Why the Beatles?

[Skygazer]

Neither was better post-Beatles.

Agreed, couldn't be better, but they weren't dinosaurs either, Lennon was 30 McCartney 28, what were they going to do? singer songwriters must have some of the biggest egos in pop ( no mean feat) yes the teenage rampage years were well behind them and the hippie trippy stuff losing it's allure. But they were still talented musicians.

Maybe that's the crux of the biscuit: rock and roll isn't supposed to be deep.
But I think it really has more to do with rock and roll being young people's music

Yes, deep but shallow:).
Both of them I think produced a few good albums post Beatles and carried on their bickering and competing, I just dislike the way McCartney gets the brunt of the blame and abuse, still after all this time. Yes he produced some cheesy rubbish, but so did Lennon.But it was arguably music for their peers, the teens in the early seventies had moved on anyway.

 

[Purple Stickpin]

The point I was trying to make in the other thread is that, while in the Beatles, Lennon's output massively outshines McCartney's output, but after the Beatles, McCartney's '70s output outshines Lennon's '70s output (but not massively). But in no way does any of their post-Beatles catalog surpass what they did in the Beatles.

 

[Skygazer]

That's ok Purple, I was sure I was in for a telling off for putting my earlier post here, I thought you had set sail and were 1 or 2 sheets to the wind when I saw your post in the music thread, then I thought shit, I should have this ( my earlier thread) in the music thread. If you follow me...
Anyhoooo,

Lennon's output massively outshines McCartney's output, but after the Beatles, McCartney's '70s output outshines Lennon's '70s output (but not massively)

easy for you to say, I think? measuring outputs:wb: but as has been said, they worked best together, for me it's Lennon and McCartney you raise a glass to, not who was best.

 

[d gray]

http://dangerousminds.net/comments/...f_white_albums_take_up_residence_in_liverpool

 

[Purple Stickpin]

That's ok Purple, I was sure I was in for a telling off for putting my earlier post here, I thought you had set sail and were 1 or 2 sheets to the wind when I saw your post in the music thread, then I thought shit, I should have this ( my earlier thread) in the music thread. If you follow me...
Anyhoooo...they worked best together, for me it's Lennon and McCartney you raise a glass to, not who was best.

I was completely sober (well, possibly), but my point wasn't that Lennon was better post-Beatles, it was that McCartney was (but not by a wide margin, longevity notwithstanding). And no telling off or any of that; it's just my observation, which I find interesting. I hold McCartney in the highest regard as a bass player, but I have trouble picking out that many Beatle songs of his that really stand out as classics. Sure, there's Yesterday, I'll Follow the Sun, I've Just Seen a Face, Eleanor Rigby, For No One, Fixing a Hole and Hey Jude (not a favorite of mine), but beyond that, I've got 30 Lennon Beatle songs that are equally as good or better.

But I agree that as a songwriting team, that is where they excelled. But other than A Day in the Life (which wasn't so much a collaboration as a case of "Hey I've got this bit and you've got this bigger bit, let's make a sandwich), I've Got a Feeling (which is a bit disappointing), and The Ballad of John and Yoko (which is a true collaboration considering that Ringo and George were unavailable and that's just John and Paul and the results are fantastic), that pretty much ended by mid-'65.

 

[Skygazer]

But I agree that as a songwriting team, that is where they excelled.

Reading that, I don't think you had any trouble picking out McCartney songs you liked.:wb: For myself, I don't want to pick it apart that much and reach a verdict on who was best, particularly in the Beatles, for me it was a collaboration, not always a happy one but what band is? sometimes the best work is done in acrimony.
I haven't listened to all of the post Beatles stuff, don't want to, especially all the McCartney stuff, but the albums I rate are:
For Paul: McCartney, Wild Life and Band on the Run
For John: John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band, Imagine and Mind Games.
The album McCartney seems to get lost though, I love it and it's underrated. Doesn't have the dark,angsty complexity of "Ono" but it isn't rubbish, Every Night and Maybe I'm Amazed, are beautiful, deceptively simple songs, as is the whole album.
I like this clip:

 

[mjp]

There's no direct comparison between those two anyway. Musically, temperamentally or any other way. Those differences (and a hundred other things) made their collaboration - even when they weren't really collaborating, strictly speaking - what it was.

When you gauge their post-Beatles work keep in mind that one of them was often consciously reaching for something, and the other was writing ditties. Which would you assume is going to appear more "successful"? If you strive for something artistically engaging, you're going to fall flat more often than you would taking a safer route.

 

[Purple Stickpin]

When you gauge their post-Beatles work keep in mind that one of them was often consciously reaching for something, and the other was writing ditties. Which would you assume is going to appear more "successful"? If you strive for something artistically engaging, you're going to fall flat more often than you would taking a safer route.

Or perhaps McCartney was just keeping his rock and roll not so very deep, as some folks prefer. On the other hand, what's more of a ditty; Oh Yoko! or Live and Let Die? A very perfunctory and pedestrian 1975 album of '50s R&R chestnuts or Band on the Run?

Then again, McCartney has his share of tripe; Wildlife being first and foremost. But McCartney and Ram are excellent, as were Imagine and small portions of Mind Games and Walls and Bridges. What does bug me about post-Beatles Lennon and his recordings is that he seemed to have such a vendetta against Paul that the bass on his early-mid '70s recordings is generally abysmal. I don't know if it was a conscious thing or if it was just an artifact of the engineer, but it's just awful. Listen to Whatever Gets You Thru the Night. The bass part is great but it sounds like someone plucking a rubber band inside a dumpster on Pluto.

 

[mjp]

A very perfunctory and pedestrian 1975 album of '50s R&R chestnuts...

Imagine (no pun intended) losing a copyright lawsuit and one of the stipulations of the judgement is you have to include three songs by an oldies publisher on your next album. What the hell can you do but an album that fits around those songs? You're not going to fuck up a real album by forcing three old covers onto it.

Anyway, we could cherry pick McCartney's least tin pan alley songs and compare them to Lennon's most sing-songy, but that's not an accurate picture of the two as artists. McCartney has a reputation as a lightweight because he is a lightweight. Sometimes that's what you want. And you know, when you want that, he's an okay way to go. Smooth sailing. Git 'er done! Thumbs up. A reliable, toe-tapping two and a half hours ending with a Beatles medley. Everyone files out of the amphitheater smiling, their sleeping toddlers over their shoulders.

But McCartney never did and never will surprise you. He never walked on to a stage and had an audience wondering what the hell was about to happen. He just never rocked. He never had the undefinable thing that makes someone mesmerizing. Lennon had it, Morrison (Jim or Van), Johnny Cash, (the young) Iggy, The Replacements, The Clash, Johnny Thunders - and a lot of other great performers. There's an unpredictability there, a little danger (or a lot of danger), and that is the essence of rock and roll. Danger. The strong possibility that the entire "show" may implode at any moment. Keith Moon laying unconscious across his drums. None of that has anything to do with music, but everything to do with rock and roll.

So in that way, in the realm of rock and roll as a thing, McCartney isn't really comparable to Lennon. They are two different beasts.

But there's more to life than rock and roll, so not rocking isn't the end of the world. Also, Lennon had the advantage of dying relatively young, so we'll never know if he would have been giving concerts to sleeping children too. For all we know they could have "reunited" and disappointed us for decades.

 

[Skygazer]

It always boils down to the basic cliche, I suppose, of Lennon being deep, artsy and McCartney being shallow, tame, but nothing is that black and white.

The Double Fantasy album told us exactly where Lennon was going - nowhere anyone wanted to follow. Although John himself carried on disparaging the "ditties" of McCartney (and there are some terrible ones) at the same time he never stopped listening and competing. Neither of them did.

In his last interview for Rolling Stone Lennon 3 days before he was shot, he said this "I've selected to work with ... only two people: Paul McCartney and Yoko Ono. That ain't bad picking."

 

[mjp]

The Double Fantasy album told us exactly where Lennon was going...

It told us where he was at that moment. The difference between the two is that you had no idea what "the next record" from Lennon would be. Bossa nova Himalayan chants? Wouldn't have surprised anyone. But you could always be pretty sure what the next McCartney record was going to sound like.

Everything I say about those guys seems to disparage McCartney, but that's not what I'm trying to do (sleeping toddlers dig aside). The point that I meant to make, successfully or not, is that you really shouldn't compare them because they didn't do the same thing. It's like comparing Bob Dylan to Bob Seeger. Or something. Okay, maybe not Bob Seeger, but you get the point. A crowd pleaser versus someone who doesn't really give a shit what the crowd wants.

All comparisons and nitpicking aside, the point should probably be that no one has ever surfaced that could challenge what they did together, the four of them, though people have been trying for 50 years. That's the story. And unfortunately for them, that was a shadow they each had to live in after 1970. As a creative person, naturally you carry on, but you're kind of fucked by a constant comparison to your own previous greatness or fame. Every successful pop/rock musician goes through that, which goes back to what I was saying about rock and roll being a weapon of the young.

 

[Purple Stickpin]

...McCartney isn't really comparable to Lennon. They are two different beasts.

This must be (a big reason) why their best stuff was in collaboration with one another. Two halves of a whole; yin/yang; accessible/unpredictable, etc. I'm sure this point has already been made, but it bears repeating, I guess.

 

[skiroomalum]

This is a great thread, and one I've refrained from entering. The thing about the Beatles for me is like Buk is for me: an intensely personal and visceral feeling that's hard to articulate. It's so mixed in with childhood memories of time and place. That being said, John's music and persona and history are so strongly linked it's hard to not mythologize his work. But fuck, his work is breathtakingly beautiful and difficult and thought provoking in a way that Paul's is not. I find George's All Things Must Pass to be better than any of Paul's post-Beatles catalogue. John was the shit. In the same category of influence as Ali, Miles, Dylan, Picasso. Two passing I still think about regularly that defined my youth: Thurman Munson in 79 and Lennon in 80. I'm never really far from that kid.

 

[Skygazer]

Sorry if you've seen it before, but it's a nice piece:

 

[Purple Stickpin]

So, best job in the world or worst? Despite loving the Beatles, this would kill me.

 

[mjp]

I take it she is QCing random samples from a pressing?

 

[hoochmonkey9]

Are they hiring?

 

[d gray]

So, best job in the world or worst?

depends on which song you're listening to.

 

[Purple Stickpin]

I take it she is QCing random samples from a pressing?

That would be my guess. That's the original UK release, but is she checking pulls from different pressing plants (or was there only a single plant)? Was she instructed to listen to the same excerpts from each disc?

 

[mjp]

I wouldn't think there were multiple pressing plants in the UK at that time, though who knows, at that point they sold enough records to justify it. I know they pressed in a few different locations in the U.S., but that's just the logistics of geography.

One of the wonderful things about the warm, perfect music medium that is a vinyl LP is it was an analog process using parts (stampers) that wore out pretty quickly. So an LP pressed from a new stamper does not sound the same as the 10,oooth LP pressed from the same stamper. I would think there would be quality control at various points in a stamper's life, but that's a lot of LPs she's got there...

You'd only have to listen to 15 seconds or so to hear any differences or defects. Not taking into account the hundred different defects each individual disk could have. Your mono CDs sound better than any platter in any one of those stacks.

 

[Purple Stickpin]

As well you know, there are a few thousand (million?) audiophiles who would scream blue in the face about how wrong you are. I can't say I've ever had much opportunity to listen to a top-notch turntable and system to A/B LPs vs CDs, so who knows? I do know that it's not worth the effort and expense to me. I will say, however, that the one time I had the privilege and opportunity to record in a really good recording studio (Sound Techniques in Boston), the playback in the control room was ridiculously realistic; actually stunning. Since that was in 1996, it was likely digital, but my point is, there are ways of getting music to sound better than what one may currently have at home.

 

[mjp]

there are a few thousand (million?) audiophiles who would scream blue in the face about how wrong you are.

Yes. But that doesn't make them right. ;)

I spent a lot of time in studios too, and that sound that I heard in there is my standard. I've never heard a vinyl LP that even begins to approach that standard, not by a long shot (and I do have a top-notch turntable, as well as, oh, 50 years of vinyl listening experience). But I've heard plenty of well-mastered CDs that come very close to recapturing that studio sound.

So who's right? Who cares, as long as you like what you hear. Most people these days listen to music reproduced through electronics on par with a 60s transistor radio, so this argument is only interesting to a small group of propeller-heads.

 

[Purple Stickpin]

this argument is only interesting to a small group of propeller-heads.

Such as ourselves.

I have a cheap Sony turntable that gets the job done, especially since the bulk of my record collection went with me to college. I don't listen to LPs much, but I've found that the single greatest improvement to the fidelity of my set-up(s) is a set of Bose QuietComfort 15 headphones. I know some folks think Bose is overrated or even terrible, etc., but these headphones destroy my Sony MDR-V600s, which were a $100 set of headphones 20 years ago.

 

[mjp]

I know some folks think Bose is [...] terrible...

The only place I've ever heard or read that is in audiophile forums. ;)

Not a Bose fan myself based on some expensive Bose speakers I once bought that sounded pretty bad. I bought them to replace some old JBLs about 20 years ago. I got rid of the Bose speakers very quickly. I still use the JBLs. Sometimes you have to try something new in order to appreciate what you've already got.

 

[Skygazer]

I've found that the single greatest improvement to the fidelity of my set-up(s) is a set of Bose QuietComfort 15 headphones. I know some folks think Bose is overrated or even terrible, etc., but these headphones destroy my Sony MDR-V600s, which were a $100 set of headphones 20 years ago.

I have a pair of Bose headphones for running, they cost £150 ( not my best ones which I keep in the house) they take a bit of abuse with being dropped, or being plunged into a ditch, when I was trying to avoid a demented chihuahua! still working and sound fine to me - but I am no expert.

Just a demo so a bit rough! and given to The Iveys (Badfinger). Apparently it's Paul on everything with John keeping out ( but looking on:-)) a comment on the mess they were in with Apple:

 

[Danny Mac]

A long time ago, about 1987, I wanted to buy some super fancy speakers for my listening pleasure. I wanted them to last a long time. So I bought an issue of Consumer's report magazine. They said Boston Acoustics were a fine set of speakers. I had never heard of them. I found a local store that carried them and even though they were expensive I had a credit card to put them on.

Man o Man what a great decision that was. I bought the pair that are approximately 1 1/2 feet wide by 3 1/2 tall. A few years later I bought a second set that were smaller. I still have them and they still look brand new. I blew out 3 or 4 woofers since then but if you are looking to buy some speakers that are truly outstanding you can't do much better than Boston Acoustics. I love those damn speakers.

I used to be a drummer and I used to have to play to records in order to play. I could never quite hear the music over the sound of the drums. When the CD was invented my drumming skills improved dramatically because I could finally really let loose on the drums and hear myself. With my 4 Boston Acoustic speakers I could drum really loud and still hear the music crystal clear. I'm sure many drummers across the land experienced the same epiphany that I did when the CD was invented.

 

[mjp]

I blew out 3 or 4 woofers since then...

A subwoofer (if your amp can accommodate it) should fix that. That and, you know, not running them with an amp that can overpower them enough to blow them. If that's what you're doing.

In any event, I don't know if I'd call speakers that "blew out 3 or 4 woofers" outstanding. Maybe I'm a stickler.

But yes, that first pair of good speakers (or first good anything in your stereo set up) is an ear opening experience.

 

[Danny Mac]

I had them a very long time. 2014 minus 1987 is, wait I have to think, that 27 years. You know how wear and tear enters into the time of it. Those speakers dealt with so much mechanical vibration that they just wore out. The tweeters are very small and tight and I never lost one of those. The woofers are about 4 inches across.

I was also playing them at very loud volumes. When I was just listening to them 4 or 5 was really loud. When I drummed with the stereo on I had them up to 7 which was ear splitting loud. I had to turn up the stereo gradually when I was going to drum so as to warm my ears up. So I think if I treated them like a normal none drumming maniac maybe only 1 woofer would have worn out over that period of time.

Trust me... these Boston Acoustics are really something special. On a different note my two older brothers always had JBL speakers. They swore by them.

 

[d gray]

 

[mjp]

That's a great example of their skill in blending vocals. The way McCartney's voice is dominant throughout until they get to "it took me so long to find out, but I found out," when Lennon's voice becomes dominant. That kind of blending only comes with singing together for a long time. And listening.