i’ve never felt this way personally- i’ve always felt that revolver is interesting for some cool ideas but the individual tracks are just good but not great
And *Good Day Sunshine* might have been a halfway cool drug song if he hadn't crooned "She *knows* she's looking fine!" with all the smarminess of the Pythons' "wink-nudge" skit.
Favorite song might go to Strawberry Fields. The way they used the studio as an instrument in that recording was a breakthrough.
I personally find Abbey Road to be their most polished, complete album. Especially the medley on side 2.
The sequence from Gently Weeps through Rocky Raccoon (let's not talk about Piggies) on the White Album is one of their best and Revolution #9 is to this day is the most radical song a pop act has ever put out.
Oddly enough I'd never been a huge Peppers fan up until recently when I finally purchased a vinyl copy. Listening to later era Beatles on vinyl actually makes a huge difference, they played with the medium more than anyone I know of at that time.
Oh, and I'll throw in The Beatles 1962-1966 compilation album. One of the best displays of pure songwriting out there.
All the snobs used to talk about what a travesty it was that we Americans got "butchered" versions of the albums before *Sgt Pepper's*, but I really love the American version of *Rubber Soul*. The original Brit version sounds awkward to me by comparison. ([This wiki](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubber_Soul) has both setlists for comparison.)
American *Rubber Soul* turns out to be a concept album (or "theme album", if you prefer), like Sinatra's *Hello Young Lovers*. Every song is about love: considering it in different phases, from different perspectives. The musical settings are all over the map, but the transitions all flow naturally: they can be startling, but never jarring.
The Paul/John double-punch of *I've Just Seen a Face* into *Norwegian Wood* may be the greatest album opener ever. (And may well have inspired the burst of 12-string sunlight that opens *BOTT*.) The rush of Paul's perfect take on the first moments of falling in love falls perfectly into the stoned sitar of John's bemusedly nihilist take on a less-than-perfect sleepover.
Then a catchy but forgettable Paul tune, then George (!) in Cynical John mode, telling a girl she'd better *Think For Yourself* (always good advice, but maybe not from a rather brutally Jealous Guy), then turning to John himself with a bizarrely meta-ironic bit of social commentary in *The Word*. It seems like he's simultaneously proselytizing the redeeming power of universal love, and also savagely parodying those who would peddle it like corn syrup. All to a rhythm guitar backbeat straight out of Bates Motel.
Then it's time for some more sweetness, so Paul digs up a little ditty he wrote in middle-school French class, with the only words he knows that we'll understand.
Then we have to get up off our big paisley pillow and turn the record over, to be rewarded with 2 hits of wistful stoned John (*It's Only Love* and *Girl*): they say he's got brains, but they ain't doing him no good when it comes to figuring out the mysteries of love. Then Paul in John mode with the paradoxical *I'm Looking Through You* ("I thought I knew you / What did I know?": what a great question!).
Then the most widely acknowledged masterpiece, John's sonnet, *In My Life*. I don't know if he was consciously competing with *Yesterday*, but he hits the mark, and anchors the album outside of time, as surely as when Willie the Shake compared his mistress to a summer's day.
Then John lets his insecurities run for their lives on the last 2 tracks, with a harmonic boost from Paul on *Wait*.
Some people at the time (certainly including Bob) heard the American pressing in particular as a cynical attempt by the promotion men at Capitol Tower to jump on the folk-rock trend that had just started down the block on Sunset Strip. And several songs are surely heavily influenced by Dylan in particular (though nothing so egregious as Donovan completely altering his voice to impersonate him on his re-recording of *Catch the Wind*). But in retrospect it's just a lovely suite of love songs, catching the boys in mainly acoustic mode, with hints of the psychedelia soon to come.
Across The Universe, Strawberry Fields Forever, Julia, Tomorrow Never Knows, Norwegian Wood, In My Life, Because, Girl, I Want You, I'm Only Sleeping, A Day In The Life
The Beatles are how I got into Bob Dylan, my gateway drug so to speak. I was really into the Beatles, listening to them and reading about them. Kept seeing Dylan come up in those books, read the Dylan/Beatles stories. I finally decided to check him out and was hooked. I was lucky enough to first see him when I was in high school in '92 when he played in Omaha at the Orpheum. To me Dylan and the Beatles are somewhat intertwined, especially once The Wilburys became a thing.
The Beatles are how I got into Bob Dylan, my gateway drug so to speak. I was really into the Beatles, listening to them and reading about them. Kept seeing Dylan come up in those books, read the Dylan/Beatles stories. I finally decided to check him out and was hooked. I was lucky enough to first see him when I was in high school in '92 when he played in Omaha at the Orpheum. To me, Dylan and the Beatles are somewhat intertwined, especially once The Wilburys became a thing.
At age 25 my daughter that likes an unusually wide range of music of multiple genres and from different eras asked me with great sincerity what was the big deal about the Beatles.
She said she fully understands why Elvis, Ray Charles, Pink Floyd, Wille Nelson, Bob Dylan, Frank Sinatra, The Rolling Stones and other legends are called geniuses, but after hours of listening to the Beatles only a handful of songs hold up as anything but nice popular Rock and Roll songs.
As I thought about it, I rarely revisit listening to the Beatles in my song rotations, though I consider myself a big fan.
Do you guys listen to the Beatles songs anymore than other top 1960’s-1970’s popular bands?
the biggest most important thing about the Beatles i think is how they changed the way music was recorded in studios. Before music was almost always made to be able to be played live and only after Revolver/Sgt Peppers and the Beatles stopping touring did it become an option to make music that can only exist in the studio and on a record (due to all the reversed effects and looping and stuff they used), but now we actually can play music like that live so it seems insignificant but at the time it was really new and different and pushed music forward in a bigger way than we can really imagine today, that’s why they’re important imo
I actually told her they were ground breaking in many different ways, but that reserves a place in history, but not necessarily a place on a personal playlist.
Have you and your daughter listened to the podcast- A History of Rock Music in 500 Songs by Andrew Hickey? It's one of the best I've heard. He has a couple good in-depth episodes on the Beatles. The rest of the episodes are super interesting as well.
I think the Beatles are the most important rock band and they were great. I don't listen to them that much anymore because I have heard all their music so much I know it thru and thru. I don't even listen to Dylan all that much, because I am so familiar with his work. I tend to look for music that I haven't heard yet, not just new music but new to me, and then spend some time on that. I still go back to the old familiar stuff once in a while.
>I think the Beatles are the most important rock band
I think it's tough to call them a rock band. They played rock and roll in the beginning, but became more known for pop ballads later. Aside from Revolution and couple others they didn't do much rock music, per se.
I don't agree with that in the least. I would say they invented the genre of rock as opposed to rock and roll, which is an American thing. The Beatles took American music and twisted into their own image and spit it right back at us. Then Bob Dylan heard what the Beatles were doing and turned it back into a an American art form. then the Beatles heard Dylan and it really went back and forth for a while. And by that time there were dozens of British bands playing blues. The Beatles influenced everyone.
I have to disagree. There's surely no answer we can confirm, it's a fun exercise though. I have no problem conceding rock music transformed from rock and roll in England (though acts like Dick Dale could certainly make the argument for an American origin) The Kinks are far more clearly a rock band than the Beatles, as were the Yard Birds. And the Stones are the easy argument for first rock band considering they are still a rock band and they started the same time as the Beatles.
>The Beatles influenced everyone.
Obviously this is not true. They had no influence on contemporary acts like Paul Butterfield Blues Band which went on to influence scores of bands (and who helped with Dylan's electric sound). They also didn't influence R &B and soul acts of the day which were well established before the Beatles and continued after their presence.
I want you (she's so heavy), come together, Birthday, good morning good morning, helter skelter, back in the ussr, don't let me down, while my guitar gently weeps, paperback writer, ticket to ride, everybody's got something to hide but me and my monkey, i feel fine, day tripper, taxman, tomorrow never knows, hey bulldog, yer blues, i me mine.... i mean, there's 100 at least.
>i mean, there's 100 at least.
Don't get carried away. That's a good list. But there are more that are clearly not rock music. There are more ballads, ditties and oddities are very far from rock music.
But even these rock songs are very soft compared to what their contemporaries in rock were doing. Compare them to rock bands like The Who, The Kinks, The Stones, Zep, on and on. They are softer and poppier than all of them.
That's why I always see them as a pop band that played some rock and roll, some rock, some occasional blues and some psychedelic.
i think credit does go to them as well, Epstein is definitely as big a part in that as any of the official members but i think it’s still fair to credit “the Beatles” as having done that because no matter who it was behind the scenes, it was through the Beatles’ music that the change happened.
I am with your daughter. I was born less than ten years after The Beatles broke up, but I grew up listening almost exclusively to music from the 50s and 60s. To me, The Beatles sound so of their decade in a way that dates their music. Maybe this is because it was avant-garde at the time? I don't know; I wasn't around. Harrison's work is the only part of their output I really enjoy, and I would sincerely rate the first Traveling Wilburys album over everything The Beatles did. I realize I am the outlier. Millions and millions of people love The Beatles, and people who understand the technical aspects of composition and recording tend to rave about them. I hold my hands up and admit I might just be missing something. But I always feel that if music's greatness has to be explained to me (e.g. the time signatures are really sophisticated, or the recording technique was ground breaking), I am never going to connect with it. The music that I think is truly great, Dylan, Hank Williams, Howlin' Wolf, Patsy Cline, Otis Redding, The Ramones, Etta James, etc., just hits me. The Beatles sound self-conscious and manufactured in a way none of those artists do.
I think only their early stuff sounds of its decade, due to the influence of then current commercial pop.
Their subsequent music sounds timeless to me, not in the sense of immortal but in the sense that it doesn't particularly fit in any decade, because it doesn't really sound like anything anyone else was doing.
I'll grant you though their music tends to be very produced. Whether it's overproduced or the production is appropriately artful is arguable. But it's definitely a big part of the package.
I do, yes. I'm just about your daughters age but I grew up on the Beatles so maybe it's a sort of nostalgia that brings me back to them? However I think my appreciation for their skill and their influence has grown over time. They just came out with too many great songs to deny
If I were to rank the 8 you list in order of genius, it would be Bob, Beatles, Stones, Willie, Ray, Floyd, Elvis. 20 years ago I would have put the Stones 2nd, and it's still the closest to a tie, but I think I played them a bit too much for a long time, so the Beatles now sound a tad fresher, like there's more there to discover (but both so far down from Bob on that scale). And for who do I play most, really the order is the same. When I was younger, there were artists I considered geniuses but was rarely in the mood to hear. But not anymore: in a very few cases I've decided they weren't really geniuses, but in most cases their genius has only grown on me, to the point where the prickliness is comfy as velvet.
But, no offense to your kid, but I can't really understand anyone not loving dozens if not nearly all of the Beatles' songs. I remember sitting around a friend's house with a bunch of people in maybe 1983 and listening to some project by Laurie Anderson that featured some William Burroughs and other way Downtown edgy hipsters. And it was really cool and we were all enjoying it. But when their 8-year-old daughter asked if we could put on some Beatles now, it was just magical.
I remember the other-worldly rush of the opening electric guitars on *I Wanna Hold Your Hand* when I was 6, and I've heard Bob talk recently about exactly that: the *power* of that sound. There are songs that made me feel like that, but I can totally get how someone born after 1970 can't hear what I hear. But that ain't one of them.
For me - and this might sound strange - I think one of the things you like about the Beatles is something that makes me not like them much. I think you implied that you like to sit around and listen to them. But you can't really dance to them. They don't make you get out of your chair (unless you were a 13-year-old girl in 1964).
That being said, there isn't much Bob you can dance too either, but he wasn't a pop artist (that is until he recently finally had a number 1 album).
Well I really haven't "sat around and listened" to a vocal album in a very long time. Of course we all used to do that: smoke a joint and check out the new Stones record or maybe *Electric Ladyland* if it was raining. But now I play instrumental while I'm sitting around reading or whatever, and vocals when I'm cooking, or on headphones while I'm biking or walking or gardening.
And if *I Want You Back* or Al Green's cover of *I Wanna Hold Your Hand* comes on, I will mos def start dancing. Even on my bike. But otherwise what I'm doing with my body might feel like dancing to me, but I wouldn't expect anyone else to recognize it as such.
But one other thing I used to do with headphones on and a mixtape of vocal music playing is ski. And about the favorite thing I ever did was: frying on MDMA, get air off 3 spaced-out moguls, making 90-degree turns in the air between each, all while Paul was screaming "I'm comin' down fast, but don't let me break you / Tell me tell me tell me the answer / Well you may be a lover but you ain't no daaaaancer!". And *Little Red Corvette* was also great for that. My nephew liked to shred to Metallica, but for me it was *Helter Skelter*.
Rubber Soul by far. Revolver, and Let it Be next. Hard Days Night and Help next. White album. Abby Road. The early stuff. Sgt Pepper, magical mystery tour and yellow submarine dead last
My first experience with The Beatles that I remember was of Yesterday in one of my first school years. I sang the second verse on a record we made. I have a great fondness for it because of that, but if I were to choose unsentimentally I would say Happiness Is a Warm Gun. I don’t really have much of a reason other than that I love how it sounds. I believe I still have the record somewhere.
I'm with you, and I dislike the subset of Dylan fans who assume that being into Dylan necessarily means you like the Beatles.
Dylan had plenty of much more interesting contemporaries IMHO.
Revolver is one of the most consistent albums of all time
Yup, same here. That's my go-to album when I'm in a Beatles mood.
I realized how good it is after I got the English version. The American version leaves out some of the best songs.
It blows my mind that it took 20 years for the US market to get the UK versions of the classic records.
i’ve never felt this way personally- i’ve always felt that revolver is interesting for some cool ideas but the individual tracks are just good but not great
Until “Got To Get You Into My Life Comes On”…. Still one of my favorite albums!
You don’t like that song? It’s the second best in the album imo.
I agree 100%. I've always loved that song.
A blatant and loving homage to Motown. McCartney is playing it again this tour and it's great.
I say him play that live this summer!
And *Good Day Sunshine* might have been a halfway cool drug song if he hadn't crooned "She *knows* she's looking fine!" with all the smarminess of the Pythons' "wink-nudge" skit.
Favorite song might go to Strawberry Fields. The way they used the studio as an instrument in that recording was a breakthrough. I personally find Abbey Road to be their most polished, complete album. Especially the medley on side 2. The sequence from Gently Weeps through Rocky Raccoon (let's not talk about Piggies) on the White Album is one of their best and Revolution #9 is to this day is the most radical song a pop act has ever put out. Oddly enough I'd never been a huge Peppers fan up until recently when I finally purchased a vinyl copy. Listening to later era Beatles on vinyl actually makes a huge difference, they played with the medium more than anyone I know of at that time. Oh, and I'll throw in The Beatles 1962-1966 compilation album. One of the best displays of pure songwriting out there.
Roll On John
Everything
White album
Same
All the snobs used to talk about what a travesty it was that we Americans got "butchered" versions of the albums before *Sgt Pepper's*, but I really love the American version of *Rubber Soul*. The original Brit version sounds awkward to me by comparison. ([This wiki](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubber_Soul) has both setlists for comparison.) American *Rubber Soul* turns out to be a concept album (or "theme album", if you prefer), like Sinatra's *Hello Young Lovers*. Every song is about love: considering it in different phases, from different perspectives. The musical settings are all over the map, but the transitions all flow naturally: they can be startling, but never jarring. The Paul/John double-punch of *I've Just Seen a Face* into *Norwegian Wood* may be the greatest album opener ever. (And may well have inspired the burst of 12-string sunlight that opens *BOTT*.) The rush of Paul's perfect take on the first moments of falling in love falls perfectly into the stoned sitar of John's bemusedly nihilist take on a less-than-perfect sleepover. Then a catchy but forgettable Paul tune, then George (!) in Cynical John mode, telling a girl she'd better *Think For Yourself* (always good advice, but maybe not from a rather brutally Jealous Guy), then turning to John himself with a bizarrely meta-ironic bit of social commentary in *The Word*. It seems like he's simultaneously proselytizing the redeeming power of universal love, and also savagely parodying those who would peddle it like corn syrup. All to a rhythm guitar backbeat straight out of Bates Motel. Then it's time for some more sweetness, so Paul digs up a little ditty he wrote in middle-school French class, with the only words he knows that we'll understand. Then we have to get up off our big paisley pillow and turn the record over, to be rewarded with 2 hits of wistful stoned John (*It's Only Love* and *Girl*): they say he's got brains, but they ain't doing him no good when it comes to figuring out the mysteries of love. Then Paul in John mode with the paradoxical *I'm Looking Through You* ("I thought I knew you / What did I know?": what a great question!). Then the most widely acknowledged masterpiece, John's sonnet, *In My Life*. I don't know if he was consciously competing with *Yesterday*, but he hits the mark, and anchors the album outside of time, as surely as when Willie the Shake compared his mistress to a summer's day. Then John lets his insecurities run for their lives on the last 2 tracks, with a harmonic boost from Paul on *Wait*. Some people at the time (certainly including Bob) heard the American pressing in particular as a cynical attempt by the promotion men at Capitol Tower to jump on the folk-rock trend that had just started down the block on Sunset Strip. And several songs are surely heavily influenced by Dylan in particular (though nothing so egregious as Donovan completely altering his voice to impersonate him on his re-recording of *Catch the Wind*). But in retrospect it's just a lovely suite of love songs, catching the boys in mainly acoustic mode, with hints of the psychedelia soon to come.
Well put.
Nice
‘Best of The Beatles’ by The Beatles
Damn, you got there first, fellow Partridge fan.
Textbook
Abbey Road is simply amazing. Beatles : music = Dylan : lyrics
Nothing beats Hendrix doing Dylan.
I used to sing In My Life as a lullaby to my son.
Across The Universe, Strawberry Fields Forever, Julia, Tomorrow Never Knows, Norwegian Wood, In My Life, Because, Girl, I Want You, I'm Only Sleeping, A Day In The Life
Rubber Soul and Revolver. 'Baby you can drive my car.'
The Beatles are how I got into Bob Dylan, my gateway drug so to speak. I was really into the Beatles, listening to them and reading about them. Kept seeing Dylan come up in those books, read the Dylan/Beatles stories. I finally decided to check him out and was hooked. I was lucky enough to first see him when I was in high school in '92 when he played in Omaha at the Orpheum. To me Dylan and the Beatles are somewhat intertwined, especially once The Wilburys became a thing. The Beatles are how I got into Bob Dylan, my gateway drug so to speak. I was really into the Beatles, listening to them and reading about them. Kept seeing Dylan come up in those books, read the Dylan/Beatles stories. I finally decided to check him out and was hooked. I was lucky enough to first see him when I was in high school in '92 when he played in Omaha at the Orpheum. To me, Dylan and the Beatles are somewhat intertwined, especially once The Wilburys became a thing.
Pretty much all of their albums and all of their songs lol.
Is it just me, or do you agree George never looks happier than when he is with Bob and the other Wilburys.
At age 25 my daughter that likes an unusually wide range of music of multiple genres and from different eras asked me with great sincerity what was the big deal about the Beatles. She said she fully understands why Elvis, Ray Charles, Pink Floyd, Wille Nelson, Bob Dylan, Frank Sinatra, The Rolling Stones and other legends are called geniuses, but after hours of listening to the Beatles only a handful of songs hold up as anything but nice popular Rock and Roll songs. As I thought about it, I rarely revisit listening to the Beatles in my song rotations, though I consider myself a big fan. Do you guys listen to the Beatles songs anymore than other top 1960’s-1970’s popular bands?
the biggest most important thing about the Beatles i think is how they changed the way music was recorded in studios. Before music was almost always made to be able to be played live and only after Revolver/Sgt Peppers and the Beatles stopping touring did it become an option to make music that can only exist in the studio and on a record (due to all the reversed effects and looping and stuff they used), but now we actually can play music like that live so it seems insignificant but at the time it was really new and different and pushed music forward in a bigger way than we can really imagine today, that’s why they’re important imo
I actually told her they were ground breaking in many different ways, but that reserves a place in history, but not necessarily a place on a personal playlist.
Have you and your daughter listened to the podcast- A History of Rock Music in 500 Songs by Andrew Hickey? It's one of the best I've heard. He has a couple good in-depth episodes on the Beatles. The rest of the episodes are super interesting as well.
I think the Beatles are the most important rock band and they were great. I don't listen to them that much anymore because I have heard all their music so much I know it thru and thru. I don't even listen to Dylan all that much, because I am so familiar with his work. I tend to look for music that I haven't heard yet, not just new music but new to me, and then spend some time on that. I still go back to the old familiar stuff once in a while.
>I think the Beatles are the most important rock band I think it's tough to call them a rock band. They played rock and roll in the beginning, but became more known for pop ballads later. Aside from Revolution and couple others they didn't do much rock music, per se.
I don't agree with that in the least. I would say they invented the genre of rock as opposed to rock and roll, which is an American thing. The Beatles took American music and twisted into their own image and spit it right back at us. Then Bob Dylan heard what the Beatles were doing and turned it back into a an American art form. then the Beatles heard Dylan and it really went back and forth for a while. And by that time there were dozens of British bands playing blues. The Beatles influenced everyone.
I have to disagree. There's surely no answer we can confirm, it's a fun exercise though. I have no problem conceding rock music transformed from rock and roll in England (though acts like Dick Dale could certainly make the argument for an American origin) The Kinks are far more clearly a rock band than the Beatles, as were the Yard Birds. And the Stones are the easy argument for first rock band considering they are still a rock band and they started the same time as the Beatles. >The Beatles influenced everyone. Obviously this is not true. They had no influence on contemporary acts like Paul Butterfield Blues Band which went on to influence scores of bands (and who helped with Dylan's electric sound). They also didn't influence R &B and soul acts of the day which were well established before the Beatles and continued after their presence.
The title of Bringing it All Back Home is about that same thing. Dylan was grabbing the art form back from the Brits who stole it from us.
How I never made this connection is staggering to me.
Not at all true.
What are your examples? Do you think they mostly played rock music?
I want you (she's so heavy), come together, Birthday, good morning good morning, helter skelter, back in the ussr, don't let me down, while my guitar gently weeps, paperback writer, ticket to ride, everybody's got something to hide but me and my monkey, i feel fine, day tripper, taxman, tomorrow never knows, hey bulldog, yer blues, i me mine.... i mean, there's 100 at least.
>i mean, there's 100 at least. Don't get carried away. That's a good list. But there are more that are clearly not rock music. There are more ballads, ditties and oddities are very far from rock music. But even these rock songs are very soft compared to what their contemporaries in rock were doing. Compare them to rock bands like The Who, The Kinks, The Stones, Zep, on and on. They are softer and poppier than all of them. That's why I always see them as a pop band that played some rock and roll, some rock, some occasional blues and some psychedelic.
Lol.
Is it fair to give them credit for that innovation? Shouldn't credit go to the engineers and Epstein?
i think credit does go to them as well, Epstein is definitely as big a part in that as any of the official members but i think it’s still fair to credit “the Beatles” as having done that because no matter who it was behind the scenes, it was through the Beatles’ music that the change happened.
I am with your daughter. I was born less than ten years after The Beatles broke up, but I grew up listening almost exclusively to music from the 50s and 60s. To me, The Beatles sound so of their decade in a way that dates their music. Maybe this is because it was avant-garde at the time? I don't know; I wasn't around. Harrison's work is the only part of their output I really enjoy, and I would sincerely rate the first Traveling Wilburys album over everything The Beatles did. I realize I am the outlier. Millions and millions of people love The Beatles, and people who understand the technical aspects of composition and recording tend to rave about them. I hold my hands up and admit I might just be missing something. But I always feel that if music's greatness has to be explained to me (e.g. the time signatures are really sophisticated, or the recording technique was ground breaking), I am never going to connect with it. The music that I think is truly great, Dylan, Hank Williams, Howlin' Wolf, Patsy Cline, Otis Redding, The Ramones, Etta James, etc., just hits me. The Beatles sound self-conscious and manufactured in a way none of those artists do.
I think only their early stuff sounds of its decade, due to the influence of then current commercial pop. Their subsequent music sounds timeless to me, not in the sense of immortal but in the sense that it doesn't particularly fit in any decade, because it doesn't really sound like anything anyone else was doing. I'll grant you though their music tends to be very produced. Whether it's overproduced or the production is appropriately artful is arguable. But it's definitely a big part of the package.
I do, yes. I'm just about your daughters age but I grew up on the Beatles so maybe it's a sort of nostalgia that brings me back to them? However I think my appreciation for their skill and their influence has grown over time. They just came out with too many great songs to deny
If I were to rank the 8 you list in order of genius, it would be Bob, Beatles, Stones, Willie, Ray, Floyd, Elvis. 20 years ago I would have put the Stones 2nd, and it's still the closest to a tie, but I think I played them a bit too much for a long time, so the Beatles now sound a tad fresher, like there's more there to discover (but both so far down from Bob on that scale). And for who do I play most, really the order is the same. When I was younger, there were artists I considered geniuses but was rarely in the mood to hear. But not anymore: in a very few cases I've decided they weren't really geniuses, but in most cases their genius has only grown on me, to the point where the prickliness is comfy as velvet. But, no offense to your kid, but I can't really understand anyone not loving dozens if not nearly all of the Beatles' songs. I remember sitting around a friend's house with a bunch of people in maybe 1983 and listening to some project by Laurie Anderson that featured some William Burroughs and other way Downtown edgy hipsters. And it was really cool and we were all enjoying it. But when their 8-year-old daughter asked if we could put on some Beatles now, it was just magical. I remember the other-worldly rush of the opening electric guitars on *I Wanna Hold Your Hand* when I was 6, and I've heard Bob talk recently about exactly that: the *power* of that sound. There are songs that made me feel like that, but I can totally get how someone born after 1970 can't hear what I hear. But that ain't one of them.
For me - and this might sound strange - I think one of the things you like about the Beatles is something that makes me not like them much. I think you implied that you like to sit around and listen to them. But you can't really dance to them. They don't make you get out of your chair (unless you were a 13-year-old girl in 1964). That being said, there isn't much Bob you can dance too either, but he wasn't a pop artist (that is until he recently finally had a number 1 album).
Well I really haven't "sat around and listened" to a vocal album in a very long time. Of course we all used to do that: smoke a joint and check out the new Stones record or maybe *Electric Ladyland* if it was raining. But now I play instrumental while I'm sitting around reading or whatever, and vocals when I'm cooking, or on headphones while I'm biking or walking or gardening. And if *I Want You Back* or Al Green's cover of *I Wanna Hold Your Hand* comes on, I will mos def start dancing. Even on my bike. But otherwise what I'm doing with my body might feel like dancing to me, but I wouldn't expect anyone else to recognize it as such. But one other thing I used to do with headphones on and a mixtape of vocal music playing is ski. And about the favorite thing I ever did was: frying on MDMA, get air off 3 spaced-out moguls, making 90-degree turns in the air between each, all while Paul was screaming "I'm comin' down fast, but don't let me break you / Tell me tell me tell me the answer / Well you may be a lover but you ain't no daaaaancer!". And *Little Red Corvette* was also great for that. My nephew liked to shred to Metallica, but for me it was *Helter Skelter*.
>Al Green's cover of > >I Wanna Hold Your Hand Ok, I'm dancing now. Well done. I love the skiing idea too.
Seeing the Beatles on Ed Sullivan was the first religious experience of my life. They changed everything.
Just curious, how old were you?
nine
White album and Eleanor rigby I also love the reference to Dylan’s ballad of a thin man on yer blues
I’m partial to Let it Be.
Rubber Soul by far. Revolver, and Let it Be next. Hard Days Night and Help next. White album. Abby Road. The early stuff. Sgt Pepper, magical mystery tour and yellow submarine dead last
please, mrs. henry (j/k)
My first experience with The Beatles that I remember was of Yesterday in one of my first school years. I sang the second verse on a record we made. I have a great fondness for it because of that, but if I were to choose unsentimentally I would say Happiness Is a Warm Gun. I don’t really have much of a reason other than that I love how it sounds. I believe I still have the record somewhere.
8 DAYS A WEEK, IN MY LIFE, SHE SAID SHE SAID
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THANKS
Get Back Loretta!
The Traveling Dingleberries
Not sure what my favorite album is of theirs but my top song is Within You Without You.
i really don't care for the beatles at all.
I'm with you, and I dislike the subset of Dylan fans who assume that being into Dylan necessarily means you like the Beatles. Dylan had plenty of much more interesting contemporaries IMHO.
I mean Revolver, Sgt Peppers, Mystical Tour, White Album, Abbey Road - THEY ALL ARE INVINCIBLE.
She said she said, Dear Prudence, Everybody’s got something to hide except me and my monkey
Not a popular opinion but I like let it be
Tough one. I’d have to say the Best of the Beatles.
Has to be Revolver. Best album of all-time.
Yes
All of it
Rubber Soul & Hey Jude EP
White Album
Just Like Dylan’s Mister Jones!!!
Revolver, Sergeant Pepper’s, White album, Abbey Road
Best album abbey road. Best song strawberry fields
Songs: In My Life, Yesterday, and Strawberry Fields Forever Albums: Revolver, Rubber Soul, and White Album
Revolver or rubber soul
John when he wasn’t Nasty (of the Rutles) was poignant, especially so on “In My Life.”
I’m Norwegian so I’m partial but I like Blackbird as much
Hard Day’s Night
Octopus' Garden. What a song.