can’t say that i listen to them on the regular. but i thought about them last week when i noticed that somebody i had met in london was opening up for macy gray @ hollywood bowl. i’ve got a beatles live at hollywood bowl album somewhere. twist & shout, roll over beethoven, stuff like that.

the other time was when i saw a pete best poster. he’s still touring as the guy who used to be in the beatles. he must be a very sad man.

for some time i was convinced to have spotted a beatles sample on a mad lion record. so i listened to a few beatles records, got distracted and don’t even remember which mad lion track i’m talking about.

well…

I know somebody who likes music and claims not to like the Beatles. You know him too. He’s probably reading this right now in his not-liking-the-beatles-world.

I, on the other hand, love the Beatles. They are one of the rare cultural pleasures that just nfailingly make me happy. I can’t break my listening down to groups of tracks, however. I tend to get into moods. I’ll fancy listening to them in a rootsy mode, so I’ll listen to Let It Be (which, while not as good as the majority of their stuff, is still incredible, as is Help!). I’ll want some of their weird pastoral-music hall take on psychedelia, so I’ll listen to Sgt Pepper. I want to hear them rock, so I’ll listen to I Want You or Helter Skelter. I want to hear them try to be the Shirelles, so I’ll listen to Baby Its You.

Or I’ll want to listen to some Harrison songs, or just McCartney. This applies to solo Beatles stuff too, most of which I have a great affection for. If you don’t have Ram, there is no excuse. Go get it. But the depth of their catalogue as a group is amazing, considering it was all done in less than a decade.

If I had to pick the songs I listen to most, iTunes says:

Things We Said Today
While My Guitar Gently Weeps (the anthology acoustic version)
You Never Give Me Your Money
No Reply
Two of Us
Old Brown Shoe
Strawberry Fields Forever
We Can Work It Out
Ballad of John & Yoko
For No One
I Feel Fine
Tomorrow Never Knows
In My Life
Norwegian Wood
A Day in the Life
Happiness Is A Warm Gun
Revolution 1
Yer Blues
Why Dont We Do It in the Road?
Hey Bulldog

I used to make a lot of Beatles tapes for people in Uni, and all of those songs would’ve made most of those tapes (which reminds me, I must get started on my Beatles: solo compilation post).

Whenever iTunes plays one Beatles song on shuffle, it generally plays another straight away, which I love. Its as if it does it out of respect…

I’m not a big fan. I don’t get their ‘dark, trippy’ stuff at all, and so will dabble only with the poppy stuff (if at all)

Twist & Shout
Ticket To Ride
Can’t Buy Me Love
IWHYH

etc

Paperback Writer is the dogs bollocks though.

(And so is Mull of Kintyre – but that’s for a different post)

Coming from a Scouse family The Beatles have pretty much been a part of my music listening for my whole life, although I don’t always choose to listen to them myself the following songs are my faves, all for different reasons:

Hello, Goodbye
Here, There and Everywhere
Help
I Wanna Hold Your Hand
I Feel Fine
We Can Work It Out
Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds

I can’t say I am a great fan of the Beatles, but inevitably a lot of the bands I like owe them something there are three songs I love:

Dear Prudence
Paperback Writer
I am the Walrus (well I just like the nonsense words bit)

I also quite like…

Day Tripper

I can Never Ever Ever listen to…

She Loves You

without cringing but that’s not the Beatles fault, that’s purely me and the mortifying memories I have of belting that out when a silly little girl (ok not that little) inorder to get the impression of someone…

Only time I ever listen to them is when I hear them as muzak while I’m out shopping or something.

Peece,
T. Tauri

When I was a yout’ my parents bought a lot of music, but all they had of the Beatles was two singles: ‘I wanna hold your hand’ and ‘twist and shout’. Or maybe that was one double A-side single. Anyway. I used to mix up the Beatles and the Monkees becauze they were both wacky pop foursomes on tv.

It wasn’t till I started hanging around with northern types at university that I heard actual Beatles albums. I concluded they weren’t bad after all. And then forgot about them till THE GREY ALBUM made my head explode.

These days I listen to The White Album, Sgt Pepper’s and Revolver. That’s about it. I really love ‘Taxman’.

I go through periods where I listen to them a lot and then not so much. I like them as much for their celebrity as I do their music. My favourite period is their funny showbiz period: 1963-65 but that’s not really for the music. I’ve always hankered after Lennon’s suit from A Hard Day’s Night (they’re not all the same) and he also has his best haircut and sideburns combo too, and cool shoes. The Beatles absolutely represent their period of existence better than anything else.

Anyway the music. It is a great, astonishing body of work, but some of it can be unlistenable. Albums are listened to, but skipping tracks is an unfortunate but essential thing. That said the tracks I now can’t listen to are often those I used to love like “Being For The Benefit of Mr. Kite”. I’m sure the pendulum will swing back one day and I’ll love it again, but track’s like “Carry That Weight” are probably just rubbish. I used to hate “Back in the USSR” but recently had to admit to myself that I do like it a lot. Same with “Lady Madonna”. I don’t know why I like them now, but I do.

Best album is probably Revolver or Sgt. Pepper’s for me, with Abbey Road and Rubber Soul being the most overated, not bad just overated.

My constant favourite tracks are:
1) Eight Days Week – a perfect, perfect song. Weird structure though. More “For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow” that most pop of the time.
2) Paperback Writer
3) Baby It’s You
4) Something
5) Here, There and Everywhere
6) Day In The Life
7) Got To Get You Into My Life
She’s Leaving Home
9) I Am The Walrus
10) Strawberry Fields Forever
11) Across The Universe
12) For No One – I-Tunes says I play this the most.
Pretty standard.
Favourite cover: Bernard Cribbins’ “When I’m 64″ – Georgeous, heartbreaking stuff. Really! Better’s the original.
Who’s next?

Nah I don’t like enough Who songs.

My Beatles listening has been very biased towards Sgt Pepper, Revolver and Help, I don’t know why I chose them to play to near-death on my sheep-shaped Boots walkman, but thus it was. So I can’t agree that Help sucks, mostly because I like:

I’ve just seen a face
You’re gonna lose that girl
You like me too much

Otherwise I think I likes these best (not in order) but I probably forgot many essential things:

And your bird can sing
All my loving
Eleanor Rigby
Fool on the hill
Ob-la-di, ob-la-da
A day in the life
For no one
I’m only sleeping
Baby you’re a rich man (because “you keep all your money in a bigbrownbag inside the zoo-oo, oh yes you do-oo”)
Octopus’s garden (I worked in a shop where this was one of approximately three non-excruciating tracks that were allowed, and I would’ve liked to be beside the sea)
She’s leaving home
Fixing a hole

These ones I’m afraid I mUst skip:

Taxman
Michelle
Lovely rita
Junior
Paperback writer
Doctor Robert
Dizzy miss lizzy

Was it really all done in ten years? Dearie me. Best film bit is in Yellow Submarine when he says “I’ve got a hole in my pocket”.

David skated outing me.

I don’t know The Beatles. What I’ve heard I can’t divorce from all the noise and wow Beatles fans throw about. And I’m usually unimpressed. Honest to god. I’m often ‘This is it?’

My childhood music education misses them out. My dad raised me on Chuck Berry, BB King, The Eagles, The Allman Brothers and dozens of others from Lou Reed to The Specials. When all that Fab Four scene was going down, my dad was a blues man. He liked the Stones, sure. Small Faces. But there was no Beatles played when I was a kid. Not in the sense I listened to other bands.

So when I began forming my own musical tastes, it was Zep who spoke to me (who are also missed out in my Dad’s choices, despite being only a handshake away from what got played). The Beatles stuff I heard was just radio play choices. And those songs just sound like jingles. They aren’t tracks as I think of them. I don’t recognise them. They blend in and I don’t really notice I’m listening to them. She Loves You…These songs are so embedded in the musical landscape that they are like lamp-posts to me.

Nobody’s stepped up, despite my asking them to, and supplied a good selection of what makes you fans so happy about them. So all I can really go on is those wedding party songs and Sgt. Peppers which I have heard from beginning to end and thought very little of.

I understand there’s something idosyncratic about this. I can name four or five George Harrison songs I know and like. I like bands who can be found on the same spectrum from Redd Kross to Madness. But there’s nothing contrary about me not caring much for The Beatles.

Though the movies…Hard Days Night and Help! rule.

Though not a big knowledge on the beatles, i don’t like all the songs i know but i do know what i like the most and they are:
(in no order)(and with reasons why)

Tomorrow never knows

Because it’s got such a big sound and is ‘trippy’ and all that. I don’t know if the stones appear on it but the beatles do backing vocals on the stones’ similarly heavy ‘we love you’ which i like just as much as this. (though i could never say that the stones were as good as the beatles even though they hold particular nostalgic standing with me.)

Blackbird

Really sweet tune that does literally bring a puny tear to my eye. ahhh.

Paperback writer

Gud Wurds. And a good jangly rythymnnn!

Taxman

Everyone can relate to having a pop at the man for taking such a big slice of your wedge. Though with all their dough, they shouldn’t have been complaining. Also i like the way it is dated by the politicians they mention. Also The Jam ripped the ‘break’ off on ‘Start!’.

Norwegian wood

Sweet tune and words.

Hey Bulldog!

Maybe my favourite, excellent lyrics and a mad nice groove, totally men-taaaal.

i am the walrus

Silly stupid lyrics!

Dr Robert

I just like this one, is Dr Robert a drug dealer or a euphemism for something?

come together

Silly stupid lyrics!

good morning good morning

Lyrics again. “we go to a show, i hope ’she goes’”
meaning in todays language that he hoped she was a bit of a slag and was gonna have sex with him”.

Sgt. Pepper’s is my favourite album of those i know and has the best art from Dartford’s greatest ever artist- Peter Blake.
But it seems theres only ever a few brilliant songs on each album, but they are really brilliant songs.
Some people ignore them like i used to because they think all the hype back in the day was just hype and really they were not that good at all. But whereas i think that’s true of Elvis, i reckon the Beatles really were GOOD.

Plus, i know i went to infant school in the 70’s but did anyone else use to sing ‘yellow Submarine’ alongside ‘Who built the ark? noah noah!’ at school???

I’m a bit late.

Baby You’re A Rich Man.

I love the opening bars of the drums and the melody throughout, it’s just genius all the way through. A perfect pop song to me. Not entirely taken with the twiddly sitar stuff in it but it gets away with it.

I also seem to listen to Rocky Racoon a lot. I have no good reason, I just like thinking about racoons.

Check David’s excellent solo Beatles post:
http://onedeadfish.blogspot.com/2007/10/rock-and-roll-springtime-take-one.html

When I was a kid my mum and dad had the Blue Album and the red album, and I couldn’t really get the Red one – ie 63-66, but the later stuff on the Blue album, 67-70, was fantastic for a ten year old into Abba and the Wombles. Particularly

Lucy in the Sky,
Fool On the Hill,
Day in the Life,
I Am the Walrus.

My best mates elder sister had Sgt Peppers, which we borrowed and played to death, handing her back a mauled and scratched copy which she didn’t really appreciate. Since then I’ve discovered some of the album tracks:

I’m Only Sleeping
Being For the Benefit of Mr Kite,
Helter Skelter
Dear Prudence,
Sun King

and of course the end of Abbey Road:
Golden Slumbers, Carry That Weight & The End.

(Prog Rocker In Disguise!)

Let It Be should have been Let It Go – self indulgent tosh!

Recently I properly listened to Strawberry Fields and was just knocked over by the inventiveness and inspiration in just one 4 minute track. Listen to this on phones and do yourself a favour.