Beatles "Live at the Hollywood Bowl" out on CD 9/9/16, Vinyl on 11/18/16 *

Dreadful poem - I felt embarrassed to bring it up

 

Funny. It looks like a Modern day Beatles tribute band. The fella behind John looks like Jimmy Nichols.

 

It was part of its time---for better or worse.

 

Did they get lost in the "demixing" process?

 

They were never recorded, the 1964 acetate doesn't have them either.

 

But somehow the tracks still sounds amazing and more powerful than the familiar studio version. Same with "You Can't Do That". I wish the backing vocals didn't come back right in the middle of the guitar solo; the flaws in the recording only seem to highlight other facets of familiar songs. They seemed to get a better recording in 1964 than a year later, despite the experience obtained from it.

 

When I burned the disc to CD-R (primarily to move the four bonus tracks into the main set) I "flew in" the missing "You Can't Do That" backing vocals from later in the song where they do appear. I did the same thing with the missing opening words to "Things We Said Today." (The words "You say..." are MIA from the first verse but fortunately are also used to open the second verse.) The patches are truly seamless. Amazing what you can do on a home computer these days...

The Hollywood Bowl engineers were too damn slow moving those faders up on the mixing board!

 

Just in case it can help anybody: I finally returned this copy and bought another one from a legit seller. I can now say without a doubt that the other one was a counterfeit: the quality of the digipack and booklet is clearly superior. So beware, there are counterfeits of this product out there.

 

It's been months since I've listened to the new Hollywood Bowl album. There's been lots of other music since my last listen. So last night I was in the mood for some Beatles.

Since I think this is their very best, I put it on and cranked it.

OMG! When the announcer said AND NOW HERE THEY ARE THE BEATLES, it hit me ALL OVER AGAIN!

This album is just a MONUMENTAL LISTEN!

Listening to it is like a seismic shift , I get an absolute thrill when I listen to this album.

I've decided that I will always take a period of time between listens so I experience this thrill every time.

I'm convinced this album has not received the true praise it deserves, whatever praise it did get was not nearly enough!

SHE'S A WOMAN sets the walls on fire, and DIZZY MISS LIZZY finishes melting them!

What an absolutely astonishing live album! The hours on stage in the Cavern, the clubs, in Hamburg turned these four guys into the ABSOLUTE ULTIMATE ROCK BAND!

Yes! I'm excited all over again!

 

Wow...great, enthusiastic post; it's impossible to knock someone's happiness when they get such a rush out of something. But I gotta tell ya...earlier live tapes of the band make me even more enthusiastic. What HB does a great job at, is documenting the very excitement of that point in time in the Beatles' "story". But earlier live performances...when the screaming wasn't quite as manic...and hearing these four pull off not only great cover versions but the intricacies of their original material as well...it is that, for me, that really shows the great "little rock and roll band" they really were.

...but still...I loved your post

 

Maccafan, you light up my life, dude.

So great to hear someone grooving over the content. Takes me back to when I salivated over everything Beatles I could get my hands on.

Stay the course, Jedi.

 

I've listened to many of their earlier live performances, but I think the larger crowds and increased screaming when Beatlemania really hit... pushed the Beatles on stage.

They had no choice but to take it to the next level, to really BRING IT when they faced these type audiences. They had to play even harder and louder, they had to REALLY ROCK!

I can't help it!

Every time I listen to this album, it just does something to me.

I'm a guy and I totally understand why everyone was screaming, put yourself back in the early 60s when all this was new, and you've never in your life seen a band like this before, a band that has songs this good and rocks this hard!

In their heyday, the Beatles were UNTOUCHABLE!

Okay, I've done it to myself, I've got to go listen again!

 

Always dearly loved the album also!
I think I have six different versions so far.
The one I've been seeking out for years now is the original U.S. 1977
Capitol Advance Promo with the white LP jacket cover w the red stamped
info on front cover, the tanish-white WLP label, and all the included papers
as released... NM or very close. This has been a very difficult item to find in top
condition. I have two different acetates of H.B. One a very rare preliminary lacquer
from Sterling Sound dating back to mid 1976, with six different songs, different
sequence, rare Lennon live chatter etc, and the final Capitol May 1977 acetate.
I had a chance a couple years ago .. but the advance promo was not in acceptable condition.
And... the hunt goes on.

 

If Pink Floyd could tour with loud and soft music, then The Beatles should have found a way to by 1968.

Selfish pricks !!!

 

Not sure if joking, but you know the reason they didn't tour again wasn't due to performance conditions in 1968, right?

 

Only half joking... Oatsdad, what was the reason(s) The Beatles did not bring their show on the road???

 

I'm not Oatsdad, but I thought a big part of the reason they no longer toured was because of all the studio trickery on their later recordings, they couldn't come close to replicating a lot of their later songs live, as a quartet?

 

Relationships within the band had deteriorated badly by then.

 

I'm going mostly with Bradman's comments. Grand_Ennui is also partly correct - obviously they couldn't have done "fully rendered" versions of their more studio-oriented stuff - but they still would've had more than enough material from 1967-68 that could work live.

They just had had enough - especially George, I think. Outside of Paul, there was no enthusiasm to tour - he tried to get them back on the road in 1969 but the others seemed completely disinterested.

The relentless grind through 1966 really took a toll, and as Bradman implies, they weren't exactly getting along swimmingly by 1968.

If the Beatles hadn't split in 1970, I believe they would've eventually toured, especially after the Stones toured in 1969 and reported back about how much the concert scene had changed from the years of screaming girls. But a 1968/69 tour had no non-Paul support...

 

Say Hay!

 

They just didn't want to.
It wasn't just the performing conditions. It was everything related to touring.

• Press conferences in every touring city, with people asking the same dumb questions.
• Ridiculous travel schedules.
• Being held prisoner in the hotel and not being able to get out and see any of the cities they visited.
• Bad experiences in many countries (protests, having their performance money stolen back)
• Threats on their life.

I know some will say, well they could change many of these things. Much of what is listed was Brian's fault. But they had 4 years of almost continuous touring/performing live and this is what their experience was. It would be awful hard to forget all that and think that it would be different.

The bad experiences just outweighed the desire to perform live. (Well, at least for 3 of the members. I think Paul may have been willing to give it another go. He certainly wanted to by late 1968.)

 

A lot of those situations would've been different in 1969 - the whole live performing situation changed radically between 1966 and 1969.

But I think those experiences through August 1966 really left a scar - especially on George - and that they would've needed more time away from the road before they gave it another go.

Like I said, I think if they'd stayed together, they would've toured, and maybe as soon as 1970-71. But we'll never know!

 

The whole incident in the Phillipines in '66 was pretty scary, so I'm sure that had an negative impact, in regard to touring.

 

Agree, and add on all the threats in the US "Bible Belt" that tour, too.

Though I think that even if the 1966 tour hadn't suffered from those bad events, they still would've quit touring. They just were so fed up with the "hamster wheel" nature of their lives!

If you read the great "Some Fun Tonight" book, the toll their schedule took becomes more and more apparent. The book documents each tour stop well and you can see based on comments/behavior how tired of it all they became - they could barely even pretend to be "fun, lovable Mop Tops" by 1966...

 

In 1966 I don't think it had anything to do with bad relationships because they kept going in the studio to produce some of their best music!

Those problems really started two to three years later.

I think Dewey02 hit it dead on the head!

• Press conferences in every touring city, with people asking the same dumb questions.
• Ridiculous travel schedules.
• Being held prisoner in the hotel and not being able to get out and see any of the cities they visited.
• Bad experiences in many countries (protests, having their performance money stolen back)
• Threats on their life.