Lewisohn - Beatles - New Tape! - Abbey Road - 'Rewrites everything we knew about the Beatles'*

'This tape rewrites everything we knew about the Beatles'

 

I saw the original thread about the tape Lennon made when Ringo was in the hospital that Lewisohn posted.
But in true Hoffman ADD fashion is seems to have disappeared into the depths of various ridiculous speculation threads.

Just like the White Album & LIB "accepted canon" that the 4 lads were at each others throats is blown to smithereens.
They knew this was their last album so they played nice re: Abbey Road is bullsh!t.

To me it look likes everyone got fed up, whatever with the question of publishing rights\royalties.
Klein v Eastman etal.

That Klein inserted his slimy self into the dispute makes me sad to this day.
That bands, even the best there ever was or ever will be got sucked into this vortex is a shame.

 

I found out that enjoyment is an overrated criterion.

 

If you can listen to John bitching and be satisfied, more power to you. It's not going to change the fact I can't stand most of the album.

 

Surely George’s output was hardly limited from 1966 onwards:

Revolver - 3 songs
Pepper - 1 plus a half-hearted and rejected Only A Northern Song
MMT - 1 out of 6 new songs
White Album - 4 songs and a rejected Not Guilty
AR - 2 classics
LIB - 2 out of 10 songs (Maggie Mae and Dig It excluded)
Plus a couple of B sides...

 

Is Let It Be still a thing if they are considering another record? They had to get rid of the movie somehow but hard to imagine a Lennon and Harrison still in the Beatles and making clear their expectations for equal participation would be eager to put a rather iffy sounding record out if they've got material more competitive with McCartney's ready to go to tape!

 

....and don't forget that it is Lennon and Harrison's rather disaffected work ethic that helps suppress their contributions. I'm pretty sure that Harrison could have made more contributions to Pepper and MMT and the singles issued in that period had he been more present for either project. Additionally... the trip to India..along with the live on tape aspect of Let It Be were BOTH attempts to explore the disillusionment and distance between band members and get everyone back on board. Seems as if the taped discussion needed to happen earlier by a year or two and maybe there would have been more places to go for the Beatles. We shall see... it's possible Yoko might have met a young Richard Branson or Chris Blackwell and perhaps made brilliant contributions to the music of Traffic or Cat Stevens had Lennon been focused on a record for Christmas '66.

 

I look forward to some people complaining that Paul and an absent Ringo are too loud in the mix

 

Step away from the kool-aid Macca fan! You're just sore that "Give Me Love" kicked that tepid piece of crap granny song "My love" off the number 1 slot. And that's just one instance where George got the last laugh. Paul only wished he'd created a Concert for Bangladesh, or a Traveling Wilburys or had a number 1 hit past 1983. The only thing "bloated" here is Macca's ego and it shows up on tape. What an embarrassment to find that the little " Lets get together and make one more album like we used to" narrative was a bulls@#t PR job!!!

 

Amazing this is even news 50 years on, oh abbey road comes out in 2 weeks and the guardian needs some click bait as well.

 

I don't get why this is such a 'revelation' the Fawcett tape was mentioned in 'Many Years From Now', the authorised McCartney biography back in 1997- not defending McCartney's behaviour at the meeting but its interesting that even he includes some of it in his official bio, specifically that quote of 'up to the last album, I don't think George's songs have been as good'. As Ringo in Anthology says (paraphrasing): "We could have always carried on, we weren't sitting in the studio saying 'last song, last take'".

 

It took a while, but eventually John's 4+4+4+1 proposal got some traction. On the last Beatles album released before George's passing, 1999's Yellow Submarine Songtrack, the songwriting distribution was: John 5, Paul 4, George 4, + 2 sung by Ringo. And it works to perfection.

 

Klein was the noose on the neck.

 

Plus It's All Too Much, which I believe was always intended for Yellow Submarine.

 

12 ÷ 6 = 2

 

I never watched the charts then or now, it's either a song I like or its not.

My Love is a haunting ballad that is timeless, feels just as fresh and relevant today as the day it was released. Give Me Love is more of that George guru crap, talking about "peace" again, riffing on the "lord" again, zzzzzz.

1973 was George's last hurrah. McCartney was just getting started. In the next 3 years, George was a forgotten footnote. Paul was the biggest solo performer in the world.

 

You are correct sir. It is the fallacy of arguing from silence. And in this case, arguing from silence on one tape from one day. So also a fallacy of sample size.

 

McCartney hatred is so disquieting.

 

And Beatles threads are surprisingly dramatic.

 

so this is what keeps beatles fans going? what might have been?

IMAGINE all the stuff that WASN'T recorded!!

 

I was in High School from 1989-1992. George and Ringo were both bigger stars and more relevant to us than Paul was. He was just known to us for being the Beatle your mom thought was cute and his horrible collaborations with Stevie Wonder and Michael Jackson. It wasn't until the mid 90s, when seventies retro was cool that I even heard anything by Wings, outside of the Guns N Roses cover of Live and Let Die. So maybe your analysis was correct in 1976, but I would not say that it stayed that way, or is even that way now.

 

Yeah....only because he's fortunate to still be alive and able to perform.

 

Those may be your firm opinions, that's fair, but from my perspective I think you've fallen into "schnitzerphilip"'s trap. Every time I see him enter a thread, it's to drop an "opinion bomb" so extreme and dismissive that it invites argument, mostly over things that are subjective and personal. Here, he's attempting to flush Harrison's life down the toilet of pop history, which invokes an understandably upset reaction in others who them feel compelled to explain how, no, it's McCartney that is actually terrible.

@schnitzerphilip I would tell you to use your words better, but I know that you enjoy being a guy from the Monty Python argument sketch. But at least that guy got paid for it, and he didn't seem to enjoy it much. You seem to revel in provoking people and derailing threads.

 

Oh, I don't think McCartney is terrible by any stretch. And I was kind of aware that he was trolling with his statement "My Love is a haunting ballad that is timeless, feels just as fresh and relevant today as the day it was released."