Solo Beatles-it would've been a masterpiece "IF"

With the recent archival release of "Red Rose Speedway" we end up presented with a potential great, vastly reconfigured single disc (up to 12 songs) or a very good double (19-22, depending on how you count the Medley of 4 songs)... my calculations run thusly...

Level I:
Big Barn Bed
My Love
Little Lamb Dragonfly
Country Dreamer
I Lie Around
Hi Hi Hi
Live & Let Die

Level II:
Get On The Right Thing
The Mess
Mama's Little Girl
C Moon
Little Woman Love

Level III:
One More Kiss
When The Night
Single Pigeon
Medley: Hold Me Tight/ Lazy Dynamite/ Hands Of Love/ Power Cut
Night Out
Best Friend
Mary Had A Little Lamb

 

Ram IS a masterpiece. Point blank period.

ATMP and POB are not entirely to my taste, but they are also masterpieces in their own right. BOTR, McCartney, and Imagine are near perfect classics.

The End.

Paul is not boring and George is a great songwriter. John could be depressing tho

 

Not without Dress Me Up As a Robber!

 

Back to the Egg with Goodnight Tonight and Daytime Nighttime Suffering... that album would be so eclectic it'd be like spinning through the radio stations on a Saturday night in 1979.

 

I love George. I really do, but imo All Things Must Pass did not need to be a triple album.
Yes it was a statement yadda yadda yadda, and a wonderful album, however in hindsight he should've spread those songs out over multiple records. You get to Material World (which I adore) and it already feels he's running out of juice. A song like Hear Me Lord, which is phenomenal, is just lost in the shuffle on All Things, whereas if it was on Material World or Dark Horse it would have been elevated to it's proper status.

 

"Back To The Egg" is a great album I have championed for years!! "Goodnight Tonight" & "Daytime Nightime Suffering" are both great additions... maybe the great "Waterspout" (an outtake from "London Town" that's better than most of the album) could be considered, but I don't think this line-up ever took a shot at it... too bad.

While I don't think there are any bad songs, I can identify the two weakest for me & think it would tighten up the album to add "Goodnight Tonight" & "Daytime Nightime Suffering" while cutting "Old Siam Sir" & "To You"... now that really is a masterpiece!!

 

Agree one perfect single album would have been much better. And lose the busy Spector productions.

 

The two you would cut are keystones of the album for me— have been since 1979. That’s usually the case with these threads though.

 

Currently working on a Pipes Of Peace and Give My Regards To Broad Street combination.

Tracks I would keep:

No More Lonely Nights
Say Say Say
Hey Hey
No Values
Not Such A Bad Boy
Through Our Love
Twice In A Lifetime *
Tug Of Peace
So Bad (Broadstreet version)
Sweetest Little Show
Spies Like Us*
The Other Me

*If going by recorded around the same time. If not then substitute Keep Under Cover and Pipes Of Peace.

Running order undetermined at the moment.

 

Agreed. Replacing Smile Away with A Love For You turns a 10/10 into an 11/10 imo

 

Ha! I understand! So it goes... and for the record, I don't think either are bad, or desperately need to be cut... just my two least faves & glad to trim two while adding two to tighten up things on my version...

 

Ditto

 

Would consider these level I also:
One More Kiss
When The Night
Single Pigeon
Medley: Hold Me Tight/ Lazy Dynamite/ Hands Of Love/ Power Cut

 

Well we agree that, this is a treasure trove of good stuff. I don't break it down into levels 1-2-3 like you do. In any event my thinking has been evolving on this material, & the best way to enjoy it..my current thinking goes like this.

To the album proper Red Rose Speedway, I add Live & Let Die & I Lie Around. Two reasons-1st it adds 1 more upbeat rock tune, giving it 3 altogether, Live & Let, Big Barn Bed & Get On Right Thing, this is important, RRS desperately needs a couple rock tracks to lift it up..2nd, although I Lie Around doesn't rock, both it & Live&Let die match the big lush production on RRS,

Now as to Hi Hi Hi, The Mess, Jazz Street, Country Dreamer, about a dozen good songs altogether, Tragedy, 1882, Mary Lamb, etc etc. These are a good blend of rock & soft tunes, and are less heavily produced, excepting perhaps Mary Lamb...so Imo, I propose carving off a separate 2nd early Wings album. Something like

1-Hi Hi Hi
2-C-Moon
3-1882 studio
4-Country Dreamer
5-Jazz Street

6-Mary Lamb
7-Little Woman Love
8-I would only smile
9-Mama's Little Girl
10 Tragedy
11 The Mess

I'd like to Use Hi Hi Hi on Red RoseSpdway, to give it one more rock track, but I don't know if there's another good track to fill in that loss on the 2nd album.

Anyway just my thoughts on it .. I've kept hands off of Give Ireland Back, as belonging to Wildlife, because it was done just a month after the Wildlife sessions & boosts that album considerably. However if you pinch Give Ireland, then there is enough to move Hi Hi Hi onto Speedway & still have a strong 2nd album.

As to Thank You Darling & Night Out I think they're too raw.

 

So a running order might go something like this for both variants:

Version 1 Only Pipes And Broadstreet tracks

Pipes Of Peace
Say Say Say
Hey Hey
Keep Under Cover
So Bad (Broadstreet version)
No Values
Not Such A Bad Boy
No More Lonely Nights
Sweetest Little Show
The Other Me
Tug Of Peace


Version 2 Using my initial list:

Twice In A Lifetime
Say Say Say
Hey Hey
Spies Like Us
So Bad (Broadstreet version)
No Values
Not Such A Bad Boy
No More Lonely Nights
Sweetest Little Show
The Other Me
Tug Of Peace

 

Another fun one to reconfigure is Harrison's Brainwashed. There are several outtakes & non LP tracks, to strengthen the album a little bit.

BUT, we don't have access to hearing 15-20 more songs worked on.

Even so I think Horse To Water & the Ringo-Platinum Weird version of This Guitar, can both replace 2 of the weaker tracks. I'm mindful of the soulful & heart wrenching tone of the album, but it's just too under produced, on a few of them particularly his post lung surgery vocals. So for me

1-Any Road
2-Rising Sun
3-Marwa Blues
4-Stuck Inside A Cloud
5-Horse To Water

6-Looking For My Life
7-Pisces Fish
8-This Guitar Can't Keep
9-Run So Far ( outfake mix w/ Clapton )
10 Brainwashed

 

We perfectly agree on what the weaker 1/3 of this great album is. And I REALLY wish that we had access to the purported dozen to 2 dozen other tracks that were candidates here too.

But I don't have any problems at all with George's vocals, nor the overall feel of rhe final production. And I wouldn't make that 2 for 4 swap either. I've always thought "This Guitar (Can't Keep From Crying)" was the weakest track on "Extra Texture" & the remake makes matters even that much worse... and I merely like "Horse To The Water"- probably even less so than the 4 songs that got cut here.

My suspicion is that, with supposedly that many tracks to choose from, that Jeff, Dhani & whoever held back a few choice gems for a potential other album (mind boggling nothing more had come of this treasure trove)- "Valentine" being one whose name had been tossed around some (even before his death...I think in a piece with Timothy White interviewing)...

I wouldn't really touch "All Things Must Pass" or "Thirty-Three & 1/3", but "Brainwashed" is my 3rd fave Harrison album & I wish there was more to choose from to tweak it ("Poor Little Girl" & "Cockamamie Business", those Best Of bonus cuts do nothing for me at all)... but it sits just ahead of a log jam of 3 fine albums, with similar ratios of greater vs. lesser material works- "Living in the Material World", "George Harrison" & "Cloud 9".

Unlike with McCartney, there just isn't as much concurrent (known of) material with which to do anything about changing things. Maybe I will look into giving it a go here, at some point, but "Brainwashed" I wouldn't do a whole lot to.

Best, perfect fit suggestion I know of, for any of them... the great lost track "Flying Hour" was originally from the 1979 "George Harrison" album sessions (though it now appears as the 12th track of both the streaming & download versions of "Somewhere In England")- I have that album at roughly a 6 greater to 4 lesser split & it adds a very strong 7th greater track...

Another terrific song from the originally rejected running order of "Somewhere In England" album, "Lay His Head" was chosen as a B-side for "Cloud 9"... odd to add it there, but another 7th stronger song it would become (I count a 6 greater vs. 5 lesser here)...

The most leeway might be with "Living In The Material World"- I count 6/7 greater vs 5/4 lesser...

..."Miss O'Dell" certainly works for me & any George vocal versions of "Photograph" or "Sunshine Life For Me (Sail Away Raymond)" would be great & the most period correct.. digging deeper in the past of the post-"All Things Must Pass" pile of possibilities, one can look to the well known Harrison lead vocal on "It Don't Come Easy", possibly the truly great rejected from ATMP "I Live For You" and "Bangladesh" & "Deep Blue"...

 

Nice

 

ATMP would have been a masterpiece if it were 2 LPs instead of 3, and if Phil Spector had stayed at home that day.

 

with Tug of War as a blueprint:

Tug Of War
Take It Away
No More Lonely Nights
Say Say Say
Here Today

Ballroom Dancing (Broad St.)
The Pound Is Sinking
Wanderlust
Dress Me Up as a Robber
Ebony and Ivory
We All Stand Together

 

And London Town could have been much better album

1. "London Town" (Paul McCartney, Denny Laine) – 4:10
2. "Cafe on the Left Bank" – 3:25
3. "I'm Carrying" – 2:44
4. "Backwards Traveller" – 1:09
5. "Cuff Link" – 1:59
6. "Mull of Kintyre" (McCartney, Laine) – 4:42
   
7. "Girls' School" – 4:38

1. "With a Little Luck" – 5:45
2. "Famous Groupies" – 3:36
3. "Name and Address" – 3:07
4. "Don't Let It Bring You Down" (McCartney, Laine) – 4:34
5. "Morse Moose and the Grey Goose" (McCartney, Laine) – 6:25

 

I like this. Recorded within about a year of each other, which fits the criteria.

I would only take off We All Stand Together and replace with Tug Of Peace. I just never warmed to We All Stand Together,but just my taste.

 

Nope still pap crap.

 

I really wish I could hear what other people hear on these solo albums which, generally, I think are pretty...well boring. Plastic Ono Band and Ram are great but that's about it for me.

Paul is the one who constantly used inferior tracks overs others on his albums, but hardly any solo Beatle track stands out for me - I fell asleep listening to the Mind Games album once. It still confuses me that people think the Tug Of War album is a masterpiece, I would of made Tug Of War and Pipes Of Peace into just once album of say the 12 best tracks (NO EBONY & IVORY!), Mama's Little Girl should have been on Red Rose Speedway and Flaming Pie is too long (If You Wanna and Used To Be Bad are terrible and should go), London Town is also a tad too long (goodbye Children Children and Famous Groupies).

George peaked with Taxman...I know I'll get shouted at for this. All Things Must Past is too long (goodbye to the jamming songs) and I don't like any mix of it to be honest.

 

Ram II
-Another Day
-Big Barn Bed
-Tomorrow
-Country Dreamer
-I Am Your Singer

-Little Woman Love
-Get on the Right Thing
-Oh Woman, Oh Why
-Little Lamb Dragonfly
-Great Day