It was 50 years ago today....

Discussions about The Beatles never fail to get everybody goin'! We who bought their albums at the time of their original release have unfortunately heard them far too many times, and it's easy to take them for granted. Rubber Soul is a really, really good album, and they had become a great recording group by the time they did it. John had discovered Dylan, and it shows. If you watch the tapes of the two of them traveling in a taxi together when Dylan was touring England with The Hawks (who became The Band in '68. George and Ringo became instant fans while seeing them on that tour), you can see John trying to be as cool as he obviously thinks Bob is. Speaking of Bob, he introduced the Jazz cigarette to The Beatles, and it too shows!

Paul had greatly improved as a bass player (thanks to discovering James Jamerson of The Funk Brothers, the Motown house band), and George's guitar playing, though it was starting to sound somewhat old-fashioned in the wake of Jeff Beck's playing in The Yardbirds, along with the emerging white Blues bands like Paul.Butterfield (with Mike Bloomfield, whom Dylan had starting using on his recordings in '65, on guitar), was peaking (his little solo in "Nowhere Man" is one of my faves. To hear where it came from, listen to the guitar playing by James Burton in Ricky Nelson's "Young World" ;-). It shortly thereafter went way south, as he became infatuated with the Sitar, with which I can not at all relate. But George better than Hank Garland, the guitarist on a lot of the Everly Brothers recordings? In his dreams! Get yourself a Garland collection and be amazed. Don Everly was a fantastic rhythm guitarist, much better than John Lennon. He played a lot of their songs' chords as inversions, which was way over Lennon's head. Their drummer, Buddy Harman, is on of my Top 5 drummers of all time list. He was Nashville's Hal Blaine, if you know what I mean.

Ringo's best drumming imo is that on Rubber Soul. He was now getting a great sound, learning how to damp the heads to get the dead, thumpy sound he was after (for whatever reason, they don't sound nearly as good imo on Revolver). He later became a huge fan of Levon Helm, who also mastered the art of drum tone. When I went to Levon's book release and signing, Ringo showed up to get his copy. To hear why I consider The Band a great Rock 'n' Roll one, but The Beatles not, listen to Ringo try to play along with them at the end of The Last Waltz. They leave him in the dust, he plodding along behind them.

Brian Wilson of course heard Rubber Soul, and it's excellence inspired his next album, Pet Sounds. He then started work on what could have been the album of all time, Smile. But that's a subject for another time, except to say that Lennon & McCartney had heard about it from Derek Taylor, who had been The Beatles press agent but was now working for The Beach Boys. The Smile tapes were kept under lock & key (Brian thought Phil Spector might try to steal his ideas!), but John and Paul came to America to try to hear them. They were working on Sgt. Pepper, and the rivalry between Paul and Brian, especially, was intense. Taylor snuck John and Paul into the studio and played them the tapes. If and when you hear the Smile album, you can guess how they reacted;-) .

I liked the white album when it came out, but also Procol Harum's debut, The Nice ( Emerson's pre-ELP group, whom I saw live at The Fillmore), Moby Grape's debut, and the rest of the emerging new groups and bands. The one I didn't "get" was Music From Big Pink. I could not understand what all the fuss was about, and gave up trying. But in the summer of '69, as I have recounted here before, all that changed when I saw and heard Dewey Martin (of Buffalo Springfield) and his band play live.  

Harold, I very much enjoy your post directly above. Nice to hear someone else give ABBA their due!

I imagine you know John Lennon loved "A Whiter Shade Of Pale", playing it incessantly they say. But I really must dispute you assertion that Gary Brooker and Hendrix "created the very first attempts to (write? create?) serious and important rock music". What do you consider "Like A Rolling Stone"? "God Only Knows"?

Leonard Berstein wrote, produced, and narrated a TV Special that aired on CBS in the spring of ’67, entitled Inside Pop---The Rock Revolution. One of the main segments is about Brian Wilson and his upcoming Smile album. Brian is shown playing "Surf’s Up" (lyrics by Van Dyke Parks, a much better lyricist that Brooker’s songwriting partner and Hendrix, imo) on the piano (yes, the one in the sandbox ;-) in his Bel Air mansion, and Berstein explains why he is so impressed. The show is viewable on You Tube.

To see and hear the genius of Brian Wilson explained and demonstrated, watch the You Tube video wherein a music teacher breaks down "God Only Knows", it's whole structure and construction. Chord by chord, the melody, harmonies, and counterpoint. It is mind blowingly great!

It doesn’t matter what anyone, whether informed pedant or shameless ignoramus, thinks about The Beatles - good or bad. Popular music today would be something else altogether had they not existed. Apart from the music they created, they changed recording studio practices. Culturally and musically they were a seismic event that lasted the better part of a decade. They altered the landscape (to use that cliche) and there ain’t no going back. They weren’t operating in a vacuum of course, and no mention of the Fab 4 should be made without invoking the names of SS. Martin and Emerick.  Love ’em or hate ’em, doesn’t matter - The Beatles transformed popular music like no other group before or since. Some of us think the transformation was for the better.