCKING ORCHESTRA playing that little lick in there. "The Long and
"Across
the Universe" is where there might be a debate over which is better, since
the overdubbing, strings, and "otherworldly" atmosphere of the
original do make it a true classic. But I still like this one
better. Ha. Bitch. There's
just one acoustic, John's voice sounds like a normal human being's, and the
deletion of the strings, although they were pretty subdued before, is
HUGE, because it lets you hear the sitar. Did you know there was a
sitar back there? I didn't! But
there is, it's absolutely brilliant, and re-listening to the original after
hearing this one, I finally heard it, but it's so buried under Spector's
metaphorical buttplugs that you can't even tell it's there. Ass.
The alteration of "Let it Be" also might cause some controversy, with
the horns deleted from whatever section the horns were in, a different (a third
one!) guitar solo, and what I swear is a completely different vocal take in the
second half of the tune, but I think I like both versions about equally, and
they both definitely both beat to a pulp the single version, which is just the
original album version with a shitty replacement guitar solo. And "Don't
Let me Down," especially its second half, rules ass, but I'm getting tired
of typing and PTI is on in like ten minutes.
I fucking love that show. Hooray
for intersession!
Final
conclusion? Well, like I said before, I have no problems with what Paul
did here. Objectively it's a better album, but it's not quite as fun, and
I really miss the nonsense goofy banter and crap in the original, so call it a
wash. They're both excellent albums. I'd say that, if you're a
Beatlemaniac, and you don't already have this, you should definitely pick it
up, if only for historical reasons. And if you're not, the de-Spectorized
version of "The Long and
Oh, go me...
Get back to where you once belonged.