I have to go with the Stones for this single v single. The Beatles single is top class pop craft recorded in one of the best studios in the world, but lacking in edge...

NFA is a killer recording, which shows what a great band the Stones were and how ace they were at arranging. The Rolling Stones sound! At this point I think they could have sang the phone book and made it sound exciting. See the Rice Krispies ad for example.

The B side, Little By Little, giving us a perfect slice of Brian and Keith's guitar interplay.

Both recorded in a demo studio!

Oh yes! The Stones had already made their breakthrough, touring the country and making headlines. ALO's 'anti-Beatles' image strategy was working. But most of all, they were the leading band in the r&b movement - a movement that was showing its middle-finger towards the Beatles-lead Mersey Beat movement. "I Wanna Be Your Man" had introduced the raw new sound into pop audiences, in a clever Beatle clothing, but it was the next single "Not Fade Away", released in February 1964, that truely was the bomb. It climbed on spot three in charts, but its influence and impact was way beyond that. It turned out to be the soundtrack tune for the whole uprising r&b movement, and by the end of year, although The Stones had two number ones to chose from, it was voted in Melody Maker to the best song of the year.

During 1964 the r&b movement, and the band leading it, grew so big and popular that NME needed to form a new category for it in their poll winners contest. The old "best vocal group" (nor 'best instrumental group' that vanished) wasn't apt, so for the Stones and their followers was introduced 'best r&b group' category (the Stones would win this thorought the 60's, except in 1966 losing to Spencer Davis Group).

So we are discussing a historical, a groundbreaking single here. I wonder if ever on the recorded history of music has a song distinguished so strongly in rawness and edge from the other singles on pop charts as this one did. Still today, ages later, "Not Fade Away" sounds so aggressive and straight to your face as possible. It's ageless. The primitive demo-like production just emphasizes the effect. Our wannabe-Spector at his best.

The Bo Diddley beat is wild and hectic as hell, no other group of white musicians had managed to recreate that natural magic as well as these kids do here. It has a feel that 'yeah, let' s steal this from Buddy Holly's silky hands and hand it over back to Bo', but the result is nothing but original-sounding Rolling Stones: the famous Stones groove and its danger is born on a recording here: like any sec it sounds like it fell apart, but it never does. What Charlie, Bill and Keith, with the help of Mick's hand claps, tambourine and maracas, do is simply hypnotic. Controlled chaos. And on that foundation the sharp edges are offered in form of Mick's bad-ass vocals and Brian's killer harmonica (the latter making history by introducing a hardcore blues harp to pop audiences). Both examples of unseen aggression put on record by that day. Taken together: what a sound, what a statement! This is the very band that would some day make EXILE ON MAIN STREET.

And dammit, they made a hit out of it in Britain! Cool kids there. They knew 'what' s gonna be'. Naturally, as a first US single, put together with "I Wanna Be Your Man" as a B side, it was doomed to fail. The American pop audiences had enough in digesting the Beatles. This music was was totally out of this world in roughness.

Well, by the time "From Me To You" was released in Britain it was wildest music there was. It was another version of catchy and clever Lennon-McCartney song production the band performed energetically. But by the time "Not Fade Away" hitted the charts a song like that was nothing but innocent, sweet pop music your mom and papa if not already liked, but tolerated. The new, exciting rock and roll rebellion was musically elsewhere. It all happened so quickly during the 60's.

In "Not Fade Away" The Stones for the first time hitted perfection, something they would do so many times by many means in future.

- Doxa



Edited 4 time(s). Last edit at 2023-01-20 16:44 by Doxa.

The flip side of "Not Fade Away" continues the series of interesting b-sides. The singles at the time were well thought entities, so it was not random what they put on the other side. For those buying the single, it had an important role in making a musical statement of the single. Probably the early hardcore fans, the pioneers of us here in IORR, were starting making notes of the band being something else than the radio hits.

"Little By Little" is a great example of the Rolling Stones playing hardcore three-chord blues scale stuff. We probably never could get closer to their musical heart as we can hear here. The music flows naturally, each dude is relaxed and just let it go. 'This is what we know, what we love and what we do'. No gimmicks. No tricks. Probably that of no shortage in drinks available has something to do with the relaxed atmosphere ('Stoned' again..) . As it always is music as formally as basic as this one it is the question of something else that makes the music sound exciting than just the cleverity of composition. Nothing is probably more boring sounding than someone playing blues scale without a point. Like Keith one said, when asked the goodness of the output, 'it's the band, man'. It is. The way the participiants interact, each having an unique character, but deliciosly supporting the outcome, as a whole making more than the sum of its parts. They capture the moment. Excellent.

Technically it is an original composition, Phelge added by Phil Spector (making the lyrics together with Mick), but despite collecting the song-writer royalties and adding some confidence, I don't think the song can be hailed any milestone in the development in their song-writing. But it was a blueprint for their later experiments and foolings with a standard blues scale ("What A Shame", "Spider And The Fly", "Who's Driving Your Plane?" "Fancy Man Blues", etc. etc). The Stones can do stuff like this half-sleep (or totally drunk), but sound exciting. They breath this stuff by nature.

No idea what was the B-side of "From Me To You".

- Doxa



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 2023-01-20 16:26 by Doxa.

"Thank you girl" was the B side , however when the beatles re-released "Please Please me" in the USA Jan 64, "From me to you" was now a B side itself!

Lennon recalled the song in his last ever interview for Playboy in 1980.
saying "it was very bluesy when we wrote it in the back of the tour Bus", he even sang the first line to the reporter!

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ukcal
"Thank you girl" was the B side , however when the beatles re-released "Please Please me" in the USA Jan 64, "From me to you" was now a B side itself!

Technically the same as what the Stones did with "Not Fade Away"/"I Wanna Be Your Man": put the A-sides of their second and third British singles into one single. The Beatles had quite a lot material in the can when they started conquering America, since having released music for some year and a half by then. The American audience got the Beatles at one token. And big time. Didn't their singles filled top five or something.

Anyway, I always found the British route more interesting, because there we can follow the development of both bands there better. By the time of release of "Not Fade Away" The Stones were still pretty much a national phenomenon, and if I have understood right, the single didn't do that well outside of Britain, say, in Continental Europe. So the song belongs very much to 'British experience'.

However, its success in UK, the home of the sensational Beatles, justified the album title ENGLAND'S NEWEST HIT MAKERS (cheapest album title ever I guess) and they even started the album with it. And kicking, for god's sake, an original Bo Diddley number out of the way.

- Doxa

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CaptainCorella

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Congratulations
It was even more exciting live! One of my all-time favourite live performances...

I was there. :-) An appropriate response in a thread that's supposed to be about Beatles vs Stones.... because The Beatles were also on the bill.

This same clip was among the colourised stuff that had a link here a few weeks ago.

Nice...what an incredible show that must have been....The Beatles and the Stones together!

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

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Hairball
Nice...what an incredible show that must have been....The Beatles and the Stones together!

As well as Brian Poole and The Tremeloes, The Searchers, The Swinging Blue Jeans, Gerry and The Pacemakers, The Hollies, Cliff Richard and The Shadows, Billy J. Kramer with The Dakotas, Freddie and The Dreamers, (probably) The Dave Clark Five... all really great acts, but things would change drastically soon, with tougher, mostly London-based groups taking over. As it is, the only Rhythm 'n' Blues groups at this concert were The Rolling Stones and Manfred Mann (1965's concert included Georgie Fame and The Blue Flames, The Animals, The Kinks, The Moody Blues, Them, and of course, The Rolling Stones).



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 2023-01-20 19:53 by Congratulations.

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Congratulations

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Hairball
Nice...what an incredible show that must have been....The Beatles and the Stones together!

As well as Brian Poole and The Tremeloes, The Searchers, The Swinging Blue Jeans, Gerry and The Pacemakers, The Hollies, Cliff Richard and The Shadows, Billy J. Kramer with The Dakotas, Freddie and The Dreamers, (probably) The Dave Clark Five... all really great acts, but things would change drastically soon, with tougher, mostly London-based groups taking over. As it is, the only Rhythm 'n' Blues groups at this concert were The Rolling Stones and Manfred Mann (1965's concert included Georgie Fame and The Blue Flames, The Animals, The Kinks, The Moody Blues, Them, and of course, The Rolling Stones).

It reinforces with a vengance my comment about it being a tightly run event. Getting all of those bands on and off in double quick time took some doing.

Here's a fun fact. The people there doing the job that we would describe as "roadies" are all middle aged men in lab coats! Hilarious.

--
Captain Corella
60 Years a Fan

An incredible discovery from 1979 that I never knew existed until this morning - HELP!




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

I like Dolly, but this is bland imo. She has hundreds that are better.
Nothing incredible here.

The video itself is incredible in that she looks so happy while pleading for HELP - especially during the whacky instrumental interlude. Incredible.

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

She looks happy for sure.

Actually beyond happy - she looks like someone laced her moonshine with several hits of acid.

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

Tight pantyhose ...



ROCKMAN

Some song can't be done better then the original...this is one of them......

__________________________

1964: Eyes of the Storm

Paul McCartney with Jill Lepore (author of introduction)




In 2020, an extraordinary trove of nearly a thousand photographs taken by Paul McCartney on a 35mm camera was re-discovered in his archive. They intimately record the months towards the end of 1963 and beginning of 1964 when Beatlemania erupted in the UK and, after the band's first visit to the USA, they became the most famous people on the planet. The photographs are McCartney's personal record of this explosive time, when he was, as he puts it, in the 'Eyes of the Storm'

1964: Eyes of the Storm presents 275 of McCartney's photographs from the six cities of these intense, legendary months- Liverpool, London, Paris, New York, Washington, D.C. and Miami- and many never-before-seen portraits of John, George and Ringo. In his Foreword and Introductions to these city portfolios, McCartney remembers what else can you call it - pandemonium' and conveys his impressions of Britain and America in 1964- the moment when the culture changed and the Sixties really began.

[www.waterstones.com]

Thanks Cristiano - here's a new promo video for the above:





“To look at the love and the wonder of what we went through that's captured in a lot
of these photographs is the whole thing. It's what makes life great" - Paul McCartney

There will also be an exhibit of these photos at the National Gallery in London (!) from 28 June – 1 October 2023.

Paul McCartney Photographs 1963–64 Eyes of the Storm

An unprecedented exhibition, revealing – for the first time – extraordinary photographs taken by Paul McCartney.

In this show, we focus on portraits captured by McCartney, using his own camera, between December 1963 and February 1964 – a time when The Beatles were transitioning from a British sensation to a global phenomenon. These never-before-seen images offer a uniquely personal perspective on what it was like to be a ‘Beatle’ at the start of ‘Beatlemania’ – and adjusting from playing gigs on Liverpool stages, to performing to 73 million Americans on The Ed Sullivan Show. At a time when so many camera lenses were on the band, it is Paul McCartney’s which tells the truest story of a band creating cultural history – in one of its most exciting chapters. Paul McCartney, Photographs 1963–64: Eyes of the Storm is supported by Bloomberg Philanthropies.


Self-portrait, Paul McCartney, 1964, © Paul McCartney

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

There's also an exhibition at London's National Portrait Gallery

[www.theguardian.com]

--
Captain Corella
60 Years a Fan

When will the next match in the great singles battle? The one in which the great ambassadors of the blues and the mighty pioneers of the whole dirty but tasty sex and drugs and rock'n'roll culture beat the hell out of Merseybeat sissies and their lollipop music? And all the Lemmys of the world are crying out the in their graveyard about the cruel injustice of reality.

Or is it It's All Over Now...

- Doxa

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CaptainCorella
There's also an exhibition at London's National Portrait Gallery

[www.theguardian.com]

I mentioned that in my previous post above, but failed to add "Portrait" to the National Gallery.
Which reminds me, about 20 years ago a friend and I were visiting both the National Gallery as well as the neighboring/adjoining National Portrait Gallery.
On our "lunch" break we meandered behind the galleries on a small side street to smoke a bit of hashish we brought over from Amsterdam.
Next thing you know I happen to look up and am staring in to a CCTV camera staring right down on us in a haze of smoke... lol ....good times...

Anyhow, never knew Paul was such a prolific photographer...I knew he wanted to be a paperback writer, but also a photographer?
Wish I could visit the exhibit in London, but will be happy enough to browse through his book.

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

High praise for "Beatle Paul" from Rick Rubin:

Rick Rubin says Paul McCartney is the “best of all bass players”

"He's number one"

Beatle Paul

Rick Rubin has said Paul McCartney is the “best of all bass players” in a new interview.

Speaking to MOJO magazine, Rubin said he thought McCartney was the best bass player of all time and was surprised by the “simplest” approach he takes to songwriting. Rubin previously teamed up with McCartney on the 2021 mini series, McCartney 3, 2, 1. “I thought about how everything I’ve seen, Beatles-related, is either about the songwriting or Beatlemania,” Rubin told the magazine. “Paul McCartney the bass player, or Paul McCartney the musician, because he plays everything – that’s a little story told. “You just think of him as Beatle Paul, yet in my opinion, he is the best of all bass players, he’s number one.”

The producer went on to say how amazed he was that the 80-year-old music icon has the “simplest” approach to writing mega-hits. He continued: “What blew my mind was when he sat at the piano and he started showing me how to write a song. “He was saying, ‘See, you could it like this’, and what he was showing me was the simplest thing, but then he starts moving his fingers around slightly, and all of a sudden it evolves into ‘Hey Jude’ or ‘Let It Be’. He’s using this technique that any child could do, then it morphs into one of the greatest songs of all time!”

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

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Hairball
High praise for "Beatle Paul" from Rick Rubin:

Rick Rubin says Paul McCartney is the “best of all bass players”

He obviously needs to get all that hair away from his ears and listen to Bill Wyman.

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Hairball
High praise for "Beatle Paul" from Rick Rubin:

Rick Rubin says Paul McCartney is the “best of all bass players”

"He's number one"

Beatle Paul

Rick Rubin has said Paul McCartney is the “best of all bass players” in a new interview.

Speaking to MOJO magazine, Rubin said he thought McCartney was the best bass player of all time and was surprised by the “simplest” approach he takes to songwriting. Rubin previously teamed up with McCartney on the 2021 mini series, McCartney 3, 2, 1. “I thought about how everything I’ve seen, Beatles-related, is either about the songwriting or Beatlemania,” Rubin told the magazine. “Paul McCartney the bass player, or Paul McCartney the musician, because he plays everything – that’s a little story told. “You just think of him as Beatle Paul, yet in my opinion, he is the best of all bass players, he’s number one.”

The producer went on to say how amazed he was that the 80-year-old music icon has the “simplest” approach to writing mega-hits. He continued: “What blew my mind was when he sat at the piano and he started showing me how to write a song. “He was saying, ‘See, you could it like this’, and what he was showing me was the simplest thing, but then he starts moving his fingers around slightly, and all of a sudden it evolves into ‘Hey Jude’ or ‘Let It Be’. He’s using this technique that any child could do, then it morphs into one of the greatest songs of all time!”

I'm trying to follow Rick's logic of Paul being the best bass player of all time, when after declaring that, he gushes how he plays 'all instruments' and then details how Paul uses the keyboard to write a song.

I'm not debating whether or not Rick is right, only that making that declaration he provides nothing to back it up.

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treaclefingers

Quote
Hairball
High praise for "Beatle Paul" from Rick Rubin:

Rick Rubin says Paul McCartney is the “best of all bass players”

"He's number one"

Beatle Paul

Rick Rubin has said Paul McCartney is the “best of all bass players” in a new interview.

Speaking to MOJO magazine, Rubin said he thought McCartney was the best bass player of all time and was surprised by the “simplest” approach he takes to songwriting. Rubin previously teamed up with McCartney on the 2021 mini series, McCartney 3, 2, 1. “I thought about how everything I’ve seen, Beatles-related, is either about the songwriting or Beatlemania,” Rubin told the magazine. “Paul McCartney the bass player, or Paul McCartney the musician, because he plays everything – that’s a little story told. “You just think of him as Beatle Paul, yet in my opinion, he is the best of all bass players, he’s number one.”

The producer went on to say how amazed he was that the 80-year-old music icon has the “simplest” approach to writing mega-hits. He continued: “What blew my mind was when he sat at the piano and he started showing me how to write a song. “He was saying, ‘See, you could it like this’, and what he was showing me was the simplest thing, but then he starts moving his fingers around slightly, and all of a sudden it evolves into ‘Hey Jude’ or ‘Let It Be’. He’s using this technique that any child could do, then it morphs into one of the greatest songs of all time!”

I'm trying to follow Rick's logic of Paul being the best bass player of all time, when after declaring that, he gushes how he plays 'all instruments' and then details how Paul uses the keyboard to write a song.

I'm not debating whether or not Rick is right, only that making that declaration he provides nothing to back it up.

I guess that inconsistancy and lack of good argumentation doesn't matter. What is more important is too see how happy Hairball is when is able to provide content in a Rolling Stones Forum to show how much better and important The Beatles and their principle members are, to prove again and again how stupid and wrong we Stones fans are by thinking differently.

- Doxa



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2023-02-02 22:50 by Doxa.

HHhaaaaaaaa

He thought he was the Pope in another thread ....



ROCKMAN

And yet many stones fans were hoping Rick Rubin would produce a Stones album...well we can guess how that might have turned out due to his bad experiences with Mick's solo album. Just be thankful he didn't produce the Stones!

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



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2023-02-02 23:03 by Hairball.

Sure are .... his sterile sound dont belong in the Stones camp



ROCKMAN

Wandering Spirit is proof of how Rubin might have sterilized/ruined the Stones, though some of his other work is pretty good - latter day Johnny Cash for example...

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

Yes, the Stones fans are so stupid, and Hairball knows better. Some of Stones fans actually even like WANDERING SPIRIT (and even do not despise or hate Mick Jagger by principle), but of course, it is nothing compared to Paul McCartney's - the genius who can no do wrong - masterpiece albums he had provided constantly.

Funny guy, but odd agenda.

- Doxa

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Doxa
I guess that inconsistancy and lack of good argumentation doesn't matter. What is more important is too see how happy Hairball is when is able to provide content in a Rolling Stones Forum to show how much better and important The Beatles and their principle members are, to prove again and again how stupid and wrong we Stones fans are by thinking differently.

I don't get that either.

My favourite piano player (and indeed one of my favourite artists) is Jerry Lee Lewis, but I'm certainly not about to rubbish Ian, Nicky, Billy and Chuck every time their names are mentioned. So yes, by all means love The Beat-less, but don't try to make out that The Rolling Stones are in any way inferior!