The Beatles - A Guide for a Twit.

[Adam Blake]

(heavy scouse accent) Still enjoyin' yerself, over ther then, are yer? Our Gord?

[Gordon Moore]

I am mate. I got a little distracted as I had to create a compilation for the guys on the CD Circle.

However by lunchtime I was back at it.

Just finished Rubber Soul. What another beauty of an album. I don't think there's a duff track on it, but I get a stylistically different feel from it.

I had hoped my book would have arrived today as Amazon indicated it was in stock, but they've just told me I've got to wait another week. Curses.

I've been trying to get my head round Norwegian Wood. The Beatles Complete song book suggest an Open E as the root chord, but many tabs suggest a capo on fret 2 and then a D, which is of course an E. I'm still not convinced, though of course it is taken from an LP and I've had tuning issues with them before (re Django).

There is one chord that doesn't seem right. It's at the end .. I noticed there wasn't a chair - suggested F#m7 to B7. On the capo, the B7 doesn't quite seem right, (played as an A7). Oh well.

I am really enjoying this. Pity I couldn't have got to Sgt Pepper for today :)

And my guitar playing is coming on leaps and bounds, though my finger tips hurt, and my wrist from the barre chords (which at last I'm now starting to get and know - a real leap for me being able to now play open or barre without giving it too much thought!)

[Gordon Moore]

Rubber Soul is even more fantastic now that I've spent another afternoon listening and playing. One track that really hooked me is I'm Looking Through You. It's not a track I've ever heard before, I wonder why?

Oh well, must push on, there's time to do all this again.

I don't know hw many of you out there profess to playing guitar, but you have to picture the scene. I'm in the conservatory, it's really hot and I don't like to have the windows and doors open too wide as all the spiders and flies like to make their home with me, and I saw a rather large mouse nosing its way around my deck. I have my new amp behind my wicker rocker, I've put on a big stand up fan, I have my Tanglewood electro-acoustic, my Spirit of Steinberger electric (i.e. not the real one!) and my banjo at my side. On my coffee table I have loads of A4 sheets with photocopies of Beatles songs I did like a hundred years ago and have never been sorted, I have my laptop and a printer, and my media center pc playing the tracks. I hear a song, try and find the chords, fail miserably, cause it never sounds anything like right. So I look uo the song through the paper, that are getting blown all over. Then i decide to do a tab search on' tinternet. I realise I haven't got a clue as to what a Bflatm7 looks like, so I look that up as well. then I'm trying to make annotations, trying to stop the banjo sliding onto the floor as I reach for a pencil. Then i plug my acoustic in before turning down the volume. Ouch, that hurt. is my new amp still working????

It's hard work you know!!!!

[Gordon Moore]

Right, I'm back.

EDIT: I'm going mad. I've posted at least twice on Rubber Soul!!!! Sorry

Rubber Soul, excellent. This album just keeps growing on me, I thought I'd mentioned this somewhere, I'm going blind like Des, but the track I'm Looking Through You is just a real favourite. I have no idea why I love it so. I even like that bit after "You're not the same" I can't even describe it. der der diddly diddly

I'm not going to song by song this album, cause just about everything is bril.

Now Revolver. Uhmm. I'm having difficulty with this one. It's definitely very good, four stars easy, and I know a lot of people rate it even more highly, but there's a little something about it (over familiarity?) that stops me giving it five. Tracks like Eleanor rigby are clearly sublimely fabulous, but, though it too is growing, more slowly than Rubber Soul perhaps, I just don't quite get it.


So one week too late, here we go with Sgt Pepper. Again, I confess I have never listened to this album before. It is now hyped? as the best album ever? I'm worried that it won't live up to expectations. What if I don't like it? Adam 'll send round the boys. Oh dear, this is very worrying.

Deep breath, here goes...

[Gordon Moore]

So Sgt Pepper.

Please Adam, don't despise me, but I don't quite get why it is the "Greatest Album ever"? (I'm not implying that you said that!)

I've been listening to it for a few days on and off, and although there are many superb tracks on it, A Day In The Life is definitely one of the best songs ever (and I'm not saying that just to please you), Sgt Pepper and its reprise, Lucy are great too. It is without doubt an excellent album, great songs, superbly crafted, but is it really the ultimate? It is their best up to this point for sure (as an album).

Perhaps I am expecting too much. I watched one of the programmes on redoing Sgt Pepper with different artists and that certainly woke me up to how well crafted the songs were and especially seeing the difficulties some had with emulating the Beatles. (I missed the second part).

In terms of the development though, it is to me that, a development of what they have done. Is it revolutionary? I don't think so, one can hear echoes in what has gone before. Of course using orchestration was certainly different.

I suspect that another reason is that the songs are just too familiar, to well known in my sub conciousness. I can't give it a fair hearing as to how I would have felt hearing it for the first time ever.

More than 5 stars, oh yes, but only to 6 stars.

I await the flak. :)

[Adam Blake]

Oh come now, Gordon, don't be so bloody daft! I would never say "Sgt Pepper" was the best Beatles album - and certainly not the best album ever made (I can't be bothered with those stupid lists anyway. They're only there to fill column inches for lazy journalists.)

The point about "Sgt Pepper" is it represented the highwater mark of the 60s UK artistic and cultural renaissance. Everything that had been building since John Osborne and Profumo, Carnaby Street, Peter Brook's RSC, Beyond The Fringe and the rise of The Beatles themselves - it all peaked around the summer of '67. After that, it was all downhill. There's a wonderful sense of optimism about the record, so beautifully cast into icy doubt by the deadpan surrealism in Lennon's voice on "A Day In The Life".
I still get chills listening to it. "I read the news today, oh boy..."

What's nice about your coming to this stuff for the first time so late in the day is that you're completely innocent of the various trends of Beatle criticism over the years. For a long time, "The White Album" was the favourite, then it was "Revolver". Now it's... I dunno. For myself, I think a good case could be made for "A Hard Day's Night" - being 29 minutes of absolutely flawless world-beating pop music, with just a tiny hint of something deeper emerging on McCartney's "Things We Said Today" and Lennon's "I'll Be Back".

[Dayna]

I heard Live And Let Die on the radio a couple days ago. I really like the song.

Along time ago, when my brother & I watched the movie, it scared us so much, we couldn't go to sleep.

[Adam Blake]

This just reminds me - where's our Gordon?

[Dayna]

http://www.charliegillett.com/phpBB2/vi ... ad09068977
This was his last message.

[judith]

Thanks Dayna, You've an incredible memory. I was looking for that but couldn't remember which thread. There are a couple of more entries by Gordon on the next page of your link (page 6).

[c hristian]

we are allowed to still talk about the beatles on this thread?

MAGICAL mystery tour is my fave.


there was this great beatles book that came out recently, more like a biogrpahy and was very neutral , not reverant at all. Talked about the drugs, etc. but not too much or in a sensational way. I listened to it on CD. Came out in the past 2 years. I HIGHLY recommend it , in terms of putting in the historical and personal (for them) context to their music. Would like to see that other book too.

After 1967 - what, the drugs got bad?

[Adam Blake]

After 1967 - what, the drugs got bad?

Yes, definitely. And their manager dying didn't help.

[c hristian]

that's true! he was into all kinds of self-destructive behavior, was the sense I got.

[Adam Blake]

He had a problem with combining alcohol with prescribed barbiturates such as Nembutal which is, I believe, what killed him.

[Dayna]

Some time ago, I watched a show on TV, The British Rock and Roll Hall of Fame & at the end of the show, they did a special tribute to a manager or producer for the Beatles. He put several newer Pop singers together like Van Morrison, & a couple others, to perform a Beatle's song. It was suprisingly good.