If the Beatles posted on SDMB they would be known as WordMan. 
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She did after I got done with her! Buh dunh dunh.
Yo mama jokes aside, I agree with your point about Pepper’s being different because it was explicitly this studio concoction… I agree that was a pop music milestone. I love a wide range of studio concoctions. But was it a good thing for the Beatles? I much more appreciate the Beatles as a band than as brand. Because that in essence became a brand for Lennon-McCartney songwriting and George Martin production. (And yes, to a lesser extent, Harrison songwriting…)
Also you can find Pepper’s takes, used and unused on YouTube and, um, oh dear. There is some really ganky playing and singing on them, and it’s a wonder that Martin and cutting-edge 60s tech were able to turn them into anything. Some of it sounds like newbs playing at the open mic, seriously. It makes you wonder how functional the Beatles really were as actual musicians at that point.
Not that the preceding albums weren’t full of studio trickery. They were. And a huge chunk of the material was never played live. A year or so ago, Paul played “Another Girl” (great song) live for the first time. But they were still a “real band” at that point, at least.
Like a billion, in high school alone.
Hey thanks!
ETA: even though, as I think about it, TRex was Cretaceous, not Jurassic. But darn it, the point still holds!! 
The Beatles were more popular than Jurassic.
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But were they more popular than T. Rex…who was the Elvis of dinosaurs?
1954 kid checking in here. My first exposure to the album was hearing “A Day in the Life” on WHFS. It wasn’t remotely like anything I’d ever heard before - totally blew me away.
I don’t recall experiencing the rest of the album as any sort of earthquake, though. Some good songs: aside from the special case of “A Day in the Life,” I’m most partial to the mellow songs from the album like “Getting Better,” “Fixing a Hole,” and “Lovely Rita.” And some so-so songs: I’m least partial to “She’s Leaving Home,” “Mr. Kite,” and “When I’m Sixty-Four,” the latter of which has become even more of a cliché as members of my g-g-generation have been reaching that age.
So in general, I’m OK with its not being the big Beatles album.
It’s hard for me to compare it with its predecessors, though, due to the divergence between the British and American releases. I listened to the American records on vinyl for decades, but eventually I bought the CDs at a point when the CDs were the British releases, so now I can’t keep straight which songs were on which albums of either national origin.
Beatles were a little strange, some great tunes but a lot of “meh” filler. My impression was after about 1966 or so, Mr. Lennon’s cheese slipped off his cracker. From the standpoint of writing and performing tuneful, catchy pop hits. I know that’s not what he wanted to do, but it’s what their producers probably wanted them to do. They were lucky their fans were as stoned as they were I guess. In retrospect it’s unfortunate they glamorized drug use, at least from the standpoint they could “get away with it”; they could afford them, and usually suffer no legal consequences of any significance. While they weren’t to blame for all the strung out “flower children” addicts in the Haight, they didn’t help anything.
I’d rather listen to Leave My Kitten Alone than Being For The Bene…blah blah any day of the week. A few drugs, probably do help get the old creative juices going. But by 1966-1967 they were starting to take their toll. Sergeant Peppers starts out amazing, and definitely has its moments but I think there is just so much hype around it. George went off on the eastern mysticism kick, and sitars and the rest of it. Rich ex-pat Brit millionaires living in LA, lecturing me in nasal twangs about the impermanence and pointlessness of existence. Yeah, sure bud. Taxman indeed, that’s why they all got the hell out of jolly old England as soon as they could.
The White Album in '68 could have been a decent single album, it has some good tunes, but they just don’t have the enthusiasm of just a few short years before. Their latter albums are a testament to how talented McCartney was, despite some of the twaddle he wrote, he was by far a better guitarist than Harrison, and competent enough drummer, and was the real “Beatles” as far as I’m concerned. He could get the boys to perform and play it straight long enough to crank out gems like Hey Jude but eventually none of them wanted to do it anymore, all this in just a few short years. Pretty wacky! I bet it was an amazing time to be alive, musically.
While reading through these posts (as well as posts from various other threads that rank Beatles albums, I have to laugh when I read younger fans constantly tout Abbey Road or The Beatles (White Album) as the ultimate Beatle LP.
I’m 55 so I was around when their music was released. I was a bit too young to appreciate their music when it first came out, I was part of the fandom that discovered them in the 70’s, well after they’d broken up.
The problem with many citing Abbey Road or The Beatles (White Album) as the ultimate Beatle LP, is, they weren’t much of a “band” by then. Much of the music written and recorded on those LP’s were by the individuals. By then, much animosity was occurring within. Paul & John were heading in two different directions, both personally and musically, and George was finally establishing himself.
Don’t get me wrong, I really like and enjoy those albums, but to truly find the music they were creating as a band, of four musicians, either Revolver or Rubber Soul would best represent them.
I think quite differently. The Beatles have so little filler in their opus. It just stuns me a band can produce such high quality work after work. What do you consider “filler”? I mean, I don’t listen to Beatles albums all that often these days, but I really can’t think of more than one or two songs on an album that I ever even have the urge to skip. And many albums, there’s just no song I want to skip.
De Gustibus Non Est Disputandum
I just went over the track list for the White Album. There’s really not enough material for even a decent single album. I like “Back In The USSR”, “Blackbird” and a few others, but it’s chock full of pretentious BS. The 60s produced some amazing music, but it also ate up a lot of talented people and spit them back out, the casualty list is extensive - Hendryx, Joplin, Jones, Morrison etc etc, Not all of them died, or at least not right away. Brian Jones was reduced to stumbling in on a recording session and tinkling a while on the piano while everyone wished he would go away. Too fucked up to play. Brian Wilson used to wander around everywhere in pajamas, his children said he would play “Be My Baby” several hundred times a day. Not sure what happened to Syd Barrett, but it wasn’t good. My point is these guys were all celebrities who were not subject to the normal market forces as it were, with respect to heavy drug use. They don’t run out of money, so they didn’t run out of drugs and booze. The Beatles rise and fall mirrors this, I think. The problem with a lot of celebrities is they start believing their own BS after a while. Lennon in particular, is Exhibit A.
When I read a critique like this, I think “totally cool; you know how you feel and can articulate why. But you must acknowledge that, critically and popularly, many folks disagree with you.”
John had his demons and was a jerk in many ways. He also wrote Across the Universe and A Day in the Life during that time. I wish I could put my trippy drug troubles to music so timelessly.
And if his getting lost in acid gets us She Said She Said then I appreciate his sacrifice.
You like the catchy little ditties. Life isn’t too complicated. That’s nice for you.
btw, we’re kind of talking about art here, not FM top 40.
I think this is the first reference to HFS I’ve ever seen on the SDMB! Considering the alt-rock identity it held from the time I started listening to it (around maybe 1987) until it became ZOL around 15 year ago, when in the history of WHFS did you hear this? I know the station underwent a LOT of identity changes in its too-brief history.
Exactly so. And Pepper was their peak moment as a band. The collaboration never got any better, and it was towards a single goal, which hit the mark to say the least. There were better songs before and after, but Pepper has a soul as a single piece. And I have a feeling this may be related somehow to the fact that the songs were not even meant to be better than their others. What do you think of that?
Well, even though I can whittle down everything before Revolver down to an EP by discarding the chaff; we’re still demonstrating De Gustibus Non Est Disputandum, just from the other side of the fence. There’s no reason to think that the Top 40 isn’t art, even if it sometimes isn’t quite so self-aware in its conception.
I think you’ve got an overly rosy idea of harmony and collaboration between The Beatles at any stage in their career. The period where Paul and John were collaborating constantly was already past. Lennon was resenting McCartney’s dominance of the band, and Ringo’s fondest memory of the album’s production is that he learned to play chess. That record is where Harrison started to lose interest in being a Beatle.
Is SPLHCB over-rated? It depends on who you talk to. If they believe that it’s an amazing document of what is possible in the studio circa 1966-67 with an unlimited budget and an amazing producer and an imminently successful songwriter backstopped by other successful songwriters, then I probably have few arguments with you. If you think it’s the best record by any band, ever? Nah, there’s a bunch of room for debate*, and plenty of reason to believe that you’re blinded by your perspective on music history.
*Fer instance: How the holy hell can you be a good band if you can’t perform it live!?!? (You know, how bands perform) Nope? that sounds like the work of an assemblage of solo artists and studio musicians, to me.
Yes, this is much more correct. Paul came up with the Sgt Pepper concept because he was feeling like the Beatles were becoming “so five minutes ago” and weren’t united on the next album. John had lost interest/frustrated with Paul, and I believe only brought Strawberry Fields and his main part of Day in the Life.
Revolver was their last truly collaborative album.
Sgt. Pepper’s isn’t one of my top 3 Beatles albums, because the songs aren’t my favorites. “Martha, My Dear” (White Album) is a very nice, minor, song that I like more than 70% of Peppers. But Sgt. Pepper’s has unifying elements that give it bonus fascination, including: lots of semi-disguised drug use, altered mental states (not necessarily drug-related), music hall & public pavilion & circus style songs, and a sense of non-sequential time resulting from that focus on contemporary drug use and historical music styles.
And, the album is filled with narrative songs and story songs. Even the least story-like song (and sonic outlier), “Within You and Without You” starts with the phrase “we were talking”, and continues as a personal discourse. Every song tells a story, in a way that, say, “Across the Universe” doesn’t. “Martha, My Dear” wouldn’t have fit into Sgt. Pepper’s – I prefer it musically to the clever “Lovely Rita”, but “Rita” tells a simple, entertaining tale
A song that would have fit is “Penny Lane”. It could have been swapped right in for “Within You” – making George even more unhappy. And while I like “Mr. Kite”, it could have been bumped to the White Album – letting “Strawberry Fields” close side one of Sgt. Pepper’s.
Well is one blinder by experiencing something or catching up with it on youtube?
Paul used to drive to Johns to write like it was a job. I think this went on a lot longer than you think. They didn’t live in one of those books written about them. It was messier than that. I’m also including George Martin as part of the collaboration, and I understand there were always ego pressures. (So you say Ringo was bored? George was pissy? Stop the presses.) Lennon really peaked around Rubber Soul. He wasn’t going to be happy that Paul was coming up with great ideas if he wasn’t. IMO this was what led to the end.
SPLHCB sounds like solo artists? With session musicians? Huh? They used very few of them. I’d venture that a lot of music since pepper has been just as impossible to play live. It’s music. Get’s more complicated every day, mainly by the light of the Beatles example. The Beatles chose not to perform live. If you say they couldn’t, and that makes them different from modern recording artists, I’d wholly disagree. They made the world these artists live in, (including hip hop naturally) and they all work their way around it with tapes and other players, like the Beatles would have if they had wanted to. It’s always interesting that some quote from 50 years ago like “We couldn’t play that stuff live” gets taken as a historical admission of their incapability. As if Van Halen, or the Red Hot Chili Peppers were more capable somehow. (Perry Mason theme here)
Anyway there were three years left here, and a lot of care and talent went into this thing. It was the first record since retiring from touring. It is a big piece. And the world seem to take it that way.
No reason to call it the greatest thing ever, cause that’s not the argument. But Lennon recognized it as a peak. It’s in the Wenner interview I believe. I still think that the songs didn’t need to be their best to be that.
You seriously think this makes your argument the least bit more believable? Again, being alive at the same time as a set of people on the other side of the world that you personally don’t know is virtually worthless in enhancing your value as the authority on them. You aren’t privy to any secret special information.
All I did was repeat what the men themselves said about the experience of making the record. You can go fantasize about what you’d like their relationship at the time to be without quoting me, thanks.
Great way to miss the point, build up a strawman, and go over the cliff fighting against it.
It’s still music, recording in separate sessions isn’t a ‘lesser’ method of production, but it’s not really the same as being in a band at all. You can react real time with each other in a band, not so when you are laying down tracks one after the other. Plus, when you record live as a band, you have to be more on the ball. Nothing is worse than having an otherwise great take with a clam in the middle of it. When you’re doing separate takes, you can plug away at your part until it’s right, then the next guy comes in and does the same thing. You don’t even have to meet the guys playing the other tracks. It’s not like being in a band.