Why did the Beatles stop touring after 1966?

Do you think this was a good decision on their part or a bad one?
Have any other bands ever tried something like this, right at the hieght of their popularity?

Because they couldnt be heard above screaming teenagers.

Gary Numan retired from touring for a few years and his sales suffered because of it.
Miles Davis retired in the 1970s for 3 years.

xtc stopped touring in 1982 right after having a top ten hit. Not sure if it was the height og their popularity.

Steely Dan did it.

XTC too

so did XTC

and Steely Dan

XTC stopped touring in '82.

the beatles never stopped touring, it's the fans that stopped showing up

Think Steely Dan did too.

but what about the beatles?

Throbbing Gristle did this, but only cuz they knocked up Cosy.

I stopped touring after my infamous kitchen jam of '04, but only because my cats kept giving me that look and I couldn't take it anymore

Do you think this was a good decision on their part or a bad one?

good decision as now there's frenzied anticipation for this year's reunion tour.

Dave Sim stopped touring when he found Allah.

Can't wait for Grizzly Bear to stop touring...

lol yeah! do the jonas bros. still tour? they should stop and concentrate on their studio wizardry.

kate bush did this.

The Beatles all died in a plane crash in 1965, and although the doubles George Martin replaced them with where good enough to fool the public on the then low-resolution TV and film broadcasts, it was decided that it wd be too risky for them to be seen again in public.

I did this.

heard they were reforming for ATP next year, gonna do "Beatles '65" in its entirety

Did anyone mention XTC?

oh fuck XTC, i forgot about them..."I Don't Like Mondays" is such a jam

Think Steeleye Span did this too.

they didn't stop. they went on hiatus. they planned their next tour in 1974, behind ringo's goodnight vienna album (like the wu-tang, the beatles had decided to spend several years releasing "solo" albums instead of group albums), but they canceled the tour when their chosen opening act, steely dan, backed out. another tour, planned for 1982, was canceled because of last-minute problems with that tour's opening act, xtc.

mf doom is another famous act that did this.

What about the voice of Geddy Lee?

dear god

i remember when KISS retired from touring i was pretty bummed out

(x-post) i wonder if he tours like an ordinary guy.

What about the voice of Geddy Lee?

This is really fucking weird, that exact same line was just in my head.

that happens a lot in my house.

If I remember correctly, didn't Lynyrd Skynyrd stop touring after 1977?

What about Dylan?
Bob Dylan didn't tour for eight years starting in 1966
"at the height of his fame"
after the release of Blonde on Blonde

copycat

i saw xtc. i think i saw steeleye span too, opening for procol harum. i don't think procol harum tour anymour.

more

what did i know from steeleye span when i was, like, 14, tho.

I guess it was a good decision - it seemed to work for 'em. But I wonder if they would have made records differently if they had been expecting to play at least some of it live. I know it's part of what made them great, but there's something a bit hermetically sealed in a lab and asexual about some post-65 Beatles records.

Ringo Starr - Theoretical Physicist

Didn't Outkast stop touring when SB/LB came out? Or Andre did, at least.

The Beatles stopped touring because George couldn't face it any more, and they'd've broken up if they'd tried to go on that way. So good decision, unless you think the Beatles albums post '66 are rubbish.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m4-_7MEyZjA

I don't know that it's really 100% live as advertised, but Cheap Trick did a pretty good live Sgt. Pepper...

R.E.M. didn't tour for either Out Of Time or Automatic i.e. their two biggest-selling albums.

Brian Wilson to thread (or rather, to bed)

and I thought The Beatles considered playing live again (maybe not touring) as part of the whole 'Get Back' project

I guess it was a good decision - it seemed to work for 'em. But I wonder if they would have made records differently if they had been expecting to play at least some of it live.

The Beatles stopped touring because George couldn't face it any more, and they'd've broken up if they'd tried to go on that way. So good decision, unless you think the Beatles albums post '66 are rubbish.

???

dunno if there have been any books written about the beatles ...

I've read a few books about the Beatles, but I have never read anything very detailed about why they stopped touring. This was a huge decision, it would seem to me, and every account I read of it takes it rather casaully. Maybe someone could direct me to a more detailed account of it.

Was the decision to stop touring in 1966 part of your re-examining your lives as Beatles?

Harrison: Well, I wanted to stop touring after about '65, actually, because I was getting very nervous. They kept planning these ticker-tape parades through San Francisco, and I was saying, "I absolutely don't want to do that." There was that movie The Manchurian Candidate [about a war hero who returns home programmed for political assassination]. I think in history you can see that when people get too big, something like that can very easily happen. Although at the time, it was prior to all this terrorism. We used to fly in and out of Beirut and all them places. You would never dream of going on tour now in some of the places we went. Especially with only two road managers: one guy to look after the equipment, which was three little amplifiers, three guitars and a set of drums; and one guy who looked after us and our suits.

Maybe at the time it wasnt as big as deal as it would be today.
I wonder did they make a formal announcement, or did they simply just stop scheduling dates?
Also, was it the Phillipines where they percievably snubbed the Royal Family then treated so poorly (threatened even) by the authorities. I wonder how much that played into it?

It only gets a couple of pages in Many Years From Now (McCartney's autobiography). It seems like it became an increasingly unrewarding experience for them, due to how demanding it was and the lack of pleasure in seeing their performances suffer because of the screaming, etc. Paul was the last one to hold out, which fits with his enthusiastic personality, but the last straw was a lousy show in the rain in St Louis, playing with wet electric equipment under a sheet corrugated iron roof(!); then piling into a wet, bare meat van to leave the venue, just a shitty experience all round, and Paul has a rant about what a bad experience it all is and the others say 'Yeah, we've been telling you for weeks man'.

It's kind of impressive that they gave it up just because it was no fun, when they must've been absolutely raking it in - it's not like they spent cash putting on an extravagant spectacle or anything.

something a bit hermetically sealed in a lab and asexual about some post-65 Beatles records.

you mean like Why Don't We Do It in the Road and Two Virgins?

some!

It only gets a couple of pages in Many Years From Now (McCartney's autobiography). It seems like it became an increasingly unrewarding experience for them, due to how demanding it was and the lack of pleasure in seeing their performances suffer because of the screaming, etc. Paul was the last one to hold out, which fits with his enthusiastic personality, but the last straw was a lousy show in the rain in St Louis, playing with wet electric equipment under a sheet corrugated iron roof(!); then piling into a wet, bare meat van to leave the venue, just a shitty experience all round, and Paul has a rant about what a bad experience it all is and the others say 'Yeah, we've been telling you for weeks man'.

It's kind of impressive that they gave it up just because it was no fun, when they must've been absolutely raking it in - it's not like they spent cash putting on an extravagant spectacle or anything.

Maybe I just dont understand the times, but why couldnt they do small upscale venues, special gigs or even live tv shows? I know they did that "give peace a chance" tv thing in 69ish though, and they did the rooftop gig at Abbey Road...

Why would they have done that, though? They were constantly trying to top what they'd done before - as Paul says: 'we never did the same thing once' - and going back to the clubs or whatever would just've been boring and frustrating for them, which is what happened when they did try it with Get Back

Seems pretty simple - they didn't like it, and they didn't have to. If you don't want to do something, you don't have to do something, and no one is making you, why do it?

In the case of The Beatles, mainly two reasons:

- This was pre-Marshalls and it was impossible for rock bands to be heard at concerts, let alone hear themselves play. They would only hear the audience screaming

- Already on "Rubber Soul" they had used several instruments that were hard to bring on tours. On "Revolver" they were also using an increased number of electronic effects. Mind you, this could all be played by a synth today, but 1966 was 13 years before samplers were invented, and synths were big modular panels that took an entire room, plus if taken down they would take ages to put up.

I'm gonna assume it was a pretty ok decision.

Miles Davis retired in the 1970s for 3 years.

Miles Davis retired for six years and it wasn't really a career choice.

the kinks were banned from touring the u.s. at the peak of their creative powers in the late '60s, and by most accounts that did not go well for them at all. but it's hard to say if the kinks are the village green preservation society was a commercial failure because they couldn't tour behind it in america, or if people just weren't going to buy that album in 1968 anyway.

Miles Davis retired for six years and it wasn't really a career choice.

more of a "I need to spend some quality time with my mountains of coke" choice amirite

well he would've liked people to think it was coke but it was really junk is the line iirc.

haha really? I forget what he says in his bio (iirc he's pretty elliptical). Kinda sad if he slid back on the junk after kicking it before

I wonder did they make a formal announcement, or did they simply just stop scheduling dates?

I believe they had a tour of the UK pencilled in for late '66 but they cancelled it, leading the press to speculate that they were on the verge of splitting.
Obviously touring had become somewhat fraught following the "bigger than Jesus" tour of the US and the Marcos debacle. Then when "Good Vibrations" was heralded as a great studio-constructed masterpiece, the Beatles naturally thought sod touring, the studio's where it's at.

Maybe at the time it wasnt as big as deal as it would be today.

It was a pretty big deal to Brian Epstein.

haha really? I forget what he says in his bio (iirc he's pretty elliptical). Kinda sad if he slid back on the junk after kicking it before

in his autobiog he says he was doing loads of coke, driving around in fancy cars, and having sex with rich white women. In other biogs it says he stayed at home taking heroin and watching tv.

Simple answer: Because they could.

Maybe I just dont understand the times, but why couldnt they do small upscale venues, special gigs or even live tv shows?

Well, there was this...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NzJ2NKp23WU

not to mention they played "live" from England on Ed Sullivan as well as Dick Cavett in the late 60's
even those performances were basically proto music videos

oh, plus the rooftop concert

even though those performances*

This is also why Sly and the Family Stone forgot to tour.

XTC stopped touring because Gangsta Andy Partidge got shot at while ridin' in stylez in Vegas.

The venues and the backline did not exist for the Beatles to be able to tour and play in any successfull/accomplished way. Yeah, the money would make up for it, but by then they had enough to be going on with.

The largest gig they ever played in the UK was a 'mersey beat' 'festival' along with other bands from Lpool, before they got signed to Parlophone.

it is sort of weird to think about what being a "band" actually means when you don't tour together and half of your music is recorded with different configurations of your members plus outside folks, sometimes even working isolation. hard to imagine many "bands" lasting for long under such circumstances--seems like there'd be a natural drift away from the unit cohesion that seems an essential thing for a touring band.

or just a band who regularly performs publicly, tour or no tour.

Well, the configuration for a 'recording band on tour' now is band members plus additional musicians and so on.

Also, their final tour of the USA was not sold out!

Too many people shouting freebird

"Wha? Free as a Bird? We'll get back to you on that one..."

The largest gig they ever played in the UK was a 'mersey beat' 'festival' along with other bands from Lpool

Not the Royal Variety Performance?

the venue they did the rvp at only held just over 1000 people

Yes, I did mean largest as in "people attending".

The NME poll winners one was probably close, but they only did three songs, or something like that.

Also, their final tour of the USA was not sold out!

Different world back then - I'd've gone. My mum saw them in Bournemouth in 1963, which I think was just pay-on-the-door

Oh sure, but by 1966 other groups were available, and the Beatles' set hadn't changed much.

In three years, technology had moved up to improve things but by then the Beatles didn't want to.

it is sort of weird to think about what being a "band" actually means when you don't tour together and half of your music is recorded with different configurations of your members plus outside folks, sometimes even working isolation. hard to imagine many "bands" lasting for long under such circumstances

add in the fact that you've realized you don't actually like each other.

The Damned stopped touring 26 times and it never did them any harm.

it is sort of weird to think about what being a "band" actually means when you don't tour together and half of your music is recorded with different configurations of your members plus outside folks, sometimes even working isolation. hard to imagine many "bands" lasting for long under such circumstances

add in the fact that you've realized you don't actually like each other.

From my understanding it was just that John didnt like Paul and George didnt like Paul. Everyone else seemed to like each other...unless you count Yoko.

However, only John liked Yoko, and without Yoko, no John.

From my understanding it was just that John didnt like Paul and George didnt like Paul. Everyone else seemed to like each other...unless you count Yoko.

John was kinda a dick to everybody - deriding Ringo's drumming skills in public interviews, refusing to contribute to George's songs, etc.

(ie. "Ringo, the best drummer in the world? He's not even the best drummer in the Beatles!")

mccartney is a pretty sick drummer tho, you have to admit it

(also prob the best guitar player in the Beatles)

no way

I will grant that McCartney was the best multi-instrumentalist in the Beatles tho

re: group cohesion, the Beach Boys were sorta ambiguous for a while, what with Brian not touring & Bruce filling in, plus The Wrecking Crew on the records, & then Brian going nuts & then later half of the Flames

haha, mainly trolling re: mccartney, i love george and ringo. but i always thought it would've been cool if mccartney went through a phase where he was like "i'm really into drumming now" and joined some random band.

the way the Beatles messed with each other I doubt if Ringo took that comment seriously. I think he would have been more pissed when McCartney took on the drumming when he wasnt around...didnt PMac even record over some of Ringo's work???

i think mccartney played drums on several White Album tracks. Not sure which ones other than USSR and Dear Prudence.

Macca recorded drums for his own songs when Ringo wasn't around - most notably during the recording of the White Album when Ringo temporarily quit because he couldn't take Macca's annoying perfectionism/endless hectoring

from what I've gathered over the years it seems like John was the biggest asshole on a personal level, but was relatively easy to work with. Whereas Paul was easily the most likeable/affable on a personal level, but he was a total pain to work with.

That last post may be quite OTM, I think. George was probably the most sympathetic on both accounts.
I suspect John may have been considerably more difficult to work with after he met Yoko though.

yeah once Yoko enters the picture its clear the balance changed considerably

I will grant that McCartney was the best multi-instrumentalist in the Beatles tho

Which of course also made him a control freak. And the others may not have enjoyed that so much.

Does anyone know if there is any footage of the Beatles recording the Abbey Road album?

seem to recall some footage of them recording octopus garden in the anthology doc ...

its kinda weird how remarkably little documentation there is of the making of Abbey Road, compared to all their other stuff. otoh, the experience of Let it Be woulda burned anybody out on cameras, I imagine

like I don't think I've ever even seen any photos from those sessions

There's some documentation of the Let It Be album...

right. I'm referring to Abbey Road. It was like after Let it Be they had a NO CAMERAS rule or something. there aren't even really outtakes or extras from the Abbey Road sessions afaik

Oh, there's a photo of them crossing the street to the studio, iirc.

some sessions stuff here:
http://bigozine2.com/roio/?p=409
there's apparently an 83-disc (!) Abbey Roads Sessions bootleg ... good lord.

Oh, there's a photo of them crossing the street to the studio, iirc.

yeah but even that is OUTSIDE!

it is kinda weird in lewisohn's "complete beatles chronicles" how there are like ZERO photos at the end except for paul talking on the phone or something

It starts with George Harrison briefing the Beatles on Something. You can hear Lennon, a bit miffed by this song, requesting the band to move on to some “rock ‘n’ roll” at the end.

ever the jerk...

haha ... "BOOOOOORING, George!"

yeah, but then you've got John here singing the lead so George can work out a countermelody to it.

Which is nice.

george-john duet on something is terrific!