Favourite Beatles Song Megathread

[redrobbo 10]

What interesting posts on the music of the Beatles by Ousetunes, which I have greatly enjoyed reading. I think Ousetunes should appear on Mastermind!

 

My list of 5...

 

1. Rocky Raccoon (I'm word perfect on this lovely little nonsense song - and it might just squeeze into my Desert Island discs list - though I'm still waiting for the invitation to appear!)

2. Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)

3. She's Leaving Home

4. Eleanor Rigby

5. Aarrgghh! Decisions, decisions! Ok, it think it has to be The Fool On The Hill, or maybe While My Guitar Gently Weeps, or perhaps it really should be You Never Give Me Your Money, or should it be Fixing A Hole or possibly.........

 

PS I noticed Yesterday was strangely absent from forummers's choices - despite it being the most popular recorded song by different artists!

[Ousetunes 10]

Just been listening to the "White album" again tonight:cool:.(whilst jamming to it on the guitar & bass)What a truly brilliant album.Never to be achieved again by any artiste ?

 

The Beatles toyed with the title A Doll's House for what eventually became The Beatles (aka Double White/The White Album). Unfortunately, a group from Leicester called Family had, in the summer of 1968 released their debut album called Music In A Doll's House so the Beatles had a change of heart.

 

This is a huge shame.

 

A doll's house is the perfect way to describe this wonderful collection of songs. It contains nooks and crannies, rooms where spider's webs hang, dark corners, rays of sunlight and everything else you might associate with an old house. The separate rooms are the separate Beatles, working largely by themselves (John working on Julia whilst next door, Paul work's on Back In The USSR).

The garden would be where John and Paul met to compose Birthday (reckoned as the last genuine 50/50 collaboration between the two song-writers). In the kitchen, George is writing poety about Piggies...,

 

But most of the rooms are empty or sparsely furnished. Paul strums Mother Nature's Son accompanied not by John, George or Ringo, but by 4 musicians on brass. Lennon was working on Yer Blues!

 

The album is the heaviest in sound and texture. The thundering bass of Helter Skelter (Lennon on 6 string bass; the original recording lasted 27 minutes) and the heavy echo on the acoustic piano on Sexy Sadie. We had the madness of Revolution 9, but in between there are the little fillers - Wild Honey Pie, Can You Take Me Back - like whispers in the ear that join the songs together. There is, to these ears, a smell of decay in these recordings. There also lurks an instense sinister feel, that something's not quite right. (Charles Manson must have thought likewise.)

 

And so it proved to be. The Beatles moved onto the ill-fated Get Back project and disintegrated (before the camera's eyes). Yes, somehow they pulled themselves together for one last hurrah (Abbey Road) but by then the damage was done.

 

The Double White set, for all its shortcomings (should it have been a single album? I beg to differ) is the sound of rot setting into a band who have been there, seen it, done it and collected the bruises.

 

A Doll's House would have been the most suitable name for this album.

[Ousetunes 10]

 

1. Rocky Raccoon (I'm word perfect on this lovely little nonsense song - and it might just squeeze into my Desert Island discs list - though I'm still waiting for the invitation to appear!)

 

 

A most interesting (and may I say brave?) choice, red!

 

Rocky Raccoon originated, as did many Double White songs, in Rishikesh. Recorded in one session back at Abbey Road - 15th August 1968 - the line-up was: McCartney: Acoustic guitar and vocal; Lennon: Bass guitar, harmonica, harmonium & backing vocal; Harrison: Backing vocal; Ringo: Drums and George Martin: 'Barrelhouse' piano.

 

Am I the only listener to detect what sounds like a female voice in the backing vocals? ('Poor, Rocky, Poor'.) Strangely, this voice sounds very much like a certain Linda Eastman (later, McCartney).

[Ousetunes 10]

-----duplicated post-------------

[happyhippy 11]

I found this internet station a while back, and it doesn't just play Beatles tracks, but solo stuff, interviews, out-takes, bands who covered the Beatles/solo stuff, and well, all things Beatles related really.

 

Beatles-a-rama

 

It can get a bit samey, as you'd expect, but it passes an hour or so while I'm wading through paperwork .......

[Tarquin 10]

Ousetunes(or anybody else;)) How big an influence would you consider George Martin to be on the Beatles sound ?

[not wanted 10]

Ousetunes(or anybody else;)) How big an influence would you consider George Martin to be on the Beatles sound ?

 

Massive, he was classically trained and also recorded stuff with Spike Milligan and Peter Sellers and the Beyond the Fringe group so would have appealed to their sense of humour. He helped invent many new ways of recording or processing effects as well as finding ways to achieve the sounds that the Beatles wanted. He was also the only person out of many who were approached who gave The Beatles a deal, not a very good deal but it was a deal all the same and he arranged and co wrote some of the music and he isn't really given the credit he deserves.

[happyhippy 11]

Massive, he was classically trained and also recorded stuff with Spike Milligan and Peter Sellers and the Beyond the Fringe group so would have appealed to their sense of humour. He helped invent many new ways of recording or processing effects as well as finding ways to achieve the sounds that the Beatles wanted. He was also the only person out of many who were approached who gave The Beatles a deal, not a very good deal but it was a deal all the same and he arranged and co wrote some of the music and he isn't really given the credit he deserves.

 

Couldn't agree with you more. He also helped to keep them 'in line' musically at times, played on several tracks, as well as being responsible for some arrangements, etc.

 

His expertise was always held in the ultimate high regard by them all, and of course when Paul was reaching (another) creative low point, he asked Martin to come in and produce "Tug Of War" in 1982, his best album (generally considered) since "Band On The Run" nearly ten years beforehand.

 

I must say I've a real soft spot for "London Town" (1978 ), which I think is very underrated, but "Tug Of War" is a great Macca LP.

 

While George Martin is still revered, I agree that his influence on the Beatles isn't recognised nearly enough.

[Siân 10]

I know you asked for 5 but I'm just going to go for:

 

Here, There and Everywhere

 

Never fails to make me feel tingly :-)

[Ousetunes 10]

George Martin and the Beatles was a marriage made in heaven. Yet it shouldn't have been. The Beatles were nothing more than a bunch of rough scruffs and Mr Martin was a well educated chap with the perfect BBC/Queen's English!

 

The fact remains that George Martin saw something in the Beatles (as recording artists) when others did not. Their debut album was recorded in one day, one long 12 hour session (but remember that they'd already recorded Love Me Do, PS I Love You, Please Please Me and Ask Me Why. The sessions commenced with There's A Place on 11th February 1963. They would have I Saw Her Standing There, A Taste Of Honey, Do You Want To Know A Secret, Misery, Anna (Go To Him), Boys, Chains, Baby It's You and Twist And Shout in the can by the end of that day. They also commenced Hold Me Tight which, with further work would appear on With The Beatles).

 

Please Please Me is virtually the Beatles as live artists. The only serious overdubs were the work of George Martin himself, adding piano to Misery and celesta to Baby It's You. His contribution would become more and more a central part to the sounds and ideas of the Beatles.

 

As I've mentioned elsewhere, it was George Martin's suggestion to begin She Loves You with the chorus. It is hard to imagine the song beginning without it. But the biggest impression he had on the music of the Beatles was his string arrangements and the fact that he could nurture the Beatles' love affair with music hall and comedy and incorporate it into their songs.

 

Thus, his painstaking work on Being For The Benefit Of Mr Kite or Bill Povey's lone clarinet line on Paul's When I'm 64. Maybe other producers would have laughed off such ideas; George embraced them and gave the Beatles the sounds and ideas they were after. Then his string arrangements on Eleanor Rigby, the suggestion to have a string quartet on Yesterday (as opposed to 'all that Mantovani rubbish' as Paul said) and the skill employed in joining two versions of Strawberry Fields Forever - different tempo and different key - into one (almost) seamless song.

 

If ever there was a fifth Beatle, that person was George Martin.

 

But Paul really hurt his feelings. During the recording of She's Leaving Home, George Martin - now in his own private studio - was unavailable to record the string section. In haste, Paul got Mike Leander to arrange the score - much to George Martin's regret.

 

Fortunately, they patched things up and Martin's best and most lush work is on the Beatles' final album, Abbey Road. Has there ever been a better string arrangement than on Something? Those sad, meloncoly chords, (C, Cmaj7, C7) really 'carry the weight' of the emotion in this beautiful song.

 

Grossly under-rated, Martin's contribution to the Beatles was in places enough to warrant a song-writing credit of Lennon-McCartney-Martin, but of course, that never happened. Quietly he got on with the job and the legacy is a collection of produced albums never equalled, especially when one considers the tools he had to work with.

 

Finally, happyhippy, London Town is a mighty fine album and I consider the title track one of the best songs Macca has ever written.

[Tarquin 10]

Fascinating reading again Ousetunes .You should write a book on the FAB FOUR. You have got the talent & knowledge to do it

[JenC 10]

Fascinating reading again Ousetunes .You should write a book on the FAB FOUR. You have got the talent & knowledge to do it

 

He definitely should, I'm learning so much! I'm in awe of his knowledge of the lads