The BEATLES (Official Thread)

[SloopJohnB]

One of my many favorite Beatles songs...

 

[LG]

^^I picked up a new vinyl copy of HELP! a few weeks back SJB, I love that album and enjoyed the movie too.

I played the White Album a couple days ago, I actually like it a lot more now than I did before. I always feel bad for George and Ringo when I play the last song on the album, instead of John's "mystical exploration of a rubbish heap" we could have had 2 or 3 good songs instead. I'm sure the two quiet Beatles held their own counsel when that song was put on the record instead of something they wrote.

 

[Hurdy Gurdy Man]

No matter where you might wander searching for classic pop/rock discussion here on the internet,the Fabs ALWAYS are considered to be at the very crux of the fandom.Not everybody is into everything,but we're ALL BIG Beatles fans!I myself recall being dutifully enraptured by the great musical bards at the tender age of five when I first saw "A Hard Day's Night".From then on,Beatles music and philosophy would greatly affect the course of my entire life.Then on Tuesday,December 8,1980,I awoke to the news that world had lost a great man and a great friend to us all.Upon George Harrison's passing,I reflected soulfully on his deeply rooted spiritual beliefs and the ways THAT changed my life.

 

[METALPRIEST]

43 Years Ago: The Beatles Announce Their Breakup

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All good things must come to an end, and this was never more true in the world of rock and roll than it was 43 years ago today (April 10, 1970) when it was announced that the the Beatles were no more.

The tale of the breakup of the Beatles is a long and, well, winding road. The band had begun to implode for a while. When manager Brian Epstein passed away in 1967, the first cracks were showing. By the time of the recording of the 1968 double-record set ‘The Beatles’ (aka “The White Album”) things had gotten worse. The Beatles were working less and less like a band, with each member focusing on their own compositions in the studio.

Flash forward to early 1969 and recording sessions for what would eventually become the ‘Let It Be’ album. Captured forever thanks to a documentary film crew (though hidden from public view for many years) the film ‘Let It Be’ shows the band breaking up before our eyes. With tensions running high and resentment building, it was clear they were not long for this world. Even though they would somehow carry on and record the much more harmonious ‘Abbey Road,’ the end was in sight.

After repeated clashes with new business manager Allen Klein, Paul McCartney was looking for it to end, perhaps sooner than the others. When ‘Abbey Road’ was released in September of 1969, John Lennon told the others that he wanted to leave the band, though no formal announcement was made. It would ultimately be McCartney who would spill the beans during the promotion for his debut solo album, which was released in April of 1970. An official announcement from the band concerning the break up would not come until the end of 1970.

There will never be another, we can only be glad they were here as long as they were.
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[Hurdy Gurdy Man]

The beginings of the famed band's demise may have actually started right after their "boy-girl" ideologies put them at the top of pop charts around the world.You can hear John and Paul start to meander from one another musically.Evidence of this occcurs at least as early as the "Help!" album which features John's guttural insecurities on the title track while McCartney takes a serious foray into pop-shmaltz with his timeless "Yesterday".And of course George was going in HIS direction.That LACK of inter-group meandering from each other at least in terms of general artistic agreement is why and how the Stones are still out there today.As Ringo once put it in the "Anthology" series,"We were all going different places..."

 

[METALPRIEST]

43 Years Ago: The Beatles’ ‘Let It Be’ Album Released



FULL ALBUM



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Let It Be’ was supposed to be the album that would bring the Beatles back together. After an increasingly fractious couple of years that culminated in 1968’s self-titled (‘White’) album, which was basically four solo records for the price of a double LP, the four Beatles holed themselves up in London’s Twickenham Film Studios, and then at Apple Studios, during the first month of 1969 to re-spark their dying flame. No outside visitors, no BS — just four guys hanging around playing music. Just like the old days. They called it ‘Get Back.’

But things didn’t work out that way. The sessions fell apart almost immediately. George Harrison quit. And nobody was particularly happy with the TV cameras documenting their collapse. So they hauled their gear to the roof of Apple’s headquarters, performed a brief impromptu concert and called it a day. Two months later they handed the tapes to engineer Glyn Johns and told him to construct an album out of the hundreds of songs and the hours and hours of tapes they had recorded.

The ‘Get Back’ album was supposed to be released in July 1969, but the Beatles had moved on and wiped their hands clean of the mess. And things were going relatively well on the recording of ‘Abbey Road.’ The band got along, inspiring each other, just like in the old days. Just like ‘Get Back’ was supposed to. So ‘Abbey Road’ was bumped up on the release schedule, and ‘Get Back’ was shelved.

A year after the Beatles gave Johns the tapes, they passed them on to Phil Spector, who added strings, choirs and lots of the production goop that made him one of the ‘60s’ most famous producers. But Spector’s more-is-more approach that sounded so great on ‘Then He Kissed Me’ and ‘Be My Baby’ buried Beatles songs like ‘The Long and Winding Road’ and ‘Across the Universe.’ Nevertheless, the newly retitled ‘Let It Be’ was released on May 8, 1970, as the group’s final album. Paul McCartney had left the band a month earlier, effectively ending the Beatles.

McCartney hated ‘Let It Be.’ The other Beatles – who had pretty much given up on the project – were either indifferent or, in John Lennon’s case, satisfied that Spector did his best with the mess he was given. The album hit No. 1. So did the two singles released from it, ‘The Long and Winding Road’ and the title track. There are some great songs – ‘Two of Us,’ ‘I’ve Got a Feeling,’ ‘Get Back’ (a different mix of the song reached No. 1 in 1969) – scattered among the ruins. It’s a fascinating work, no matter how you hear it (the album was remixed in 2003 as ‘Let It Be … Naked,’ with Spector’s often intrusive production removed). It’s the sound of a band falling apart. It’s the sound of a band trying to hold it together. And it’s the sound of an era ending.
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[METALPRIEST]

The Beatles’ ‘Help!’ Coming to Blu-ray



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The Beatles‘ 1965 movie ‘Help!’ is finally coming to Blu-ray. The remastered disc will be available on June 25 with a beefed-up soundtrack and more than an hour’s worth of bonus material.

‘Help!’ followed the Beatles’ first film, 1964′s ‘A Hard Day’s Night,’ into theaters at the height of Beatlemania. Directed by Richard Lester, who also was behind the camera for ’A Hard Day’s Night,’ ‘Help!’ — the Beatles’ first color movie — focuses on Ringo and a special ring that gets stuck on his finger. The Fab Four are then chased across Europe by various sinister parties.

The movie features some of the Beatles’ best songs, including ‘You’re Going to Lose That Girl,’ ‘You’ve Got to Hide Your Love Away,’ ‘Ticket to Ride’ and the title track, all of which are performed like the ’60s version of music videos.

In addition to featuring a newly remastered 5.1 soundtrack, the Blu-ray includes a 30-minute documentary about the making of the film. Director Lester shares some memories and behind-the-scenes footage. Other extras include an outtake from the movie, some trailers, radio spots, remembrances from the cast and crew and a look at the restoration process. Renowned director Martin Scorsese also penned a new appreciation in the Blu-ray’s booklet.

‘Help!’ follows two other recent Beatles features on Blu-ray, the animated ‘Yellow Submarine‘ and the terrible ‘Magical Mystery Tour.’ Now if they can only somehow wrangle the rights to the long-missing ‘Let It Be.’
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[Mr. Bob Dobolina]

They've got the rights to "Let It Be". That's why it's been promised for the last 10 or so years. Director Michael Lindsay-Hogg is on record as wanting the film released. The hope is that with BluRay they can load it with hours of bonus material.
They also have the rights to the Beatles cartoon series from the mid 60s. Apple bought the rights from Kings World about 8 years ago. I would love to see a deluxe BluRay release of those.

 

[Mr. Bob Dobolina]

The more I'm hearing about the release of "HELP!" on BluRay, the less exciting it sounds. Except for a new filmed intro by Richard Lester, it doesn't sound like there's going to be anything that wasn't on the 2007 DVD upgrade. They did two promo videos for the "HELP!" single and one for "Ticket To Ride", why not include those as bonus material? Why not have Paul and/or Ringo do the audio commentary, the way Paul did for "MMT"? The "outtake" from the movie, a scene featuring Frankie Howerd and Wendy Richards, is photos only. It was explained on the '07 reissue that the actual footage of that scene was destroyed ages ago. I'll buy it, of course, because I'm upgrading my stuff to BluRay, but it seems like a missed opportunity.

 

[METALPRIEST]

45 Years Ago: The Beatles Begin Recording ‘The White Album’



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In May of 1968 – nearly a year after the release of the triumphant ‘Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band’ and a few months after the major movie blunder ‘Magical Mystery Tour’ – the Beatles began working on their next album. They had been writing songs (including ‘Dear Prudence,’ ‘Mother Nature’s Son’ and ‘Sexy Sadie’) during their trip to India earlier in the year. In May, they began to lay down demo versions at George Harrison’s bungalow in Esher, England.

Astounded by the amount of material they already had (23 tunes were finished at Harrison’s place), the Beatles decided that a single LP wouldn’t be enough to contain the sheer volume of music they had written. So the band prepared to make its first double album.

Recording for ‘The Beatles’ (which would come to be known as ‘The White Album’) began at 2:30 p.m. on May 30, 1968, at EMI Studios on Abbey Road in London. All members were present for the first day, as was John Lennon’s new girlfriend Yoko Ono, who would become a fixture at Beatles sessions for the rest of the band’s run.

Within a few months, the band would become more fractured, with members working in separate studios on their own songs, culminating in Ringo Starr quitting the band — although he returned after a couple of weeks and after much begging from his bandmates. But at the first session, all four Beatles worked together on Lennon’s ‘Revolution 1’ (simply called ‘Revolution’ at the time). He had started writing the song — a response to the antiwar protests that raged on in America and the recent assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. — in India and continued working on it after returning,

The quartet laid down 16 takes of the song, although the last one was markedly different, stretched out to more than 10 minutes and ending with six minutes of feedback, screaming and moaning, some of it from Ono. ‘The White Album’’s infamous ‘Revolution 9’ sound collage came from the improvisational coda.

The first part of the song would undergo its own changes. In order to get Harrison and Paul McCartney’s approval to release ‘Revolution’ as a single, Lennon had the band record a faster version of ‘Revolution,’ which was released as the B side to ‘Hey Jude’ more than four months before ‘The White Album’ came out.

The original, more deliberate version was renamed ‘Revolution 1’ and kicked off side four of ‘The Beatles’ (which also included ‘Revolution 9’ but not the single version of the song). The band’s most varied collection of music was released as a double LP on Nov. 22, 1968, in the U.K. and three days later in the U.S.
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