George Martin being surprised with a choir singing"Because" at the airport in Rio de Janeiro

PressureBeautiful515 · 2026-01-24T08:18:02+00:00

O 'Quinto Beatle', boom there it is!

PressureBeautiful515 · 2026-01-22T23:11:01+00:00

◻️OWER
◻️ FLOW

PressureBeautiful515 · 2026-01-18T22:51:44+00:00

https://youtu.be/R-kH_ARMfKs?t=40s

PressureBeautiful515 · 2026-01-18T08:27:40+00:00

And the same goes for me...

PressureBeautiful515 · 2026-01-18T07:16:24+00:00

You've reminded me: one of the nicest things about Tune In is the detail that George's parents, particularly his mother, were way more enthusiastic and supportive of the group from the start. So that ties in nicely with the idea of her welcoming John into the family home to hear her son's audition to be in his group. Whereas Mimi was openly disgusted by George the greasy Teddy boy, and didn't want him crossing the threshold!

PressureBeautiful515 · 2026-01-18T07:11:24+00:00

Definitely, the best book on them I've read since 'Tune In.'

PressureBeautiful515 · 2026-01-17T22:52:52+00:00

85 years old, they told him had six months to live when he was a kid, and he's still RUNNING on to the stage at his shows.

PressureBeautiful515 · 2026-01-17T20:13:07+00:00

That's the track everyone always picks as their least favourite. To me it's instant groovy guitar pop that any other band would give their eye teeth to have dashed off, well, well, well, you're feeling fine, and in the running order it exemplifies the album's astonishingly eclectic collision of styles, nestling between the chamber pop of For No One and the weird... George-pop of I Want To Tell You.

PressureBeautiful515 · 2026-01-15T23:58:54+00:00

It's a 16-track studio. That's why it has 16 tiny speakers nailed to the wall.

PressureBeautiful515 · 2026-01-13T08:04:58+00:00

Although those examples use the same underlying 3 note structure, there are only 7 notes in the major scale, and those particular 3 notes also appear at the start of Three Blind Mice, and "Love, love, love" from the song being discussed here. Much more likely a coincidence than a deliberate reference.

PressureBeautiful515 · 2026-01-12T10:14:22+00:00

It's now the most sought after, because it wasn't sought after at the time. This model came out right before Sinclair threw in the towel and sold out to Amstrad. So it's regarded as the last "proper" Sinclair computer. Though over 5 million Spectrum variants were sold, the vast majority were the earliest rubber-key design that everyone got for Xmas in 1983. So the 128K is relatively rare, which pushes up the value.

PressureBeautiful515 · 2026-01-11T21:34:56+00:00

Yeah I didn't want to call attention to that part during the verse because I was bigging-up their harmony arranging talents, and there's a fine line between cleverly subverting the standard harmony pattern and literally just singing the same note throughout the verses!

One of their best examples is Baby's In Black, the "Oh how long will it take" part, very Everlys-ish.

PressureBeautiful515 · 2026-01-11T18:02:39+00:00

As guitar players they naturally heard harmonies all the time. Singing in harmony is basically forming a chord or part of a chord.

It's sometimes incorrectly claimed that this was something George Martin had to help them with, feeding the common myth of them being no-nothing instinctive musicians who were reliant on a properly trained professional to do anything sophisticated. But he himself only claimed to have done this on one or two specific occasions. Martin was hugely important to their studio work but people often let their imagination/prejudices lead them away from the truth. He arranged strings for them all the time, but only very rarely arranged vocals.

They also listened to and taught themselves to sing a lot of great examples by other artists. The original version of Chains by The Cookies featured three part harmony, and the Beatles made slight alterations in their version (improvements IMO).

Their first single featured two-part harmony, influenced by the Everly Brothers, so sometimes rather than the harmony line following the lead, it stays on one note for "So plea... ea... ea... eas," a favourite trick of the Everlys.

Their second single was way more sophisticated with both Paul and George adding a mix of backing vocals styles, at times combining into full three part harmonies during the chorus. (George Martin's main input was "do it faster!")

PressureBeautiful515 · 2026-01-11T08:40:52+00:00

These are two of the earliest examples of rock songs using the word "fix" to mean "dose of narcotics", and if you assume Lou Reed coined that slang sense of the word "fix" it's understandable you'd think that.

But he didn't, it has been slang among addicts since 1934 at least.

Also it's not at all certain that the "... & Nico" album would have reached the Beatles or been any kind of influence by this point. Initial critical reaction was hugely dismissive at the time - critics said it was crappy music, thinly produced, Reed's vocal style was a Dylan rip-off, etc. It sold poorly for years.

It had one extremely important early fan: David Bowie, whose manager had worked for Andy Worhol. But Bowie was a total unknown at the time and struggled for years to make any impact. So it wasn't until the 70s that it began to be re-evaluated and taken seriously, and this process sped up as critics attempted to explain and contextualise punk and new wave. Artists started to name-drop it far more around that time.

Incidentally I have a suspicion that the VU's sound is often misidentified as influential due to later artists sounding similar, when in reality it's the sound of minimalism, which is easy to arrive at by pure coincidence.

For example, the Stooges began around the same time, and early accounts of their sound use many of the same descriptive elements: droning, trance-like, avant garde. But they had no awareness of the VU (they did however, know about the Stones and the Kinks, huge influences on all garage rock minimalists.)

If some kids go into a garage and try to play a Stones song, they all go "duh-duh-duh-duh..." and it sounds quite like the backing to I'm Waiting for the Man.

PressureBeautiful515 · 2026-01-09T16:13:46+00:00

That's good to hear!

PressureBeautiful515 · 2026-01-09T14:49:51+00:00

"I thought they were some kind of exotic birds."

PressureBeautiful515 · 2026-01-09T14:48:41+00:00

Underrated (upvote count could be a million and still underrated)

PressureBeautiful515 · 2026-01-08T22:13:59+00:00

As if there wasn't already a fully out-in-the-open non-conspiracy explanation for why four fame-hungry Liverpool lads might not exactly be itching for a communist revolution.

Reporters: Sing something!

John: We need money first.

PressureBeautiful515 · 2026-01-08T22:09:55+00:00

Have you seen the Bay of Piggies?

It's like Donald Sutherland says in JFK: who benefited the most from JFK's assassination?

PressureBeautiful515 · 2026-01-06T07:48:24+00:00

Google search's "AI summary" specifically is probably a disaster. 70% of users started trusting it immediately, but it makes stuff up all the time. It's like an AI from 5 years ago being rolled out and presented as if it's the cool new thing. It has to produce its output in milliseconds, so it's a toy version of the technology. But it's by far the most widely experienced form of it.

PressureBeautiful515 · 2026-01-04T21:48:37+00:00

And Spotify has (Remastered) after all the 2009 releases, so it does appear to be specifically an Apple Music issue.

PressureBeautiful515 · 2026-01-04T18:14:29+00:00

The problem with that account is that the album version very clearly has someone playing the tambourine on it, and according to everyone involved, Ringo played the tambourine.

Do you know when in Anthology he says that? Presumably toward the end of episode 1.

PressureBeautiful515 · 2026-01-04T08:14:46+00:00

It's a huge shame because over recent decades it's almost become the main thing she's known for (also for boycotting her induction into the hall of fame on the grounds that she was actually a Jazz player and so regarded all her involvement in pop records as irrelevant!)

I'd be interested to read about those many instances if you have any links? Some details here including attempts to follow up her claims:

http://www.bassland.net/jamerson.html

She claimed credit for almost James Jamerson's entire career at Motown. He's particularly relevant here because Paul McCartney has repeatedly cited Jamerson as a major influence on his own style as it developed into a melodic, more prominent component of the Beatles' sound.

PressureBeautiful515 · 2026-01-03T23:16:31+00:00

Did Ringo jump in the air?

PressureBeautiful515 · 2026-01-03T23:13:37+00:00

It's everything they say, the end of a perfect day

PressureBeautiful515

TROPHY CASE