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JOHN SONGS VS. PAUL SONGS IN 1964

September 26, 2017 · by solobeatles

It’s time for the next installment of our year-by-year comparison. While they were in the Beatles, John and Paul attributed all the songs they wrote to “Lennon-McCartney.” But after 1963, most tunes were primarily the work of one composer or the other, who would usually sing lead on the track.

Who do you think came out ahead in the year Beatlemania broke worldwide?

John:

A Hard Day’s Night

I Feel Fine

Eight Days a Week

I Should Have Known Better

If I Fell

I’m a Loser

No Reply

You Can’t Do That

Tell Me Why

Any Time at All

I’ll Cry Instead

When I Get Home

I’ll Be Back

I Don’t Want to Spoil the Party

I’m Happy Just to Dance With You (written for George)

Rock and Roll Music (cover)

Slow Down (cover)

Mr. Moonlight (cover)

Leave My Kitten Alone (cover)

Paul:

Can’t Buy Me Love

And I Love Her

Things We Said Today

She’s a Woman

I’ll Follow the Sun

What You’re Doing

Every Little Thing

It’s For You (written for Cilla Black)

From A Window (written for Billy J. Kramer)

Nobody I Know (written for Peter & Gordon)

I Don’t Want to See You Again (written for Peter & Gordon)

One and One Is Two (written for The Strangers)

Long Tall Sally (cover)

Kansas City/ Hey Hey Hey Hey! (cover)

Both:

Baby’s in Black

Words of Love (cover)

Macca, Michael, and The Man

July 26, 2017 · by solobeatles

“The Man” is the second of McCartney’s three collaborations with Michael Jackson, recorded in 1981 and released on Pipes of Peace (1983).

Jackson wrote the lyrics, about some wise dancing man who “plays the game of life so well.” McCartney wasn’t sure if Jackson was talking about Jesus or a Jehova’s Witness — or just a happy “fool on the hill” type guy who kicked up his heels like The Wiz — but went with it.

So it was the second song McCartney sang that seemed to be a merry ode to the general wisdom of “The Man” (the other being “Listen to What the Man Said”), apparently unaware that to many “The Man” was slang for an oppressive government/authoritarian figure. Jackson, too, was apparently unaware or unconcerned.

With two hit singles under their belt (“Say Say Say” and “The Girl Is Mine”), it seemed they had a good thing going. But then McCartney advised Michael Jackson to start buying song copyrights to make big money. Around that time, ATV Music Publishing went up for sale. It owned the copyrights to most of the Lennon/McCartney songs, and as a courtesy they offered McCartney the option to buy it for $40 million. McCartney tried to get Yoko Ono (who ran Lennon’s estate) to split it with him, but she thought they could get it for $20 million. When that deal didn’t happen, McCartney decided to drop it because it was “too pricey.”

So in 1985, Michael Jackson bought it for $47.5 million. Even though he had originally passed, McCartney was reputedly unhappy about it, and they never worked together again.

Ringo Rocks Out With Elton In “Snookeroo”

July 17, 2017 · by solobeatles

One of the 1970s stars who came closest to reaching Beatles heights was Elton John, and he worked with both Lennon and Starr in 1974. For Starr’s album Goodnight Vienna, Elton John and his lyricist Bernie Taupin contributed “Snookeroo.”

John kicks things off with “Crocodile Rock”–style piano and Taupin sketches a song based on Starr’s upbringing in a working-class town in the North of England. It includes the same eye for detail that made John’s other working class portrait, “Saturday Night’s Alright for Fighting,” stand out lyrically as well as musically. The Band’s Robbie Robertson delivers on guitar, tasty horns lean in, gospel-sounding ladies back the Ringed One at the mike, and it’s an anthem for poor Andy Capps-turned-millionaire-playboys everywhere. It made it to number three in the United States as a double Aside with “The No No Song.”

Snooker is a British version of pool with a bigger table and smaller pockets. Basically, Starr sings about being a lazy, no-good guy who hangs out playing pool and refuses to work normal hours while his dad gets drunk and his sister gets a reputation.

He sings that he needs a factory girl who will cook for him and turn him loose at night, which is what he had in Maureen, though she would be the last factory girl with whom he’d bunker down. Technically, she wasn’t a factory girl; rather, she left school at fourteen to become a hairdresser trainee. Before Starr knew this drummer thing was going to sustain, his plan had always been to get his own hair salon, so they must’ve bonded over hair. Maureen was born in 1946 and a regular at the Cavern Club at age fifteen. Starr married her in February 1965 after she became pregnant with the first of their three children.

The lyrics talk about how the family’s four-room house is condemned. In 2005, the Liverpool City Council decided they would knock down Starr’s birth home at 9 Madryn Street—but after an outcry, it announced the building would be taken apart brick by brick and preserved elsewhere.

My Favorite of Paul’s Classical Pieces: “Cell Growth”

July 6, 2017 · by solobeatles

McCartney’s symphony Standing Stone (1997) was the natural progression from “Yesterday,” “Eleanor Rigby,” and 1966’s The Family Way soundtrack (the first Beatle solo album). Recounting the rise of Celtic man (hence the Stonehenge reference of the title), it opens with the primordial great ball of fire and progresses to the first signs of life in this track, which recalls Fantasia’s take on Stravinksy’s Rite of Spring. Now if Macca just raps over an Asian folk tune, he’ll have every musical genre covered.

“Cell Growth” starts at 4:30 in the clip below:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IVcAlzr7StQ

And while we’re at it, here’s “Love in the Open Air,” from The Family Way.

“Best of the Solo Beatles” Boxed Set

July 6, 2017 · by solobeatles

People have asked what an anthology of the Fabs’ greatest hits since 1970 would include so below is my proposed track listing. I tried to emulate the chart-topping 1973 Beatles collection 1962-1966 and 1967-1970, commonly referred to as The Red Album and The Blue Album, with 54 songs total.

The Solo Beatles had 56 Top 10 hits, and a four-record anthology could have been compiled with just those songs, but there were some classics that didn’t make it that high on the chart (Lennon’s “Mind Games” and “Stand By Me,” for example) so the overview was expanded to three volumes.

Some songs below were included in this list because they were hits but I did not profile them in the book because I didn’t think they were the artists’ best, and the book is about the “essential” songs. (Songs not in the book are indicated with an asterisk.) Still, realistically a solo Beatle retrospective would have to include Paul’s collaborations with Michael Jackson and Stevie Wonder … and probably even “Wonderful Christmastime.”

Looking over the list, it’s interesting to see how many of their finest songs are not included, as they were deep album cuts not released as singles … I guess that’s a compilation for another day!

1969-1974 (The Yellow Album)

Side One

1. Give Peace A Chance
2. Instant Karma
3. Maybe I’m Amazed
4. My Sweet Lord
5. What is Life
6. Another Day
7. Power To The People

Side Two

1. It Don’t Come Easy
2. Imagine
3. Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey
4. Hi Hi Hi
5. Back Off Boogaloo
6. My Love
7. Happy Xmas (War Is Over)

Side Three

1. Give Me Love (Give Me Peace On Earth)
2. Live And Let Die
3. Mind Games
4. Helen Wheels
5. You’re Sixteen
6. Jet
7. Photograph

Side Four

1. Band On The Run
2. Whatever Gets You Thru the Night
3. Oh My My
4. Junior’s Farm
5. Dark Horse
6. Only You
7. #9 Dream

1975-1983 (The Green Album)

Side One

1. Listen to What the Man Said
2. The No No Song *
3. Venus And Mars/Rock Show *
4. Stand By Me
5. Silly Love Songs
6. You *
7. Snookeroo

Side Two

1. Let ‘Em In
2. Crackerbox Palace *
3. Mull Of Kintyre
4. With a Little Luck
5. Blow Away
6. Wonderful Christmastime *
7. Rockestra *

Side Three

1. Goodnight Tonight *
2. (Just Like) Starting Over
3. Coming Up
4. Woman
5. Waterfalls *
6. Beautiful Boy
7. Watching the Wheels

Side Four

1. All Those Years Ago
2. Take It Away
3. Ebony And Ivory *
4. The Girl Is Mine *
5. Say Say Say *
6. In My Car
7. Pipes Of Peace *

1984-2005 (“The Indigo Album”)

Side One

1. Nobody Told Me
2. No More Lonely Nights
3. Borrowed Time
4. We All Stand Together *
5. I’m Stepping Out
6. I Don’t Want to Do It
7. Once Upon a Long Ago *

Side Two

1. Got My Mind Set On You
2. My Brave Face
3. When We Was Fab
4. This One *
5. Handle With Care
6. Put It There
7. End of the Line

Side Three

1. Weight of the World
2. Hope of Deliverance
3. Free as a Bird
4. Real Love
5. Young Boy
6. Beautiful Night
7. Flaming Pie

Side Four

1. No Other Baby
2. From a Lover To a Friend
3. Any Road
4. Jenny Wren
5. Never Without You
6. Fine Line
7. Liverpool 8

* Not profiled in the book

1974 COMMERCIAL WITH RINGO AND JOHN PROMOTING THEIR ALBUMS

June 24, 2017 · by solobeatles

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jJzlxpTQoqQ

46 YEARS LATER, JOHN’S DARK CLASSIC AS RELEVANT AS EVER

February 24, 2017 · by solobeatles

An acoustic demo of this song was recorded during the Get Back sessions in January 1969. McCartney chimes in on the chorus, and as can be heard on YouTube, the song is almost cheerful, miles away from the nauseous despair of the final version. No doubt all the scorn heaped upon Lennon and Ono between 1969 and 1971 turned the song darker.

Yet despite the rage, there’s vengeful joy in his performance, the catharsis of a brilliant wordsmith at the height of his powers unleashing a hilariously cynical barrage of bile. There’s spiteful glee in the perfectly phrased proto-raps of bitterness he spits out against a “short hair” establishment utterly beneath contempt. It’s as sharp as Dylan’s “Subterranean Homesick Blues,” though Lennon’s songs were almost always succinct whereas Dylan’s luxuriated in precedent-smashing length.

Unlike the political songs that would follow in 1972’s Some Time in New York City, this is one of his most timeless because it is unspecific—as relevant to today as it was in 1971. Most essentially, it’s witty. He can’t decide whether to spend his money on dope or rope, and we don’t know if the rope is to hang the politicians or to just give up and hang himself. With humor as black as could be, he spoke for every guy of draft age deciding whether it was time to run through the jungle or run for Canada.

In high school, the schoolmaster regularly caned Lennon. In his twenties, his records were burned in the South. Now, he called out “Tricky Dicky” by name and brought down the wrath of the US government, immersing himself in a quagmire of deportation court battles for the next four years.

The song carries the righteous indignation of “I Found Out,” but unlike that stark and primitive track, here Harrison perfectly compliments the vitriol with the desolate beauty of his distorted and chiming slide guitar. Harrison stopped by to play on half of Imagine, and Lennon later exclaimed it was the best Harrison had played in his life.

McCartney’s Coolest B-Side? “Oh Woman, Oh Why”

October 31, 2016 · by solobeatles

The rock snobs of 1971 were underwhelmed by the cute and seemingly non-tortured “Another Day,” but had they listened to the flipside they would have realized that the son of Little Richard was still in possession of his shredding rock-and roll vocal range. McCartney slips back into the mode of “I’m Down,” “Oh! Darling,” and the climax of “Hey Jude,” while the slide guitar sounds like he’s riffing off the country blues on the second side of LED ZEPPELIN III, released a month or two before McCartney recorded this song. Macca was always trying to keep pace with the guitar virtuosos; after seeing Jimi Hendrix, he wrote the guitar for “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.” “Helter Skelter” was his attempt to outdo The Who’s live sonic assault.

Basically, “Oh Woman” is “Why Don’t We Do It in the Road” with lyrics and a full band backing him. McCartney would dig the song’s drummer, Denny Seiwell, enough to bring him into Wings later in 1971.

In the song, McCartney’s woman shows up with a gun to shoot him down. He pleads with her to tell him what he’s done wrong and it’s his cheating ways. Perhaps it’s a flashback to the time in 1968 his pre-Linda girlfriend Jane Asher came home to London earlier than expected. The fans who hung around outside McCartney’s house saw her arriving and tried to warn McCartney, who was inside with girlfriend number two, Francie Schwartz. He scoffed, “Ah, pull the other one” — but suddenly Jane was standing there glowering.

The main attraction of the song is McCartney’s voice, a freak of nature every bit as powerful and rough as Kurt Cobain’s or any who have come down the pike since. This song should be played for people who associate McCartney solely with soft pop like “The Girl Is Mine.”

For a long time it was unavailable but this May it was included on the deluxe version of RAM, along with another great non-album B-side “Little Woman Love.” Other Grade A ’70s flipsides are still not on iTunes, including “Sally G” and “Girls’ School,” but presumably this will be gradually rectified when McCartney releases the remastered versions of albums like VENUS AND MARS and LONDON TOWN.

My Book “Where’s Ringo?” Is An Illustrated Beatles History

August 2, 2016 · by solobeatles

From Thunder Press, it’s a take off on Where’s Waldo with twenty double-page illustrations packed with Beatles trivia in which you have to find Ringo and other Beatles-related people and things, and fifty pages of text.

The artwork by Oliver Goddard, Takayo Akiyama, and David Ryan Robinson is beautiful, each with their own inimitable style: from childlike whimsy to outrageous psychedelia.

With the prose I did my best to cover all the bases from the boys’ early days in Liverpool to their final album, Abbey Road, all told from Ringo’s perspective.

You can look inside at Amazon here:

Ringo realizes a dream by recording a country album with Nashville legends.

July 12, 2016 · by solobeatles

Today “Beaucoups of Blues” (1970) stands as one of his finest moments. Click the link below to check out the story:

http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/book-excerpt-ringo-starr-realizes-a-dream-with-his-1970-country-album-20120818

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