The Beatles are a part of the world we all live in, and I've been
aware of them for as long as I remember. They're a perfect narrative:
four young lads start out playing other people's exciting music, and
then magic happens, as it always does, and the smart one and the cute
one write perfect pop. They become the biggest band in the world, our
representatives in the Solar System. Then the world gets a lot
stranger, and they get stranger with it, until... something happens,
I was never clear what. The perfect pop song turns into walls of
feedback, and dies away.
The need for narrative is the need for metaphor, the need to link
what we see to what we've seen. It can help, but oh, it can hurt. How
many bands have dashed themselves on the rocks of becoming the new
Beatles? How much damage was done to the solo careers of John and
Paul (and George and Ringo) by the knowledge that they used to be in
the Beatles? But our stars have to be collapsible: to live in the
lives of everyone, they have to be able to fit in the spare bits,
between work and the shopping list.
I ended up in front of the Beatles Anthology when it was shown on the
telly, and was struck by how, after the serious problems during The
White Album, they recorded another album, saw the writing on the
wall, but weren't happy enough with what they'd just done to let it
be the last album, and went back to get it right one last time.
Shortly afterwards, I was letting my overstuffed paypacket turn me
into a vinyl snob, and I noticed that my local record shop was
selling the LPs, as new (They still make them, because, y'know,
people still buy them). So I bought them, and went home to trace the
story, with a brief stop by the internet to find out the release
order (I am a geek).
And it sounded great, the best investment I ever made. And at the
end, the perfect end to the perfect story: after the odds and ends of
Abbey Road, John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo
Starr head back into the studio to record Let It Be, and magic
happens. They're the Beatles again, and they're having a great time.
The songs rise to the occasion, sounding like a band having
straightforward fun, with The Long and Winding Road and Two of Us
adding a note of ending, and never ending. The perfect stop to our
cartoon boys.
And then I checked our friend the internet again, and horrible facts
struck. Let It Be was the album they couldn't be having with, and
Abbey Road was the one they recorded last but released first. You
just can't find a good reality these days.
― Andrew Farrell, Thursday, 11 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)
that's fascinating... I've never heard Let It Be, but have long been
interested by it as a concept.
so you're saying it's not as bad as trend people say?
one thing I wonder with Let It Be - it was famously remixed by Phil
Spector after the Beatles and George Martin gave up on it. But is
there a pre-Phil Spector version of it knocking around.
buying ALL of a band's recorded output in one go and listening to it
consecutively is such a great thing to do.
― DV, Thursday, 11 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)
>so you're saying it's not as bad as trend people say?
Tuesday, Thursdays and Fridays it's my favourite Beatles record. I
read on AMG that it's "The only Beatles album to occasion negative,
even hostile reviews", which bewilders me. Abbey Road sounds so much
more like they're phoning it in to me.
Let It Be, Get Back and Across The Universe appear on Past Masters
Vol.2, and I think at least two of them are pre-Phil versions.
― Andrew Farrell, Thursday, 11 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)
not to forget the lovely "two of us" on Let it be. There is a very
moving rendition of "the long and winding road" -pre spector choir
choruses- with just macca and his piano in the Let It Be film.
as to your request for stories, I have indulged in conscious
sophistry all my life, and it has made me very tired.
― pulpo, Thursday, 11 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)