Tell Me :  Talk
Talk about your favorite band. 

Previous page Next page First page IORR home

For information about how to use this forum please check out forum help and policies.

Goto Page: PreviousFirst...196197198199200201202203204205206...LastNext
Current Page: 201 of 228
Re: Beatles vs Stones - and other Beatles stuff
Posted by: frankotero ()
Date: October 28, 2022 09:26

I know a guy who says when his favorite band is finished he’ll sell his collection and move on. Are you one of these types? Personally I plan on following The Stones until death, which should be long after they’re done. Same logic is applied to Beatles or anything I love. Cheers!

Re: Beatles vs Stones - and other Beatles stuff
Posted by: Witness ()
Date: October 28, 2022 15:40

Quote
lem motlow
Quote
frankotero
Haha, lem you’re too much. Are you really trying to say there’s no Beatles Fans? Just because John died that helped bring attention to them, haha. I hate to say it but I haven’t noticed a surge in Stones Fans since Charlie passed. Maybe it’s because they’re from the 1960s?

This is why I use the term Beatletards, you just start saying incoherent shit when the Beatles are challenged in some way.
Let me walk you through this- Elvis fans, 1950s
In the 70s Elvis was an old fat guy with aunts and moms swooning over him, a joke.

Until 77, when Elvis passed he was no longer seen in the present, his life and career was looked at in retrospect.all the cool rockstars talked about his influence and rock fans young and old paid respect.

In the 70s the Beatles didn’t exist as a group, like Elvis they were a joke. 60s leftovers making out of touch music.their fans were older brothers and sisters who probably bought Imagine and had Abbey Road etc.
If you were 16 in 1975 you were buying Physical Graffiti and Wish you were here , not a Beatles record that came out when you were a little kid.
I’m sorry,that’s just how it was.
When John passed the same thing happened , there was no more Elvis and there would be no more Beatles.
Again fans young and old then placed them on their pedestal.

Bringing up Charlie, more Beatletard.
There is still a touring and recording Rolling Stones in case you haven’t noticed.

One puzzling aspect though: You write as if the decades have stopped to go by. As if we all still live in a prolonged seventies. Your outlook accordingly still prevails.

One question arises: What would they have thought or think about your presentation of musical achievements, that was 16 in 1985, 1995, 2005, 2015 and will be in 2025? And more important, would it or will it be relevant for them?

Re: Beatles vs Stones - and other Beatles stuff
Posted by: treaclefingers ()
Date: October 28, 2022 17:17

Quote
Witness
Quote
lem motlow
Quote
frankotero
Haha, lem you’re too much. Are you really trying to say there’s no Beatles Fans? Just because John died that helped bring attention to them, haha. I hate to say it but I haven’t noticed a surge in Stones Fans since Charlie passed. Maybe it’s because they’re from the 1960s?

This is why I use the term Beatletards, you just start saying incoherent shit when the Beatles are challenged in some way.
Let me walk you through this- Elvis fans, 1950s
In the 70s Elvis was an old fat guy with aunts and moms swooning over him, a joke.

Until 77, when Elvis passed he was no longer seen in the present, his life and career was looked at in retrospect.all the cool rockstars talked about his influence and rock fans young and old paid respect.

In the 70s the Beatles didn’t exist as a group, like Elvis they were a joke. 60s leftovers making out of touch music.their fans were older brothers and sisters who probably bought Imagine and had Abbey Road etc.
If you were 16 in 1975 you were buying Physical Graffiti and Wish you were here , not a Beatles record that came out when you were a little kid.
I’m sorry,that’s just how it was.
When John passed the same thing happened , there was no more Elvis and there would be no more Beatles.
Again fans young and old then placed them on their pedestal.

Bringing up Charlie, more Beatletard.
There is still a touring and recording Rolling Stones in case you haven’t noticed.

One puzzling aspect though: You write as if the decades have stopped to go by. As if we all still live in a prolonged seventies. Your outlook accordingly still prevails.

One question arises: What would they have thought or think about your presentation of musical achievements, that was 16 in 1985, 1995, 2005, 2015 and will be in 2025? And more important, would it or will it be relevant for them?

AND...to call them a 'recording Rolling Stones' is being a little generous. True, we finally have confirmation of a new studio album of originals, but we're getting it 18 years after the last one.

You could have been born AFTER the release of the last one, turned 16 and still never heard a new album of stones originals.

Re: Beatles vs Stones - and other Beatles stuff
Posted by: lem motlow ()
Date: October 29, 2022 09:12

If you were in a band and you put out your first album, it debuted at number 4 in the United States and number 2 in the UK and was awarded a Grammy would you be happy? Because that’s what the Stones did in 2016.

If you wrote a song and it was featured in the movie Avengers: Endgame that grossed 2.7 billion dollars would you think you did something pretty damn great?
Because that’s what the Stones did in 2019.

If you go on you tube there are approximately 6 thousand comments on Doom and Gloom, I tried to find a negative one and gave up before I found it.
If you don’t think this is a kick ass Stones song you’re an idiot.

Mick is way ahead of everybody, he saw that it was pointless to keep putting out records that nobody listened to and were quickly forgotten like most of his contemporaries did.
Sometimes less is more but The Rolling Stones are still an ongoing recording act.

Re: Beatles vs Stones - and other Beatles stuff
Posted by: frankotero ()
Date: October 29, 2022 10:14

That's a lot of "if's". winking smiley We might as well just shake on it and move on. I'm still going to be a fan of both bands.

Re: Beatles vs Stones - and other Beatles stuff
Posted by: treaclefingers ()
Date: October 29, 2022 20:07

Quote
lem motlow
If you were in a band and you put out your first album, it debuted at number 4 in the United States and number 2 in the UK and was awarded a Grammy would you be happy? Because that’s what the Stones did in 2016.

If you wrote a song and it was featured in the movie Avengers: Endgame that grossed 2.7 billion dollars would you think you did something pretty damn great?
Because that’s what the Stones did in 2019.

If you go on you tube there are approximately 6 thousand comments on Doom and Gloom, I tried to find a negative one and gave up before I found it.
If you don’t think this is a kick ass Stones song you’re an idiot.

Mick is way ahead of everybody, he saw that it was pointless to keep putting out records that nobody listened to and were quickly forgotten like most of his contemporaries did.
Sometimes less is more but The Rolling Stones are still an ongoing recording act.

I get that you like the band. A lot of us do on IORR. But to identify they've done virtually zilch in 17 years in terms of new material, should not be taken personally by you. Doesn't squelch their other accomplishments, but those are rather moot, don't you think? Stay on point.

Re: Beatles vs Stones - and other Beatles stuff
Posted by: Hairball ()
Date: October 29, 2022 21:41

From Slate.com:

The Beatles’ Revolver Was Their Avant-Garde R&B Album
It’s remembered as revealing the possibilities of the studio, but the band was no less obsessed with the possibilities being revealed by Motown and Stax.

By Jack Hamilton, Oct 28, 2022

"The band initially planned to record Revolver at Stax’s studios in Memphis".

REVOLVER

About 41 months passed between the release of the Beatles’ 1963 debut LP Please Please Me and their seventh album, Revolver, in August 1966. To put this in perspective, 41 months ago from the time I’m writing this was late May of 2019, when the Toronto Raptors were about to win the NBA title, Avengers: Endgame was in theaters, and Game of Thrones had just ended. Pandemic vortices aside, 41 months isn’t a very long time. Releasing seven albums’ worth of mostly original material in that span, along with a steady churn of chart-topping singles that weren’t included on those LPs, is extraordinary on its own. That the Beatles changed the entire landscape of popular music in the process makes it all the more mind-boggling.

Revolver is the latest Beatle album to receive the deluxe boxed-set treatment that was lavished on Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band back in 2017. The new set boasts five CDs’ worth of material, headlined by a new stereo mix by Giles Martin (son of Sir George), and a sumptuous coffee-table book that includes an expansive and lovely essay by Questlove. The new mix, which seeks to transpose the album’s original mono mix into a stereo setting that’s less perfunctory than the Beatles’ own original stereo mix, feels mostly superfluous, and isn’t as revelatory as the younger Martin’s mix of Sgt. Pepper’s, an album where the discrepancy between the mono and stereo mixes had long been criminally glaring. The bevy of outtakes and alternate arrangements will surely delight hardcore fans, many of which are new (official) releases, others of which have appeared in other settings like 1996’s Anthology 2.

Revolver has become such a hallowed work that it can be easy to overlook the context of its release, which was fraught to say the least. In the U.S., Revolver’s release was overshadowed by waves of protests against the band over John Lennon’s “more popular than Jesus” remark. The week that Revolver arrived in stores, American newspapers contained headlines like “Quote on Christ Gives Beatles Woe,” “Beatles’ Manager Flies to U.S. as Furor Over Slur Melts,” and “Klan Puts Match to Beatles Records.” For a while it also seemed to many that Revolver would be the Beatles’ final album. When reports began circulating in late 1966 that the Beatles were taking an indefinite hiatus from touring, a lot of the press assumed that meant they were finished. “Beatles Going Their Own Ways,” declared the Washington Post, and “Beatles Reported Breaking Up,” announced the Los Angeles Times. It was as if the concept of a rock ’n’ roll band turning away from live performance was a sort of conceptual contradiction, an existential impossibility.

The Beatles, of course, weren’t breaking up. But 1966 was a grueling and largely miserable year for the band. Beside the outrage over Lennon’s “Jesus” quip, the band weathered another Stateside controversy for the infamous “butcher” cover of Yesterday and Today (which featured the band in white coats, surrounded by decapitated baby dolls and hunks of raw meat, in a gesture whose meaning remains unclear), endured a harrowing episode in the Philippines (in which the band and its crew were assaulted by a mob of Imelda Marcos’ loyalists for allegedly “snubbing” the First Lady), and generally seemed to be collapsing under the weight of what was now year four of world-historical levels of overexposure. The decision to leave the road was a necessary one, if only for sheer survival.

The seeds of this transition were already there in Revolver. It was the first album the Beatles released that contained no songs that the band had, or ever would, perform live. Part of this was undoubtedly due to sheer logistics: try lugging around a string octet to play “Eleanor Rigby” in various baseball stadiums with no monitor speakers. But it also reflected an increasing obsession with the creative possibilities of the recording studio itself. A song like “Tomorrow Never Knows” can’t really be performed live because it isn’t meant to be.

In retrospect it’s hard not to consider Revolver as a hinge point in the history of the Beatles, and by extension the music of the 1960s more broadly. There’s some truth to this, but it also runs the risk of hearing Revolver in terms of what came after it, rather than listening to the music on its own terms. At its core, Revolver is an avant-garde R&B album, a work that represented the Beatles’ most compelling and complete engagement with contemporary Black American music to date: more so than the throat-shredding rendition of the Isley Brothers’ “Twist and Shout” that ended Please Please Me, than the trio of Motown covers on With the Beatles, even than their previous record, Rubber Soul, which advertised its debt to soul music in its name.

In retrospect it’s hard not to consider Revolver as a hinge point in the history of the Beatles, and by extension the music of the 1960s more broadly. There’s some truth to this, but it also runs the risk of hearing Revolver in terms of what came after it, rather than listening to the music on its own terms. At its core, Revolver is an avant-garde R&B album, a work that represented the Beatles’ most compelling and complete engagement with contemporary Black American music to date: more so than the throat-shredding rendition of the Isley Brothers’ “Twist and Shout” that ended Please Please Me, than the trio of Motown covers on With the Beatles, even than their previous record, Rubber Soul, which advertised its debt to soul music in its name.

Ringo’s playing on “Taxman,” “Dr. Robert,” and “I Want to Tell You” has a sticky funkiness that feels a lot closer to the Mississippi than the Mersey. The drums on “I’m Only Sleeping” swing like hell, as they do on Ringo’s own vocal star turn, “Yellow Submarine.” To my ears the most audacious drum performance on Revolver is “She Said She Said,” which finds Ringo holding down a murderous groove while simultaneously providing an onslaught of cascading, over-the-bar drum fills. There was simply no one else playing drums quite like this in pop music. (Ringo’s friend Keith Moon’s similar style evolved slightly later, and Moon never had Ringo’s sheer command of time.) The song that contains what Ringo considers his greatest drum performance, “Rain,” was recorded during the Revolver sessions but was left off the album, released instead as the B-side to “Paperback Writer”; multiple versions of that remarkable track appear on the new box set, including the “actual speed” instrumental track. (The Beatles slowed down the tape speed on the track for the single release.)

Perhaps even more prominent than the influence of Stax on Revolver is the influence of Motown, in particular that label’s incomparable bass player James Jamerson. Jamerson still isn’t a household name among casual music fans, but he’s one of the most important musicians of the 20th century. There is electric bass playing before James Jamerson, and there is electric bass playing after him: It’s hardly an exaggeration to say that he is to his instrument what Jimi Hendrix is to the electric guitar. In the mid-1960s, Jamerson was exploding the possibilities of electric bass playing, pioneering a style defined by intricate syncopation and complex, brilliantly melodic phrasing.

Jamerson’s name wouldn’t appear on a Motown record sleeve until 1971, but by 1966, every serious bass player on earth was taking note of what was happening on the low end of Tamla-Motown records. One of these players was Paul McCartney. Jamerson’s influence is all over Revolver, most notably on “And Your Bird Can Sing,” John Lennon’s alleged middle-finger to Frank Sinatra, multiple versions of which are included on the new set. McCartney is a musical freak of nature whose best work always has the thrilling joy of a self-taught prodigy. The bass playing on Revolver is steeped in this feeling, like a musical version of Peter Parker the morning after the spider bit him. The combination of McCartney’s near-hyperactive inventiveness with Ringo’s stunning rhythmic anchor is the true soul of Revolver.

As I’ve written about at some length elsewhere, the later part of the 1960s was marked by a growing insistence among audiences, critics, and even some musicians that white rock music and Black R&B music were separate entities, and alongside this was often a racist insinuation that rock had evolved past its Black origins. When I was growing up in the 1990s, the “classic rock” radio stations that played “Paperback Writer” and “Taxman” on a seemingly hourly basis almost never played the Supremes or Wilson Pickett, even though those artists where who the Beatles were listening to when they made those recordings. The Beatles’ whole career gives the lie to this foolish segregation, and nowhere more so than Revolver. In hindsight, Revolver was a turning point, but in the present, it remains the sound of endless possibility

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

Re: Beatles vs Stones - and other Beatles stuff
Posted by: Taylor1 ()
Date: October 30, 2022 02:16

I may be in the minority but I think Revolver is their most overrated album.I would put it behindPlease Please Me, Hard Days Night, Help, Rubber Soul, Sgt Pepper, Magical Mystery Tour, White Album and Abbey Road. John Lennons songs are particularly weak. Harrison’s songs are mediocre and sound dated.McCartney does have 3 classic ballads

Re: Beatles vs Stones - and other Beatles stuff
Posted by: Hairball ()
Date: October 30, 2022 20:24

Great drumming from Ringo on this "actual speed" version...sounds like Keith Moon meets Mitch Mitchell...




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

Re: Beatles vs Stones - and other Beatles stuff
Posted by: NashvilleBlues ()
Date: October 30, 2022 21:15

Quote
Hairball
Great drumming from Ringo on this "actual speed" version...sounds like Keith Moon meets Mitch Mitchell...


Yes. Very nice. Never understood the hate for Ringo. I love him.

Re: Beatles vs Stones - and other Beatles stuff
Posted by: Hairball ()
Date: November 1, 2022 03:22

Nice review from the New York Times published today:

‘Revolver,’ Newly Expanded, Shows the Beatles at a Creative Peak
A five-disc set reveals a band awash with musical and sonic ideas, having fun and making breakthroughs.
Jon Pareles - Oct. 31, 2022

Revolver

Imagine — or if you’re young or distant enough, enjoy — a moment when Beatles songs weren’t bone-deep familiar, weren’t canonical, weren’t thoroughly embedded in succeeding generations of rock and pop. A moment when the band that had worked its way up to becoming the most popular act in the Western world was still just four guys knocking songs around in a room and keeping themselves loose and whimsical. The room, however, was a well-equipped recording studio — creating what were then state-of-the-art four-track master tapes — and for all their joking around, the Beatles were also pushing themselves to evolve while applying ruthless quality control. That’s what comes through on the expanded reissue of “Revolver,” a pivotal Beatles album from faraway 1966. Like Bob Dylan, who had gone electric with two albums in 1965 and released “Blonde on Blonde” in June 1966, the Beatles had already been pushing at the limits of what a rock song could be. But “Revolver” was a decisive step; the Beatles were determined to sound stranger and more idiosyncratic than ever.

Like previous Beatles archive reissues, the new “Revolver” set, which came out on Friday, is based on the British version of the album. Its five discs — CDs or vinyl — include the mono album and new stereo mixes along with two discs of (mostly) previously unissued studio tracks, revealing the songs as works in progress. (The two CDs drawn from the sessions are skimpier than necessary; they run only about 40 minutes each, matching the vinyl version of the set. There was room for more.) Even an expanded “Revolver” doesn’t explain why the Beatles, already at the top of the world, were so eager to challenge themselves anew. Yet “Revolver” was, after all, an artifact of the mid-1960s, when everything was in flux and musicians were expected to be prolific. Before “Revolver,” the Beatles had already churned out six albums in Britain plus non-album hit singles, an output rejiggered into 10 U.S. releases. They had also made two movies, all tucked in between grueling tours. Only two years earlier, the Beatles had been the Fab Four, leading the British Invasion of American pop radio. They were a charming, longhaired but neatly groomed band in matching collarless suits, smiling and wisecracking and navigating a new level of international pop success and fans who out-screamed the band’s amplifiers.

The Beatles arrived as experts on musical conventions and how to bend them. They had soaked up parlor songs, British music hall, Tin Pan Alley, 1950s rock ’n’ roll and more; they had built superb reflexes through years of club gigs. Even from the beginning, John Lennon and Paul McCartney wrote songs that slyly added unexpected chord changes and hints of ambivalence in the lyrics, sparking a listener’s reflexes and then evading them. Many Beatles songs also take an extra twist in the last few seconds, just because the band had so many ideas at its fingertips. The Beatles and their producer, George Martin, were already pushing past teen-pop subject matter and toying with studio illusions on “Rubber Soul” in 1965. “Revolver” was not the grandly packaged, more-or-less concept album that would appear in 1967, “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.” But it was every bit as innovative: a clear statement that the Beatles would follow no expectations but their own.

“Revolver” opens with George Harrison’s “Taxman” — a politico-financial gripe — and ends with “Tomorrow Never Knows,” an avant-garde cosmic drone with lyrics based on the Tibetan Book of the Dead. In between are further reflections on mortality, from Eleanor Rigby’s solitary funeral to the morbid thoughts of “She Said She Said” (“I know what it’s like to be dead”). What kind of pop group was so willing to linger over death and taxes? There were still love songs on “Revolver” — the cozily devotional close-harmony ballad “Here, There and Everywhere,” the fanfaring “Got to Get You Into My Life” — but they shared the album with the more ambiguous introspection of “I’m Only Sleeping” and “I Want to Tell You,” with the sarcastic praise of the mood-altering “Doctor Robert,” and with the chiming put-downs of “And Your Bird Can Sing.” Clearly the Beatles no longer felt they had to make themselves endearing.

On “Revolver,” the Beatles went all in on ways to skew reel-to-reel tape recordings. They started the recording sessions of “Revolver” after a four-month break — their first real respite since 1962 — and they arrived eager to experiment. Along with the elaborate overdubs they were already cramming into only four tracks, they took new delight in mechanical manipulations: loops, reversals, slowing things down, speeding things up. Band members had tripped on LSD; now they wanted to create hallucinatory sounds. Although it ends the album, the first song of the “Revolver” sessions was its most radical: “Tomorrow Never Knows,” a pure studio construction. Its syncopated rhythm track — just one bar of Ringo Starr’s drumming and an octave-hopping bass line — is a tape loop, as are the tamboura drone and the quasi-seagull cries (McCartney’s sped-up laugh), orchestral sounds and backward guitars that waft in and out of the mix. Between Take 1 (included in the set) and the finished version, the arrangement was almost completely transformed, discarding and reinventing most of the backup track. Yet all of the studio work took only three days.

One revelation among the session tracks is the original instrumental track of “Rain,” the B-side of the single that was recorded during the “Revolver” sessions and released before the album. As recorded, “Rain” was two minutes of snappy, upbeat folk-rock, breezing through its subtle bit of asymmetry; the verse is nine bars long, not a typical eight. But for the finished song, the tape was slowed down: melting the edges of each note, making a Rickenbacker guitar sound like a sitar and muddying the ground below Lennon’s voice. At the end, his vocal is also played backward. With “Paperback Writer” on the A-side — an unlikely pop premise, a surging riff, a profusion of vocal harmonies — the single affirmed the Beatles’ mastery while forecasting change.

With a few takes of each song, the session tracks hint at how intuitively the Beatles worked. “Yellow Submarine” started out as a lament — “In the place where I was born/No one cared,” Lennon sang at first — but turned into sound effects-laden drollery. It turns out that “Taxman,” now dated by its backup-vocal references to “Mr. Wilson” and “Mister Heath,” could have had a less topical backup part, but with more syllables; the Beatles chose the terser, catchier one. For “Eleanor Rigby,” the Beatles recorded versions of Martin’s backup arrangement with a string octet using lush classical vibrato and legato phrasing, but they wisely chose a brusque, woody attack instead. “Revolver” is also newly infused with Indian music. The link is obvious in Harrison’s “Love You To,” with its Indian modality, a sitar hook, and an Indian tabla player (Anil Bhagwat). But Eastern music also resonates in the drone of “Tomorrow Never Knows” and the guitar lines of “She Said She Said.” The Beatles were still open to influences.

The new mixes on the expanded “Revolver,” made with current technology and 21st-century ears, are a pleasure; they have more transparency and a more three-dimensional sense of space than the 1966 mixes. Yet those remixes do trade away the vintage eccentricity of the original stereo versions, which were completed in one day as an afterthought to the more fastidious mono versions, back when stereo was still a novelty. The old stereo mixes can be heard as slapdash or as downright avant-garde. Many of the instruments and vocal tracks are heard on just one channel, pulling the music apart, particularly when heard through headphones; it’s still disorienting. The new versions are more in line with stereo-era expectations, bringing vocals and lead instruments closer to the center, but luckily without blending too much. They made me appreciate anew the loose-limbed way that Starr knocked around the beat, and the many stray eruptions of added percussion and phantom voices throughout the album.

Five decades later, it’s not easy to hear “Revolver” afresh. But the new set insists that the clearer it’s heard, the odder it is. “Revolver” still holds surprises.





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

Re: Beatles vs Stones - and other Beatles stuff
Posted by: MKjan ()
Date: November 1, 2022 09:04

Quote
Hairball
Nice review from the New York Times published today:

‘Revolver,’ Newly Expanded, Shows the Beatles at a Creative Peak
A five-disc set reveals a band awash with musical and sonic ideas, having fun and making breakthroughs.
Jon Pareles - Oct. 31, 2022

Revolver

Imagine — or if you’re young or distant enough, enjoy — a moment when Beatles songs weren’t bone-deep familiar, weren’t canonical, weren’t thoroughly embedded in succeeding generations of rock and pop. A moment when the band that had worked its way up to becoming the most popular act in the Western world was still just four guys knocking songs around in a room and keeping themselves loose and whimsical. The room, however, was a well-equipped recording studio — creating what were then state-of-the-art four-track master tapes — and for all their joking around, the Beatles were also pushing themselves to evolve while applying ruthless quality control. That’s what comes through on the expanded reissue of “Revolver,” a pivotal Beatles album from faraway 1966. Like Bob Dylan, who had gone electric with two albums in 1965 and released “Blonde on Blonde” in June 1966, the Beatles had already been pushing at the limits of what a rock song could be. But “Revolver” was a decisive step; the Beatles were determined to sound stranger and more idiosyncratic than ever.

Like previous Beatles archive reissues, the new “Revolver” set, which came out on Friday, is based on the British version of the album. Its five discs — CDs or vinyl — include the mono album and new stereo mixes along with two discs of (mostly) previously unissued studio tracks, revealing the songs as works in progress. (The two CDs drawn from the sessions are skimpier than necessary; they run only about 40 minutes each, matching the vinyl version of the set. There was room for more.) Even an expanded “Revolver” doesn’t explain why the Beatles, already at the top of the world, were so eager to challenge themselves anew. Yet “Revolver” was, after all, an artifact of the mid-1960s, when everything was in flux and musicians were expected to be prolific. Before “Revolver,” the Beatles had already churned out six albums in Britain plus non-album hit singles, an output rejiggered into 10 U.S. releases. They had also made two movies, all tucked in between grueling tours. Only two years earlier, the Beatles had been the Fab Four, leading the British Invasion of American pop radio. They were a charming, longhaired but neatly groomed band in matching collarless suits, smiling and wisecracking and navigating a new level of international pop success and fans who out-screamed the band’s amplifiers.

The Beatles arrived as experts on musical conventions and how to bend them. They had soaked up parlor songs, British music hall, Tin Pan Alley, 1950s rock ’n’ roll and more; they had built superb reflexes through years of club gigs. Even from the beginning, John Lennon and Paul McCartney wrote songs that slyly added unexpected chord changes and hints of ambivalence in the lyrics, sparking a listener’s reflexes and then evading them. Many Beatles songs also take an extra twist in the last few seconds, just because the band had so many ideas at its fingertips. The Beatles and their producer, George Martin, were already pushing past teen-pop subject matter and toying with studio illusions on “Rubber Soul” in 1965. “Revolver” was not the grandly packaged, more-or-less concept album that would appear in 1967, “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.” But it was every bit as innovative: a clear statement that the Beatles would follow no expectations but their own.

“Revolver” opens with George Harrison’s “Taxman” — a politico-financial gripe — and ends with “Tomorrow Never Knows,” an avant-garde cosmic drone with lyrics based on the Tibetan Book of the Dead. In between are further reflections on mortality, from Eleanor Rigby’s solitary funeral to the morbid thoughts of “She Said She Said” (“I know what it’s like to be dead”). What kind of pop group was so willing to linger over death and taxes? There were still love songs on “Revolver” — the cozily devotional close-harmony ballad “Here, There and Everywhere,” the fanfaring “Got to Get You Into My Life” — but they shared the album with the more ambiguous introspection of “I’m Only Sleeping” and “I Want to Tell You,” with the sarcastic praise of the mood-altering “Doctor Robert,” and with the chiming put-downs of “And Your Bird Can Sing.” Clearly the Beatles no longer felt they had to make themselves endearing.

On “Revolver,” the Beatles went all in on ways to skew reel-to-reel tape recordings. They started the recording sessions of “Revolver” after a four-month break — their first real respite since 1962 — and they arrived eager to experiment. Along with the elaborate overdubs they were already cramming into only four tracks, they took new delight in mechanical manipulations: loops, reversals, slowing things down, speeding things up. Band members had tripped on LSD; now they wanted to create hallucinatory sounds. Although it ends the album, the first song of the “Revolver” sessions was its most radical: “Tomorrow Never Knows,” a pure studio construction. Its syncopated rhythm track — just one bar of Ringo Starr’s drumming and an octave-hopping bass line — is a tape loop, as are the tamboura drone and the quasi-seagull cries (McCartney’s sped-up laugh), orchestral sounds and backward guitars that waft in and out of the mix. Between Take 1 (included in the set) and the finished version, the arrangement was almost completely transformed, discarding and reinventing most of the backup track. Yet all of the studio work took only three days.

One revelation among the session tracks is the original instrumental track of “Rain,” the B-side of the single that was recorded during the “Revolver” sessions and released before the album. As recorded, “Rain” was two minutes of snappy, upbeat folk-rock, breezing through its subtle bit of asymmetry; the verse is nine bars long, not a typical eight. But for the finished song, the tape was slowed down: melting the edges of each note, making a Rickenbacker guitar sound like a sitar and muddying the ground below Lennon’s voice. At the end, his vocal is also played backward. With “Paperback Writer” on the A-side — an unlikely pop premise, a surging riff, a profusion of vocal harmonies — the single affirmed the Beatles’ mastery while forecasting change.

With a few takes of each song, the session tracks hint at how intuitively the Beatles worked. “Yellow Submarine” started out as a lament — “In the place where I was born/No one cared,” Lennon sang at first — but turned into sound effects-laden drollery. It turns out that “Taxman,” now dated by its backup-vocal references to “Mr. Wilson” and “Mister Heath,” could have had a less topical backup part, but with more syllables; the Beatles chose the terser, catchier one. For “Eleanor Rigby,” the Beatles recorded versions of Martin’s backup arrangement with a string octet using lush classical vibrato and legato phrasing, but they wisely chose a brusque, woody attack instead. “Revolver” is also newly infused with Indian music. The link is obvious in Harrison’s “Love You To,” with its Indian modality, a sitar hook, and an Indian tabla player (Anil Bhagwat). But Eastern music also resonates in the drone of “Tomorrow Never Knows” and the guitar lines of “She Said She Said.” The Beatles were still open to influences.

The new mixes on the expanded “Revolver,” made with current technology and 21st-century ears, are a pleasure; they have more transparency and a more three-dimensional sense of space than the 1966 mixes. Yet those remixes do trade away the vintage eccentricity of the original stereo versions, which were completed in one day as an afterthought to the more fastidious mono versions, back when stereo was still a novelty. The old stereo mixes can be heard as slapdash or as downright avant-garde. Many of the instruments and vocal tracks are heard on just one channel, pulling the music apart, particularly when heard through headphones; it’s still disorienting. The new versions are more in line with stereo-era expectations, bringing vocals and lead instruments closer to the center, but luckily without blending too much. They made me appreciate anew the loose-limbed way that Starr knocked around the beat, and the many stray eruptions of added percussion and phantom voices throughout the album.

Five decades later, it’s not easy to hear “Revolver” afresh. But the new set insists that the clearer it’s heard, the odder it is. “Revolver” still holds surprises.



Imagine no one reads this, it's easy if you try.....

Re: Beatles vs Stones - and other Beatles stuff
Posted by: Hairball ()
Date: November 1, 2022 19:16

From the UK site officialcharts.com:

The Beatles’ Revolver re-release challenges Taylor Swift’s Midnights in race for UK’s Number 1 album
A very special re-release of The Fab Four's most sonically innovative record is looking to displace the record-breaking Midnights. Can it?

By George Griffiths

Revolver

After a record-breaking arrival last week which saw her claim an Official Chart Double, Taylor Swift has found herself up against none other than The Beatles in the race to keep Midnights at Number 1.
As Midnights lead track Anti-Hero leads the Official Singles Chart charge, could Taylor make it another week at the top of both the Albums and Singles charts? She has some tough competition, from one record-breaking Official Charts act to another! At Number 2, this week’s highest possible re-entry could come courtesy of The Beatles, with a special new Deluxe re-issue of Revolver. The seventh studio album from the Fab Four is notable for its innovative and avant-garde production style, which is considered a turning point in the Beatles’ career. Revolver originally debuted at Number 1 upon its 1966 release.





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

Re: Beatles vs Stones - and other Beatles stuff
Posted by: 24FPS ()
Date: November 1, 2022 19:39

Revolver was one of their absolute best. Check out the completely different take of Tomorrow Never Knows on the Beatles Anthology. I remember that time, August-September '66 when Revolver dropped. The Beatles were considered a bit passe at that point, at least on the radio. Paperback Writer was sonically advanced, but wasn't simple, like their past work. It was a success, in relation to other bands, but wasn't the smash they were used to. They were getting ahead of the audience. Last Train to Clarksville, which sounded like 'old' Beatles, was a big hit at that time.

Albums were just beginning to be appreciated. It took a long time for Revolver to have the great reputation it has today, especially when Sgt. Pepper was the right album for the right time. Revolver outshines Pepper in some ways.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2022-11-02 07:33 by 24FPS.

Re: Beatles vs Stones - and other Beatles stuff
Posted by: NashvilleBlues ()
Date: November 3, 2022 23:35

Cool story about Lennon claiming to be the first to use backward vocals (on Rain)…

[apple.news]

Re: Beatles vs Stones - and other Beatles stuff
Posted by: Taylor1 ()
Date: November 4, 2022 00:25

Quote
NashvilleBlues
Cool story about Lennon claiming to be the first to use backward vocals (on Rain)…

[apple.news]
A lot of these experiments like reverse vocals are just boring and don’t add to the listening experience other than as a cool novelty

Re: Beatles vs Stones - and other Beatles stuff
Posted by: NashvilleBlues ()
Date: November 4, 2022 01:12

Quote
Taylor1
Quote
NashvilleBlues
Cool story about Lennon claiming to be the first to use backward vocals (on Rain)…

[apple.news]
A lot of these experiments like reverse vocals are just boring and don’t add to the listening experience other than as a cool novelty

Maybe not to you, but it adds to mine.

Re: Beatles vs Stones - and other Beatles stuff
Posted by: Hairball ()
Date: November 4, 2022 04:21

From PaulMcCartney.com:

You Gave Me The Answer: Recording ‘Revolver’ at EMI Studios

Revolver

It’s one of the most iconic photos of the 20th century: George Harrison, Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr and John Lennon walk across a zebra crossing in London in 1969, taking time out from a break in recording at nearby EMI Studios. The photo ended up gracing the cover of their album Abbey Road – so strong was the association with The Beatles, and so popular the record, that EMI was renamed Abbey Road Studios in the mid-1970s.
Abbey Road was the last in a long line of the ‘Fab Four’ records recorded at EMI, cementing the studio’s reputation as ‘the home of The Beatles’. The band recorded a whopping 190 of their songs there with EMI’s producer George Martin, from the harmonica in ‘Love Me Do’ to the string quartet in ‘Yesterday’, and the studio technology enabled innovative songs such as ‘A Day In The Life’ which pushed the boundaries of popular music.

And now, Abbey Road Studios has breathed new life into one of The Beatles’ best-loved albums, Revolver. A new 2022 version has been mixed by Giles Martin using the original four-track master tapes along with machine-learning technology developed by Peter Jackson’s team. The result is a journey through the band’s creative process, as if the listener is in the studio hearing every twang of George’s guitar string and reverb of Ringo’s snare drum. Listening in Dolby Atmos, the sound really is ‘Here, There and Everywhere’! So, ahead of the 2022 Special Editions release, we sat down with Paul to ask about his experience and memories of recording Revolver at EMI…

PaulMcCartney.com: The album sessions that turned into Revolver were originally planned at Stax Studio in Memphis with Jim Stewart producing, but it ended up being recorded at EMI. Do you think Revolver would have been a completely different album if you had gone that way?

Paul: It could have been – the only reason you want to record in those kind of studios is because you love the records that come out of the studios. So, we loved a lot of Stax stuff but ultimately I’m glad we didn’t record there.

EMI was our home, and we didn’t have to deal with anything other than making the record. If you’re in a strange studio there’s things you got to deal with, as you’re getting used to the new surroundings and so on. At EMI we knew the space and the people, so it was just a case of concentrating on making the record.

PM.com: Famously, Revolver was the first Beatles album that couldn’t be played live as so much of it relied on the EMI studio technology – do you think the record might have sounded more ‘live’ if you had done it at Stax?

Paul: It could have, yeah. In a different circumstance we might not have felt we could take as much time with the record. EMI was always home, so it was easy to push boundaries and get creative. We didn’t have to think about it! And the really great thing about EMI, let’s not forget, was that it had instruments lying around. There was the Mrs Mills Piano, the sound effects cupboard, a harpsichord, a celesta, the Lowrey organ (which I used on the next album Sgt. Pepper, on ‘Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds’) – this stuff was all there. A Mellotron, even! EMI was definitely the best place for us.

Six decades on, it’s amazing to see that Abbey Road Studios are still singing in sweet harmony with The Beatles. Which Revolver track are you most looking forward to hearing in the 2022 mix? Let us know on social media using the hashtag #TheBeatlesRevolver.

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

Re: Beatles vs Stones - and other Beatles stuff
Posted by: Elmo Lewis ()
Date: November 4, 2022 14:03

As expected, the sound quality of the remixed (or whatever they did) is excellent.
"Here, There, And Everywhere" being a great example.

Re: Beatles vs Stones - and other Beatles stuff
Posted by: treaclefingers ()
Date: November 5, 2022 19:49

Don't notice any coloured vinyl for the new Revolver release.

Total marketing rookies, eh?!

Re: Beatles vs Stones - and other Beatles stuff
Posted by: Irix ()
Date: November 5, 2022 19:55

Quote
treaclefingers

Don't notice any coloured vinyl for the new Revolver release.

They saved that for the next re-release. winking smiley

Re: Beatles vs Stones - and other Beatles stuff
Posted by: frankotero ()
Date: November 5, 2022 20:27

Maybe they covered that area with a picture disc? Anyhow, I prefer color vinyl myself. Or there will be RSD release in the future. Who knows.

Re: Beatles vs Stones - and other Beatles stuff
Posted by: Irix ()
Date: November 6, 2022 11:35

An artfully created Video of 'I'm Only Sleeping':



[www.YouTube.com]

Re: Beatles vs Stones - and other Beatles stuff
Posted by: frankotero ()
Date: November 6, 2022 12:23

At first I thought the video was going to dopey. I’m happy to say I enjoyed the thought and creativity of it.

Re: Beatles vs Stones - and other Beatles stuff
Posted by: Hairball ()
Date: November 10, 2022 05:54

From Billboard:

The Beatles’ ‘Revolver’ Reissue Tops Multiple Charts, Hits No. 2 on Album Sales
Keith Caulfield. 11/09/2022

REVOLVER

The Beatles’ Revolver album, first released in 1966, rushes to No. 1 on multiple Billboard charts following its deluxe expanded reissue on Oct. 28. The set re-enters at No. 1 on Top Rock & Alternative Albums, Top Rock Albums and Catalog Albums (all dated Nov. 12) – its first week at No. 1 on all three lists. Revolver also re-enters Top Album Sales, Vinyl Albums and Tastemaker Albums at No. 2. On the Billboard 200, the former No. 1 – which spent six weeks atop the list in 1966 – re-enters the list at No. 4.

For Revolver’s special edition, the album was reintroduced and remixed in a variety of expanded formats and editions, including many with previously unreleased tracks. The range included a standard digital album priced at $9.99 in the iTunes Store up through a boxed set boasting four vinyl LPs and two seven-inch singles that sold for $200 or more, depending on the retailer. All versions of Revolver, old and new, are combined for tracking and charting purposes. In the tracking week ending Nov. 3, Revolver earned 54,000 equivalent album units in the U.S. (up 1,963%). Of that sum, traditional album sales comprise 46,000 (up 6,346%).

Billboard’s Top Album Sales chart ranks the top-selling albums of the week based only on traditional album sales. The chart’s history dates back to May 25, 1991, the first week Billboard began tabulating charts with electronically monitored piece count information from SoundScan, now Luminate. Pure album sales were the sole measurement utilized by the Billboard 200 albums chart through the list dated Dec. 6, 2014, after which that chart switched to a methodology that blends album sales with track equivalent album units and streaming equivalent album units. For all chart news, follow @billboard and @billboardcharts on both Twitter and Instagram. Top Rock & Alternative Albums, Top Rock Albums and Catalog Albums rank the week’s most popular rock and alternative albums, rock albums and catalog albums, respectively, by equivalent album units. (Catalog albums are older albums, generally those at least 18-months old.) Tastemaker Albums ranks the week’s best-selling albums at independent and small chain record stores. Vinyl Albums tallies the top-selling vinyl albums of the week.

Of Revolver’s 46,000 in album sales for the week, physical sales comprise 42,000 (18,000 on vinyl and 24,000 on CD) and digital album download sales comprise 4,000. The rerelease of Revolver is part of the ongoing series of expanded reissues of select studio albums by The Beatles. It follows reissues of Let It Be in 2021 (first released in 1970), Abbey Road in 2019 (first released in 1969), The Beatles in 2018 (often referred to as the White Album, first released in 1968) and Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band in 2017 (first released in 1967).

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

Re: Beatles vs Stones - and other Beatles stuff
Posted by: CaptainCorella ()
Date: November 10, 2022 06:55

If topping the Billboard charts is clearly not enough for Paul McCartney of Liverpool.

He's now releasing 80 7" singles (159 tracks) in an as yet unstated format. (That's a very big box if it's all on 7" vinyl).

Gory details at [www.noise11.com]

Captain Corella

Re: Beatles vs Stones - and other Beatles stuff
Posted by: Irix ()
Date: November 10, 2022 12:30

Quote
CaptainCorella

He's now releasing 80 7" singles (159 tracks)

The 7” Singles



02-Dec-2022 - [www.Qobuz.com] , [Music.Apple.com] .


"It's called The 7" Singles Box and will be released on 2 December 2022 in an extraordinary edition personally curated by Paul McCartney: it's Vinyl and limited to only 3,000 copies (all numbered). The box is in a wooden box designed and assembled in the UK, and includes a 148-page book with an essay by Rob Sheffield. The collection will also be available on streaming platforms" - [www.Rockol.it] - (in Italian).



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2022-11-10 13:25 by Irix.

Re: Beatles vs Stones - and other Beatles stuff
Posted by: Spud ()
Date: November 10, 2022 13:10

I'm all for vinyl ...but releasing these huge sets of 7" singles is never anything other than a greedy money grabbing exercise .

Yes ... I know , it's all about selling music for money ...that's why there are professisional musicians ...

..but this is a cynical excess !

Re: Beatles vs Stones - and other Beatles stuff
Posted by: Doxa ()
Date: November 10, 2022 13:34

Quote
Spud
I'm all for vinyl ...but releasing these huge sets of 7" singles is never anything other than a greedy money grabbing exercise .

Yes ... I know , it's all about selling music for money ...that's why there are professisional musicians ...

..but this is a cynical excess !

Well, looking how the Beatles catalog is handled and how Macca sells his stuff, there is still something the Stones could learn from their old rivals... I mean, we know the Stones dudes are greedy, and eager to take any cent out of anything possible, but probably they are B class there...

- Doxa

Re: Beatles vs Stones - and other Beatles stuff
Posted by: Spud ()
Date: November 10, 2022 13:43

I think I'm glad they are B Class grinning smiley

Goto Page: PreviousFirst...196197198199200201202203204205206...LastNext
Current Page: 201 of 228


Sorry, only registered users may post in this forum.

Online Users

Guests: 1230
Record Number of Users: 206 on June 1, 2022 23:50
Record Number of Guests: 9627 on January 2, 2024 23:10

Previous page Next page First page IORR home