So how precisely were decisions made about what singles to release in later years of the Beatles?

I was reading a passage in a book today where Lennon says he fought really hard to make Revolution an A side (over Hey Jude) and that after that John's interest sort of faded in coming up with songs for the band.

Why on earth didn't they release Hey Jude as an A side first and Revolution as an A side 6 weeks later ? What kind of bad business decision was that, being that the original Revolution has to be in the top 10 or 15 Beatle songs ever, it totally rocks.

I'd add that pretty much all my friends prefer Walrus,which is my 2nd favorite Beatles song ever, greatly over Hello Goodbye,. Same question there.

Likewise, Penny Lane is almost as good as Strawberry Fields maybe, but why on earth didn't they release them separately ? I think John said they could've had both. But how did it come to pass that they didn't do just this, it was idiotic.

It's no damned wonder John faded out, he totally got the shaft. Are there similar examples where Paul's song was really good and got B sided for John's song ?

How were these decisions really made ? Was it a democracy and George and Ringo voted for Hey Jude and Hello Goodbye ? Somebody must know the answer to this, because it's outrageous.

When I put myself in John's shoes, those 3 songs I mentioned should all be in the greatest 100 songs in the history of rock, and all of them got relegated to B sides ?? That's repulsive.

 

S. fields was no B side! One of 2 double As!

 

It's easy to take the long view of history now, but in the moment I'm sure no one could predict the impact those songs would eventually have.

 

B-side "Rain" is equally great as Paul's A-side "Paperback Writer" too and I prefer John's "Don't Let Me Down" to Paul's A-side "Get Back".

 

Paul's weak attempt at a communal anthem 'All together now' was safely diverted to the ys soundtrack, while John's AYNIS got the A.

 

Very weak song that the movie manages to make fun.

 

I always felt Here Comes the Sun should have been a single, with Octopus's Garden on B-side. That would have been a cool Harrison/Starr chart topper to finish off the band.

 

I have a similar what-if discussion about the singles not included on LPs. I made a CD-R for my mates of the White Album with Rev #9 sent to the sin bin in favour of Hey Jude. It seems to work well to consign Rev #9 to that mystical unreleased bin with Carnival of Light!

Same with Sgt Pepper: ditch Within Without You and bring in off the bench both Strawberry Fields and Penny Lane.

Isn't the popular story that Klein picked Come Together/ Something as a double-A side for some quick cash?

 

I have a similar what-if discussion about the singles not included on LPs. I made a CD-R for my mates of the White Album with Rev #9 sent to the sin bin in favour of Hey Jude. It seems to work well to consign Rev #9 to that mystical unreleased bin with Carnival of Light!

Same with Sgt Pepper: ditch Within Without You and bring in off the bench both Strawberry Fields and Penny Lane.

Isn't the popular story that Klein picked Come Together/ Something as a double-A side for some quick cash?

 

I don't see what's so outrageous here, the more commercial song got the 'A' side. The Beatles wouldn't be The Beatles if the 'B' side wasn't awesome too! You want to weaken these great 45s so it doesn't upset you that both sides are so good?

 

Well i'm not sure but this story from his own gob is good....
in Lennon Remembers at a time when he is seriously slagging Paul off (and most other people/things) he starts moaning about what a bunch of pussies the Beatles were and that he really wanted Revolution to be the A side but the band were scared. He then says something like so it just came out on the B-side of Hello Goodbye or" some **** like that."
He then corrects himself and says no actually it was the B-side of Hey Jude which was worth it.
Even in a period of his life when he was really anti-Paul, he could see the quality of Hey Jude (which he really liked,partly coz he thought it was about him and Yoko) and was still able to give Paul credit for the better song which made a better A side.
It's a measure of how much they still cared at this point (1968) to put out 2 such good songs on a 45. The fact that it was effectively launching the Apple label must also have been a consideration.
John most definitely did not get the shaft in The Beatles. He gave up during Pepper in my opinion and spent the next 2 years too scared to leave even though he wanted to. He was also very lazy, out of it on psychedelics and then heroin addicted. His very best stuff was often made that good by the contribution of McCartney and Martin. Without Martin's studio heroics and cello/trumpet score, Walrus is a boring turgid pile a crap. By the time the radio play's been dubbed on it's a psychedelic tour de force. Look at Macca's input on Lucy,Mr Kite and others from the same period.
If anyone in The Beatles got the shaft it was George. Lead guitar taken off him post Beatles For Sale and John's appalling attitude towards his songwriting and lead vocal reduction from 1/4 to 1/3 in the Cavern to 1 vocal per album from A Hard Days Night. 2 on each lp 1965 and so on.
Having said that for God's sake someone get McCartney off the piano he's driving me nuts.

 

At the time of Lady Madonna, various insiders at the sessions thought that Across The Universe should have been the single and were surprised when LM was chosen.
I always thought it was a shame that the half a dozen spare tracks (including the ones that ended up on the YS LP) weren't released as another double-EP at the time (say, mid-68).

 

Across The Universe is the better song but John wasn't happy with the recording and there was no time to recut it as they were off to India and wanted a single out while they were away. He must've really been unhappy with it coz they gave George the B-side !
I don't think anyone's done a definitive Across The Universe to this day.

 

I don't think either Get Back or Don't Let Me Down were that worthy of being singles but agree with you that Rain is as good as Paperback Writer.


Something is better than Come Together.

 

I believe in the US Strawberry Fields was the B side, at least it is according to something I read on another thread on this forum.

 

The only fragment we have were John is dismissive of George's writing is in January 1969 when George debuts I Me Mine. At every other session John encourages George, unlike Paul. You should investigate a bit further.

 

Line of the day!!!

 

So true.... if the breakup hadn't occurred already and Let It Be had been a little more delayed , I think that would have been the natural decision to make. If they'd kept up with the practice of keeping singles exclusive from albums, could Harrison have been appeased by getting two consecutive A-sides in exchange for joining in the long medley and adding a different song like All Things Must Pass? That would have weakened the running order a bit as Something is such a strong Beatles song but what a string that would have been. What if George had brought in What is Life that spring and that becomes the THIRD consecutive A-side, cooler heads prevail and THEN they revisit Let It Be and put it out!

Also.. more to the point of this thread. The original poster does realize that John was pushing for the SLOW version of Revolution which was the first song recorded for the White Album to be a single. He was highly offended that Paul and George were cool to that idea and in some ways the FAST HARD LOUD version of Revolution is the Lennon way of showing that offense. So the reason why that DIDN'T happen is that it was the SLOW Revolution or maybe even that more recent take 10 version that goes on for 8 or 10 minutes. I guess in retrospect it would have bought George and Paul some patience points from John & Yoko and maybe spared us Revolution No. 9 . Paul should have held back Hey Jude until the Revolution single was safely away, then there would have been no way that White Album would have been unaccompanied by a concurrently released single, and thrown George BOTH B-sides.

 

When John bothered to show up to the George sessions, which wasn't often by the end. At least Paul made an effort to contribute to George's songs.

 

two things.. The benefit of hindsight really does make the whole question a bit meaningless and B sides then had to compete and would be expected by the label to be played a lot - fillers would not really do or the album sales would suffer.

 

No, John was at the sessions, George wiped his contributions later, doing his own overdubs. Paul was interested in making George's songs into a good sounding Beatles record, but didn't help George write the songs, John did. As I said, maybe time to look into it more closely, what you've written is totally inaccurate.

 

Don't know why that is. I thought the Anthology 2 version was a decent rendering for what they were trying to do but is there really ANY excuse for why there isn't a better one? Even the time factor isn't totally convincing as the original sessions lasted 4 days and 3 months later they were at the beginning stages of the white album. Perhaps it DOES belong with those Yellow Submarine and Magical Mystery Tour songs as it has that wistful quality to it. There's a missing Beatles album or two that is in that period between Pepper and The White Album ... the band was meant to be making records and had gotten caught up in other endeavors outside of that main mission. The Magical Mystery Tour... You Know My Name(which along with Flying stands in for all the sort of noodling they did during the spring and summer).. and the Lady Madonna sessions were certainly times when they should have spent more weeks or months getting to it!

 

Shafted? A great song doesn't mean it's radio-friendly or commercial enough to be a hit or chosen as an A-side. Revolution was both great and commercial... and as a b-side was a big hit on its own (#12 Billboard). Hey Jude, on the other hand, was a MONSTER hit and one of the most beloved and respected singles released in the rock & roll era. I Am The Walrus didn't even crack the Top 40 (#56 Billboard)...in fact, i was the lowest rated B-side in the US since What Goes On! So yes, I Am The Walrus is arguably a better "song" than Hello Goodbye, but the later was MUCH more commercial and was in fact a number one hit.

It's all pretty simple. Paul (and to a lesser degree, George) were writing more commercial and single-worthy tracks than John post-1967. Across The Universe had potential to be a "major" song and certainly had commercial appeal, but it was rather rush-recorded and John himself wasn't happy with it and vetoed its release as a single... even a b-side. It wasn't Paul, or George Martin voicing displeasure with it... but the writer himself. Other John b-sides were quite excellent... Rain, Don't Let Me Down, but as charting b-sides they weren't big hits on their own. So it seems that George Martin made the correct choices as A and B-sides all along. The lone exception was pairing Strawberry Fields Forever and Penny Lane. Martin himself admitted that pairing two great songs caused diminished returns. Ron

 

Always liked this out take.. All bands after time though tend to reach a straning point.

 

John also claimed he wanted the slow version of "Revolution" as the single -- his idea of "commercial" at the time wasn't necessarily commercial.