neil mathis's List: The Beatles OAA Discussion Board

• The Beatles' recording technology developed during the 1960s and influenced the way music was recorded. Effects achieved on their recordings include sampling and Artificial Double Tracking and the creative use of multitrack recording machines.
• They also used classical instruments on their recordings and guitar feedback. The Beatles' attitude to the recording process was summed up by Paul McCartney: "We would say, 'Try it. Just try it for us. If it sounds crappy, OK, we'll lose it. But it might just sound good.' We were always pushing ahead: Louder, further, longer, more, different."^[
• The Beatles also demanded a lot from the studio; John Lennon allegedly wanted to know why the bass on a certain Wilson Pickett record far exceeded the bass on any Beatles records. This prompted EMI engineer Geoff Emerick to try new techniques for "Paperback Writer".
• As early as "I Want to Hold Your Hand" the Beatles innovated using organ sounding guitars which was achieved by extreme compression on Lennon's rhythm guitar.^[10]
• Engineers and other Abbey Road staff have reported that the Beatles would try to take advantage of accidental occurrences in the recording process;
• The Beatles' song "You Like Me Too Much" has one of the earliest examples of this technique, the Beatles recorded the Steinway through a Hammond B-3's rotating Leslie speaker, a 122 or 122RV, a trick they would come back to over and over again. (At the end of the intro, the switching off of the Leslie is audible.)^[
• Audio feedback, in which a high-pitched electric noise can be heard, was used by composers such as Robert Ashley in the early 60s
• The Beatles song "I Feel Fine", recorded on 18 October, starts with a feedback note produced by plucking the A-note on McCartney's bass guitar, which was picked up on Lennon's semi-acoustic guitar.
• Although strings were commonly used on pop recordings, George Martin's suggestion that a string quartet be used for the recording of "Yesterday" marked a major departure for the Beatles. McCartney recalled playing it to the other Beatles and Ringo saying it did not make sense to have drums on the track and John and George saying there was no point having extra guitars. George Martin suggested a solo acoustic guitar and a string quartet.^[23]
• The Beatles first used samples of other music on "Yellow Submarine", the samples being added on 1 June 1966. The brass band solo was constructed from a Sousa march by George Martin and Geoff Emerick, the original solo was in the same key and was transferred to tape, cut into small segments and re-arranged to form a brief solo which was added to the song.
• More obvious, and therefore more influential samples were used on "I Am the Walrus"—a live BBC Third Programme broadcast of King Lear was mixed into the track on 29 September 1967. McCartney has also described^[36] a lost opportunity of live sampling: the EMI studio was set up in such a way that the echo track from the echo chamber could be picked up in any of the control rooms. Paul Jones was recording in a studio whilst "I Am the Walrus" was being mixed and the Beatles were tempted to "nick" (steal) some of Jones's singing to put into the mix.

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• The Beatles were many things simultaneously: they were the most famous celebrities of their day…the best songwriters of their age…and, ultimately, the most beloved band of all time.
• The Beatles were also the most creative single force to ever hit popular music.
• The band influenced generations, and the group still continues to have a profound impact. The Beatles not only changed the way music was being made, they forever changed music.
• The fifth Beatle: Producer George Martin (center) worked on all but one of The Beatles’ albums.
• he Beatles were assisted greatly by studio wizard George Martin, who produced every Beatle album (except Let it Be) and helped the band with their various sonic experiments.
• In 1964, the idea of musicians actually trying to get their instruments to produce distortion was radically new.
• The Beatles were the first to release a single that featured feedback.
• How It Happened: It was all due to a happy accident in the studio, when John propped his Gibson acoustic/electric against a switched-on amplifier. The guitar erupted with feedback, which stopped Lennon and McCartney in their tracks. The uniqueness of the sound impressed Lennon so much, he instantly asked producer George Martin if they could somehow use feedback in the recording. The producer suggested tacking it onto the front of the song and the rest is Rock ‘n’ Roll history.
• A million bands may have incorporated feedback into their sound, but The Beatles were the first to put it on record.
• Each song on the album Revolver has a unique, fully formed sound, but none more distinctive than Paul McCartney’s “Eleanor Rigby.
• Nonetheless, despite the somber subject matter, the song spent four weeks topping the British pop charts. More than 60 pop artists have covered the song since then.
• Revolver marks the point when The Beatles stopped being a live performing act and became a full-time studio band.
• How It Happened: There was a real Eleanor Rigby, who worked as a scullery maid in a Liverpool hospital and died in 1939. As teenagers, Lennon and McCartney hung around near a cemetery bearing her tombstone. It’s been suggested that McCartney absorbed the name subconsciously and used it years later when penning the song. By the way, “Father MacKenzie” started out as “Father McCartney,” until Pau
• feared that people would think he was describing his own father.
• Paul scored high marks with “Eleanor Rigby,” while George Harrison contributed one of his best songs (“Taxman”) and drummer Ringo Starr sang lead on the innocent anthem, “Yellow Submarine.”
• As for John Lennon, he added the album’s closing track – a stunning piece of early psychedelic music called “Tomorrow Never Knows.” The lyrics, inspired by The Tibetan Book of the Dead, were strange enough (“Listen to the color of your dreams”) but the song itself sounded like virtually nothing the band had recorded up to that point.
• How It Happened: To give Lennon’s chanting vocal the desired “sound of a guru on a mountaintop,” producer Martin ran the vocal track through a Lesley spinning speaker, a type of speaker that produced an odd, wobbly sound. John’s vocals were also doubled by using an Automatic Double Tracking (ADT) system.
• Meanwhile, Ringo used a unique drum pattern for his rhythm tracks and his drums and cymbals were recorded and played in reverse, as was Harrison’s sitar.
• The Beatles also gave the song an added layer of weirdness by adding 16 six-second-long tape loops of various sounds (most of which were played in reverse), which producer Martin interspersed through the song.
• Things were getting pretty crazy in groovy 1967, and that influence colors the album that many critics regard as not only The Beatles’ best album, but the best Rock album of all time.
• Sgt. Pepper is loaded throughout with one innovation after another, but “Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite” capably demonstrates the band’s daring musical experimentation. The song’s lyrics, which tell of an upcoming old-style circus event, were inspired by an antique music-hall poster that Lennon had acquired.
• How It Happened: Much of Lennon’s lyric was taken word-for-word from the original handbill. For one musical passage within the song’s middle eight bars, a collection of different pieces of audio was gathered.
• Each tape contained a different type of carnival music.
• Producer George Martin, unhappy with their attempts to find one signature carnival sound, had all of the tapes cut into small pieces, which were then thrown into the air and onto the studio floor. The studio engineer then randomly picked up the pieces of tape, which were re-assembled in precisely that order to create a flowing montage of circus sounds.
• After the dense, multi-layered psychedelic rumble that The Beatles pioneered during the Pepper era, most of Abbey Road (which was the last Beatle album recorded, although Let it Be would be released after it) was marked by a simpler sound that didn’t seem to rely quite so much on audio “tricks.” But even at their simplest, The Beatles’ music contains multiple levels.

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  he “Fab Four” from Liverpool, England, startled the ears and energized the lives of virtually all who heard them. Their arrival triggered the musical revolution of the Sixties, introducing a modern sound and viewpoint that parted ways with the world of the previous decade.
• They helped confer self-identity upon a youthful, music-based culture that flexed its muscle in myriad ways - not just as music consumers but also as a force for political expression, social commentary and contemporary lifestyles.
• The Beatles’ buoyant melodies, playful personalities and mop-topped charisma were just the tonic needed by a nation left reeling by the senseless assassination of its young president, John F. Kennedy, two months earlier.
• Between the lines, and without obvious disrespect, the Beatles announced the ascendancy of youth - and the inevitable coming of a generation gap as a result.
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  he long journey resulting in the mob scene that greeted the Beatles’ arrival at Kennedy Airport began in Liverpool. In 1958, John Lennon formed a skiffle group called the Quarrymen. Lennon was raised on Fifties rockabilly and was especially partial to Elvis Presley and Gene Vincent. He met a similarly rock-smitten schoolkid named Paul McCartney.
• Impressed by McCartney’s knowledge of song lyrics and ability to tune a guitar, Lennon recruited him into the Quarrymen. A schoolmate of McCartney’s, George Harrison, came next. The youthful Harrison’s mastery of guitar licks by Duane Eddy impressed the skeptical Lennon.
• They became a fixture on the rough-and-tumble club scene in Hamburg, Germany, where their five-set-a-night marathons helped mold them into a tight performing unit.
• trailblazers as Chuck Berry and Little Richard.
• where they were discovered by a local record merchant and entrepreneur, Brian Epstein, who became their manager in December 1961.
• the group landed a lunchtime residency at a club called The Cavern,
• In January 1962, a fan poll in Mersey Beat declared them the top group in Liverpool.
• The Beatles signed with EMI-Parlophone in April 1962 after impressing producer George Martin.
• In August, fellow Liverpudlian Ringo Starr (born Richard Starkey), then a member of Rory Storm and the Hurricanes, replaced Pete Best. The group’s first single, “Love Me Do”/”P.S. I Love You,” briefly dented the U.K. Top 20 in October 1962, but their next 45, “Please Please Me,” formally ignited Beatlemania in their homeland, reaching the Number Two spot.
• They conquered the U.K., even inducing a classical music critic from the Sunday Times to declare them “the greatest composers since Beethoven.”
• , Chuck Berry. The freshness and immediacy of the Beatles’ sound stemmed from the fact they assimilated and synthesized the most vital sources for rock and roll that preceded them.

• The Beatles combined the harmonic range and implicit equality of the Fifties vocal groups with the flash of a rockabilly band (the Crickets or Gene Vincent’s Blue Caps) with the aggressive and unique personalities of the classic rock stars (Elvis, Little Richard) with the homey, this-could-be-you manner of later rock stars (Everly Brothers, Buddy Holly, Eddie Cochran) with the endlessly inventive songwriting touch of the Brill Building, and they delivered it all with the grace of the Miracles, the physicality of ‘Louie, Louie,’ and the absurd enthusiasm of Gary ‘U.S.’ Bonds.”

   
• The Beatles’ success can be attributed to a combination of factors, including Lennon and McCartney’s songwriting genius, Harrison’s guitar playing prowess, Starr’s artful simplicity as a drummer, and the solid group harmonies that were a hallmark of their recordings.
• George Martin’s production and Brian Epstein’s management were important elements as well.
• The Beatles’ conquest of America early in 1964 launched “the British Invasion,” a torrent of rock & roll bands from Britain that overtook the pop charts. The Fab Four’s first Number One single in the U.S. was “I Want to Hold Your Hand,” released on Capitol Records, EMI’s American counterpart.
• This exuberant track was followed by 45 more Top 40 hits over the next six years.
• During the week of April 4, 1964, the Beatles set a record that is likely never to be broken when they occupied all five of the top positions on Billboard’s Top 40, with “Can’t Buy Me Love” ensconced at Number One.
• When all was said and done, the Beatles charted 20 Number One singles in the States – two more than runner-up Elvis Presley.
• It is estimated by EMI, their British record company, that the Beatles have sold more than 600 million units worldwide.
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  or feats of sales and airplay alone, the Beatles are unquestionably the top group in rock and roll history. Yet their significance extends well beyond numbers to encompass their innovations in the recording studio.

• The Beatles’ legacy as a concert attraction, during their harried passage from nightclubs to baseball stadiums, is distinguished primarily by the deafening screams of female fans more overcome by their appearance than the music they played.

   
• Consequently, the Beatles began to indulge their creative energies in the studio, layering sounds and crafting songs in a way that was experimental yet still accessible.
• The Beatles retired from touring for good after a San Francisco concert on August 29, 1966. Like Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys, who abandoned touring to focus on his music, the Beatles thereafter became creatures of the studio.
• Ten months later, they released Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, an album that has almost universally been cited as the creative apotheosis of rock and roll, a watershed event in which rock became “serious art” without losing its sense of humor - or, in Lennon’s case, sense of the absurd.
• Realizing the band members’ collective ambitions took four months and all the technical wiles of producer George Martin could muster. A completely self-contained album meant to be played and experienced from start to finish, Sgt. Pepper broke the mold in that no singles were released.
• Sgt. Pepper was preceded by perhaps the greatest two-sided single in rock history, “Strawberry Fields Forever” and “Penny Lane,” which exhibited the creative sensibilities of John Lennon and Paul McCartney, respectively, at their zenith.
• In the wake of Sgt. Pepper, the Beatles began to splinter in ways that were initially subtle but gradually grew more pronounced.
• Subsequent events included the death of manager Epstein due to an overdose of sleeping pills; the release of the TV film Magical Mystery Tour, which earned the Beatles some of their first negative reviews; a trip to India to meditate with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, about whom Lennon wrote “Sexy Sadie;” and the launching in January 1968 of Apple Corps, Ltd., a well-intentioned but ultimately mismanaged entertainment empire that helped bring down the Beatles.
• Through all the chaotic events of the late Sixties, however, the Beatles retained their ingenuity and focus as recording artists. Released in August 1968, the single “Hey Jude"/"Revolution" became their most popular single.
• The Beatles (1968), a double-LP popularly referred to as "the White Album,"
• The album and film Let It Be, recorded in 1969 but shelved until 1970, documented the Beatles’ dissolution. Internal squabbles and the discomfiting presence of John Lennon’s new soulmate, Yoko Ono, revealed widening cracks within the group.
• The Beatles exited on a high note, coming together in the summer of 1969 to record a fitting swan song, Abbey Road.
• On April 10, 1970, Paul McCartney announced his departure from the Beatles, and the group quietly came to an end.
• Those hopes were dashed by the senseless murder of John Lennon in New York City on December 8, 1980.
• The Beatles were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1988.
• n 1995, the three ex-Beatles regrouped harmoniously for The Beatles Anthology, which produced a six-hour video documentary aired over the course of three nights on ABC-TV; three double-disc anthologies of Beatles music, including much rare and unreleased material; and a massive coffee table book with new and archival pictures and interviews.
• Free as a Bird” (Number Six) and “Real Love” (Number 11)

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  In the sixties a new sound conquered the world of popular music. It was the sound of beat music, which laid down the foundations for most of nowadays rock music.
• The sound was different from that of its predecessors in rock 'n' roll and rhythm and blues. And its origins did not lie in the United States but on the other side of the Atlantic: in Great Britain.
• Undoubtedly the Beatles operated in the front lines of this British invasion, which changed the face and sound of popular music for the next decades.
• Rock music and youth culture appeared almost simultaneously.

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• The Beatles were an English rock band that became arguably the most successful act of the 20th century.
• They contributed to music, film, literature, art, and fashion, made a continuous impact on popular culture and the lifestyle of several generations.