That's true and maybe a few discs of sessions will be quenching enough. I'd still like to hear how Dear Prudence was worked up with various drum parts added on, how Not Guilty grew out of 100 takes, the various versions of Obladi Oblada, the Beatles jamming in a tiny room recording 'Yer Blues', bare bones 'Me and My Monkey', Savoy Truffle with clean horns, ST without horns, the full session of 'Take Me Back,' extended Revolution 1, recordings for No. 9, any early versions of 'Good Night' with John instructing how it might go. I think there'd be a wealth of great listening. I guess it depends on what made it to tape. I just think it'd be a better listen and I've heard plenty of Get Back sessions in my life already so I'd rather have things I haven't heard.
Hooray if today's whispers prove true!!! And, not to beat a dead drum too hard, but I'd simply go on record reiterating my wishlist, based on the following logic : If Sgt. Pepper had 2 whole discs of outtakes for one single album, can't that ratio please carry over into the White Album 50th set? That means at least 10 discs of material, with let's say up to 3 or 4 versions of each individual song? Each CD filled to absolute running-time capacity? Come on, folks - go for it! Do it right, once and for all. People have argued that the White Album tracks were more finished by the time they were tackled in the studio, hence there are probably less outtakes/alternates than with Sgt. Pepper. At present, this is simply unknown. But, judging from the high number of takes for many of these songs which we've read about down the years, there truly could be a wealth of material available, if simply in the form of entertaining also-rans like the version of Rocky Raccoon on A3. The Beatles, performers to their core, themselves referred to feeling like a band again when making this album; therefore it stands to reason there are more legitimately different performances in the can. Keep the Esher Tapes on one separate disc, and all other goodies, like video, mono mix and 5.1 on yet another blu-ray disc, and there you have it : 10 discs. It's the only ratio which is fair, and perfectly in keeping with Sgt. Pepper 50th's generosity (and THAT certainly sold, didn't it?). It's undoubtedly too late now to sway things one way or another, but one can dream, right?
I've always kind of liked Don't Pass Me By. Wasn't Ringo working on this as far back as the Beatlemania era (64-65)? He's not the best vocalist but he pulls it off alright. The song itself is pretty hilarious with the jangly piano and fiddle, some of the lines are real howlers too. It's almost like Monty Python doing a satire of The Beatles doing a satire of American Country & Western music. Anth 3 has this utterly goofball version where Ringo repeats an unnecessary "don't make me bluuuuu-uuuu-uuue!" as if by accident and then starts rambling to himself at the end. Just crazy stuff!
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And Savoy Truffle with flutes, ST with fiddles, ST with harpsichords, ST with children's vocals, ST with backward loops, ST with wood blocks, ST with Paul playing every instrument, etc. It was quite a session...
This thread is too long to try to read, and I'm sure others have said something similar to what I want to say, but I'll stumble ahead regardless. Fifty years ago I was around 9 yo, but I did get to experience WA pretty close to it's release. Of course it was fascinating and fun, a whole lot of material to assimilate, and tons of great music. Great photos, too. But further down the line, I really began to see it as 4 solo artists appearing on one album. How much any other member contributed to any song seemed like only a courtesy. Maybe John and Paul did wail together in the studio, and maybe George did contribute unique solos on songs that would have been less colorful without him. But song-after-song, to me it just sounds like a different Beatle doing what they want - as cool as that is. Doesn't sound like a band effort.
Your opinion is not unusual. Some people think exactly as you do, while others hear the opposite. For me, I hear a BAND riding on a music train that sometimes doesn't have a driver and might just run off the tracks. But at the last second, they get it back on the rails. I see/hear it as a crazy musical journey, of a BAND so far ahead of the competition and even so far ahead of themselves, where they just want to totally immerse themselves in ALL sounds. It's not the same structured and polished band of A Hard Day's Night, Revolver, Sgt Pepper, or Abbey Road. It's a BAND diving musically into new waters but without fear. And also without limits and without safety guards. It's drug and alcohol fueled; and it's tender and sweet. It's brutal and abrasive, and it's honest and touching. In fact, it's The Beatles. They knew exactly what it was, and who they were---hence, the title. I wouldn't have it any other way. But I understand why some think differently.
Does anyone else feel that McCartney and JL/POB are both continuations of the White Album? To me, all three of these albums are emotionally raw and hold no boundaries in light of the slow and painful dissolution of the Beatles.
Maybe John's POB is more connected to the WA, but I think Paul's songs in LIB are more honest, confessional and raw than his material in the WA. So I see McCartney as a continuation of that. As a matter of fact, I've always thought that it's interesting how two songs released in 1970, Let It Be and Mother, reflect the ying/yang which Lennon and McCartney usually were. How Paul's song shows that the memory of his dead mother gives him solace and confidence, while John was still haunted by his mother's abandonement and death; he ends up screaming "mama don't go" like a child. Paul said that their mother's deaths brought them together at the beginning, so it's fascinating to see how far they were in their feelings at the moment of the break-up.
I think the stories that this was a "solo Beatles album" are a bit overstated, although I think there are moments where glimpses of their then-upcoming solo careers shine through somewhat. For examples, I'd say the sparse instrumentation and melancholy tone of Julia evolved into what Lennon did later with Mother, and the rough edgy Yer Blues reminds me a little of I Don't Wanna Be a Soldier. McCartney-wise, Blackbird bears a little similarity to Bluebird. In terms of the "solo" material sound on some songs, I think that overall it is closer to solo Lennon than the others' solo stuff, but even then it does not sound "exactly" like solo Lennon. (Perhaps #9 might sound like solo Lennon, but I've actually never listened to Two Virgins or The Wedding Album.) The similar sounds/themes are only slight similarities though in my opinion, and there isn't a lot here to me that sounds very much like solo Harrison on his particular songs. Ringo seems to have always had a liking for American country-and-western and with his first solo song he heads straight into that territory. But most of the songs, especially the ones that got significant airplay (USSR, Birthday, Obladi Oblada), sound solidly like Beatle songs. Helter Skelter, Dear Prudence, While My Guitar..., Cry Baby Cry, Sexy Sadie and many others also sound to me like songs with all four Beatles participating (even though a Beatle may have been absent for some tunes).
Great post. I agree, though I do hear some “Long Long Long” in solo George tunes such as “Be Here Now.”
I love DPMB, and if I confine myself to the White Album, I'll take the song over "I Will," "Julia," "Honey Pie," "Savoy Truffle" and "Good Night."
"For me, I hear a BAND riding on a music train that sometimes doesn't have a driver and might just run off the tracks. But at the last second, they get it back on the rails. I see/hear it as a crazy musical journey, of a BAND so far ahead of the competition and even so far ahead of themselves, where they just want to totally immerse themselves in ALL sounds. It's not the same structured and polished band of A Hard Day's Night, Revolver, Sgt Pepper, or Abbey Road. It's a BAND diving musically into new waters but without fear. And also without limits and without safety guards. It's drug and alcohol fueled; and it's tender and sweet. It's brutal and abrasive, and it's honest and touching. In fact, it's The Beatles. They knew exactly what it was, and who they were---hence, the title. I wouldn't have it any other way." Thank you Arnold! Perfectly stated! I wouldn't want it any other way, either, not a jot, not a whit. At best, I'm just hoping for a little bit more, one last glimpse into how the recipe was executed.
Whether or not a reissue comes out, November 22nd will still be the 50th anniversary of an important and renowned album. It is, after all, a "50th Anniversary Celebration," not a "Deluxe Expanded Reissue Celebration." To be fair, Pepper didn't have "2 whole discs of outtakes." It had two 50-minute discs of outtakes, with one or two versions of each songs, plus a handful of vintage mono mixes tacked to a different disc (in what appears to me to have been a very last-minute decision). I've been loath to guess, because the decisions have all already been made and I don't want to over-promise myself anything. Lowball estimate: Discs 1 & 2 - New stereo remix of original album. They could put another hour of material on those two discs, but they won't, out of the same sense of misplaced reverence that keeps the Red Album a double set despite its 62-minute running time. Disc 3 - Esher demos. I disagree. The dead space on the original album CDs may be sacrosanct, but discs 4 & 5 would still have some room left over for the singles even with some doubling like on Pepper. I see the singles being interspersed with the album tracks in chronological order, same as Pepper. (That's not necessarily what I want them to do - it's what I envision them doing.) I think they could easily justify a sixth audio CD, or put the singles on the same discs as the remixed album, but I don't want to promise myself that. Same goes for the songs that didn't make the album at all. I think it would be a dreadful mistake if "Not Guilty" were represented only by the Esher demo, but I'd rather brace for it and be pleasantly surprised than assume we're getting four versions and then curse the heavens for not living up to my fantasies. (Remember the moaning when Pepper excluded "Only a Northern Song," several months after the preliminary announcement accurately said that the set would comprise the album plus SFF/PL?)
Thank you. And to PeteM also. Yes, Long... definitely has the closest sound to solo Harrison out of all the Harrisongs on here. Also I was thinking about BuCo's statement about the White Album being the lead-in to Lennon's POB and McCartney's 1st LP. Their "solo sound" on some of these songs is closer to those albums than other solo albums that followed, and I feel there is at least some slight resemblance, at least in a few songs. You could say I Will is a little like The Lovely Linda, for example, inasmuch as they both reflect a whimsical, romantic (and acoustic) side of Paul. Ram and Imagine are a little further down the solo path but still have some echoes of the White Album. It's tempting to think of what these would have sounded like as Beatles' songs instead of solo, but I think that's already been discussed somewhere else.