there was this new Beatles box set that came out a couple years ago...actually, it was on 9.9.09...they're all on mono now, as if that's something special? I guess it is. I thought that stereo was special. When it first came out, it's selling point was that it sounds a lot better than mono...that it was the newest in technology...and so now is it the case that mono is a lot better than stereo, for purposes of nostalgia? I don't get it...
it's odd when you listen to a lot of that early stereo music on stereo headphones...you can hear the drums and some vocals in one ear and lead guitar and other vocals in another...like if your equipment is wrong you can get an impropotu special version of like backup guitar and drums only with no singing or an acoustic version of the song...but anywho...Beatles music...I used to listen to that stuff all the time as a pre-teen...when I was like 11 and 12...
my brothers and sister were/are like 10 years older than me and as a kid, I thought that the old music that they listened to sucked...crap from the '60s and '70s...I loved listening to the new music that was being played on the radio and that my young, dumb pisado friends at school listened to...disco and also the rock music of the day...and pop...
then one fall day in the fall of 1979 I got this new turntable...I wanted to test it out and I didn't own any records of my own...so I went out to the living room where the records were...my brothers had their rock albums mixed in with my father's jazz records and my mother's classical music and opera records, and I just randomly grabbed a record from the collection...it was copy of "The Magical Mystery Tour"...
I looked at it and was like, "what the hell is this?"....the four guys were dressed in masks and costumes and one of them still had his glasses on...the colors were interesting...kind of psychadelic-looking..."The Magical Mystery Tour"...I thought it must have been a children's album like from Sesame Street or something, or a comedy album...
but then when I listened to it on the stereo headphones while looking out the window of my bedroom it was the most amazing thing I had ever heard...REAL music...I was like what the hell is this?? and who are these people?? I didn't even really identify them as people...most normal musical acts just got up and played and sang...and were on the radio that everyone listened to and were on TV...the music that I had been listening to since I had been born did not sound this way...it sounded nothing like it...
...and so that was a little over 30 years ago...and from the fall of 1979 all through 1980 and into the fall of 1981 when MTV debuted, that's all I wanted to listen to...the Beatles...and I also started becoming obsessed with and a student of the 1960's...including movies like "Hair" and "More American Graffiti" and "The Deer Hunter"...and documentaries on PBS about the '60s...and I used to read underground comics that were produced in the '60s...at first I became fascinated by the hippy aspect of things...living free, doing drugs, and not caring about a job...but then I soon came to realize that was only a small percentage of the population and I got to a point where I wanted to learn more about what normal people were doing during that period...
so maybe I was born too late?...I listened to a lot of The Beatles during this time period and also started getting into The Doors, The Rolling Stones, and Jimi Hendrix...someone told me that if I liked those groups that I would probably like Led Zeppelin...and so I gave them a listen and I hated it...it was too heavy for me...I like them now but I didn't then...and so The Beatles, and then later The Doors, The Rolling Stones, and Jimi Hendrix...was all I wanted to listen to...for a LONG time...especially after I got my first Sony Walkman in the fall of 1981...damn thing cost almost $100...because of the novelty of it...then someone stole it from me....took it out of my coat pocket in the gym...now you can't even find a tape recorder Walkman-type thingy in stores...it's all CD players and MP3 players, iPods and the like...but when they WERE in stores up until a couple of years ago, you could get one for like $15 or less...for next to nothing...but I thought they were the greatest things in the world at the time...when they first came out...LOL my cousins from New Jersey used to play music on tape recorders hahhah...it sounded like shit but they didn't care...
anyway...getting back to the Beatles...at the time I was listening I was really into the music and not even thinking about the personalities that composed the band...who the people were...it never crossed my mind...I didn't know who they were...I mean they were wearing costumes on the album cover of "The Magical Mystery Tour" and on the front of "Sgt. Pepper's" they were wearing faux military or marching-band uniforms and were among 100 other people...so it's funny as much as I loved the music and listened to it all the time, as a 10-year-old kid I never gave much thought to who these people actually were...
I was eleven when John Lennon was shot dead in December of 1980...a few miles from where I lived...I remember hearing it the news..."he was in The Beatles back in the day"...I was a little kid at the time and to my mind that music was so long ago that I figured they must ALL have been dead by then...from old age...what surprised me was that there were any of them who were still alive to shoot...I wasn't shocked that a Beatle got shot I was shocked that there were any of them still alive...THEN I was shocked that he was shot...that's how a kid's mind works, I guess...the Beatles were all right around 40 at the time...
and so yes at that point I knew who John Lennon was...and after a bit I figured out who Paul McCartney was...I had kind of sort of knew who Paul was because he was still making music during the '70s and it wasn't top of the charts or disco or pop but I heard some of his stuff and sort of put things together in my head...oh, yes...the voice in this Paul McCartney music sounds like a voice I sometimes hear when I listen to The Beatles...and so as I got older I started to realize who they were and YES they were still alive (three of them, anyway) and still making new music as solo acts...
I assumed they were all hippies...peace and love and all that stuff "All You Need Is Love", "Strawberry Fields Forever"...that's when I found it weird that they were often motivated by money and that during much of the period of time when the band was together, there was competitiveness, rivalries, distrust, jealousies, and the usual human emotions that a tight-knit group entails...
as I would read the record album sleeves and the records...I had albums and also 45's...one thing I noticed about the Beatles was...other than a few songs that were written and performed by George Harrison or Ringo Starr, the songwriting credit almost always read, "Lennon and McCartney"...as if they were equal contributors to each song...which I found to be was typically NOT the case...I'm not sure why they chose to share credit for all of those songs the way they did...but with many of those songs it's simply a falsehood that they worked together on them...they worked together on some but there were plenty that they didn't work together on...they weren't so much of a team as it may have seemed...
it's quite the opposite...in a certain sense and at certain times, The Beatles resembled four different solo acts...and that aspect of their music became more and more pronounced throughout the '60s...this is always the way that The White Album struck me...as four different solo albums...one thing I read about those "Lennon/McCartney" songs is that you can almost always tell who REALLY wrote any given song based on who sang it...it's that simple...so looking back on the Beatles' biggest hits, or their most profound artistic masterpieces...you could tell who was responsible for what simply by who was singing the song...
during the early '60s "British Invasion" heyday of the Beatles and also in to 1964 and 1965 when they were doing all of those movies, John was clearly the leader of the band...it's biggest and most outgoing personality...George was just the guitarist and Ringo was the drummer...they were both very quiet and in the background...Paul did a lot of writing and singing but he was also more laid back...John was always the most out front...but as the '60s wore on, Paul started to have a larger and larger influence on the Beatles' sound and his creative power became more obvious with each passing year...
in my opinion, the Beatles' greatest work happened in the mid-'60s...from let's say 1966-1968, when Paul started to become equal to and then in some ways surpass John in terms of obvious musical talent...
let's take the 1966 album, "Revolver"...it is, in my opinion, the first REAL modern rock album, as we know it today...it starts out with "Taxman" and "Eleanor Rigby" and ends with "Tomorrow Never Knows"...I think that if this album was released today, it would seem just as fresh and as relevant as a lot of today's music does...it would not seem dated at all...
if you compare the music from the album "Revolver" to the other music that was coming out at that time...say any top 40 songs from the year 1966...the musical genius of The Beatles becomes obvious...at the time, when those songs really WERE new, it must have sounded as if the Beatles were from a different planet or something...they were so far ahead of their time...I mean you had Motown and Frank Sinatra on the charts...they were way ahead...
Paul really starts to shine in 1967..."Sgt. Pepper's" and "The Magical Mystery Tour"...in these two albums John and Paul were about equal in their contributions to the music...these are the two best Beatles albums, in my opinion...and as I stated previously, the 1968 release The White Album resembled four different solo albums...and it's when George and Ringo started stepping up as creative players within the band...
and so this trajectory continued...and from...let's say 1969 onward...John Lennon was so damn cracked out from all of the heroin and LSD...it's a wonder he could do anything...his music was not nearly as good as Paul's and considering how debilitated he was from all the drugs...he left his beautiful first wife Cynthia for that ugly zipper head Yoko...what the hell was he thinking???...it's a wonder John's music was as good as it was at the time...which if you ask me was not very good..."Here Comes The Sun King"???...puleeze...
in my opinion the quantum leap came with the album, "Abbey Road"...I feel that John contributed very little to that album..."Come Together"??...yuck...every time I listen to Abbey Road, I skip that song (it's the first song)...John sucked at that time...and he let the band down because he was being an a-hole...at the same time, Paul was coming into his creative peak and was firing on all cylinders...and also George and Ringo started writing and singing more great songs...and I'm sure that John was an envious bastard...because his importance to the band got smaller and smaller as time rolled on...
and so looking at "Abbey Road", the music...just take the second side of the album...that's ALL Paul...or, I guess since today we have CD's and not record albums...take the part of Abbey Road starting from the song, "You Never Give Me Your Money" all the way to the end of the disc...THAT'S ALL PAUL...and no John...and it's pure genius...I even read that for some of those songs Paul took the sticks from Ringo and actually drummed certain parts himself...
and of course after the Beatles broke up in 1970...John had a few good songs during the '70s but Paul exploded, creatively speaking...his music was always better in my mind and to this day, 30 years after first hearing "The Magical Mystery Tour", Paul always was the biggest talent behind the Beatles and he is my favorite rock musician of all time...
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