[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GAYZ9BrD97U"]YouTube - Get Back - The Beatles - Rooftop Performance[/ame]
[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g4n0Vd2ptyw&feature=related"]YouTube - Beatles Rooftop "Don't Let me Down[/ame]
Best. Rock. Band. Ever. Every time I see this footage, I think something was left undone that they had a decade to solve and didn't. Then John got killed and it didn't matter. I wish they'd reunited for at least one more album sometime in the late 70s, with all of them approaching maturity as people and as composers. Paul in particular bloomed during the Wings era, but George and Ringo had a few great tunes post-breakup.
I think part of their allure is that they didn't regroup, but you're right, it feels something was left undone. And I love Ringo, but honestly I'd hesitate to call any of his tunes "great". Now his screen performance opposite Barbara Bach in "Caveman" is another story. The Academy robbed him of an Oscar.
Glad to know I'm not the only one. The funniest part of that film is where this frisbee-sized mosquito lands on dude's face and the other guy is trying to gently blow him off...."fffff"... "pffffff"... That said, Photograph and It Don't Come Easy are both among the great former Beatle compositions of all time, IMO. every bit as god as Paul's Wings stuff (which I will defend to the death) and George's singles like My Sweet Lord and Give Me Love.
I think everybody my age struggled with this for a decade or two; it seems that way because they were four exceptional talents who fit together in such a way as to cover for the weakest parts of each other's game and emphasize the strongest. Anyone could hear that in the music, the more so when the solo careers were well underway and the parts separated out. It seemed as though the same should be true of their personalities; but of course that was all illusion-- the combination of talents had little to do with the shape of their interactions. In fact it seems now a small miracle that John and Paul could function so closely together for so long when they were almost the sort of people who should hate each other... In the end I was just brought to the wonder one more time at "Free As A Bird." I thought it quite acceptable as a very last Beatles single, and a graceful coda to the whole story. When the Jefferson Airplane made a wretched reunion album, it was ok-- they made a couple of clunkers in the first run. When Poco did the same, it wasn't a reunion of The Greatest Band Ever. But if the Beatles did that, released an album full of each other's solo material; with no "Imagine" no "Meet You in the Falling Rain" no "Crackerbox Palace" or "It Don't Come Easy" drawing the best efforts out of each other-- well that would have been tragic... and it would have been our tragedy, not theirs. They did terrific things for a decade, under intense pressures at both ends; and left a book of melodies rivalled perhaps only by Mozart. I think it was kind of greedy of us to ask for more.
Well thought out, as always. It's refreshing to read the perspective of someone who saw it all unfold. I don't have that experience first hand- I'm looking at old footage and even tho I marvel sometimes at that, I guess it's not the same. Yeah, I'll confess to some greed in that regard. You got to see this all first hand- you'll have to understand that some of us are jealous that you got to live in that time (at least as far as music goes). But my hope wasn't that they reunited and just tossed together some of their unrecorded solo material- it was that they reunited and took up where they left off composing.
Yeah, gotcha-- I was balancing that against the fear that they reunited and didn't... And you know-- I spend a whole lot of my listening time these days listening to Ory and McPartland and Venuti and Leadbelly; so maybe I envy my father his time...
It was 40 years ago today ... Both clips together, with a little extra prelim & after footage: [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ea6ZcfJspcI"]YouTube - The Beatles Rooftop Concert 1/3[/ame]
It was 40 years ago today ... [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xINfAYiWVhU&NR=1"]YouTube - The Beatles Rooftop Concert 2/3[/ame]
It was 40 years ago today ... 3/3 [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pd8JYA4MvlQ&NR=1"]YouTube - The Beatles Rooftop Concert 3/3[/ame] Is that Billy Preston on keyboards? I heard a story yesterday that Ringo regretted that he was not dragged from his drum kit by the police at the end. Perhaps if he had known that this would be it ... There's also a classic John Lennon comment at the end. Supposedly, this inspired a similar event by U2 in LA some years later.
40 years? Jesus, I refuse to believe that so much time has passed. We cannot possibly be that old, it doesn't add up.
Re: It was 40 years ago today ... 3/3 It's the video for Where the Streets Have No Name, nice little homage, which I knew nothing about when it came out. If you haven't seen them you should really check out the Beatles Anthology dvd's, I'm pretty sure those interviews is where Ringo's story comes from. Maybe it's a little sanitized, but there's no substitute for hearing the stories from the guys who lived through and created them. I've been on a mad Beatles kick for about the past year, kicked off by watching the Anthology and I've been diving through several books since. I'm reading the Bob Spitz biography right now, and he gives a great account of the early chemistry that developed between John and Paul (and I think George gets short shrift by most people, he was part of the glue that held them together). I don't think they were opposites at that early point, Paul was much more of a rebel than he gets credit for, I just think as they grew older their differences grew less compatible (and they just got sick of each other). They actually started hanging out together again in the late 70's, so really does make you wonder if they'd have gotten the bug to start making music together again, especially after John came back with Double Fantasy. Man, I'd love to tap into that What If universe....
As always George gets no respect. It's Paul this, John that. Even Ringo gets a little airplay. Well here is the best Beatle tune e-vah: [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AHChc2I7FKk"]YouTube - While My Guitar Gently Weeps[/ame] It is amazing, George was only given a cut or two on each album but each song was stellar.
Apologies if I wasn't clear. It was the relationship between Paul and John which formed and fractured the Beatles, but I certainly didn't mean to denigrate George's abilities. I actually would put WMGGW no higher than third on his list-- and I'd have to think about what else I might rank higher. "Here Comes the Sun" and "I Want to Tell You" would be 1 and 2. Plus of course "NSU " should probably be considered half his...
NSU? I'd put "Something" and maybe "If I Needed Someone" up there too. I love the demo version of Something on Anthology 3. The demo of WMGGW is pretty damn good too...
Sorry-- meant "Badge." Was talking as I typed. George came up with the cascading riff that makes the whole thing work when Clapton asked his help on it.
George was awesome. Maybe I should be embarassed to admit it, but I even like "All those years ago." I get chills whenever I hear it. Coincidentally (in that someone mentioned U2's homage to the rooftop performance), I saw U2 play the day after George passed away and they did a nice cover of "My Sweet Lord."
Sacrilegious wet blanket alert ..... Is it just me or were the Beatles such phenomenal writers and composers that they didn't have the ability to perform their music to the level it deserved and only other artists who happened to be better performers than writers could give it the respect it deserved?
In the age of 32 track recordings, over dubs and digital enhancements? Maybe... There is no doubt they were an unparralled creative force. Even a song as benign as Maxwell's Silver Hammer was painstakingly worked over for weeks. And then they decided to bring an anvil it to give it the signature sound we had grown accustomed to from them. Amazing....
I'm talking even in the '70's. Joe Cocker comes to mind. Kind of like Pink Floyd having to invent pulleys and pivots to wind the 4 track tape around when doing the loops for 'out of time'. Apparently they had tape running in every corner of the studio which was the only way to do it before any sort of digital sampling. And they wouldn't have gotten there if the Beatles didn't come first
I think its just you. In listening to the rooftop tapes you should keep in mind that this is a band which has not played out as a quartet since the mid-sixties and hardly played all together in a studio setting in anything but a superficial runthrough in all that time. And they quit playing live because the crowd noise had far exceeded any monitor technology for the last couple of tours-- they quit because they couldn't hear themselves play and had no idea whether they were cooking or stinking out the joint... so its been a couple of extra years since they heard themselves play. To my ears the version of "Don't Let Me Down" is flowing with ideas which had no previous existence as far as I know. The performance seems as fluent as anyone could ever ask... at least in a 1970 context and perhaps for years to come. Now if you are criticising the recorded material, and comparing the Cocker versions on that basis, that would suggest merely that you fall on the punk side of the "punk vs pop" debate. Do you like "Live At Leeds" better than "Sell Out?" "Between the Buttons" better than "Only Rock and Roll?" Certainly for many of us George Martin is the gold standard in recording...