Essential Beatles

I have listened to the Beatles all of my life - especially when my Dad bought the big RED double album (were there actually any families that did not have a copy of that album?). Later on, I invested in a few CD's - one of the best things about CD is that it allows you to rediscover your love of music that is long gone! So it was natural that they should have their own entry on the site - especially as I do not know where else to put them!

If you do not know the story of the Beatles then you really must have got lost on your way here! No but seriously, folks, this is quite simply one of the most important bands of all time. This is not for their complexity, but mainly for their simplicity; the Beatles just took their own favourite tracks and bashed them about until they had their own sound - Paul McCartney admits that early Beatles tracks were little more the works "on a theme of" Buddy Holly.

Also, you cannot even whisper the world Beatles to another drummer without getting an opinion, one way or the other, on the drumming prowess of Ringo Starr - or lack thereof. Jasper Carrot once said that Ringo was not the best drummer in the world, he wasn't even the best drummer in the Beatles! Now come on - that is a little bit harsh! Ringo pushed along the sound of the Beatles in a no-nonsense fashion; no overplaying the track was required - just check out the fantastic simplicity of Yellow Submarine - but also contrast with the very inventive and busy drumming he did for A Day in the Life - cited by Phil Collins as perhaps one of the greatest drum fills of all time.

Basically, if you want to truly appreciate the Beatles then you should delve into their history in stages.

Stage 1 - The Early Years

Yes - this is the hell that is.....a world that had the Beatles and Cilla Black on the same books! The Beatles can trace their beginnings back to the Mersey-Sound that sort of erupted out of NW England in the early 1960's. This was when the Beatles became the worlds first megastars - bigger then Elvis Presley, bigger than Buddy Holly. The Johnny Carson Show, when they made their first appearance on US TV, has to be one of the defining moments of the 1960's.

Stand out tracks from this period are:

• Love Me Do - a very simple track with some clever elements  - such as the drum beat (famous for the fact that Ringo did not even appear on it - a session drummer was called in whilst they waited for a drummer to complete their lineup)
• Yesterday - unthinkable nowadays - a track on which only one of the band appears - a certain Paul McCartney. This, if anything, reveals the vibe present within the band during these early years. This is a Paul McCartney solo piece that will forever be associated with the Beatles. Every top 100 should have this in somewhere - Spike Milligan once cited the perfection of this song as the reason we should not bother making any more pop music.

Stage 2 - The Intermediate Years

I have always harbored the opinion that the Beatles only really started to get good once that they abandoned the idea of touring - in the recent Beatles Anthology, the gist seems to be that the band were particularly disappointed with just how quiet and bad they sounded live - not to mention being drowned out by the screams of the girls in the crowd - real loud PA systems were quite some time off.

The good news about this is that it made then band more introspective, paying more attention to the way the songs were written and put together - and this is readily evident on two albums that were virtually released on top of one another during the mid 1960's; Rubber Soul and Revolver. This makes the Beatles somewhat ahead of their time - now this is the way that all albums are recorded. There are so many highlights on both of these cuts that I am scared to miss any off;

• Yellow Submarine - according to Bill Hicks, irrefutable evidence that the boys were doing serious drugs! This immortal song contains lots of Beatles trademarks - the cutting in of conventional instruments (the band that begins to play), sound effects (the sea of green was actually a bowl of water sloshed around next to the microphone) and the madcap vocals (the call and response during the middle eight - sky of blue, sea of green, in our yellow.....submarine - yah hah).
• Drive my Car - perfect song writing - with a superb jazz-ish piano break.
• Tomorrow Never Knows - one chord, sitar, tape effects - this is a statement of intent from the lads as loud as the one Miles Davis made in the late 1960's - a harbinger of what lay around the corner.
• Here, There and Everywhere - more perfect song writing - simple guitar line - right near the top of the mix as well - making this as pure as sitting in the studio next to them!

Stage 3 - the Autumn Years

For many people, this is where the Beatles story ends - they were simply too far from left field for their traditional fans to be appreciated - but the experience they gained whilst putting together Rubber Soul and Revolver would serve them well as they became more and more like a thinking man's band. Good old George Martin was on hand to help produce another set of albums that have become perpetual choices in everyone's top 100 CD's; The White Album and Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.

The White Album, more than any other, is the most personal of the back catalogue that you are likely to listen to. This contains a great deal of experimental work that seems to have just been selected for inclusion as it was recorded... well I am sure that it is more complicated than that! Here you can find Blackbird (immortalised on the Quentin Tarantino episode of ER), Helter Skelter (blamed by Charles Manson as the reason he went completely tonto).

This is all rounded off by a rather clumsy film - and the closing of the story - Abbey Road. The studio that gives the last album its name had been their home right from the very start.

Highlights from this period are;

• A Day in the Life - the best Beatles Track - FACT - so you can stop your internal dialogue right now. The standard for the acid generation - if you listen to the CD version you can hear the studio engineer counting the orchestra in - mind-blowing!
• Dear Prudence - right near the start of the White album, you can find this track - it takes a while to get going - but is worth the wait.
• Strawberry Fields Forever - the best use of a Mellotron ever. Contains lots of trademarks that would later become more or less the norm for regular acid users........
• Something - George did not write much - he saved himself for this sort of fantastic ballad - best avoid the Frank Sinatra version......

 back to essential music