Surf's Up Vs A Day In The Life

There's nothing like a bit of Lennon + big chorusey solo piano really.

All of this conversation later and I still can't choose. It's very much a draw for me. I think both of these songs stand up surprisingly well both all of these years later, and also when stripped of all of their production 'excesses' (for want of a better word).

Interesting to hear the edits on the White Album being talked about... there are some seriously awful, cack-handed, sloppy edits on that album. It's part of the charm of the record for me now, but when I first started listening to the Beatles discography, I did so in order - so by the time I got to the White Album I thought "christ, they had all of that studio time and the recordings just feel thrown together". I don't think that way now, and see its flaws as part of the 'package', even if it is the messiest record The Beatles ever made.

It's important to remember how vastly more difficult editing was in the 1960s than today. Combining two sections of music meant taking two reels of analog tape, doing your best to locate the end of the first and the beginning of the second, then taking a razor blade and slicing your only first-generation copy in half on a slicing block, than using adhesive to join your two tape segments together. And if you got the timing off and sliced off a bit too much tape, the timing would be off, and you didn't get a second chance to get it right. Nothing like nowadays where you do all of that with a click of the mouse, and you can undo and retry if you don't like the result.

Yes, I understand what the process involves, you honestly didn't need to enlighten me! However, it is plainly obvious that the editing on 'The White Album' is considerably more sloppy and noticeable than on pretty much any other Beatles album. They had all of the studio time in the world to get things done (one of the few bands of the era that had such an embarrassment of resources), and managed to do it with meticulous care and attention on other albums, so it's not really much of an excuse. If they were rushing themselves, then it showed. But, like I said, I view it as part of the 'charm'/'aesthetic' of that record now.

I don't really get where the sloppy edits are on the White Album tbh

Beach Boys catalog, however, is littered with sloppy edits - botched vocal punch-ins, extraneous dialogue/talking, etc.

You don't think the ending to 'Yer Blues' is a sloppy/bad edit!?

"I would like you dance!"

"Birthday!"

"DaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaAAAAAAAAA/**squeak**/AAAAAAaaAAAAAAAnce!"

never noticed either of those

honestly don't hear the Yer Blues one... I guess I can tell where the edit is in Birthday but that one's never leapt out at me either

there are some jarring edits on the white album, but i always thought of them as in keeping with the aesthetic modus operandi of the album, not really "sloppy"?

i just realized that my version of little dog is a way more complex work of art than the beatles, thanks y'all

there are some jarring edits on the white album, but i always thought of them as in keeping with the aesthetic modus operandi of the album, not really "sloppy"?

― tylerw, Monday, November 7, 2011 9:30 PM (7 minutes ago) Bookmark

I don't think they intended for the edits to sound 'jarring', I think that's just how it turned out. It's pretty well documented that The Beatles weren't the most focused bunch of individuals in 1968! The 'aesthetic modus operandi' thing is what has been attributed to the album since by people who have embraced the flaws.

The Beatles also weren't the guys cutting up tape with razorblades, so faulting them for bad edit is silly. But at any rate, if you haven't read "What Goes On - The Beatles Anomalies List" check it out, it's nothing but editing and other mistakes:
http://wgo.signal11.org.uk/wgo.htm

That's a great site! He's even solo'd the vocal bit from 'Birthday' I was talking about!

http://wgo.signal11.org.uk/snd/bi_0207.mp3

I don't think they intended for the edits to sound 'jarring'
i don't know, both lennon and mccartney were pretty familiar w/ avant garde recording techniques/approaches at this point. i mean, i don't want to give them too much credit, but I can certainly see Lennon hearing a rough edit and thinking that it sounded raw, intense. which is kind of what he was going for at that point.

Even with that in mind, I don't think it's deliberate. There was a reason why they made those solo projects.

I'm referring of course not just to 'Two Virgins' here, but also 'Electronic Sound'.

Also, while McCartney was more than familiar with the avant-garde, even before Lennon was (it took Yoko to open up the avant-garde to him), he was also less than thrilled with stuff like 'Revolution 9' going on the record, and successfully vetoed 'What's The New Mary Jane?' also.

I think the "McCartney was more avant-garde" meme is something sort of perpetuated by him, and won't believe a word of it until I hear "Carnival of Light". Where is Paul's "Life With the Lions"?

That's a great site! He's even solo'd the vocal bit from 'Birthday' I was talking about!

except that I totally don't hear that in the finished version of the song...? I dunno what's going on here.

I don't think his "output" was more avant-garde, merely that McCartney appreciated the avant-garde well before Lennon did. Lennon did once go on record and say "avant-garde is French for bullshit" before he met Yoko.

McCartney was responsible for the tape loops on 'Tomorrow Never Knows', and Lennon once lamented that all of the experimentation seemed to happen on his songs. Lennon was even toying with the idea of re-recording 'Strawberry Fields Forever' in a "straighter" form during the Double Fantasy sessions!

except that I totally don't hear that in the finished version of the song...? I dunno what's going on here.

― The Uncanny Frankie Valley (Shakey Mo Collier), Monday, November 7, 2011 11:08 PM (53 seconds ago) Bookmark

It is there, believe me. Towards the end.

oh it's in the SECOND refrain.

yeah now I hear it

that is a pretty weird thing to leave in

You are right when you say there's some obvious bleed throughs/bad edits/bad punch-ins on Beach Boys stuff, though. I think 'Here Today' has a near-audible conversation in the background at one point which isn't supposed to be there.

McCartney was responsible for the tape loops on 'Tomorrow Never Knows'

wait I read that that was all Harrison and Lennon

yeah there's a similar page for the Beach Boys (iatee or tylerw might know what I'm talking about?) - but I was kinda surprised how much of the entries on there were things I had actually noticed before. The conversation about cameras in Here Today is noted in the liner notes iirc

from wiki - "McCartney supplied a bag of ¼-inch audio tape loops he had made at home after listening to Stockhausen's Gesang der Jünglinge. By disabling the erase head of a tape recorder and then spooling a continuous loop of tape through the machine while recording, the tape would constantly overdub itself, creating a saturation effect, a technique also used in musique concrète. The tape could also be induced to go faster and slower. McCartney encouraged the other Beatles to use the same effects and create their own loops."

i mean, if that's true, mccartney can lay claim to being the avant garde beatle.

Here's a bunch
xp

Honkin Down the Highwway - (fade) Al sings "Who cares if I gotta spend the night" at the end of the fade -- obviously not the correct lyric, and right after, realizing his mistake, he seems to say, "Oh, shit!"

I mean I love "Love You" and totally noticed this before, it just makes me laugh

now I'm just laughing at this list...

2:26 Carl says "I love you" it is intentional, but I don't like it

In Brian's autobiography on page 326 referring to digital recording which can easily be made flawless Brian says "I learned the lesson that so many people who made albums in the eighties missed: no matter how perfect technology made the sound, an album still boiled down to great songwriting and a spiritual investment in the music."

Mr. Wilson is OTM. Flaws can add 'character' to a release. I know they certainly do to 'The White Album'.

when i saw the pet sounds tour with the wondermints many years ago BW was constantly coughing/clearing his throat into the mic- old habits die hard

All those supposed flaws you hear on the 'White Album' I think I have missed. I always heard it and felt like everything really flowed in its own strange way. Nothing really took me out of the mood. I don't think it's really a bad edit unless it takes you out of the song/flow of the album, regardless of technical standards.

I dunno man, there were a lot of things that were very noticeable to me!

Like, on 'Happiness Is A Warm Gun' for example. I noticed several things right off the bat about that track, and two of them are noted on that anomalies site... the fading in of the word 'down' before John starts singing the "I need a fix..." bit, and right at the end the bleed-through of the falsetto "Guuuuuuuuun!" before the actual lead vocal comes in. One thing that isn't noted on that site that I noticed is during "mother superior jump the gun", the vocal double-tracking goes all to shit.

I've never questioned the intentionality of those elements on the white album. Same guys that went on to attempt to make an album of all live takes next (Let It Be) and went on to make records like Wild Life and Some Time in New York City.

I understood that The Beatles wanted to make a bit more of a 'stripped back' album than the psychedelia of 'Sgt. Pepper's' and 'Magical Mystery Tour'. I honestly don't think that bad edits/punch ins/messy double-tracking was the intention. I just think they had a lot of songs and rushed their way through it. Look at 'Hey Jude' and the single version of 'Revolution', for example. Those two tracks were done during the White Album sessions, but because they knew they were going to come out as a single they paid more attention and care to what they were doing, and it shows!

It's also worth noting that George Martin didn't produce all of 'The White Album' either... he buggered off on holiday half-way through and left The Beatles to it.

Geoff Emerick quit the sessions too... so you've got Ken Scott/Geoff Emerick engineering and Chris Thomas/George Martin/The Beatles themselves producing.

So maybe an engineer does and edit, shows it to a John Lennon who is tripping on LSD, and gets the OK to keep it in.

I honestly don't think that bad edits/punch ins/messy double-tracking was the intention.

Right, but the decision not to do anything about them was intentional and, I've always assumed, aesthetically-motivated rather than just due to laziness. I mean, who knows, but surely something like the editing on "Yer Blues" was intentional.

My theory is that the decision not to do anything about them was because they wanted to record as much of their material as possible and maybe their record company had set a release date. The compiling of the album legendarily took place in their only 24-hour session, which suggests to me that they may have had a deadline. They were in the studio a fair amount of time making that record while they were essentially falling apart... band members and producers going off on holiday or quitting. There may have been an attitude of "okay, that'll do".

I think they spent six months making 'The White Album' ... 'Sgt. Peppers' took five and there's considerably less songs on it.

'Abbey Road' took seven months from start-to-finish, but there were less songs... which means more time devoted to each song, with a producer that was completely in charge and a much stricter recording regime. Still though, this is the band that made 'Revolver' in three months... I just think they became distracted by having so much material and the tension in the studio, really, that's the only real reason I can think of that they spent six months on 'The White Album' and it ended up sounding so sloppy. I really don't think they intended to make a messy record, though, it just turned out that way as a product of what was going on when it was made. Lord knows they had enough studio time to make it non-sloppy, though.

It all seems 'of a piece' to me on an album with a long tape collage piece, the intentional editing at the end of "Yer Blues," lo-fi things like "Wild Honey Pie," the rambling fiddle at the end of "Don't Pass Me By," the little snippet of unidentified song on Side Four, etc.

tell you though, if I had 6 months in Abbey Road, I'd make a damn great double album!

I'm voting Beatles. 'Surf's Up' is gorgeous, but I've never been a fan of VDP's lyrics. The "music holocaust" pun, "adieu or die," etc... are much too "clever" to move me. Arrangement-wise, 'Surf's Up' is certainly more textured than ADITL, but it's nothing that Spector, the Beatles, and the Beach Boys themselves hadn't done at least a few times already. ADITL's crescendos, on the other hand, are some pretty inspired and unique bits of orchestration. ADITL also flows much more smoothly to my ears than the start-and-stop production of 'Surf's Up.' I do love both songs. If you break them down into sheet music, I think Surf's Up is probably the stronger composition. It'd be a beautiful piano piece. But in the end, I prefer Lennon's voice to Wilson's, and Ringo's performance is just too good. I suppose I usually prefer the rougher Beatles sound to the Beach Boys sound.

I've been thinking a lot about album context too. I listened to each of these songs many times tonight, and it's been a little strange to hear ADITL on its own, instead of at the end of 'Pepper.' One of my favorite things about the song, and the album, is that instead of a crowd pleaser, this silly, psychedelic, half-assed 'concept band' ends their night with a creepy existentialist encore. WTF?

Yeah, that's one of the problems with Sgt Peppers. It starts off with the best intentions of being a themed concept album and quickly forgets about it all after the first two-three tracks.