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CaptainCorella

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slewan
well, at least the Beatles wrote their song while the Stones covered Chuck Berry

It's impossible to overemphasise how important the above point actually is.

Up until then it was 100% assumed that the artists would be the puppets of the A&R folk in the record company. The chance combination of Lennon/McCartney and the maverick George Martin (for all of his assumed posh appearance) was the key for this.

It's astonishing that a band's FIRST release was allowed to be their own composition. It's astonishing that they stood their ground and refused to properly record the next song that was offered, and went with "Please Please Me".

The vast importance of the fact of the breakthrough that The Beatles were central to far outweighs any subjective discussion of which was the better single. (And I write that as someone who has posted here before that Chuck Berry is the true GodFather of most of what we know as pop and rock music today).

Cliff Richard and The Shadows were releasing self-composed singles for years beforehand (as well as making zany movies and appearing on the Ed Sullivan Show). Just because they "only" made it big in the rest of the world and not the USA means that their importance and influence are constantly overlooked (even Keith Richards admited in 'Life' that an early favourite of his was Cliff's 'Travelin' Light').

Also, love him or hate him, but Cliff Richard continued having chart-topping singles well into the 21st century, long after the Stones and Macca were struggling to get into the top 20.

Here's 1962's 'Bachelor Boy', written by Cliff Richard and [Shadows bassist] Bruce Welch, live on the Ed Sullivan Show in 1963:







Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 2023-01-06 10:19 by Congratulations.

...yes,the Shedows and Clff records (1960 1964) are sadly constantly overlooked today......

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jp.M
...yes,the Shedows and Clff records (1960 1964) are sadly constantly overlooked today......

Cliff’s early recordings with the Shadows were utterly terrific. Nine Times Out Of Ten being my favourite. Hank Marvin’s influence cannot be underestimated either. Such a unique guitarist.

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CaptainCorella

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slewan
well, at least the Beatles wrote their song while the Stones covered Chuck Berry

It's impossible to overemphasise how important the above point actually is.

Up until then it was 100% assumed that the artists would be the puppets of the A&R folk in the record company. The chance combination of Lennon/McCartney and the maverick George Martin (for all of his assumed posh appearance) was the key for this.

It's astonishing that a band's FIRST release was allowed to be their own composition. It's astonishing that they stood their ground and refused to properly record the next song that was offered, and went with "Please Please Me".

The vast importance of the fact of the breakthrough that The Beatles were central to far outweighs any subjective discussion of which was the better single. (And I write that as someone who has posted here before that Chuck Berry is the true GodFather of most of what we know as pop and rock music today).

right.
Maybe the Beatles' greatest achievement was that they were the first to break the record company's power. The Beatles were able and clever enough to use their market power to set their own rules. So they didn't let the record company decide any more which songs became singles, which songs were put on albums etc.

Dave Clark had (and still has) far more control over the band's music than the Beatles, the Stones, and just about everyone else. A real pioneer.

George Martin. I have very mixed emotions about him: yes, he had a very commercial "ear" (indeed, he recognised the potential of 'How Do You Do It', as quickly proven by Gerry and The Pacemakers' chart-topper), but he also smoothed the rough edges off the band. Imagine what 'I Feel Fine' and 'Ticket To Ride' could've sounded like with someone like Shel Talmy producing!

Love Me Do, clearly.

Even the Stones didn't want Come On as their first single.

Of all of Chuck's songs they could have covered, this was one of them.

Love Me Do

Stones are my #1, but it took them a minute to catch up and indeed surpass.

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treaclefingers
Even the Stones didn't want Come On as their first single.

Of all of Chuck's songs they could have covered, this was one of them.

It's a fabulous cover. The Stones album I grew up with (which my parents bought when I was 3) was the UK version of 'Big Hits (High Tide and Green Grass)', and 'Come On' fit on there perfectly.

It was still influencing cool American bands as late as 1967!







Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 2023-01-06 18:38 by Congratulations.

Despite having a preference for Love Me Do, I do really like the Stones’ rendition of Come On. My late father bought the single in ‘63, as a fourteen-year-old. He kept all his vinyl, and it was one of his many 45’s that I’d spin often. What i like about the track - and the b-side, too - is that it doesn’t really sound like anything that’d come after. I’m not sure if it’s Mick’s vocals, or the overall performance, but it just sounds unique to me. Charlie’s drumming on I Want To Be Loved is great.

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Congratulations

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treaclefingers
Even the Stones didn't want Come On as their first single.

Of all of Chuck's songs they could have covered, this was one of them.

It's a fabulous cover. The Stones album I grew up with (which my parents bought when I was 3) was the UK version of 'Big Hits (High Tide and Green Grass)', and 'Come On' fit on there perfectly.

It was still influencing cool American bands as late as 1967!

I don't hate it...it's alright. But I wouldn't say it's a strong cover, that's all. And if we're to compare which is better, Love Me Do flipped the script.

I don't think that's bad to say. One has to give credit where it's due.

Come On is not even one of Chucks better originals, and ultimately it's far from being one of the Stone's better covers.
I do like it for what it is - a very early Stones cover, but the future for the band was much brighter.

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Rip this joint, gonna save your soul, round and round and round we go......

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floodonthepage
Love Me Do

Stones are my #1, but it took them a minute to catch up and indeed surpass.

I agree, the few Beatle songs I like are the very early singles. When the Stones love of music led to songwriting and their own sound, the Beatles couldn't keep up, they couldn't even tour or continue.

"Love Me Do" was a tentative, medium-paced, clean, family-friendly melodic pop song - as if they've intended to not shock the elders all too much - in comparison "Come On" has decidedly more edge and dirt, and despite being a cover, already hints at the more aggressive sound that was to follow, a difference that's even more evident when one compares the Stones' 2nd single "I Wanna Be Your Man" with the Beatles original...

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Congratulations
Dave Clark had (and still has) far more control over the band's music than the Beatles, the Stones, and just about everyone else. A real pioneer.

Hmmmm....

Whilst he most definitely gets a vast amount of credit for saving the video tapes of Ready Steady Go! (which would otherwise have been deleted), he loses almost all of the credit for the way he treated the recorded shows.

If you are unfortunate enough to get hold of one of his RSG! re-releases you'll see that the performances are chopped up and not as broadcast, PLUS there's invariably a DC5 performance (in an empty studio in every one I've seen) dropped in to falsely represent that the DC5 were ever-present at RSG!. Ridiculous misrepresentation.

RSG was switched on excitement, and the worst thing possible is to fiddle with them, and that's what DC did. Shame on him.

A re-release of all of the shows, as broadcast, would be a wonderful thing.

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Captain Corella
60 Years a Fan

I was referring to him striking business deals that allowed him to produce the band's recordings and gave him complete control of the master recordings. No-one else was doing that in 1964.

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treaclefingers
Love Me Do, clearly.

Even the Stones didn't want Come On as their first single.

Of all of Chuck's songs they could have covered, this was one of them.

LOL!

(It was our decision to record it.) Nobody else knew it and to the best of our knowledge nobody had done it. I don't think it was very good, in fact it was shit... It really was shit. God knows how it ever got in the charts, it was such a hype. In fact we disliked it so much we didn't do it on any of our gigs... Eventually we did it in the ballrooms and the people seemed to dig it.

- Mick Jagger, 1974


The first single was Chuck Berry's Come On. It was middle ground, but it was also very, very pop. We threw it in along with a couple of Bo Diddley songs and I think it was chosen because it was so obviously more chart-orientated. We did listen to Decca's feedback, obviously - not that it was particularly interesting. It might have been Andrew Oldham along with a few people like Dick Rowe making the decision. It really didn't matter to us; we just wanted to put it out. Then the record did so much better than we had expected and suddenly we were being told to wear the houndstooth check jackets. That one track did it.

- Keith Richards, 2003

[www.timeisonourside.com]

ROCKMAN

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Rockman

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2023-01-06 23:34 by Congratulations.

Hank Marvin - LEGEND.

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Rip this joint, gonna save your soul, round and round and round we go......

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Hairball
Hank Marvin - LEGEND.

Britain's 1st guitar hero!

Love Me Do
Come On

Even the title of each song lays out where each group was coming from.
One was coming for your mothers and grandmothers and the other was coming for your daughters!

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Congratulations
I was referring to him striking business deals that allowed him to produce the band's recordings and gave him complete control of the master recordings. No-one else was doing that in 1964.

I know. That's why I only mentioned his utterly disrespectful, and misleading, treatment of the RSG! shows.

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Captain Corella
60 Years a Fan

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Paddy
Love Me Do
Come On

Even the title of each song lays out where each group was coming from.
One was coming for your mothers and grandmothers and the other was coming for your daughters!

Flip them over, and the difference is even more stark:

P.S. I Love You (ahhh, how sweet...)
I Want To Be Loved (yikes! these ragamuffins are seriously horny!)



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 2023-01-07 11:20 by Congratulations.

Oh my God, if the Stones would later form their image, to go with their raw, blues-based music, as 'anti-Beatles', their first attempt as a recording artist was more like trying to be 'anti-Rolling Stones', both in music and image.

After signing them to Decca, Andrew tried his best polish them and make them a politically correct pop band. This seems to be written out of history, or forgotten, since the phase was short and unsignificant, but that's what he did! And the boys, thrilled for having a recording contract and a sudden window opened for them being pop stars, followed the orders. And like trying to clothe them to alike uniforms, "Come On" was an attempt to provide a catchy radio-friendly pop number. You know, like the ones The Beatles were now doing in a row. Naturally their club circuit blues material, non-commercial by nature, didn't provide any, so they needed to look a bit further. Choosing a Berry number was probably the only nod to their musical background. Chuck Berry was, or at least his hits were, pretty well-known in UK so the idea was also to pick up a song that wasn't so well-known (they would continue this policy by not picking up so obvious Berry numbers later, and much, with much better results, and some of those songs are made popular by them). Or probably ALO thought that this Berry number could be most easily transformed into a Beatle-like pop number.

And oh man, did they try to sound so 'contemporary'. So safe and cute as they ever could. Actually, if we listen their version of "Come On", its arrangement idea, the very beat, derives from the latest Beatles single, "From Me To You". Keith especially was listening closely the rhytmn guitar of that track.

Thankfully, after this doomed but thank god short phase to follow this normal show business route and ape the trendy Beatles, they would rediscover their own identity both musical and image-wise, relying on their Richmond days. This was something Andrew had also realized when he started building up his 'anti-Beatles' strategy for the band. Funnily, their next single, although written by Lennon/McCartney, provided such a raw soundscape that it would take probably The Sex Pistols to come up something as shocking again. It's The Singer, Not the Song indeed.

But I love "Come On". It has a certain charm, and one could almost hear the hidden rage there, like the dudes doing their best holding their horses and trying to act nice. But they don't sound nice and cheerful like the Beatles singles at all, but strangely defiant, dark, bluesy, even threatening. Like looking those photos of them posing in similar suits. How uncomfortable, especially Mick and Keith, look like! But soon they would let the tigers out...

Hey Beatles fans over here! Now it is your chance to meet the Stones at your own playground. Here they truely are following the steps by the Beatles. After this the Stones would create such a route of their own and define their own criteria of greatness in where Beatles pop, no matter how genius it is, has no room.

- Doxa



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2023-01-07 14:30 by Doxa.

One thing that should perhaps be pointed out is that 'Come On' wasn't that obscure, as it was the B-side of Chuck's No. 38 UK hit 'Go-Go-Go' a couple of years earlier. By contrast, songs like 'Roll Over Beethoven', 'Johnny B. Goode', Carol' and 'Rock and Roll Music', were, unbelievably, complete chart failures in the UK.

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Congratulations

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Paddy
Love Me Do
Come On

Even the title of each song lays out where each group was coming from.
One was coming for your mothers and grandmothers and the other was coming for your daughters!

Flip them over, and the difference is even more stark:

P.S. I Love You (ahhh, how sweet...)
I Want To Be Loved (yikes! these ragamuffins are seriously horny!)

Ha...good point. And I think this is a better comparison to make, a 'more fair' comparison if you will as you get a version of the band that is more identifiable, and yes what a stark difference, not only between the two bands, but between side a and side b!

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Big Al

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Hairball

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Big Al
When making comparisons, it is fair to note that their respective images were purely manufactured by management for marketing purposes. Epstein wanted his act to be well turned-out, smart, uniformed and respectable, whilst Oldham thought he’d create the complete antithesis: scruffy and unruly. It shouldn’t be forgotten that, only a short while before they recorded Love Me Do, they presented themselves as leather-clad rockers, whilst performing in Hamburg nightclubs to an audience consisting of drunken sailors and prostitutes. The Stones’ beginnings? They were performing in leafy, middle-class Surrey, to well-behaved teenagers, ‘rebelling’ against their parents. To summarise: the Beatles were rough and tough northerners; the Stones were from quite a different background; especially that of Mick and Brian.

Excerpt from the late, great Lemmy's memoir White Line Fever from 2002:



“The Beatles were hard men. Brian Epstein cleaned them up for mass consumption, but they were anything but sissies. They were from Liverpool, which is like Hamburg or Norfolk, Virginia – a hard, sea-farin’ town, all these dockers and sailors around all the time who would beat the piss out of you if you so much as winked at them. Ringo’s from the Dingle, which is like the @#$%& Bronx.”

“The Rolling Stones were the mummy’s boys – they were all college students from the outskirts of London. They went to starve in London, but it was by choice, to give themselves some sort of aura of disrespectability. I did like the Stones, but they were never anywhere near the Beatles – not for humor, not for originality, not for songs, not for presentation. All they had was Mick Jagger dancing about. Fair enough, the Stones made great records, but they were always shit on stage, whereas the Beatles were the gear.” - Lemmy (RIP)

Ah, The great Lemmy Kilmister, that wise, old sage. He was spot-on... as usual!

The

Yes. He was also once a roadie for Jimi Hendrix, and saw the Beatles live in the early days - he seemingly lived a thousand lives!
And while his quote about the Stones being "shit" on stage seems a bit farfetched, his take on the Stones manufactured image is much more accurate and believable.

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Rip this joint, gonna save your soul, round and round and round we go......

-



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2023-01-07 22:25 by frankotero.

From GOLDMINE:

The Paul McCartney '7-inch Singles Box' is a once-in-a-lifetime release
There's a reason why the legendary Beatle's 7” Singles Box set was a highly prized collectible: it's a gem and should be treated as one.

By John M. Borack

Macca-Singles

It’s no secret that Paul McCartney has had a hand in some of the finest, most innovative singles of the rock and roll era, both with The Beatles and during his storied solo career, which is now well into its sixth decade. One could make a strong case for bestowing the title of the Greatest Record Ever Made upon such 7-inch legends as “Paperback Writer”/”Rain,” “Penny Lane”/”Strawberry Fields Forever,” “Hey Jude”/”Revolution” or even “We Can Work it Out”/”Day Tripper.”

But Sir Paul certainly did not misplace his hit-making mojo or songwriting magic after The Beatles split in 1970; au contraire, he was churning out some of the tastiest ear candy to hit the airwaves and the charts in the ‘70s and ‘80s (with and without Wings). While singles such as “Jet,” “Band on the Run,” “Silly Love Songs,” “Junior’s Farm” and “My Brave Face” (to name but a handful) may not carry the same aura of coolness as The Beatles tunes for some, they still stand as top-drawer songs and rank as some of McCartney’s best-ever efforts released via the 45 RPM format. And while the top 10 singles chart action may have ceased (for the most part) for McCartney in the U.S. and the U.K. by the end of the ‘80s, his gift for melody and crafting catchy singles has continued unabated.

That’s one of the many reasons why the limited edition 7” Singles Box is such a treat: aside from the fact that it’s beautifully appointed (we’ll get to that in a sec), it contains an amazing cross-section of material from 1971 (the sweet character study “Another Day,” backed with the raging “Oh Woman, Oh Why”) to the present day (the Lead Belly-influenced “Women and Wives”). It’s somewhat akin to “Paul McCartney: This is Your Life,” as it contains large doses of everything that has helped to make the man one of the premier tunesmiths of our generation, all wrapped up in 80, career-spanning 7” singles. There’s Paul as pop craftsman supreme (“With a Little Luck,” “Let ‘Em In”), as the self-proclaimed “mad professor” (“Temporary Secretary”), as hopeless romantic (“No More Lonely Nights,” “Waterfalls,” “My Love”), as ace interpreter (the haunting “No Other Baby”), as stoned experimentalist (“Check My Machine,” “C Moon”), as a legendary live performer (“Maybe I’m Amazed,” “Coming Up”), and so much more.

The set is housed in a custom-made wooden crate and limited to 3,000 copies. In addition to the 80 singles — 15 of which have not previously been released in the 7” format — each box includes one exclusive test pressing randomly selected from the manufacturing process. (Our set included the “Jenny Wren”/”Summer of ‘59” single.) The majority of the singles feature hard-cover picture sleeves with restored original artwork from 11 different countries. (The “Venus and Mars/Rock Show” sleeve from Belgium is very smart looking, but the less said about the garish “My Love” sleeve from Israel, the better; the original Italian or French issues would have been much more stylish choices.)

Also included is an expertly annotated, 148-page book with an enthusiastically illuminating foreword from McCartney—where he gives a shout out to “You Know My Name (Look Up the Number)” and “Ode to a Koala Bear”—and an excellent essay by Rob Sheffield, along with recording notes, and US and UK release dates and chart information on each single.

The 7” Singles Box contains 163 tracks, with more than 50 being newly remastered for this collection. The production notes state that everything has been “optimized for vinyl,” whether it is the 2022 remasters or those done for McCartney’s Archive Series releases or 2016’s Pure McCartney compilation. Among the tracks that shine particularly brightly due to the ’22 remastering are two underrated late ‘70s rockers, “Girls’ School” and “I’ve Had Enough,” along with the gorgeous London Town ballad, “I’m Carrying,” and the 1974 country weeper, “Sally G.” Alternately (and strangely), the tracks from 1979’s Back to the Egg LP sound strangely flat.

There are tons of goodies sprinkled throughout: two unreleased demos (“Dance Tonight” and “[I Want to] Come Home”); a previously unheard 7” single edit of the oddly trancey “Secret Friend”; a freshly remastered mono 45 of “Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey” and “Too Many People”; a previously unissued 45 with a single edit of “Love is Strange” backed with “I Am Your Singer” (which was slated to be Wings’ debut single until it was nixed in favor of the topical “Give Ireland Back to the Irish”); a previously unreleased mix of the gorgeous “Only Love Remains”; a B-side called “Walking in the Park with Eloise,” an instrumental written by Paul’s father Jim McCartney and originally released in 1974 under the moniker The Country Hams; and three singles from Flaming Pie reformatted from their original iteration as picture discs.

The hits that helped define his solo career; glorious singles that failed to attract US record buyers (the aforementioned “Only Love Remains,” “Hope of Deliverance”); sorely undervalued B-sides (“Daytime Nighttime Suffering,” “Fabulous,” “Back on My Feet”); rarities and more. It’s all here, expertly curated and nicely packaged. If you’re a Paul McCartney fan and/or collector and you can scare up a copy of The 7” Singles Box, grab it. It’s already a highly prized collectible and it’s bursting with 10 hours’ worth of wonderful music from one of the masters.

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Rip this joint, gonna save your soul, round and round and round we go......

His solo music is 90 percent superficial fluff.