“…just as Lennon and McCartney had intended”. So where would the two songs slot in? Or will they just be tacked on to the end as bonus tracks? Will anyone want to buy it yet again?
Full text from behind the paywall:
“50 years on: the real Sgt Pepper
It is one of popular music’s seminal albums, has sold more than 32m copies around the world and marked the Beatles’ first embrace of psychedelic culture.
The 50th anniversary of the release of Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band this June will be marked with a worldwide re-release — and for fans it will mean at last hearing the album as the band had intended it to sound.
In 1967 the record label EMI poached what John Lennon and Paul McCartney believed to be two of their best songs from the album and released them as a double A-side single, something George Martin, their producer, later described as “a truly terrible mistake”.
The Beatles had wanted Strawberry Fields Forever and Penny Lane as showcase tracks on Sgt Pepper, their eighth album.
Now, according to sources, Apple Corps, the Beatles’ company, has scored a victory: the anniversary relaunch on June 1 will reinstate the tracks, just as Lennon and McCartney had intended.
Although the songs were credited to both Beatles, Lennon wrote Strawberry Fields and McCartney wrote Penny Lane.
McCartney has told friends: “We were then moving away from screaming girls’ gigs where no one could hear anything in the concert halls any more and were working on Sgt Pepper.
“John wrote this absolutely amazing song, Strawberry Fields Forever, for the new album and I was frankly a bit jealous, so I went home and wrote Penny Lane. It worked and we wanted them as the main tracks on Sgt Pepper.”
It is said that one in five British households still have a vinyl copy of Sgt Pepper.
Although details of the re-release are being kept secret, it is understood that all parties involved have co-operated fully, including McCartney, Ringo Starr and Yoko Ono and Olivia Harrison, the widows of John Lennon and George Harrison.
Dan Cairns, rock critic of The Sunday Times, said: “Many Beatles fans have added the two tracks to their own Sgt Pepper playlist, which allows you to hear the album as it so nearly ended up being — so it’s nice to hear that Apple are finally catching up.” “
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/news/50-years-on-the-real-sgt-pepper-68vrrg7pw
“the Beatles’ first embrace of psychedelic culture”.
Whereas Tomorrow Never knows and Rain might as well have been played in the Cavern in ’62, I suppose.
Who writes this crap?
Interns.
Truedat
It’s probably just another 50 year copyright extension job. There are a few recordings from the 1967 sessions that have yet to escape officially but which have turned up on bootlegs, such as the complete brass and cello version of Strawberry Fields Forever.
It could mean that we’ll finally get to hear the fabled Carnival Of Light, but that’s probably going to be a massive let-down.
Why should it be? After all, What’s the New Mary Jane turned out to be a masterpiece…
…er…
I will repeat this…. I guarantee that Carnival of Light is total garbage. Everything I have read and heard about it points in this direction. It will send everyone scurrying back to Revolution 9 as if it was bleedin’ Hey Jude.
It’s no “Christmas Time is Here Again”.
Spooky. I was visiting several charity shops in the Penny Lane area today. I did not find a single Beatles record but did find a version of Hello, Goodbye by James Last.
Presumably on the Beat Brothers’ first label.
I just have a couple of questions:
1. Which two tracks are they going to remove? The last two recorded were Sgt Pepper Reprise and She’s Leaving Home, preceded by Within You, Without You and Getting Better. A forty-seven minute Pepper is just too much.
2. How about It’s Only A Northern Song? That was intended for Sgt Pepper, too.
And they can’t tack them on at the end. That would spoil A Day In The Life’s final chord, the backward talking and the dog whistle.
I can only imagine someone has dreamt up this idea as a means of getting more money out of the great music buying public. The Fab Two + spouses must have agreed to it purely on that basis.
Bet there is no documentary proof as to what the track order was supposed to be, so it will all be cooked up post hoc. I smell a Let It Be Naked style inessential release on the way.
The only thing I can think of that would make me buy this is the inclusion of the aforementioned Carnival of Light as a bonus track or summat. It’s about time.
I’d go for a second disc of early stripped down versions like Good Morning, Good Morning on Anthology.
When the Pet Sounds Sessions box came out 20+ years ago I thought/expected they would do something similar with the good Sgt. (and a few of the other albums, come to that).
I think Let It Be Naked is much better than the original release.
Nay, sir – give me those strings and Mike Sammes Singers any day.
A Beatles Numpty Asks: I’d never heard of Carnival Of Light till I came to the Afterword – is it something you’ve all got bootleg copies of and heard a zillion times, but hasn’t been officially released…or has Macca managed to keep it from everybody’s ears all this time?
Carnival of Light is known to exist but has never made it out officially or even on bootleg. Paul has wanted to release it since the Anthology days but clearly the Fab Other One plus Fab Wives have not agreed.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnival_of_Light
I seem to recall in the sleeve notes of the first CD issue of SPLHCB, George Martin making a comment about a different running order and how through the wonders of technology you could program your CD player to hear how SPLHCB would have sounded.
I would prefer a celebratory collection of the album, mono and stereo, plus all the outtakes etc., along the lines of the Pet Sounds box, along with a decent book. For intance, I have a bootleg of all the Strawberry Fields versions, from first demo onwards, which is fascinating, and there must be more of this stuff.
The edit sequence that takes you from Lennon’s demo to “cranberry sauce” was the highlight of the Anthologies for me. Ditto the LOVE version.
More people are still alive on the original Sgt Pepper cover than those depicted on the 2016 celebrity deaths version. Food for thought.
Is you trippin’?
No, sadly it’s a joke I made up. This is better than most.
I larfed.
I fought they wuz all cardboard cutouts..?
Thank you!
Isn’t Carnival of Light now in the public domain? Publishing/copyright-wise? Or does Macca have until the end of 2017 to release it to maintain rights over it? I’m pretty sure it’d eat away at him, knowing that if any unofficial version did ever leak after the 50 year copyright expiry, it would immediately become a public domain recording. But it’s actual 50th anniversary of recording was back in January.
The Public Domain “clock” starts ticking from release date, not the date of creation, though in theory if anyone had a 50 year-old tape copy, that would technically be in the public domain and therefore OK for release, but I’d imagine Macca would bring charges as it would presumably be stolen goods, and down the rabbit hole we go (however, the fact it’s never appeared even on bootleg suggests there are no other copies in existence…)
Don’t care.
My days of collecting all available versions of my heroes’ work are gone.
I have Sgt. Pepper and I have Strawberry Fields/Penny Lane. All of them are delightful.
Disinclined to purchase them again just because they’re being made available.
…is the correct – or at least, sane – answer.
One just KNOWS that, with a big money PR campaign, something like (gasp, shock, wow, who knew…) Sgt Pepper with two single sides added will be marketed as a groundbreaking new perspective on the Beatles, a major leap forward, an undiscovered this or that – and that Mojo and Uncut will run (for the nth time) vast features hung around this stunning new insight/product.
‘McCartney has told friends…’
Friends who happened to have a dictaphone on them (or were very good at jotting down verbatim notes)? Friends who had no idea Sgt Pepper was recorded after The Beatles stopped touring and that Strawberry Fields/Penny Lane weren’t on it?
And how could they intend them to fit into a sequence of songs that hadn’t been written yet?
At least what Macca told friends has put to rest one thorny issue. The correct abbreviation is ‘Sgt Pepper’, not ‘Sgt Pepper’s’.
The ‘friends’ may be Hunter Davies, who writes for the Sunday Times.
Hmmm… by this point, The Beatles had a well established pattern of not putting singles and B-sides on albums. So nothing out of the ordinary there. As for these two being ‘two of their best songs from the album,’ at the time the decision to put out a single was made (Mid-January ’67?) only a handful of the Pepper tracks had been recorded.
Yellow Submarine was released in August 66, and Pepper in June ’67. If not for the single release in February they’d have been out of the charts for longer than at any point their career. And they didn’t have the visibility of touring any more. They would have all known they needed to put something out.
I distinctly remember that the assumption at the end of 1966 was that the Beatles were possibly finished. They were unfashionable, had stopped playing live and appearing on tv, and there was no single and album for the Christmas market – EMI put out a compilation of ‘Oldies’ to fill the gap, adding to the impression. The new single was a bolt from the blue, and suddenly everyone was interested again – Sgt. Pepper was so hotly anticipated because of it and everyone loved them again that summer.
I think it is well documented that it was EMI who wanted a release, not the band, who had decided to tear up the rule book.
Maybe at that stage, there was an expectation (on the part of the band and George Martin) that the rest of the songs for the album would be as good as PL and SFF.
I do get the impression that they were supremely confident at this stage. The fact that JWL was off his lysergic tits probably accounted for some of that.
Indeed. And they probably got quite excited at the *idea* of Mr Kite and the recording and chemiof the 2 parts of Day in the Life coming together. Perhaps they didn’t realise until too late that they actually needed PL and SFF to balance out the filler.
That said, 1967 was supposedly the year that the album as something more than a collection of recent songs took hold. It’s only maybe hindsight that places importance on the contents of a particular album. After all, most of the industry had fully expected this pop music stuff to be over by 1965 or so.
Nicky Campbell (pop music = hopeless) declared this morning how wonderful Apple have been in re-inventing the back catalogue. I think he’s confusing “The Beatles” with “Bob Dylan.”
Actually, Nicky, absolutely essential releases post-Let It Be can be counted on one hand, and this news is unlikely to get me into a Sainsbury’s/Tesco’s/Morrison’s (insert the name of your local record shop here) parting with hard-earned on 1st June.
Funny thing is, I found myself playing a lot of psych two weeks ago (Giles, Giles & Fripp, Art, the UK Kaleidoscope, July), yet it never occurred to me to play Sgt. Pepper’s.
One final point…..it would appear that all that “we don’t put bonus tracks on the Beatles’ LPs, as that would detract from the original release” rubbish spouted in 2009, was exactly that, rubbish.
The track listing will probably be …Mr. Kite – Penny Lane – Strawberry Fields – Within You Without You… – which actually sounds pretty good (it’s this version of “Sgt. Pepper” that’s the standard in my house).
And this expanded tracklisting was actually discussed when EMI first issued Beatles CDs in the late 80s (my former boss has a cover design mock-up of this… at some point they were planning of adding the singles to the LP running order), before they decided on the “Past Masters” concept of putting all the singles on a separate release.
This is an interesting piece of information. I’d love to see some of those mock-ups.
On the 1987 CD liner notes by, I think, Lewisohn, he puts forward a different track order for the first side as ..”What the Beatles originally intended”. What his source for this information is,and why they had to change it, will have to wait for the third vol of his stupendium. Due out in 2027 – seriously.
FFS Lewisohn, get on with it – I’ll be dead by then….
Macca and Yoko will be dead by then. That’s the idea…
It’s Game of Thrones all over again.
I’ve always thought that the people who’ve said adding contemporaneous singles to Beatles albums in the CD era would be some kind of blasphemy were idiots, or pompous. It’s an established process with every other musical act of the era. The Beatles are no different. History is not changed by using the extra capacity of a modern content platform to group period pieces together for the convenience, delight and fresh perspective of modern listeners.
On a tangent… this is great fun: Fever Tree’s 1968 cover of Day Tripper/we Can Work It Out (with a dash of Eleanor Rigby):
No shortage of pompous idiots when it comes to the Fabs, Colin. 😉
In other news, there’s going to be a new edtion of Thriller with the singles taken off.
Oh, well played, Sir! 🙂
So that would be, like, one track, IIRC?
Still one too many…
Hmm… Within You Without you – would have been a smash hit single!
When I’m 64… totally a smash hit single!
Lovely Rita…. a smash hit single in any era!
See where I’m going with this? 😉
Back when such things were measured (and when HMV were the dominant UK record seller) “When I’m 64” was HMV’s most requested non-existent single, followed by “Stairway To Heaven” and the Floyd’s “Money” IIRC…
And I maintain the HJH missed a trick with the last CD re-issues by not making them doubles/triples and including all of the appropriate contemperaneous tracks from Anthology, Past Masters & the BBC sessions…
There appears to be a stick you’ve grabbed the wrong end of. I was answering Escher’s post about Thriller.
FWIW, I’d resequence like this. Drop WYWY & Fixing A Hole. Add Penny Lane, Strawberry Fields and Northern Song. Strawberry Fields opens side two.
If I were in charge of Apple Corps, I’d make this happen:
Sgt Pepper 50th Anniversary Box
– Mono album CD
– Stereo album (original) CD
– New stereo album mix CD
– CD of associated singles (PL/SFF) and other tracks recorded at the time of Pepper, including those that were released (e.g. Northern Song) and not (e.g. Carnival of Light)
– 6+ CDs of sessions
– Surround sound hi-res album (On DVD-a and bluray), throw in a copy of the 1970s Quad mix, while you’re at it
– DVD/bluray of documentaries: South Bank Show (1992), 20 yrs ago today (1987), new one, plus Music vids.
– New stereo mix on vinyl
– Big book
– Stickers, patch, marbles.
Just what the doctor ordered. Now THAT I’d buy.
And you’d listen to most of it once.
Especially the marbles…
Will the marbles be remastered?
…what about a ‘tache?
Ps. 20 Years Ago Today was brilliant. Also Annie Nightingale did quite a good doc on radio 1 the night before the 1987 CD was released.
Given the three month head start I might be alright for a ‘tache.
And marbles? No!
I need some. I lost mine.
Did she mention that other great songwriting partnership Simon and Garfunkel?
It is not unprecedented for The Beatles to add a single to a release after the fact. e.g. the UK Magical Mystery Tour expanded from (double) EP to full length album (matching US release). Included one single recorded well before the rest of the tracks er … Penny Lane/Strawberry Fields Forever.
Have to say, I’ll be a complete sucker for this, just as I was when The Floyd monstered The Final Cut with When The Tigers Broke Free. Not a great precedent maybe – it just doesn’t belong – like adding Seamus to DSotM.
I’ve always found Pepper a bit tune-light and this ‘feels’ right. Next up Paperback Writer and Rain on Revolver please. Feel free to erase (forever) George’s woeful attempts at tuning his didgeridoo and mimicking Peter Sellers’ Sophia Loren singing style on WYWY/Love You To.
“Tune-light”?, whatever one might say about “Pepper” it is certainly not lacking in good tunes.
Disagree I’m afraid Dai. That cod Indian one, a reprise, a couple of granny-friendly oompah/joke songs and Good Morning – I’d happily bin half of it. Only a handful of songs on a par with Penny Lane and SFF. In my opinion.
I’m with you Bart: Sgt Pepper is a bit of a bore, in my view. I’ve never willingly listened to it, but I could happily listen to Revolver, Abbey Rd, the White Album (if I’m in a tolerant mood) and the Yellow Sub songs. I love ‘Only A Northern Song’ and ‘The Inner Light’ but George was below par on ‘WYWY’. The SFF and PL single is terrific but there’s something really gloopy and sugary and sickly about Sgt Pepper as a whole. Very much of its time, in my view. I have no doubt about its historic importance and influence, but I wouldn’t want to listen to it.
Funny thing is Colin, I’ve listened to it quite a bit in recent years in my ongoing efforts to not-so-subtly brainwash my kids. It’s funny hearing something afresh as you try to point out it’s significance and other nonsense. Lovely Rita is the one they latched onto first. Then She’s Leaving Home, which they found desperately sad. Fixing, Better, Plastic Sitar, Good Morning, Kite? Barely register. I think they may be right.
If it’s “very much of it’s time,” and it’s time is clearly 1967, I’m taking a rain-check….Pepper’s is definitely coming down from the dusty shelf before 1st June.
This is precisely why I come onto the Afterword website!
So only half the songs are up there with 2 of the best ever recorded? Not bad. If anything it could be too tuneful (a little twee).
Yup. I suppose I meant ‘tunes that resonate with me or that I ever want to hear again’ as opposed to ‘songs with notes that go up and down in a catchy/oompah oompah/nursery rhyme way’.
Fair enough. It’s not my favourite Beatles album either, but apart from A Day in the Life, I enjoy title track, With a Little Help, Fixing a Hole, Getting Better, Lovely Rita and Mr Kite. LSD is overrated (ha!)
I’ve read elsewhere that we might be looking at a Giles Martin remix job, which maybe fits with comments from him that he was working on a Beatles psychedelic project. Presumably this would be a new stereo version, and in 5:1 perhaps..?
Well he did LOVE in 5:1.
Not that I’d know it from 2 by 4.
Just had a Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Bath.
Now following up with a Magical Mystery Tea.
After a liberal application of talc, do you now have a White Ol’ Bum?
Don’t stay out in the cold or it’ll start turning blue….a sort of flabby woad.
People, people, people….
Lots of sniffiness about Pepper on this thread. I’m here to redress the balance and declare my love for it. This is the album that made me fall head over heels for the Beatles in the first place.
In fact, it’s the album that made me fall in love with this whole rock/pop music lark at all. As soon as it hit me, I took up playing guitar, grew my hair long and started dropping out of school because I’d seen something bigger in life than education. And this wasn’t the sixties, it was 1990!
Along with my other great love of that time in my life (Tubular Bells), Pepper kind of ruined me because I never found anything as perfect ever again.
It’s probably my favourite Beatles period, that transition from ’66 to ’67 where it seemed they were imploding but were actually about to rise like a bloomin’ phoenix from their most startling transformation yet.
And that cover! Pop art perfection!
I’m waiting for this rerelease with baited breath. No doubt I’ll be disappointed with the final product, but I can at least hope we get a Pet Sounds or Dylan type ‘complete sessions’ box. And surely the time has come to unleash Carnival Of Light in all its bonkers glory?
Can we at least agree that A Day In The Life is a masterpiece of songwriting and production that’s never been equalled? Please?
The trouble is, I can’t take this post seriously because Tubular Bells. 😉
I have never had it satisfactorily demonstrated to me what’s supposed to be so amazing about A Day In The Life.
Hey, it was a heartfelt and honest statement! Those two albums probably ruined my life. And seeing all you rascals on here badmouthing Pepper feels like you’re all laughing at photos of my ex-girlfriend I’ve never gotten over.
Haha sorry! I’m teasing about Tubular Bells. I didn’t realise people really like it until recently. 😉
You possibly misunderstand some of the criticism Arthur. As an album, I think it’s important, has some great things on it – I’d certainly agree with you on Day in the Life. The production, ingeniuos studio inventiveness, period importance, seminal impact on the cult of the LP, design, feel, look and status as this nearly-concept album, all are a given. It’s a hugely important album and I have great affection for it. But it’s not a religious relic and, ignoring the relic/icon nature, it’d be a hell of a better actual listen if you replaced WYWY and the Sgt Pepper reprise with Penny Lane and Strawberry Fields Forever. In my personal opinion. There aren’t many classic albums you’d want to swap tracks on, but this one just has a big imbalance between a couple of the included songs and another couple that came from the same sessions.
A quick note about the Sgt Pepper Reprise…
I didn’t hear the Beatles in mono until the 2009 CDs, and the BeatleBores are right about mono Pepper being a different beast. It was like hearing the album again for the first time. When that intro drum beat comes in on the mono version of the reprise it is one of the most glorious pop noises known to man.
That is all.
Tubular Bells – yeah, I kind of know it’s a bit of a joke these days. But I genuinely love it, and as I get older it’s become a proud badge of curmudgeonness.
I love it too, and I’m a spritely young apple-cheeked urchin.*
(*by AW standards)
There’s nowt wrong with Tubular Bells.
I’m with you Arthur. Pepper is grossly underrated, yeah you read that right people, underrated. Over the last 30 years it’s become the norm that Pepper wasn’t much cop and that Revolver is the one. I first listened to Pepper on June 1st 1987, I’d bought a copy for the “20 Years Ago Today” hype. Been listening ever since.
For a great contemporary overview of Pepper and 1967 with added Floyd, I’ve just re-read Clinton Heylin’s “The Act You’ve Known For All These Years”. He tries to demythologise the aftermath of Pepper too, but it’s a great read.
Agree with all you say DrJ, I love Sergeant Pepper & still listen to on a regular basis (&, FWIIW, a day in the life is my favourite song by anyone anywhere, anytime).
WYWY is fabulous (or it is to my tin ears), & removing it from the album would weaken it considerably. IMHO. IOANS is far weaker & should not go within 2 marching paces of SPLHCB.
If PL & SFF are to be included, I rather like the idea that they fit between Mr Kite & WYWY.
I have used quite a few abbreviations here, any ??? see me after class.
IOANS?
It’s Out, Although Not Standing .
Only a Northern Song, your honour. I dire dirge by Mr Harrison. Who, Taxman and If I Needed Someone aside, was keeping his songwriting abilities a secret at the time.
Ah! ‘Twas the superfluous “I” that put me off the scent.
When it’s out you can see the “I”…
Are you sure and Macca and Winston weren’t keeping George’s talents a secret by telling him his songs were crap?
My point is, they sort of were, those 2 aside. And where would Taxman be without Sir Thumbsaloft’s bass part? A 2 chord rant about earning enough to qualify for the highest level of surtax.
It’s Sir Wacky Thumbsaloft’s guitar solo too.
True dat. As Geoff Emerick has taught us, George could barely play the guitar until 1969.
Sorry folks, I had abbreviated “Its only a northern song” I shall stand in the corner with my back to the class.
My opinion that it is not fit to be on Sergeant pepper still holds though.
its shite (OOAA)
Of course it’s brilliant, but about the 7th best Beatles album.
I only really like Lovely Rita and Sgt Pepper (Reprise) and the latter mostly cos of The Sound Of Science. I suppose my thing about the Fabs, much as I love many of their songs, is that there isn’t a genuinely great Beatles album. There’s always a quite a bit of filler and without fail at least two songs which are actively bloody terrible. In this case as @bartleby says above, any time George starts wanking about with a sitar you can reliably turn it off. This album is full of rinky-dink irritation, to my ears.
But of course there’s always going to be someone ready to shell out yet again for Beatles product. I wish them joy of it, as Stephen Maturin might say.
Re: “any time George starts wanking about with a sitar you can reliably turn it off”
I love “The Inner Light”. It’s one of my absolute favourite Beatles songs.
It really really irritates me. It’s musically not interesting to me, but that’s not why it irritates me: the ideas behind the lyrics really fuck me off.
I couldn’t agree less. Of course there is the (very) occasional weaker track on some albums, but you can say that about any album some consider ‘great’ by any artist. Is any album 100% ‘great’? There’s a thread in the making….! Nailing colours firmly to the mast, I consider Sgt. Pepper one of the greatest albums of all time, and my favourite Fabs LP.
I do think that it depends on perspective – I was a fan from 1963, got all the albums and singles in order in real time, and the impact of this LP was simply stunning at the time.
Is any album 100% great? Loads! (Although few artists have managed the feat more than once.)
I bet if you name one then you’ll get an argument on here! My point was that great albums aren’t (necessarily) made up of 100% ‘great’ tracks.
I can imagine it was very exciting to be there at the time. Not knocking anyone else’s enjoyment – to each their own. I have the Fabs’ mono boxset, I like them. But I can’t think of a Beatles album apart from possibly Revolver where I like more than half the songs. Even on Revolver I’d chuck out For No One, Love You To, Doctor Robert and I Want To Tell You. I’d only keep Eleanor Rigby cos I like the string arrangement and George Martin did that (and IMO ought to have got 50% of the royalties for it).
I think music fans fall into three types: Beatles worshippers who are a tiny bit scandalised by any naysaying, Beatles likers / admirers who don’t buy into the worship, and Beatles deniers. I’m definitely not a denier. I’m the middle kind.
“I’m definitely not a denier.” Only a massive denier would say that.
I’m a 15 denier.
I’m the middle kind too, but chuck out For No One and I Want To Tell You? Scandalous! 😀
There’s a fourth kind: people like me. People who heard every Beatles album the week it came out and listened to them all so much that all the tracks are firmly imprinted in their brain in the order they appeared on the elpees. I’m not particularly bothered about adding tracks, but I’m absolutely scandalised by all this loose talk of removing them. This doesn’t make me a worshipper – I’ve skipped George’s sitar wanking as much as the next man, and obviously I like some songs better than others. But they’re all…just…there.
Yes, folks: this is the obligatory ‘you had to be there’ post. I’ll get my military-style coat with the brass buttons and frogging epaulettes.
I suppose I’m a denier.
It feels like a stance even saying it out loud like that, but the thing is I listen to these records and I’m honestly just not hearing what everyone else seems to be.
Case in point: having read this thread I went back to Pepper this morning on the way in to work. I didn’t listen to it thinking “must collect more evidence that the Beatles were, in fact, pony”, I listened to it, not having heard it in a while, in the fervent hope it would be really good, and blow me away. But it didn’t. The production on the vocals for A Day In The Life is obviously lovely, but the rest of the album is just this dreadful, chintzy, rinky-dink bobbins. And that’s when George hasn’t got his bloody sitar out.
I’m sat there on the train, with Good Morning, Good Morning ringing in my ears, and I literally do not know what the rest of you (or the rest of the world, for that matter) are hearing in this stuff that I’m not to prompt the superlatives above. Which probably means I have a dreadful tin ear, but more likely means that the Beatles simply made a bunch of records that are not to my personal taste and simply do not do what I want music to do, which is – broadly – to make me feel something, be that anger, excitement, a desire to move my feet or to wipe a tear from my eye. I know that She’s Leaving Home is reaching for that last note, but it’s so utterly portentous, from the strings to the vocal, that I just can’t get with it.
I guess that makes me a Beatles denier. But here’s the thing – if you removed this music from its context; if you played me Lucy In The Sky with Diamonds, and I’d never heard it before, and you told me it was a new band, maybe a new band with an awesome name and a lead guitarist who wears loads of bodypaint and freaky contact lenses, and shreds righteously, I know for a fact I would still think it was a load of bobbins. So it’s not really the band I’m denying, it’s the music.
Apols for intruding on this thread. I generally try to avoid putting downs on the passion of others, but it felt like the conversation had moved on to a more general discussion of responses to the Beatles. For what it’s worth, you’d think most of my favourite music is crap too.
We’ll put Bingo. There’s definitely an element of ‘you had to be there’ in some of The Beatles love. Because without them and some of the breakthroughs they made, popular music since would have been far poorer. I could walk you through the musical innovations they made, from the revolutionary middle 8 starting points, the chord progressions they brought to popular music, we could debate the lyrical, arrangement, production, engineering, design, concept, lifestyle, political, social and other changes wrought by this band, but it’s all irrelevant if you’re not feeling it. I appreciate the contribution that country music made to rock without liking much of it.
Funnily enough, the closest I’ve ever really come to “getting” the Beatles was while reading a chapter of this book, which does a great job of spelling out the cultural context into which the band first emerged.
https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/270200/the-great-british-dream-factory/
You never know – maybe one day it’ll click for me.
The Songwriting Secrets of The Beatles is fantastic at pointing out the musical innovation, step by step and song by song. Unfortunately it’s the size of a small house.
I’m with the haters. Just leave albums alone. Adding When The Tigers Broke Free to The Final Cut, How Soon Is Now to Meat Is Murder, changing the running order of The Clash’s debut… No! Just leave it alone.
When The Tigers Broke Free – I’m torn, because it’s a perfect fit lyrically and thematically at that point in the LP. But it spoils that perfect segue between One Of The Few and The Hero’s Return.
Has the LP had Tigers in it now for longer than it ever didn’t have it? If it has, that kind of legitimises it in my mind. When was it added?
My favourite Floyd LP, by the way.
Yes. Much maligned if you ask me.
It’s a fine song. But it belongs with The Wall film in my head. One thing Final Cut wasn’t short of was overwrought war songs. And I love it too.
Let’s all three of us quit our jobs and start a tribute band playing nothing but The Final Cut. I’ll be Nick.
I’m in! I’ll be Bob Holness.
Can I be Andy Newmark? Cool.
(Oh and Tigers was added in 2004, it’s been on TFC for 13 of its 34 years!)
My mates and I hired a video camera whilst at university. We recorded one video of us arsing around in various sketches. And a second video of us acting/singing along to the whole of The Final Cut. We watched the latter more, I seem to recall.
Just possibly I’ve got the fragile ego to be Rog.
Did one of you mime a bit of arc welding during Not Now John? I know I would.
Not sure we’d have known arc welding from Art Garfunkel at that age. Just possibly we were too excited/distracted at being able to mouth “Fuck all that” to the camera.
There would also be fun to be had with special effects when owd Rog talks about his eyeballs melting…. Here, I was saving that jelly!
We definitely missed an opportune. Sadly the camera was static and our ‘antics’ were confined to mugging and miming from my bed.
Where was the Belgian?
There was a Belgian?! I only remember some wily Japanese.
IIRC, at the start of Fletcher Memorial Home, Waters is wecoming the world leaders/incurable tyrants (Reagan and Haig, Begin, Mrs. Thatcher, Ian Paisley, Brezhnev, the ghost of McCarthy and the memories of Nixon) and someone asks “Where’s the Belgian?”, just before a group of anonymous Latin American meatpacking glitterati arrive, I think.
Ah, is that what he’s saying. Rog was heavily into his recorded tape atmospherics at the time wasn’t he (all over The Wall, this and Pros and Cons). Listening to the vinly now. God it’s good!
Yes, some of those little audio asides are spine-tingling. I’m thinking especially of ‘the moment when the brakes lock’.
“Oh no!”
An almost compulsory headphones listen.
Yeah, on reflection I think it belongs with The Wall. I had it as a gatefold-sleeve seven-inch that came out around the time time of the film, so a while before I heard The Final Cut.
Where would you put it in The Wall, I wonder, if you were to add it? Is Pink’s dad dead before Pink starts school?
However the back of the Tigers single states that it’s taken from the forthcoming album “The Final Cut”. TFC evolved from the “Spare Bricks” album which is mentioned in the end credits to The Wall movie and was meant to be a collection of the new songs and alt versions of songs featured in the movie. Somehow it evolved into The Final Cut – I’ve never read a good piece about where Spare Bricks ends and TFC begins. It was a missed opportunity with The Wall box to not include the movie versions of The Wall songs that have never been released.
Thank God, when it comes to Bob Geldorf’s godawful shrieking.
The extended version of Empty Spaces that is on the film has aged a lot better than a lot of the stuff that’s on The Wall.
You Final Cutters, and I’m fond of the album myself, might get a kick out of Marcello Carlin’s account here.
http://nobilliards.blogspot.co.uk/2014/01/pink-floyd-final-cut.html?m=1
Some interesting ideas, thanks for sharing. The Not Now John single did not have the swearing, as he seems to believe. The elephant in the room is of course that – as now – just about everything that Rog advocates fails to rise above its 6th form level of political understanding and back then, would have prolonged or intensified the Cold War. But great emotion doesn’t need a just cause. I’m a proud Final Cutter. Oh Maggie, what have we done!
I always thought it was ‘recourse to the lord’.
I always thought it was “Goodbye Mags, Goodbye Ma”
It’s very teleological isn’t it? I honestly think people now grow up thinking that everyone who took up arms on the allied side between 1939 and 1945 said to themselves, “I’m doing this because of the gas chambers and the Beveridge Report!”
In other news, U.S. Beatles magazine Beatlefan brings forth rumours that the upcoming 50th anniversary edition will include a new stereo mix of the album, a new 5:1 mix, and outtakes from the album sessions. Still no confirmation on this from official sources, so again…stay tuned!
I see the SH forum is now up to an excitable 200 pages of speculation on the subject! Admirable restraint from Afterworders, or just indifference?
Outtakes?
I’d be happy with the ‘overdubs’ removed. One of my very favourite Anthology tracks is Good Morning, Good Morning without the sound effects. Lennon’s vocal snarls and the kick drum rocks.
Why not a “deluxe” Rubber Soul and “Revolver?”
1. “Live at the BBC Vol. 2” should have come out in 2009, not 2013.
2. The mono and stereo re-masters of 2009 should have been released on the 50th Anniversary of each of the studio albums, from 2013 (see The Kinks’ 2-cd mono/stereo versions of their original 60s LPs).
Think how much more money they’d have made doing that.
I’d now be “Live at the BBC Vol. 2” AND 7 deluxe releases out of pocket (£120).
I’m actually only “Live at the BBC Vol. 2” out of pocket (£13.99).
No one at Apple would win The Apprentice.
Although the prices of the albums have always been fairly high, I agree about Apple/ The Beatles ™ not taking the piss too much. I think some of this was plain incompetence rather than altruism though – e.g. They waited until 1987 to exploit CDs, the Anthologies were quite cheap from the start when they could have gone to town, they then waited until 2009 to remaster the albums again etc. There were some odd issues – the Capitol albums sets were poorly packaged and never completed, Let It Be Naked should have been much better and was a missed opportunity, and they should have expanded the red and blue albums to be true career best ofs rather than just stick to the original track listings….and don’t even talk to me about leaving Please Please Me off of 1. They are not exactly consistent either – they are missing a trick not releasing the mono albums individually, and that is annoying for people who don’t want them all, but the US album box is a bargain in comparison, are also available individually….and they are mono plus stereo discs too, so go figure.
Yep.
Actually I chanced upon the “Capitol Vol. 1” box for £10 a few weeks ago in a charity shop, and, you’re right, there the albums are in mono and stereo on one disc. So why not the UK albums?
I think it’s a bit of an urban myth that Apple have over-exploited The Beatles back catalogue….I mean, how many times has Jimmy Page gone off to a darkened room to “improve” the Led Zeppelin stuff in the same period? Or Townshend? Or The Doors?
I simply think they haven’t done it very well.
A placeholder listing for a 6-disc Anniversary Super Deluxe edition has appeared on Amazon US, along with listings for 1CD, 2CD and 2LP.
I think we can assume that, come September, The People Who Grinned Themselves To Death will get the same treatment 😉
Bruv, I would be all like…
http://i1350.photobucket.com/albums/p773/minibreakfast/throwing-money_zpswhyyo4lr.gif
Let the zooming in commence.
http://i1350.photobucket.com/albums/p773/minibreakfast/sgt%20p_zpshgs50tfg.jpg
Video of contents here. 100 minutes of unreleased (well some of them) session outakes! https://www.amazon.com/dp/B06WGVMLJY/ref=sr_1_fkmr0_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1491330052&sr=8-2-fkmr0&keywords=sargent+peppers+lonely+hearts+club+band+deluxe