The beatles and beyond...the solo careers

[Music Head]

CH - I agree about Blue Jay Way. Other than that and Flying, I love everything on there

[SteveO]

Yes I know Clapton was involved in more ways than one ..lol...with Patti, thanks Crazy Mate ...I forgot about that! I stand corrected ! I don't know who in the hay is playing drums now ! I know Paul can...he plays everything pretty much...just going by what my drummer friend told me, mate ????...lol

i agree with you SteveO...their solo stuff does have Beatles written all over it,

i think you may have made a mistake with "while my guitar gently weeps" and georges guitar work on it mate....Eric Clapton actually played lead guitar on the White Album version of that one...

not so sure about Ringo being a great drummer though as i read a Macca interview somewhere and he said he ended up playing drums on a number of their earlier studio tracks as Ringo couldnt keep time, so when Ringo left the studio Paul would re-record the drum part for the songs???

[CRAZY-HORSE]

maybe we should all forget the logistics of it all and simply enjoy their music for what it is.....great listening overall!!!!!

[SteveO]

I agree except I like every song on MMT. The film by the way, has made a comeback with the young generation,,according to my CD guy at HMV !

CH - I agree about Blue Jay Way. Other than that and Flying, I love everything on there

[SteveO]

i agree with you SteveO...their solo stuff does have Beatles written all over it,

i think you may have made a mistake with "while my guitar gently weeps" and georges guitar work on it mate....Eric Clapton actually played lead guitar on the White Album version of that one...

not so sure about Ringo being a great drummer though as i read a Macca interview somewhere and he said he ended up playing drums on a number of their earlier studio tracks as Ringo couldnt keep time, so when Ringo left the studio Paul would re-record the drum part for the songs???

I said he was a very good drummer not great !...lol and I got blisters on my fingers from Helter Skelter is John's voice....

[SteveO]

Good discussion though...where's Gryph ? Thanks for this response guys ! Well said Crazy Mate...let's just enjoy the music !

maybe we should all forget the logistics of it all and simply enjoy their music for what it is.....great listening overall!!!!!

[SteveO]

Excellent sir ! I totally respect your viewpoint mate ! However I truly believe with or without Martin the Lennon & McCartney dynamo would have left its' mark on rock music history regardless! They were a lot more than craftsmen of catchy 2 minute pop songs! Those two minute (actually for the most part...over three minutes..lol) pop songs were and still are complex songs...four fingered chords, etc. The very early stuff like Love Me Do, I Wanna Hold Your Hand, She Loves You . Please Please Me,I Saw Her Standing There were raw pop rock that no one had ever heard before. Remember Crazy that I am an old geezer and I experienced the Beatles from their inception and lived with their music from 11 to 17 years old and beyond! I do not expect a yungin' like you to be as gaga over the Beatles as I am ...lol...I admire you for your comments and also for your passion for Neil Young and Crowded House among others....two artists that do not have a multitude of boring songs like many of today's artists!

another thought SteveO....

yes, of course all bands had "producers" but you will find they were standard "rock/pop" producers who were set in their ways as how to produce those bands...
The Beatles producer, George Martin, was different, all he had ever produced was classical musicians and comedy records, thus he was thrown in the deep end with rock and roll, so he was learning as he went along also, he also has experience with these other genres and techniques that werent entrenched in rock/pop, thus he had the ability to make John and Paul think outside the square of simple rock/pop music...and it worked well, as they were responsive to his suggestions and also asked questions like "we want to do this,how do we do it?" so i guess they inspired eachother along the road to what they did,

the above comment is not meant to be disrespectful to John and Paul as they were fine craftsmen of the 2minute pop song and Paul continues to be so to this day, but GM opened their ears and eyes to other possibilities, and of course they opened his also...
they worked brilliantly together IMO, a great union of minds which John,Paul and later George took through to their solo material, Geroge Martin must have had a huge impact on Paul because he ventured out into classical and operatic material later also,starting with "the family way" soundtrack in 1966, and as we know, returned to classical and opera in a big way during the 1990s...

again, dont missunderstand or miss-interperate what i have written, i am not criticising The Beatles in any way, they were young and eager and George helped motivate them to move in other avenues of music...!

[SteveO]

I think Paul was into all types of music . He watched Bach's Bradenburg concertos on TV and the next day he told George Martin that he liked the trumpets...and he'd like to use them in a song...the instrument was a piccolo trumpet and thus the solo for Penny Lane was created!

[SteveO]

I like this song!

[video=youtube;UDcZxEpA9XY]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UDcZxEpA9XY[/video]

[Mrrusty1]

Ringo is very under rated in my view because he has made some very good tracks for instance photograph/im the greatest/it don't come easy / beaucoups of blues.. all very good songs and excellent production and musicianship

as good as the Beatles were, i think Paul and John didnt really hit their straps until they went solo...i think John came into his own on the Imagine album...Paul had to wait another couple of years until Band On The Run was released...
George, well, i think he was at his best sometime between The White Album through to his debut solo set All Things Must Pass, that said, i thought "somewhere in england", "cloud nine" and "brainwashed" were also superb albums from him...
Ringo, i must say he reached his peak somewhere around 1989ish when he narrated Thomas The Tank Engine & Friends(seriourly, im not kidding!)

back to the Beatles though...i do own all of their albums, they are all good bar "yellow submarine" and "magical mystery tour" which, imo were crap!
i still think that they had one or two dud tracks on each album, and without the genius and foresight of George Martin they would have been just another 1960s UK beat band....and they were just that until Rubber Soul and Revolver, and it was at that moment they became the greatest band in history

IMO the Beatles did record some rubbish that no-one else would have got away with like...Octopus' Garden, Yellow Submarine, Within You Without You etc etc, i could probably name another twenty songs to fit that catagory, regardless of those bloopers, you cannot deny the impact they had on popular music and still do, so hats off to those four lads from the shitty city of Liverpool...