r/TheBeatles

Are there any examples of John actually saying something nice about George Martin’s work on his songs?

There are countless examples of bands releasing songs that are direct, obvious attempts to sound like The Beatles. Most sound exactly the same: slow 4/4 tempo, overly twee vocals, White Album descending minor chords on a piano. It's usually sterile and derivative.

It hit me, I can't think of any Beatles knockoff that tries to emulate the country-western influence George's guitar work. Crisp, peppy western guitar is present and obvious in nearly every Beatles song that features guitar.

Saw Paul on this season's SNL finale.

Not the first time in recent months that Paul's voice is pretty weak. Relying on band to cover him. I'm saddened.

EDIT: Lots of know-it-all criticism here.

How in the hell is this knocking his body of work?

Did I ever say he should stop performing?

I know he's amazing and has been doing super-long great concerts in recent years. With amazing energy.

I've loved him since the live Ed Sullivan shows.

You don't notice his voice has changed? Not supposed to say that out loud?

No shit people get old. That's saying the same thing. How dare you say people get old!

What if he lost his voice entirely? How much would you pay to go see him play bass? Name your top price.

Go away, you juvenile contrarians.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5XwXliCK19Y

https://preview.redd.it/0aoc7frjb42h1.png?width=276&format=png&auto=webp&s=6d43c94caf650e07bb4ab22b469f9acdf715462c

This morning I was woken up by a friend playing "I'm Only Sleeping". Besides making me feel very nostalgic and pleasant, it got me thinking about the history of this track.

In 1966, John was living in his massive estate in Kenwood, deeply sunk into apathy, and heavy LSD use. Journalist Maureen Cleave (who conducted the famous "More popular than Jesus" interview for the Evening Standard in March 1966) recalled that John could sleep for 14- 15 hours a day. When he wasn't sleeping, he just lay on the sofa, staring into space or reading newspapers. Apparently, in 1966, at the absolute peak of their global popularity, his ultimate comfort zone was sleep- a natural reaction of the brain when a human is exhausted and subconsciously running away from reality.

The physiology of sleep defines this process as a state of decreased sensitivity and isolation from external stimuli. This was exactly what John needed. Burned out by the fame machine and paranoia, he spent 15 hours in a depressive daze on his couch in Kenwood, despising the people rushing around outside.

This lethargy can be seen elsewhere in his work. In "Nowhere Man", he describes himself as a completely blind man without a direction. Years later, on the White Album, his sleeping state  crashed into insomnia and nightmare with "I'm So Tired", where his mind officially refused to function .

But this is where Paul McCartney’s complementary  and saving role comes in . Without Paul, John’s "sleep apnea" would have remained just a messy, fragmented home demo tape. Paul took John’s lethargy and modeled it into a perfect form. Paul built those floating, ghostly backing vocals that mimic a daze, and personally insisted on slowing down the tempo,  to give John’s vocals that heavy, dragging character typical of the first stage of sleep (Mark Lewisohn’s The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions). I can't help but mention Paul's bass, leading the entire song.

The only element that, in my opinion, blurs and stains the perfect line of this track is the forced Indian motifs at the end. It was George Harrison who fought for that wailing, backward guitar solo, spending 9 hours in Abbey Road completely obsessed with Eastern ornamentation. To my ears, this solo feels artificial. It fractures the perfect, lazy bass rhythm from underneath. But that's what happens when you work in a democracy.

For me, "I'm Only Sleeping" is a brilliant song that shows us John’s mind at its most vulnerable biological point. But it is also yet another proof that Paul has the talent to structure a song so that it becomes a masterpiece.

So I bought the Beatles stereo box set CD and the Beatles The mini documentaries are sealed Is that classed as rare or no just wondering thanks!

I recently came across this one YouTube comment (and its replies) about the irony that the Beatles, by remastering Let It Be, didn’t let it be in the end. What are your thoughts on that?

https://preview.redd.it/fbbo20y04x1h1.png?width=1280&format=png&auto=webp&s=e65a94fb1505cb839e6edf81fd95ec3cec2b809d

We have all been teenagers who thought that life was ahead of us and that we could conquer the world. The music we discovered played a huge part in that. The Beatles and Pink Floyd are absolute favorites for people who had a bit more sensory depth in their ears and courage in their minds. Furthermore, many people, including myself, discover them later in life rather than during their actual peak of popularity due to the age factor, which indisputably makes them classics.

In my case, during my early youth, I was looking for passion, anger and rebellion. That is why John Lennon and Roger Waters looked like gods to me. I believed that their raw, ripped vocals, political slogans, and screaming in pain were the only true signs of "intelligence and depth." We sought salvation in John’s raw, primal scream in "Cold Turkey" and "Mother," or in Roger’s eerie, aggressive madness in "In the Flesh" and "Don't Leave Me Now." But today, I can say that youth confuses concepts quite a bit.

The machine of life grinds us down, takes us through real battles, and ultimately clears our brains- for better or worse- from the illusions of meaningless rebellion.

At that point, some might rediscover the camp of Paul McCartney and David Gilmour. They realize that true strength is not about screaming and throwing mud (like John in How Do You Sleep?), but in the ability to finely  control the form in order to create a divine melody. By control over the form, I mean the artist's ability to govern the emotion instead of letting the emotion govern them. I find the real aesthetics in Paul's composition "You Never Give Me Your Money" or David's gentle  tranquility in "Echoes" and "High Hopes." I just feel  that the complex, beautiful musical composition (like Paul's in Dear Friend, for instance) is light-years ahead of the primal scream. 

Paul in "You Never Give Me Your Money" takes five completely different, fragmented ideas and moods and carefully  welds them into one whole. The emotion is just perfectly  shaped. This is an exact example of powerful impact without force. In general, this masterpiece deserves a separate in-depth post.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BpndGZ71yww