On The Records

The Beatles were the most influential band in history, and it wasn’t just their music.  Their hairstyles, fashion choices, and opinions impacted the youth of the 1960’s and beyond.  That innovative spirit included The Beatles’ album covers.

The group always used professional photographers and artists to help them with the covers.  Some became iconic, and others were less successful.  So here are the covers of their original thirteen studio albums ranked from weakest to best.

The 1965 movie HELP! was a colorful comic romp, and the album was filled with great songs like “Ticket To Ride”, “Yesterday”, and of course “Help”.  So there’s no explanation for having a boring white cover with the guys simply waving their arms.  You’d think they were at least spelling out the title of the album, but no they’re just putting their arms in positions the photographer thought looked good.

Yes it was winter when Beatles For Sale was released in late 1964, but having The Beatles cold and miserable on the cover was not a great look.  The downer cover has always seemed to unfairly affect perceptions of the quality of the music on the album.  Songs include “Eight Days A Week”, “No Reply”, & “I’ll Follow The Sun”,   Sure there were “down” songs like “I’m A Loser”, “Baby’s In Black”, & “I Don’t Want To Spoil The Party”.  But they’re good songs, and the cover is simply too uninviting.

There was another lost opportunity with the A Hard Day’s Night album from 1964.  The music is excellent and exciting, and the movie is a lot of fun.  The best representation of the album and movie is not five little pictures of each of the Beatles trying to make a variety of faces.  The American version was slightly better in that it’s more dramatic, and accents their haircuts which were an important part of their image as they were still breaking in the U.S. at the time.  Certainly the movie would have been better represented by one of the action photos taken during filming.

The Magical Mystery Tour album cover from 1967 is a little too busy, but did a good job of conveying the spirit of the film, especially with the colorful logo.  Although we’d normally like to see The Beatles faces on their covers, maybe having them hidden by costumes was part of the mystery.  It was also a good idea to put the song titles on the cover since this was a unique album.  It was a combination of six new songs, and five recent singles.  This American version became the official British version when Beatles albums came out on CD’s.

Another psychedelic album cover was used for the Yellow Submarine soundtrack in 1968 (shown above on the left).  It’s a good cover in that it provides a lot of the artwork from the animated film.  Next to the original cover is the Yellow Submarine Songtrack that included a lot more songs from the movie in remixed form.  It was released in 1999.  The cover is a nice eye-pleasing update.

The 1963 cover for The Beatles’ first album,  Please Please Me, was The group looking down from the stairwell at EMI’s London headquarters.  The photo was taken by Angus McBean.  It’s an interesting shot that has held up well, and was even recreated in 1969 for the planned Get Back album that became Let It Be.  That 1969 photo ended up as the cover for The Blue Album hits collection.

Here’s another innovative photo from 1963 that was on The Beatles second album, With The Beatles.  It looks like a studio shot with carefully placed lighting, but in reality, photographer Robert Freeman took the photo of the group in a hallway, and simply used the natural light.  The photo style made the album cover one that was imitated by other artists.

This might seem like a boring cover, but knowing when it came out shows the genius of it.  1967 was the height of psychedelia with everything bursting with colors and complicated designs.  In 1968, The Beatles decided to change that up big time by creating a minimalist cover.  The idea came from Paul McCartney who was immersed in the London art scene.  The cover was all white, with “The Beatles” embossed.  That was the name of the record, but it quickly became The White Album.  I remember some fans even saying they felt cheated that there wasn’t a photo of The Beatles on the cover.  Of course inside were four individual colorful photos of The Beatles that were suitable for framing.

In 1970 the final studio album was released by The Beatles.  Let It Be has a dramatic black background, colorful photos with white edging, and the title all capitalized in white.  Maybe the black color, and the use of individual photos (instead of a group photo) were representing the end of the group.  The result is a classy and dramatic cover that stands out among any group of album covers.  Credit goes to Art Director John Kosh who also did Abbey Road.

The Revolver cover from 1966 is an example of The Beatles trusting their friend, bassist & artist Klaus Voormann.  He used a combination of line drawings and photos to create a very unusual look for the album.  It reflected the extremely innovative recordings found inside.  The cover told us that Revolver was unlike any album that had come before it.  Reportedly, Beatles’ manager Brian Epstein was overjoyed Voormann was able to create a cover to match the music… “Turn off your mind relax and float downstream.”

The 1965 album Rubber Soul has a cover that really reflects the name.  The story is that The Beatles were looking at the photo being projected onto a white piece of cardboard that fell backwards slightly and made the image look warped.  The Beatles asked photographer Robert Freeman if the cover could be similarly altered to give it that stretched look.  Then illustrator Charles Front designed the title to match the look of rubber kind of oozing from a rubber plant.  That style of lettering was used often during the psychedelic era that followed. 

Album covers don’t get much more iconic than Abbey Road.  It might be the most imitated and parodied cover in history, and the location of the photo shoot has become a tourist destination.  After dismissing complicated ideas, like shooting a photo at Mt. Everest (with Everest a possible album title), they finally settled on Paul McCartney’s photo idea and the title Abbey Road.  Photographer Lain Macmillian was on a ladder and took just six photos.  Here they are.

What’s amazing is that the photo they used is the only one that’s any good.  The other photos look like four disorganized guys kind of stumbling across the street.  It seems they were lucky to get the shot of them in full stride.  One of the defining aspects of the cover is Art Director John Kosh deciding to not put the name of the group or the title on the front of the album.

As simple as the photo shoot was for Abbey Road, the exact opposite is true for our top Beatles album cover, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.  Like the music on the album, this is The Beatles’ most intricate and hardest to produce album cover.

Pop artists Peter Blake and Jann Haworth were asked to design the cover.  Blake suggested it be The Beatles with a crowd of fans, and said it could be a “magical crowd” made up of whomever The Beatles wanted.  After the group submitted a list of names, the design team had to get clearances to use the images.  In all, the cover has 57 cardboard cutouts and 8 wax figures, including The Beatles.  Today, such a cover would be done electronically, but in 1967 The Beatles dressed in colorful military band costumes and stepped into the complex art piece.

The amount of money spent on the cover was about 70-times higher than normal, but everyone knew the Sgt. Pepper album needed a truly unique cover, so it was worth it..

It’s likely the quality of the music on an album at least somewhat affects our perception of the quality of the cover.  Upon completion of this list of best covers, I noticed the top four selected are probably The Beatles’ four most popular albums.  You can decide what order to rank them musically.

Both John Lennon and Paul McCartney have new releases of old material in 2024.  We’ll start with a review of McCartney’s One Hand Clapping.

These are recordings from 1974 (50-years ago!).  Paul McCartney was coming off the success of his Band On The Run album.  Although that album was released under the Wings name, it was really just Paul, his wife Linda, and guitarist Denny Laine.  The other members of Wings had quit just before the album was recorded.  So, McCartney added more musicians in order to perform the songs live.

Paul (bass, guitars & keyboards), Linda (keyboards), Jimmy McCulloch (guitars), Denny (guitars), Geoff Britton (drums)

“One Hand Clapping” has quality recordings of the new band performing live in the studio for what was intended to be a TV special.  Most of the songs here are familiar…five of the best songs from Band On The Run, plus the hits “My Love”, “Live And Let Die”, “Junior’s Farm”, and “Hi Hi Hi”.  The band is energetic and sounds good on all of the group songs on the album.

Besides the instrumental “One Hand Clapping”, which was supposed to be the theme song for the TV special, there are three short original McCartney songs in a row that were not released prior to the filming.  They sound like they’re from the “Tin Pan Alley” era of songwriting.  It’s just Paul at the piano performing “Let’s Love”, “All Of You”, and “I’ll Give You A Ring”.  Here’s the audio of the three of them segued together:

They’re raw, but charming, and they show McCartney’s gift for writing melodies.

Also from the non-rock tracks are a couple of standouts…a beautiful version of “Bluebird”, and an acoustic “Sally G”.

“Bluebird”:

“Sally G”:

The released version of Sally G was a fun Country song McCartney recorded with studio professionals in Nashville.  Here we get just McCartney on guitar & vocal with an unplugged version.  By the way, the few Beatles songs on the album are just incomplete rehearsal segments by McCartney.

One Hand Clapping is not a must have album, but there are enough good versions on it to make it worthwhile for hardcore fans.  The two CD set is priced at $25.  Interestingly, if they had left off one 4-minute song, everything would have fit on one CD.  The choice for elimination…”Maybe I’m Amazed”.  It’s a great song, but this version has a tremendous amount of echo on the vocal, and it sounds out-of-sync.

The 2-record vinyl version is $38.

The John Lennon release is another “Ultimate Mixes” album, this time Mind Games.  Here’s how the CD versions look on Amazon.

You can see the prices for the 6-CD and 2-CD versions.  The album was released on July 12th, 2024.

CD-1 is the original 1973 album, but with improved mixes.  CD-2 has alternate takes of the same 12 songs, plus two bonus tracks.  By the way, the “Nutopian International Anthem” is not really a song.  It’s just 3-seconds of silence that was at the end of Side 1.  So it’s funny there’s an “Ultimate Mix” of it.

If you own any of John Lennon’s previous “Ultimate Mixes”, you know the sound quality is excellent.  Besides the two discs shown above, the mixes of the other four CD’s in the Deluxe version are titled… Elemental Mixes, Elements Mixes, Evolution Documentary, and Raw Studio Mixes.  It’s always interesting to hear the Raw Studio Mixes, because those are the songs just as John recorded them in the studio, without his voice being altered.

The 2-record set has the same tracks as the 2-CD set, and is priced at $48.

Mind Games isn’t one of John Lennon’s best albums, it made it to #9 in Billboard.  The title song was the only hit single (#13), but it’s still worth checking out all the alternate takes and mixes.

Here’s what the titles of the individual discs mean.  Elemental Mixes are stripped-down versions.  Elements Mixes are instrumental versions of the songs with only some of the instruments featured.  Evolution Documentary takes the songs from demo form, featuring segments of their development to completed songs.  Raw Studio Mixes feature the unaltered voice of John Lennon with the songs mostly in a band-only form before overdubs.  There’s also the disc of selected Out-Takes (alternate versions).

It’s a lot to take-in six different versions of each song.  Overall, the Ultimate Mixes versions of the songs on CD/Album #1 are best, and are significantly better sounding than the original album.   It’s also interesting to hear the various mixes.  Besides hearing John’s voice sounding so natural, the various versions let us hear the instruments better, and gives us a good understanding of the creativity of the arrangements.

My favorite songs on the album are “Mind Games”, “Intuition”, and “I Know (I Know)”.  One recommendation from the Elements Mixes is the instrumental of “Intuition” with the bass and guitar.  Here it is:

According to the credits, it’s Gordon Edwards impressively on bass, and David Spinozza with the great guitar touches.  Since it’s without the main melody, it makes it hard to recognize the song, but the parts are cool on their own.

Fifty years ago, no one would have thought we’d have new versions of songs by Lennon & McCartney in 2024.

The plan is to have four movies about the Beatles, each from the viewpoint of one Beatle at a time.  Only guessing, but the films will probably be named John, Paul, George and Ringo.  The movies are being developed by well-known director Sam Mendez, who is working with the full music rights and approval from all The Beatles’ representatives.  All four movies are expected to be released in 2027.

And now the lead actors have been cast.

No, they won’t look exactly like The Beatles, but they’re all considered good actors.

Normally the announcement of a new Beatle project is exciting, and has me looking forward to its release.  Ever since this one was announced, I’ve been more wondering than excited.

What made The Beatles so special was having John Paul George & Ringo together.  Trying to look at the same important events from four different viewpoints could be amazingly repetitious.  Were their viewpoints so different?  It could also seem exceedingly long since it’s four movies.  Honestly, this seems better suited for a limited series.

The films are not the life stories of the individual Beatles.  They’re only going up to the 1970 breakup of the band when all four members were still in their 20’s.  The breakup also seems like a downer of an ending that we’ll get four times.

The “Here Comes The Sun” view is that Sam Mendez knows what he’s doing.  That each story will be interesting and entertaining, and that the films will become a treasured history of the world’s greatest band.

Here’s hoping younger fans find the films fascinating, and we older fans are still around in 2027 to enjoy them too!

One of the first uses of an expletive in a hit song was by Taylor Swift’s namesake, James Taylor, singing “Go away then damn ya” in “Don’t Let Me Be Lonely Tonight” in 1972.

A year later, Chicago had a #4 hit with “Just You ‘N’ Me” with the line “Loving you girl is so damn easy”…done in perfect harmony.  In 1976, the Eagles took it one step further by adding God to damn in “Life In The Fast Lane”.

Then when Rap took over, the floodgates of expletives opened.

Using expletives is neither right nor wrong.  It’s not a morality problem, because swearing is a part of life, and most of us do it.

The question being posed here is…do the expletives being used by the current biggest star in the world really serve the songs or not?

Taylor Swift’s Folklore is a great album, and the best part is the trilogy of  “Betty”, “Cardigan”, & “August”.  “Betty” is so strong melodically and lyrically, but there was a problem with it for some listeners.  James saying to Betty…”Would you tell me to go f-myself” (using the full word) was too harsh for the story, and the only part of the trilogy with an expletive..

The radio version used “Would you tell me to go straight to hell”.  That was enough to convey the story without distracting the listener away from it.  That “clean” version allowed it to go to #2 on the Country chart, and let Swift perform it at the CMA awards show.

Using expletives in a song might limit recordings of it by other artists, and possibly reduce its chances of being well thought of by future generations.  It takes away a song’s universal appeal.

Swearing is normal in some situations, but the f-word is wasted when it’s used casually.  Take Swift’s “Snow On The Beach”.  It’s a beautiful duet with Lana Del Rey, and the radio version should have been the official one.  The beauty is lost on the album track with the supposed casual-cool of using f-in’.  Completely unnecessary.  The same goes for “The Tortured Poets Department”.  It’s a really good song, and the f-word is so not needed that no one would miss it if it wasn’t there.

To Taylor Swift’s credit, she makes “clean” radio versions of her songs available.  On her best songs, she takes the time to record both versions equally well, with lyric substitutions that make sense.  Many of her songs with expletives are fine the way they are, but from personal preference I chose to also buy the radio versions of “Ivy”, “Maroon”, “Hits Different”, “Florida!!!”, “I Can Do It With A Broken Heart”, and “Down Bad”.  Those last two songs have major hit potential.

Before Folklore in 2020, Taylor Swift hadn’t used expletives in her songs.  Certainly some of her songs warrant the impact expletives can provide, but she may want to consider whether she’s overusing them, and that some of her songs would be better without them.

Topic change:  It was a little weird how quickly some people jumped on a few negative reviews of The Tortured Poets Department.  You’d have thought Swift’s career was tanking.  In reality, the problem was that the 31 songs required a lot more listening.  People had to get to know the songs before they could evaluate them.  The reviewer for CNN initially gave TTPD a poor review.  Then he listened to the album more, and wrote a new review saying it’s one her best albums.

Taylor Swift can rest easy.  The public has embraced the album.  Not only did it set records as it was released, it remained at #1 for twelve weeks (a personal best).  If it was a poor album, it would have faded fast.

We’ve always needed time to get to know albums.  When The Beatles released the White Album with 30 tracks, we honestly didn’t know how good it was the first time we heard it.  In time, we picked out the songs we liked.  They weren’t all good, but there certainly were enough good songs to make it a great purchase…just like The Tortured Poets Department.

Now we’re left with the question… How in the world did Taylor Swift have time to write and record a 31 song album with how amazingly busy she’s been?

Bonus:  Here’s the trilogy of Betty/Cardigan/August segued together.

So many lists try to rank the best albums of all time and inevitably fail. That’s not what this is.  There are no albums here that were wimpy on the charts, barely sold, or that most people don’t know.  Instead, this is a small list of Classic Rock albums that were highly impactful.  They set trends, set sales records, dominated the album chart, and lodged in the minds of the public.  This is not a ranking, but a chronology, and we start with an album that garnered unheard of fame, and changed the recording industry forever.

Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band was like no album before it.  The songs showed great imagination.  The recordings were extremely innovative in their topics, the instrumentation, and the way they were recorded.  There were no breaks between the album tracks, and some songs flowed directly into another.  For the first time, all the lyrics were printed right on the album cover.  It was 1967, and Sgt. Pepper launched a new age of how artists and fans looked at albums as whole works of art, instead of just a collection of songs.  In fact, The Beatles didn’t release any of the tracks as singles, and didn’t include the two hits they recorded during the album sessions…“Penny Lane” and “Strawberry Fields Forever”.  The album held #1 on the Billboard Top 200 for 15 weeks, and remains the best-selling album of the 1960s.  You might even remember that Johnny Rivers’ hit song “Summer Rain” contained the line… “Everybody kept on playing “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band”.  They still do.

The first #1 song of the new decade in 1970 was “Bridge Over Troubled Water”, and the album Bridge Over Troubled Water was not only #1, it became the best-selling album of all time (at that time).  It also contained the hits “The Boxer”, “Cecilia” and “El Condor Pasa (If I Could)”.  It went on to win six Grammy Awards, including Album Of The Year.  The album boasted a variety of musical styles, including World Music, which foreshadowed Paul Simon’s solo career.

Carole King’s Tapestry set a new standard for female artists, and helped lead the singer-songwriter movement of the 70s.  Her 1971 album topped the chart for 15 consecutive weeks and stayed on the Top 200 chart for a record number of weeks (318, 6-years)…broken later by one of our other blockbuster albums.  Tapestry also had a two-sided #1 single “It’s Too Late” and “I Feel The Earth Move” which spent five weeks at the peak of the Hot 100.  Carole wrote or co-wrote all of the songs, including “You’ve Got A Friend”, which she kindly allowed James Taylor to release, and it also went to #1.  Tapestry is the third of our albums to receive the Grammy Award for Album Of The Year.

Also in 1971, but on the other side of the Rock spectrum was Led Zeppelin IV.  At the time, the title of the album was just the band’s name, but the Roman numeral was added for clarity.  Although the album “only” made it to #2, it went on to be among the very best-selling albums of all time and a major influence on the Hard Rock genre.  It’s filled with popular songs, including “Stairway To Heaven”, “Rock And Roll”, “Black Dog”, and the folk-style “Going To California”.

A true blockbuster album, The Dark Side Of The Moon by Pink Floyd was released in 1973.  Although the album only hit #1 for one week, it became the dominant album in terms of longevity.  It was on the Billboard 200 album chart for over 15 years, a total of 741 nonconsecutive weeks.  No other album is close.  Dark Side is one of the best-selling albums of all time, and is always among the highest ranked in any list of best Rock albums.  Popular songs on the album include “Money”, “Time”, and “Us And Them”.

Welcome to the Hotel California.  It was released in December of 1976, and was an immediate success in sales, critically, and on the album chart, with eight weeks at #1.  It contained the #1 hit singles “New Kid In Town” & “Hotel California”.   “Life In The Fast Lane” would probably have made #1 too if it hadn’t contained an expletive.  In recent years Hotel California has ranked as high as number three on the all time best sellers list.  The title song won Record Of The Year at the Grammy Awards, but lost the Album Of The Year Grammy to our next blockbuster.

Just two months after the Eagles’ best album came out, Fleetwood Mac released their best…Rumours.  It was a phenomenon, spending a total of 31 weeks at #1.  The album was filled with great songs, and FM stations played nearly all of them.  Tracks included “Dreams” #1, “Don’t Stop”, “Go Your Own Way”, “The Chain”, “You Make Loving Fun”, and “Gold Dust Woman”.  Rumours was certified 21x platinum in the U.S. alone with worldwide sales estimated at about double that.  Just last year (2023, 46 years after its release), it was the 9th highest selling album on vinyl.

Born In The U.S.A. is the only Classic Rock album to put seven songs into the Top-10 of the Billboard singles chart.  In 1984 and 1985, Bruce Springsteen was all over the radio, and his videos were heavily featured on MTV.  Besides the title song, the biggest hits were “Dancing In The Dark”, “Cover Me”, “I’m On Fire”, “Glory Days” and “My Hometown”.  Bruce never had another album that was even close in popularity to this blockbuster, which is estimated to have sold over 30-million copies worldwide.

Dire Straits’ Brothers In Arms was the album that transitioned music into the digital age.  It was the first major album to be all digitally recorded.  It was also the album that helped consumers move from vinyl records to compact discs.  The record came out first, and then when the CD was released, listeners found out the songs were more complete.  The tracks had been edited down for the vinyl, because of the time restrictions of the format.  For quite some time, Brothers In Arms was the biggest selling CD.  The hit songs included “Money For Nothing” (the MTV Video Of The Year for 1985), “So Far Away”, and “Walk Of Life”.

Honorable Mentions:

These albums were blockbusters too, but not quite at the impact level of the others.  They range in order from 1969 to 1986.  There are many other great and influential Classic Rock albums that could be added to these, but by the late 1980s Rock’s prominence started to lessen.  Classic Rock albums dominated from about 1965 to 1986, even though we’ve had many excellent albums since that time.

Here are the statistics.  In the 1960s, 8 of the top 10 selling albums were Rock.  In the 1970s it was 7 of 10.  The 1980s, 4 of 10.  And by the 1990s, only 1 of the top 10 selling albums was Rock.

Maybe every generation feels the same way about their music, but it was exciting experiencing the golden age of Classic Rock as the albums were being released.

That’s the straight-forward title of the new documentary that’s streaming on Disney+.  If you’re a Beach Boys fan, you’ll enjoy it and learn even more about one of America’s top bands.  Only snippets of their songs are used, so novices are encouraged to stream some of the group’s biggest hits and the Pet Sounds album, and then watch the documentary.

Like the recent book, The Beach Boys by The Beach Boys, there are a lot of archival comments by all of the members.  The comments are insightful, plus there are recent interviews with original members Mike Love and Al Jardine.  In addition, there are contributions from musicians who were influenced by the band.

Director Frank Marshall does a really good job of selecting the most important aspects of the group’s development.  It’s difficult to get The Beach Boys story told in less than two hours.  Sure there are details left out, but overall it’s a welcome summary of the band.

The Wilson brothers, Brian, Dennis & Carl, plus 1st cousin Mike Love, and friend Al Jardin were the original Beach Boys.  The documentary explains the group’s lineup changes and additions for touring and recording.  The band built a great library of material based on surfing, cars, girls, and sunshine.  Then when Brian Wilson stopped touring, he spent time writing and arranging The Beach Boys best album, Pet Sounds.

By now, fans know the album was not a successful seller when it was released in 1966.  Yet it’s thought to be among the greatest albums ever recorded.  The documentary accents the fact that Pet Sounds turned platinum in 2000, 34 years after its release, but that’s only one-million copies.  Obviously, Pet Sounds is still under-appreciated by the general public.  The album has been compared to Revolver and Sgt. Pepper, but those sold around 30-million copies each.  The Beach Boys and The Beatles were fans of each other’s music, and influenced one another mostly during 1965 & 1966.

One of the positive aspects of the documentary is how it shows The Beach Boys were more than just Brian Wilson.  Brian gets credit for being a musical genius, and there wouldn’t have been The Beach Boys without him, but the contributions of the other members are highlighted too.

Mike Love may have busted some awkward moves as a live performer, but he quickly wrote lyrics when needed for “California Girls” (in the recording studio hallway) and “Good Vibrations” (dictating to his wife as he drove to the vocal session).  He also provided lyrics and lead vocals for dozens of other hits.  Carl Wilson took over more lead vocals when Brian had problems with drugs and his mental health.  Carl also produced some of the group’s recordings.  You’ll see that all of The Beach Boys were multi-talented.

For example, Bruce Johnston wrote “I Write The Songs”, which won the Grammy Award for Song Of The Year in 1978.  Bruce says the “I” refers to God, because of the way songs often seem to come to songwriters in a spiritual way.  Johnston also wrote “Disney Girls” for The Beach Boys.  Art Garfunkel did a great cover version.

The documentary cleverly takes us full circle from The Beach Boys’ first album cover shoot, to the remaining members of the group at the same location 61 years later.  The Beach Boys documentary is not all sun and fun, but it’s worth taking the safari through it.

Extra:  Random notes made while viewing the documentary…

We hear the impressive separated vocal parts of “Don’t Worry Baby”.

Brian says he was “pretty jealous” seeing The Beatles on The Ed Sullivan Show, but “They got us off our asses.”

On Brian’s breakdown in 1967 he said… “I was a millionaire, and I was able to get ahold of all these drugs, and they messed me up.”

Bruce Johnston said at one time in the early 70s The Beach Boys were so uncool their concert fee actually dropped to just $5,000.

The 1974 release of Beach Boys hits, Endless Summer, went to #1, sold over 3-million copies, and made the group a successful live act again as their early songs reached newer generations.

Of course when Mike Love sued Brian Wilson to get credit for writing lyrics for some songs (he won), there was this headline:

At least the documentary is no bummer.

Many of us saw Let It Be in theaters as soon as it became available in 1970.  Now 54-years later, a restored version of Let It Be is streaming on Disney+.

So how does the new version compare with the original theater experience?   The film has been completely restored, and it actually looks a lot better than it did in 1970.  Let It Be was not movie-screen quality, because it was originally shot for television (and is still in the old TV ratio instead of wide screen).  The new look of the film brightens the whole perception of it.

By 1970, most Beatles fans had seen A Hard Day’s Night, Help, & Yellow Submarine in theaters.  We also knew The Beatles from their often humorous press conferences.  What we had never seen was The Beatles working and creating in a recording studio.  It was raw seeing them in real life instead of acting, and the playing was not smooth, but kind of herky-jerky rehearsals as they explored their new songs, and jammed on old cover songs.

There are a couple of highlights among the rehearsals and jamming.  We get two of George Harrison’s songs back-to-back, “I Me Mine” and “For You Blue” in nearly complete form.  “I Me Mine” includes John & Yoko waltzing.  “For You Blue “ has cool instrumental solos from John Lennon on lap slide guitar, and Paul McCartney on a prepared piano (to make the sound more percussive).

We had never imagined John, Paul, George & Ringo in disagreements.  That new reality became what the movie was known for.  Prior to the movie’s release, The Beatles had just broken up, and people thought this was the documentation of it.  The film and the Get Back documentary did show there were fractures in the group, but the band members were able to come together for Abbey Road later that same year.

Here are two photos next to each other that kind of sum-up Let It Be.

Look at the range of emotions between the two photos.  They appear to be taken in the same room, and on the same day.

All rock bands have their ups and downs. We didn’t know back then, but The Beatles having disagreements while they were recording was nothing new.  Paul left briefly during Revolver, Ringo left during The White Album, George left during Let It Be, and John quit the group after they recorded Abbey Road.  The public wasn’t aware of the breakup until just before the release of Let It Be.  Seeing the movie again shows it is not as negative as its reputation.  The Beatles were usually working well together, and mostly in a very friendly way.

If we step back just a little to think about what The Beatles accomplished during the filming, it’s amazing.  They came into the project needing to write a whole album’s worth of songs.  In less than one month, January of 1969, they wrote the songs for Let It Be (with three #1 singles), plus there were portions of 11 songs (shown in Get Back) that appeared on Abbey Road, and a few songs that ended up on their solo albums.  They completed recording the tracks for the Let It Be album, except “I Me Mine” and some overdubbing later.

Let It Be has something the Get Back documentary sorely lacked…complete performances of the key songs “Let It Be”, “Two Of Us”, “The Long And Winding Road”, and “For You Blue”.  It was a real treat to see The Beatles perform them in the studio, and with video and audio quality better than originally shown.

Another difference between the 8-hour Get Back and the 82-minute Let It Be is that there’s limited dialogue in the original film.  It’s mostly The Beatles rehearsing and jamming.  The infamous disagreement between Paul & George about a guitar part, and Paul talking to John about George not wanting to perform live are the negative parts of the movie.  There are more scenes of problems in the Get Back documentary, even though the tone is positive overall.

Director Michael Lindsay-Hogg and Get Back director and film restorer Peter Jackson do an interesting 4-minute discussion before the film starts.  You can see how happy Lindsay-Hogg is to finally have his movie streaming after having it disappear for 40 years.  We get to see Lindsay-Hogg in the film, and he was about the same age as The Beatles.  He certainly did superior work in capturing the rooftop performance.

Considering the cramped space, there are a lot of good camera angles, and his crew did a great job of getting the reactions of the Londoners who heard the music on the streets below.

Early in the film, we see Lindsay-Hogg concentrating the majority of the time on Paul McCartney.  Some may interpret this as ego or bossiness on McCartney’s part, but it’s just the reality of what was happening.  The majority of the songs are written by McCartney, so he’s leading the recordings.  John Lennon had withdrawn from his once leadership role, probably because he was more heavily into drugs at that time.  Neither George Harrison nor Ringo Starr demonstrate the dominant personality traits of Lennon & McCartney.

The last 30-minutes is the movie’s payoff.  That half-Hour includes the final studio performances of “Two Of Us”, “Let It Be”, and “The Long And Winding Road”.

Then comes the rooftop concert and The Beatles are really connecting with each other, particularly John and Paul.  The songs are “Get Back”, “Don’t Let Me Down”, “I’ve Got A Feeling”, “One After 909”, “Dig A Pony”, and another version of “Get Back” as the police arrive to shut down all the loud music.

After The Beatles “passed the audition” and the credits roll, we also get an early version of “Oh Darling”.  It’s quite different from the Abbey Road recording, and Paul & John have fun with it.  There are also some cool keyboard flourishes by Billy Preston.  Since the Let It Be version of “Oh Darling” isn’t readily available, it’s included here:  (2:24 long)

Let It Be probably isn’t a movie we’ll watch often, but along with the Get Back documentary, it’s an important historical record.  If only someone had filmed at least portions of The Beatles in the studio during the making of Rubber Soul, Revolver, and Sgt. Pepper.

Extra:  The film’s songs in order…the first 20 are mostly incomplete.

1. Paul’s Piano Intro
2. Don’t Let Me own
3. Maxwell’s Silver Hammer
4. Two Of Us
5. I’ve Got A Feeling
6. Oh Darling
7. One After 909
8. I Bought A Piano The Other Day (piano boogie)
9. Two Of Us
10. Across The Universe
11. Dig A Pony
12. Suzie Parker
13. I Me Mine
14. For You Blue
15. Besame Mucho
16. Octopus’ Garden
17. You Really Got A Hold On Me
18. The Long And Winding Road
19. Medley: Shake Rattle & Roll/Kansas City/Miss Ann/Lawdy Miss Clawdy
20. Dig It
21. Two Of Us (complete songs from this point)
22. Let It Be
23. The Long And Winding Road
24. Get Back
25. Don’t Let Me Down
26. I’ve Got A Feeling
27. One After 909
28. Dig A Pony
29. Get Back
30. Oh Darling (playing over credits)

In reality, the rooftop concert was on January 30th, and the final studio recordings of “Two Of Us”, “Let It Be” & “The Long And Winding Road” were recorded on January 31st, the last day of filming.

And some extra photos:

As our Classic Rock artists are ending their careers, we’re getting a lot of “Greatest Hits”, “Best Of”, and “Anthology” collections.  Are they needed?

A recent release is the Eagles’ 3-CD or 6-Record To The Limit: The Essential Collection.  Two-thirds of it is the Eagles’ studio recordings, and the rest is many of those same songs performed live.

The songs are in the chronological order of their albums.

If you’re an Eagles fan, you probably have most or all of these recordings.  The collection is definitely not essential for us.  Maybe it’s for young people who are new to the band.  The 3-CD set is reasonably priced at about $26, and the 6-Record set is about $140.

One of the impressive aspects of the Eagles is that they were always very good at performing their songs live.  The problem with the live set here is that they chose live versions that are almost identical to the studio recordings.  From time to time the Eagles rearranged their songs live…such as an acoustic version of “Hotel California”, or having Glenn Frey sing “Take It To The Limit” after Randy Meisner left the band.  Giving us some alternate versions like that would have made the live album more interesting and differentiated it from the studio recordings.  In addition, they could have included some of their solo songs that were often played at Eagles concerts.  Those would have been very welcome.

There are good recordings of the Eagles playing Don Henley’s “Boys Of Summer”, “New York Minute”, “Sunset Grill” and “All She Wants To Do Is Dance”.  Joe Walsh could be much better represented with Eagles live recordings of “Funk 49”, “Walk Away”, “Rocky Mountain Way” and “All Night Long”.  Including some of these would have improved the collection.

Another new release is from Bruce Springsteen.

Both cover photos are from the Born To Run photo shoot.

The one on the left is the new collection, but it’s not an improvement over his Greatest Hits as you can see below.

Bruce Springsteen is an iconic artist, but if we’re being honest, his best songs were on the albums leading up to his Greatest Hits (as you can see above).  In addition, even though his extremely popular album Born In The U.S.A. had seven Top 10 hits, only two are on the new collection.  Certainly the reason is because his label will be doing a special edition release of that album someday.

And now we have it.  It was released on June 14th, 2024.

It’s not a box set.  It’s a single album pressed on red vinyl, with just the original songs.  It has a gatefold cover with the paper inserts you see above.  The list price is $34.98.  There’s not a 40th anniversary CD version.

Some artists (or their families) have good reasons to release a new collection, such as Tom Petty’s Best of Everything that gathered all his best solo and group songs covering his entire career.  Also it’s great to have collections that include unreleased songs, alternate versions, demos, or remixes of mono or poor stereo versions.

With so many artists having sold the rights to their music, we can depend on a steady flow of releases as those buyers want to make money on their investments.

Maybe we’re just in the “best of” times.

Once it seemed like the original film of Let It Be would be lost forever.  It hadn’t been available for 40 years.  Now the movie has been restored, and started streaming on Disney+ on May 8th, 2024.

After taking years to restore all the original footage filmed in 1969, producer/director Peter Jackson released the 8-hour award-winning documentary Get Back in 2021.  Now Jackson has worked with the original director, Michael Lindsay-Hogg, to complete the restoration of Let It Be.

Interestingly, Lindsay-Hogg asked Jackson to give the restoration a look that appears more like film, instead of the pristine digital look of the documentary.  Peter Jackson says the documentary he made leads up to the film, and now the presentation is complete.  The biggest fault with the documentary was that we saw all the songs being rehearsed, but only the five rooftop songs were shown in completed form.  The Let It Be film has taken care of that problem.

The completed songs we missed in Get Back are… “Let It Be”, “Two Of Us”, “The Long And Winding Road” and “For You Blue”.  At the time it seemed unthinkable that we didn’t get to see the completed songs, but Jackson and Lindsay-Hogg were probably already planning to rerelease Let It Be.  Of course the music in the film has been restored and remixed.

There’s no word as to whether Let It Be will be released in a physical form, such as Blu-Ray disc.  So I had to renew my Disney+ subscription.  There’s a review of the movie on this site.  Here’s the link:

https://ontherecords.net/2024/05/beatles-let-it-be-movie54-years-later-review/

At some future date there will likely be a “Super Version” that combines the best scenes from Get Back and Let It Be.

Historical Note:  The last time Let It Be was released on video:

Those are the two sides of an RCA video disc from 1981.  I had the disc, but the whole disc player system wasn’t very good.  I did dub all the full-song performances from the disc onto a video tape so we could watch them without searching through the disc.  It seems like ancient technology.

It was over 50-years ago (1973) that we first heard Billy Joel and “Piano Man”.  Joel then became one of the world’s most successful singer/songwriters, with 20-years of hit singles and hit albums.

He even outsold Elvis Presley and Michael Jackson in the U.S.  But that was yesterday, and yesterday’s gone.

“Today” (2024), Billy Joel released his first original Rock/Pop song in over 30-years, “Turn The Lights Back On”.  On March 28th, 2024 he performed his 100th sold out show at the 20,000-seat Madison Square Garden in New York City.  Except for a time during COVID, Joel performed at M.S.G. every month since 2014.

After month’s of promotion, CBS televised an edited version (14 of 25 songs) from that 100th concert on April 14th, 2024.

The concert was beautifully filmed and edited.  Billy Joel was in very good voice (for a 75 year old), and the band was top notch.  TV viewers in the Eastern & Central Time Zones had the concert start a half-hour late, because of a golf broadcast overrun.  Then near the conclusion of the show, Joel’s signature song “Piano Man” was cut off mid-song as the network went to local news.  The outcry was such that CBS scheduled a rebroadcast.  They should have aired it commercial free.  The original broadcast had so many commercial breaks that four individual songs had breaks on both sides of them!

By the way, “You May Be Right” mixed in some of Led Zeppelin’s “Rock And Roll” to great effect.  Here’s the running order of the original 25 songs from the March 28th concert, as shown on the setlist website.  Of the songs left out of the TV concert, “The Longest Time” deserved to be included…in place of one of those commercial breaks.

It’s been exactly 40 years (April of 1984) since my wife and I saw Billy Joel live in concert.  It was his Innocent Man tour.   He was really excellent, and he looked like this.

It was a pleasure to see him in the new television concert, along with saxophonist Mark Rivera who was also at the 1984 show.  Billy Joel may not look the same…

…but he has the same sense of humor, and still delivers a great show.  Here are some screenshots from the broadcast (click to enlarge).

While Billy Joel has been prominent in New York during his decade-long concert series at The Garden, he was mostly out of the national picture for decades.  However he’s been doing short tours recently, including with Stevie Nicks and with Sting.

If you watched the TV concert, you saw that the audience was loving it, and were enthusiastically singing along.  Joel charted 33 Top 40 hits and has a bunch of famous album tracks.  So he could have played for a lot longer…except CBS would have cut him off!