I hate CNN’s coverage of the Malaysian Airlines crash too but keeping my fingers crossed this will mean the end of “Morning Joe”:
In February, the month before the plane disappeared, “Morning Joe” had a comfortable margin over “New Day,” 127,000 viewers to 79,000 in that advertiser-preferred group. So “New Day” is up more than 50 percent since then, while “Joe” is down 17 percent.
Don Lemon is an idiot and embarrassment but at least we don’t have to hear about he might run for president.
Got to be the only remotely listenable Wings song, right?
ulee
Band on the Run is good.
DougJ
@ulee:
Goes on too long.
PsiFighter37
I would appreciate if Morning Joe is cancelled and Ted Turner decided that CNN has turned to total shit since he stopped paying attention/sold and came back to run the show.
And I don’t even watch either channel. I’m stuck watching the shitshow of CNBC all day, every day when I’m at work
PF37 +4
Hunter Gathers
That moment where he entertained the idea of a black hole swallowing up the plane was quite possibly the stupidest/most hilarious moment in television news history.
We all know that Obama made the plane disappear in order to distract us from #Benghazi!
ulee
@DougJ: Three part song. Gets into the head of the outlaw and rags on the judicial tyrants. I like it.
KG
@ulee: @DougJ: you’re both right
dp
Virtually all Wings songs are listenable — that’s right in McCartney’s wheelhouse. The issue is, how many are memorable? Some, but not enough.
DougJ
@dp:
Uncle Albert is not listenable. And it’s memorable for all the wrong reasons.
John O
Let Me Roll It.
RaflW
So remind me why anyone pays attention to what Morning Blo says? I had no idea he had so few viewers, and I’m talking about the 127K.
He’s treated by the blogging/bobblehead world as if he has 1,000,000 viewers at least. Now I know he’s a joke.
DougJ
Someone Knocking at the Door and The Man Says are pretty godawful too.
I’ll grant that It’s Coming Up and Band on the Run are catchy.
WereBear
It’s easy to see, now, that McCartney provided the catchy hooks and Lennon came up with poetic lyrics and the bluesy parts.
By himself Paul is far too twee for me.
angelfoot
Junior’s Farm was a trippy little throw away.
Mnemosyne
No love for “Live and Let Die”?
Elizabelle
A good night’s sleep, restoring one’s brain cells, and you are going to throw them on the floor watching Morning Joe? Do like the music they segue with …
@angelfoot: I do like “Junior’s Farm.” Not played to death. Always turn it up on the car radio.
Amir Khalid
@Mnemosyne:
The lyricist who wrote “this ever-changing world in which we live in” should never be forgiven.
Mnemosyne
@WereBear:
That’s why the McCartney/Elvis Costello album was so good — Costello is probably the best pop lyricist of his generation.
Just give “My Brave Face” a listen.
johnnybuck
Eh, it’s all second side of Abbey Road all the time. Lazy.
dp
Let ‘Em In/Silly Love Songs were the nadir for me. Uncle Albert didn’t bother me much, and it was made up for on the same album by Backseat of My Car.
Elizabelle
“New Day” sounds like a hygiene product. Or something for incontinence.
Hungry Joe
@Mnemosyne: None here.
“But if this ever changing world in which we’re living … ” By the time I’m through cringing, wincing, sighing, rolling my eyes, and shaking my head at that, the song is over.
(Yet again, Amir Khalid beats me to it.)
Tracy Ratcliff
Wings was the AM-radio sound track for my life age 12-17, so I can’t be objective.
WereBear
@Mnemosyne: Mmmm, good point.
And I’m one of those people who loved Lennon’s solo work, so I’m on the intense side, anyway.
NotMax
@RaflW
127k is not total viewers, it’s the composite total of a demographically sought after age group of viewers.
johnnybuck
In my experience, the only people that watch Morning Squint are folks that tune into MSNBC generally and apparently find any other alternative vile.
ulee
Lennon’s How Do You Sleep is fun. Lennon could be a mean son of a bitch when he wanted to, which was often.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@WereBear: Bingo. Too twee is exactly it. But, there is @Elizabelle:
TG Chicago
The best post-Beatles songs McCartney did are “Say Say Say” and the very underrated “Temporary Secretary”.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@johnnybuck: Except for raven, who watches and mocks it so we don’t have to.
Roger Moore
@Mnemosyne:
I was going to mention that one. The Guns N’ Roses cover is pretty good, too.
dp
McCartney’s biggest post-Beatles problem was the lack of competition and editing. The same can be said of Lennon and Harrison. Having the three of them in a band together imposed a meritocracy, largely mediated by George Martin, that (1) ensured the amazing quality of their group work, but (2) made each of them feel individually stifled, (3) led to their inevitable dissolution, and (4) was a situation they never had to deal with again — who would argue with them, they were freaking Beatles!
Tony J
You don’t like Wings, the band the Beatles could have been?
And no one has mentioned Mull of Kintyre?
johnnybuck
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q): And bless his soul for that!
Pogonip
@Hunter Gathers: Maybe Obama put the plain in a black hole to distract us from eyc.
Amir Khalid
I’m listening to Helen Wheels, which is apparently a song about Paul and Linda’s Land Rover, and it’s pretty good.
Higgs Boson's Mate
Wings:
Back in the Eighties we hired a late-twenties-year old machinist who had started out in Tennessee and then traveled out to the coast. He told me that, back home, someone had had set up a date for him with a young woman who had recently graduated from High School. He said that he knew that it wasn’t going to work when he put a Wings tape in the player in his truck. She said “Ooh, Paul McCartney. Wasn’t he in some other band before Wings?”
dp
@Amir Khalid: Yes. He’s had tons, but they’ve been overwhelmed by the mediocrity and the critical/popular conventional wisdom that he’s just a hook machine.
angelfoot
“Maybe I’m Amazed” is the only post-Beatles love song by McCartney that doesn’t make me cringe. I like it.
ulee
Double Fantasy was a good album. A bit soft, but reflective and active. Yoko’s half of the album, however, really really sucked.
ulee
@angelfoot: Yes, that’s a great song.
Amir Khalid
@Higgs Boson’s Mate:
Ouch. And them young people nowadays don’t remember the Rolling Stones from before Mick was a Sir.
Pogonip
@Pogonip: Er, maybe Obama put the PLANE in…to distract us etc. fvck you ghost of Steve Jobs.
Villago Delenda Est
Band on the Run
Live and Let Die
Magneto and Titanium Man
Venus and Mars
Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey
Jet
Just off the top of my head.
Yes, they’re “Silly Love Songs”.
However, I can not forgive the monstrosity of “Wonderful Christmas Time” AIEEEE!
nellcote
@WereBear:
Thank you. I’ve hated PM for decades and always searched for a polite way to say it.
Villago Delenda Est
@Higgs Boson’s Mate: Paul McCartney was in a band before Wings?
ulee
@nellcote: PM hates you too, if it’s any comfort.
angelfoot
@ulee: You know, I used to feel that way about Yoko’s songs but some of them have grown on me. I like “Kiss Kiss Kiss” a lot, and her single “Walking on Thin Ice” too.
Summer
I loved RAM as a kid and think there are all kinds of awesomeness on that album. “Too Many People” and “Monkberry Moon Delight” still strike me as great.
WereBear
Well, Paul came from an intact family who went to music halls all the time, and John was raised by his aunt when his parents broke up and then his mother was killed by a car in front of the house he lived in.
Might have had something to do with it.
ulee
Fred Lennon, John’s absent father, showed up one day after John was successful and famous. Reportedly, John told him to get lost.
notoriousJRT
@DougJ:
IYO
srv
Would someone email John and ask him if I should see George Clinton Thursday, Friday and Saturday next week, or just do the double headers on Friday and Saturday?
Can one have too much of a good thing?
dp
@WereBear: Uh, you know McCartney’s mother died of cancer when he was young, which was one of the things that made him and Lennon connect after Lennon’s mother’s death, right? And Lennon, thanks to his custodial aunt, had the most middle-class upbringing of the four of them? He was the only one who didn’t live in council housing, i.e., the projects.
Making Lennon and McCartney one-dimensional opposites of one another does a disservice to both, and it impedes an appreciation of their respective geniuses.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@ulee: Didn’t John pretty much stiff Julian and Cynthia? Or is that anti-Yoko propaganda?
ulee
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Yes, he sure did. John was a self admitted horrible husband and father the first time around.
Long Tooth
You Tube (verb) the Wings songs: Let Me Roll and Junior’s Farm.*
BTW, did you know that the band (i.e. McCartney) were forced to start from scratch with the entire Band On The Run album? Just before hitting the studio, he lost all the music and notes he had recorded to help guide him through that process. The group was left to their memories of what the songs and lyrics sounded like– and they did a great job doing it, too.
*Heck, a person can YT the entire Band On The Run album. If you haven’t heard it, it’s worth a listen. The songs Bluebird and Mumunia are two of the nicest Macca ballads extant.
WereBear
@dp: Oh, I didn’t know about his mother! Thanks! It seems like half of what I was told at the time is lies, so I should check up now that it’s easy to do so :)
I wasn’t intent on making them one dimensional. I just think early experiences are incredibly crucial in developing the person to come, and they usually get a few pages in anyone’s bio.
After all, Harrison had this early experience:
I’ve learned my lesson! I looked it up!
PsiFighter37
Totally OT, I don’t mean to be sexist, but after surveying the Facebook, I am surprised at how many of the hotter, attractive ladies that I knew in the past have settled for much, much less when it comes to looks of their significant others.
Frankly, unless these guys have personalities that are worth killing for, I do wonder if that trope about women in their late-20s getting desperate has more than a grain of truth to it.
shelley
As Philip Henslowe in ‘Shakespeare in Love’ would say, “It’s a mystery!”
dp
@WereBear: Sorry, didn’t mean to get confrontational, but simplistic analyses of the Beatles, and particularly their solo careers, are one of my pet peeves! It’s so much more important than politics! ;-)
The fact is that they were an amazing conglomeration of talents, each of whom had/has their faults as well, and we’re lucky they all fell together at the right time.
srv
I was just listening to Oblivion Express, and thought “I wonder what he’s up to.”
Yep, Brian Auger is alive, and if you live around Cleveland or Pomeroy, you really should have something to do next week.
@PsiFighter37: Maybe it’s the size of the wallet and not the other stuff.
WereBear
@dp: Oh, true! I always felt Ringo never got proper musical credit, for one thing. Or Pete Best would be more than a footnote in history…
When I need cheering up, I remember that none of my bad decisions can hold a candle to his.
PsiFighter37
@srv: Maybe. I was poor as shit in college, so I could only dream of getting any attention. I suppose that’s lucky that my fiancee saw past that shortcoming when we started dating more than 6 years ago…
ulee
@WereBear: Ringo is the luckiest man on the planet. With a Little Help From My Friends was given to him as a gift and he hit a home run.
The Thin Black Duke
@WereBear: Well, I dunno, because from what I read, it wasn’t entirely Pete’s decision. Plus, Mr. Starkey really was a better drummer than Best. Then again, who knows? Whatever you read about the Beatles is a Rashomon Magical Mystery Tour, ain’t it? The Truth is Here, There and Everywhere.
dp
@ulee: Listen to the drumming on Rain.
opiejeanne
@Amir Khalid: I thought it was “In which we’re livin'”.
ulee
@dp: I love Rain. Ringo can drum and he is the luckiest man on the planet.
Evap
C Moon
The Thin Black Duke
@dp: Hell, listen to the drumming on “Tomorrow Never Knows”.
Long Tooth
Attention All Beatlemaniacs: If you haven’t already, do yourself a favor and read the 2013 book, ‘Tune In’ (by Mark Lewis; or ‘Lewisohn’).
Lewis is the cat granted access to the Beatles vault at EMI/Abbey Road. He is one of the handful of people on the planet who have listened to every second of the Beatles archived tape 1962-1970. Volume One of the book chronicles their lives up January 1, 1962. I really look forward to reading Volume 2.
Amir Khalid
@opiejeanne:
Your mileage may vary, but what my ears hear is “… in which we live in”.
MikeJ
Every time I thought of one that was good I’d remember that it was actually by Badfinger.
dp
@The Thin Black Duke: True.
opiejeanne
@Higgs Boson’s Mate: Ha! That’s a Billy Crystal joke he did many years ago about feeling really old; he had this same conversation with his daughter who was about 13 at the time.
dp
@ulee: Not mutually exclusive! But think how hard they had to look to find a drummer — it took them years.
gogol's wife
@dp:
I thought I didn’t like post-Beatles McCartney at all, but his recent song “My Valentine” is beautiful, “Yesterday”-quality.
gogol's wife
@Amir Khalid:
That’s what my ears year too, but I also spent years thinking there was something about a douche in “Blinded by the Light.”
Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason
@The Thin Black Duke:
I read in some history of the Beatles (I think it was the recent big one I flipped through in the bookstore) that Ringo was known as the best drummer in Liverpool at the time and that the boys sought him out.
dp
@gogol’s wife: His output has been so voluminous, there are plenty of gems alongside plenty of dreck.
ulee
Pete Best goes to heaven. “What’s wrong?” says God. “You’re in heaven.’ Pete says, “I’m pissed. Who wouldn’t be?”
Cacti
Wings was useful in that answered for all time the question of “John or Paul?”.
Amir Khalid
@gogol’s wife:
Bruce Springsteen blames that one on Manfred Mann’s mispronunciation. The Greetings From Asbury Park lyric sheet clearly says “cut loose like a deuce”.
ul
Don’t Let It Bring You Down
Call Me Back Again
Too Many People
Big Barn Bed
all kick ass
Suffern ACE
@PsiFighter37: cnbc is on in the lobby. Whenever I walk past it, I wonder if anyone had ever made a good investment decision based on the information breathlessly shouted at their viewers all day long.
AnotherBruce
I also want to put in a word for Hi Hi Hi, along with Junior’s Farm. I’m guessing that McCartney was smoking a boatload of pot in the early 70s.
Omnes Omnibus
“Jet” is a pretty good song. “Live and Let Die” is better as a GnR cover.
Belafon
My wife is watching Pitch Perfect. I go downstairs to get something to drink and one of the groups in the movie is doing an a cappella version of “The Final Countdown.” It totally cracked me up.
phein39
No. 71 et al.,
When you were young and your heart was an open book
You used to say live and let live
(you know you did, you know you did you know you did)
But if this ever changing world in which we’re living
Makes you give in and cry
For what it’s worth, until today, I always heard the last line as “makes you give it a cry”
I like mine better.
Long Tooth
@AnotherBruce: The Tokyo Police Department could assure you, that, indeed, McCartney enjoyed smoking grass while on tour during that decade. They didn’t grant him another visa for something like 35 years.
raven
Fack Paul!
Cold Turkey for me.
? Martin
The best thing about misheard song lyrics is that you can’t unhear them once pointed out to you.
Neither Ms Martin nor my kids misheard “Excuse me while I kiss this guy” until I pointed it out to them in one of the Sochi Olympics ads, and then it was just riotously funny to them because it was obviously used by the ad agency to be misheard that way.
Long Tooth
@raven: “Pete Forever! Ringo Never!”.
Omnes Omnibus
@gogol’s wife:
The line “Oh, some hazard from Harvard was skunked on beer, playin’ backyard bombardier” sounds like a description of a douche.
opiejeanne
@Amir Khalid: My ear hears that too, but my brain corrects it to the other because I can’t believe someone really wrote that and thought it was ok.
dp
@Cacti: And Elephant’s Memory doesn’t factor into that? ;-)
Roger Moore
@Suffern ACE:
Maybe by doing the opposite of what they say.
gbear
@ulee: Ringo was the best drummer in Liverpool at the time he was hired. Everyone there knew it. Pete Best was an unimaginative drummer at best. John, Paul, and George were the luckiest guys on earth for landing Ringo.
Ringo’s drumming was always kind of unique in a way that I couldn’t pin down until I heard that he’s left handed. Unlike Paul, he didn’t flip his instrument around. His style and his fills start to make a lot more sense when you realize that he wasn’t set up for the natural patterns that most drummers fall into (‘Rain’ being a prime example).
MaryRC
@WereBear: You should try to find a short story called “Snodgrass” by Ian R. Macleod in which he images a world in which John Lennon was Pete Best, i.e. he walked out/was thrown out of the Beatles before they hit it big. They were still the Beatles, but all of their songs were Paul’s …
Amir Khalid
@? Martin:
There’s a line from Sarah Mclachlan’s Angel which I cannot help hearing as “You were blown from the ribcage of yon sullen referee”. For some reason, it makes me think of this man.
PurpleGirl
The only thing I’m sure about is that when I attended the Beatles concert at Shea Stadium in 1964, there was so much yelling and screaming that if you “heard” the Beatles it was your memory of their music on records and the radio. Yes, the audience noise was just that loud and constant.
Dr. Strangelove (Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb) is starting on the TeeVee; Fail Safe just ended. Always loved the whole title for Dr. Strangelove.)
ulee
@gbear: Being the best drummer in Liverpool might have landed you a lay and a payday, but hooking up with Lennon/McCartney sort of makes you lucky. What part of that are you missing?
raven
@Amir Khalid: And this version is killer.
Cacti
@dp:
And Elephant’s Memory doesn’t factor into that? ;-)
The best thing that can be said for Wild Life is that it only has 8 songs.
No such luck with McCartney II.
Amir Khalid
@MaryRC:
I remember reading a story by Gregory Benford, written in the mid-1970s, about a man who kills John Lennon with the intention of impersonating Lennon. I think it was titled Doing Lennon.
raven
Ringo’s only drum solo.
WereBear
@MaryRC: Mmm, mere thought is intriguing, thanks.
Roger Moore
@? Martin:
Summertime, and your mother’s easy.
dp
@raven: That is spectacular.
different-church-lady
@ulee: Lennon & McCartney were just as lucky to find a talented, inventive and utterly reliable drummer who was willing to put up with their abuse for 8 years.
dp
@Cacti: Lennon definitely benefits from the relative paucity of his post-Beatles output. Hell, “Maybe I’m Amazed,” which stacks up against anything by anybody, is the only song worth a damn on McCartney.
raven
@dp: And in the end. . .
pete
Paul McCartney was in a band? Wings ended more than thirty years ago! Yeah, he can be facile, and twee, and annoying, but he can also rock like a MF, and he’s been doing it (and drawing large audiences) for more than fifty years. Really, he’s quite good. (Even though he was my least-favorite Beatle.)
johnnybuck
@gbear: And this accounts for their very unique sound. Ringo is a true artist.
different-church-lady
@pete: And that’s the whole McCartney paradox: the same guy who could blister paint with the solo on Tax Man would make them spend 37 days doing Maxwell’s Silver Hammer.
I mean, listen to Your Mother Should Know and honestly tell me you couldn’t understand why Lennon wanted out of that group.
pete
@different-church-lady: Yeah, great example
WereBear
The Scorsese documentary on George Harrison is wonderful; it was on HBO last year. There’s a great reminiscence by Ringo, to the effect that he and John were sitting in his garden, tripping on acid, and grooving… while in the house, the phone rings. And both of them simultaneously say, “It’s that Paul. Wanting us to work.”
And that’s the thing. If you have a work ethic that keeps you pumping out songs, that considers inspiration secondary, who prides themselves as the kind of workman for whom the pump never runs dry, then you are going to have a large output, and a lot of dreck silting up the bottom.
Bailey
I can’t help it, but I’m a big fan of Wings-era “Nineteen Hundred and Eighty Five”, “Mrs.Vandebilt” “Daytime/Nighttime Suffering” and “Rockshow” (in addition to the other tracks already named in this thread.) I even enjoy some of his music hall inspired pieces like “You Gave Me the Answer.”
Always felt Wings was a bit underrated. Compared to the Beatles, yeah, sure, but as entry into 70s rock in general? Not bad.
As a sidenote, I’ve seem PM in concert 5 times. the most recent last summer in Seattle. The man, at 71 years old, freaking TEARS IT UP in concert. Seattle featured a bit of a mini-Nirvana reunion as well and it was nothing short of epic. Just a marvelous performer, the likes of which we are lucky to have in our midst.
ulee
@different-church-lady: I’d take that abuse. And if I could drum, all the better. Stu couldn’t play the bass but they kept him around, until he died. My guess is that Pete just didn’t fit in.
gbear
@different-church-lady: You’re Mother Should Go.
Paul did manage to write a lyric strong enough to get him banned by the BBC when Wings released ‘Give Ireland Back To The Irish’.
Bailey
@dp:
I’d agree that “Maybe I’m Amazed” is killer output by anyone at anytime but would argue that “Every Night” is a solid recording on “McCartney” and for a little throw away ditty, “Junk” is a great tune.
tybee
@ulee:
uncle albert
ETA: and fuck the unbelievers.
raven
@WereBear: The Tribute Concert is insane.
Bailey
@ulee:
Stu left the band before he died, but at any rate, he didn’t last until the era that the Beatles entered a recording studio or had a real manager requesting changes–a time in which Best’s real deficiencies were further revealed. But yeah, as a bonus he didn’t fit in culturally with the band, so there is that.
raven
@tybee: Hey, I keep trying to catch you. Headed to Jekyll Thursday to try some fishin. Tips? Know any guides?
hilts
Got to be the only remotely listenable Wings song, right?
You’re forgetting Junior’s Farm. I’d also cut McCartney some slack because he wrote more than enough great songs with the Beatles
For Beatles fans in the NYC area, the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts’ exhibit Ladies and Gentlemen…The Beatles! runs thru May 10 http://www.nypl.org/events/exhibitions/ladies-and-gentlementhe-beatles?hspace=244958
Bob In Portland
The New York Times has kind of retracted the propaganda about Russian military in eastern Ukraine.
raven
Here’s the whole Harrison Tribute Concert at 147:25 watch Paul and his ukelele and hang on to your hat.
dp
@Bailey: Those are some good songs.
Villago Delenda Est
@Bob In Portland: Let’s roast some Colorado beetles!
dp
@Bailey: True enough, they just pale in comparison. Of course, I dis output that I would be more than proud to have produced myself! ;-)
My first response was to your 7:25 post; this one was to your 7:30 post,
Long Tooth
@dp: Maybe I’m Amazed is the best song, for sure. Still, the man played every instrument, and sang every song. Of course, others have done the same (and I always find the vibe stilted). But ‘McCartney’ remains a virtuoso performance of nice little toe tappers, easily recalled, preformed by a guy in the middle of a post-Beatle nervous breakdown. Or so he’s on record of having said..
ulee
I like Harrison’s say about lead guitarists now. –They’re good, but they all sound like the same fellow—When you hear Harrison, you know you’re hearing Harrison.
raven
Call the Midwife on deck!
MaryRC
@Amir Khalid: Yes, I’ve read the Benford story too. The guy has himself cryogenically frozen in order to impersonate Lennon when he is unthawed in the future. It actually works for awhile …
I like the MacLeod story better, though. Interesting that both MacLeod and Benford are science fiction writers although the MacLeod story doesn’t imagine a future world, just an alternate one.
tybee
@raven:
don’t know any guides in jekyll. a bit further north, around townsend, i could maybe recommend a couple.
last sunday, after our oyster stalking expedition, we met a boat coming back in from offshore with a tale or three: http://www.coastaloutdoors.com/ibf/index.php?showtopic=27778
gbear
@Bailey: McCartney was pretty actively trying to get Stu fired, but John was the leader at that point and Stu was John’s best friend. Stu quit the band to stay with his German girlfriend.
George Martin wasn’t going to let Pete Best play at their recording sessons. He knew Pete couldn’t cut it so he brought in a session drummer. Martin didn’t know The Beatles had already come to the same opinion and fired Pete. When Ringo showed up for the first recording sessions, Martin stuck with his decision to use a session drummer so Ringo didn’t get to play on the original single version of Love Me Do.
Tommy
@PsiFighter37: I didn’t realize Ted can back to CNN. I often think he has to be sick to this stomach, cause when he owned the station I thought it was pretty amazing. I don’t follow the news stations that closely anymore, but it seemed CNN broke onto the scene cause they actually had reporters in offices all over the world. Pretty sure many of these close after Ted sold, cause well they are expensive and maybe sometimes there isn’t any “news” going on there.
YellowJournalism
@Belafon: I love that movie so much. It’s the movie-watching equivalent of comfort food. Has some great covers, too, like “Bright Lights, Bigger City.”
raven
@tybee: k, thanks. I think I’m going to have to stick to something out of Jekyll so my bride and the pups don’t have to drive all over.
Bailey
@gbear:
Correct.
And the same fate would have come to Stu had he lived long enough to see the Beatles get a recording contract–or had not left the band on his own to stay behind in Germany. Friend or not, George Martin (or any professional producer, really) wasn’t going to let Stu play on the records–he was a friend, he wasn’t a skilled musician.
ulee
The Beatle’s cover of Twist and Shout is the apex of Western Civilization.
ruviana
@? Martin: My brother remains convinced that in Nineteenth Nervous Breakdown Mick is singing “Billy Tom” (“Billy Tom, Billy Tom–here comes your nineteenth nervous breakdown”) he kept wondering who Billy Tom was and why he had so many nervous breakdowns.
Long Tooth
@ulee: Ulee: Mine is just the idle curiosity of a first wave Beatlemaniac– how old are you?
dp
@raven: It brings tears to my eyes.
Eljai
So, apparently y’all would rather discuss The Beatles than Morning Joe or CNN. That is why I love you all very much.
dp
@ulee: That’s the key — they perfected the rock and roll of Elvis, Chuck Berry, Buddy Holly, Little Richard, the Beach Boys, Motown, etc., and didn’t stop there — they went forward.
ulee
@Long Tooth: I’m 48, but my mother played the Beatles in our house when I was growing up. I thought Billy Shears was a Beatle.
WaterGirl
@raven: I downloaded the video so I can watch it later. Thanks for that.
Elizabelle
@Eljai:
It’s what history will do.
scav
@Eljai: I rather enjoy the local propensity to discuss CNN in threads devoted to the Beatles as well. Plus the errant exploding whale sighting.
sheldon vogt
@Higgs Boson’s Mate: hey nineteen
PsiFighter37
@Tommy: Covering things as they are happening isn’t ground-breaking, but you know something’s gone wrong when you want ”experts’ to analyze what is going on, and Jake Asshat Tapper and Candy ‘not hot enough to be a porn star by a long shot’ Crowley are what qualify as ‘experts’.
PF37 +waiting for GoT and stopped counting
Omnes Omnibus
@sheldon vogt: No, that’s Aretha Franklin.
Cacti
@Bob In Portland:
Here’s what some of your anti-fascist friends in eastern Ukraine have been up to:
Aside from the super progressive not fascist activity of abducting and assaulting journalists…
How odd that locals would need to ask directions.
different-church-lady
@gbear:
The interests of didacticism force me to note that your details are a bit munged.
Best played at the artist/recording test on June 6, 1962. As is typical of Beatles yore, the basic outlines of the recollections are consistent, but the details vary from telling to telling, even from the same person. But a recent document (Recording the Beatles) has George Martin recalling that he said to Brian Epstein (paraphrase), “I don’t care if you fire Best, but I’m not using him on the records.” Apparently the lads and Epstein were already thinking Pete wasn’t working out, and Martin’s reaction to his talents was the final straw they needed to do the deed.
Whether said firing took place before or after Martin’s comments, in the event the Beatles showed up at Abbey Road on Sept. 4 to tackle their debut single, Ringo in tow, and no session drummer booked. Martin was pushing “How Do You Do It” on them, but they pushed back with “Love Me Do”. They recorded both, with Ringo playing drums on the latter. Martin was on the fence about which to use, and they did mixes of both tunes.
On Sept. 11, they returned for another go at Love Me Do. Some accounts have Martin hiring Andy White to drum on the session, others credit Martin’s assistant Ron Richards with the idea. (Richards was producer that day, with Martin only showing up towards the end of the session).
Whether it be through confusion or preference, in the end the Sept. 4/Ringo version of Love Me Do was the one used for the original single release. And whether through carelessness or policy, both the twin-track session tapes and the mono mix of the Ringo version were lost not too long afterwards. These twin losses lead to the stereo LP mix and later mono single releases being sourced from the Sept. 11/Andy White session.
Long Tooth
@ulee: You’re a good sport. I’m 59, and have an eight year old’s memory of the JFK assassination-extravaganza weekend, and then the Fabs on the Sullivan show 3 months later.
hilts
@Eljai:
What can one say about Morning Joe besides the fact that it’s a super sized, putrid, steaming pile of excrement and that CNN is now challenging Fox News for the title of the biggest laughingstock in journalism?
The Beatles are timeless and a discussion of their music never gets stale.
different-church-lady
@Eljai:
Why do any of those things when we can witness an obsessive serial flamewar over who wears the white hats in Ukraine?
Mnemosyne
@different-church-lady:
When you turn on your flamethrower, remember that there’s no such position as They both suck.
Eljai
@hilts: Yes, when you put it like that. Now, I wonder if I still have a copy of Band on the Run somewhere…
dp
@different-church-lady: Wait a minute — there are white hats in Ukraine?
ruemara
@PsiFighter37: As a non-hot type, I wouldn’t know, because I’ve always been the hotness lacking end of my relationships. They really may have found some stunning males of personality hotness.
gbear
@Long Tooth: 59 here too. Watching the Beatles on Ed Sullivan was a life-changing moment.
Long Tooth
@gbear: It took the release of Hard Day’s Night to rock my (by then) 9 year old soul. That’s when I started humming their tunes, along with everyone else.
Flash forward 6-7 years, and their entire catalog had been permanently hard wired into my memory, where it remains unto 6:03 PST. Greetings from Sonoma County, Ca.
scav
@dp: Only if the contrast knob is broken on your B&W tube TV set with the tin-foil rabbit ears.
different-church-lady
@dp: I didn’t say the flamewar made sense…
different-church-lady
@Long Tooth:
Really? Even “Yes It Is”?
gbear
@Long Tooth: St. Paul MN here then and now. Not as much going on here as in CA (especially in February) so I caught the bug instantly. Still remember seeing A Hard Day’s Night at the Arcade Theater on the east side. It took a while for the catalog to get permantly embedded because we were more into buying 45’s than albums. I had to play some catch-up once Sgt. Pepper came out. I didn’t have all the US albums until the early 70’s and then had to re-learn them when I discovered that the original UK albums were completely different than ours.
gbear
@different-church-lady: ‘Yes It Is’ and ‘I’m Down’ got embedded early because we bought 45’s.
different-church-lady
@gbear: I was thinking of going with “The Inner Light”, but George gets too much abuse in general.
A fun Beatlephile game would be “Most obscure record they made.” Certainly those two tunes would be on it. Hell, I’ve been a fan since I was 5, and I’m pretty sure last week was the first time I’d ever heard “I Call Your Name”
Comrade Mary
@angelfoot: I liked those, too. I also have a soft spot for Bad Dancer, but half the charm is from the video.
gbear
@different-church-lady: ‘I Call Your Name’ was one of the first songs I learned. It’s on the US Beatles Second Album. Mom made us choose between that album or Meet The Beatles. No way was she going to buy us both!
I’d put ‘Inner Light’ and ‘You Know My Name (Look Up My Number)’ as my two most obscure songs. Once Sgt. Pepper came out, I quit buying the 45s.
kindness
I like Wings. Band on the Run and Venus & Mars are great albums. I bought their Greatest Hits just to add Junior’s Farm to my iTunes library.
DougJ
@ruviana:
It does kind of sound like that!
Long Tooth
@different-church-lady: Yeah, I knew Yes It Is by heart by the time the Fabs folded shop. And by ’72 I was buying their bootlegs. I remember one was entitled Yellow Matter Custard, and was a compilation of their BBC recordings (this decades before the “official release”).. I also scored their Star Club recording about that time.
Mike E
@WereBear:
And, if you’re George Patton, believing you have the right instrument in the right place at the right time, you might desire to take on the Bolsheviks beyond the European Theater and settle the score once and for all, too. You just might want to do that.
Yes, The Beatles were that great.
James E. Powell
@dp:
The fact is that they were an amazing conglomeration of talents, each of whom had/has their faults as well, and we’re lucky they all fell together at the right time.
The almost miraculous facts are that they were born within hailing distance of each other, that they met and decided to join together rather than compete, and that they stayed together through their formative years, working very hard to be better.
Anyone whose ever been in a garage band knows how hard it is to stay together.
mai naem
Nobody’s mentioned With A Little Luck. I know it’s not some Beatles standard like Yesterday but it is a pretty sweet song. Also too, Mull of Kintyre. Kind of mournful haunting song. It was the top song of the year in the UK when it came out – ’79 or ’80.
notoriousJRT
@Bailey:
Agree.
But, then, I have loved Paul since I was six years old listening to my sister play
“Meet the Beatles!” after my bedtime.
notoriousJRT
I am also a fan of “Sally G.” Very country.
Fred
@ulee: “Yoko’s half of the album really, really sucked.”
I remember watching John and Yoko plus Plastic Ono Band on “The Mike Douglas Show” with my mom. When Yoko sang her solo my mom smiled and said, “He REALLY loves her.” I think that is the the most accurate review of Yoko Ono’s unique talent. Her voice could peel paint.
I mostly can’t stand McCartney’s solo work. Good musicianship but just pointless fluff that rambles all over the place. But that’s just me. I sure can’t do as well.
droog
Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey is not a Wings song. It is found in Ram, before McCartney formed Wings. Ram is on par with his previous self-titled album, which is to say it’s a cracking LP.
The problem, if any, with UA/AH is as mentioned by others above: McCartney had been doing the same stuff to great acclaim on the Beatles’ final albums, but lacking input from John and George it comes across as twee. However, if you listen to it as part of Paul’s first two post-Beatles albums which are more introverted and sparse the song offers a refreshing comic break.
Sondra
@RaflW: Ole Joe is yet another example of wingnut welfare I guess. A normal response to such low numbers would be to ditch him. I don’t watch him or Don Lemon, but I think I sort of remember Don Lemon was not an idiot before he got this slot.
Maybe he is just “acting” the part of an idiot. Sort of the obverse of Colbert? Which would mean he’s a very good actor because I believe him to be an idiot now.