Flashback Friday: 14 Blog Posts About The Beatles

Bob Boone, owner of the West Theatre, introducing
The Revolution 5. Thank you, Bob for what you have 
given the City of Duluth by renovating these two theaters.

Thursday evening I had an opportunity to see The Revolution 5, a Beatles tribute band from Minnesota, and, as expected, it was fun, nostalgic and energizing. I'd seen them in 2012 in a smaller venue, and last night the West Theatre was packed as the team of five performed all 27 of The Beatles' number one hits, plus a few additional bonus classics. 

Though outside the City of Duluth was experiencing a smothering blizzard, no one (as far as I could tell) here in the theater could care less. I intended to check to see the road conditions during intermission but forgot that, swept up in the music and memories. Hopefully you all reached home safely.

When we saw the group in 2012 I was impressed. I didn't really prepare in any way. We got tickets and went to an exhilarating show. This time I listened to most of their albums between the time we got tickets two months ago and the show last night. Besides being famously talents songwriters, they really were innovative musicians. 

Rather than write a review of last night's show I thought I'd pull together some of the blog posts I've written about the Beatles over the years. To catch a review of the show I recommend that you pick up next week's Duluth Reader and look for the story by Jill "Jillybones" Fisher who covers the local music scene here. You can also find her review of this energizing concert here at the Reader Duluth website.

In the meantime, enjoy these stories about The Beatles

Tim Hatfield's Beatles Tribute Now In Print: When We Find Ourselves in Times of Trouble 

https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/9146215066182995239/7605976059959242264

The 10 Most Expensive Vinyl Records Ever Sold

https://pioneerproductions.blogspot.com/2021/04/the-10-most-expensive-vinyl-records.html

John Lennon Slits a Vein and Unburdens His Soul In "Yer Blues"

https://pioneerproductions.blogspot.com/2018/05/john-lennon-slits-vein-and-unburdens.html

Tomorrow Never Knows: The Beatles' Turning Point?

https://pioneerproductions.blogspot.com/2018/04/tomorrow-never-knows-beatles-turning.html

Dutch Beatles Authority Chantal de Paus Addresses Beatles Conspiracy Theories and How the Fab Four Became So Popular 

https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/9146215066182995239/2418279277774081471

50 Years Ago Today: The Beatles' Revolver Fires Imaginations

https://pioneerproductions.blogspot.com/2016/08/50-years-ago-today-beatles-revolver.html

Back In The U.S.S.R. -- Beatles Just Having Fun Causes a Stir

https://pioneerproductions.blogspot.com/2016/07/back-in-ussr-beatles-just-having-fun.html

A Beatles Timeline, Three Beatles Trivia Quizzes and More

https://pioneerproductions.blogspot.com/2015/03/a-beatles-timeline-three-beatles-trivia.html

The Revolution 5: All Beatles, All Night Long

https://pioneerproductions.blogspot.com/2012/01/revolution-5-all-beatles-all-night-long.html

Helter Skelter, Revisited

https://pioneerproductions.blogspot.com/2009/10/helter-skelter.html

Nevada Bob MeetsThe Beatles and 14,000 Screaming Beatles Fans

https://pioneerproductions.blogspot.com/2021/12/nevada-bob-meetsthe-beatles-and-14000.html

Was Ringo a Starr? Oh Yeah.

https://pioneerproductions.blogspot.com/2016/06/was-ringo-starr-oh-yeah.html

 

George Harrison and the Concert for Bangladesh

https://ennyman.medium.com/george-harrison-and-the-concert-for-bangladesh-8802fd91464b?sk=21e0a740613a8d8c3475b0fcec06c067

A Leadership Lesson from John Lennon

https://audacityhr.com/a-leadership-lesson-from-john-lennon/

Personally, I think their most remarkable achievement was the moment they occupied the top five positions on the Billboard Hot 100 simultaneously. It was an extraordinary display of cultural influence and popularity, showing not just one hit song but complete dominance of the charts—a rare feat that few artists in music history have ever matched. What do you think?

Ringo and George on Aspel & Co.,--YouTube and History

Photo by Elijah O'Donnell on Unsplash

YouTube is definitely one of the phenomenon of our time. Currently 1.3 billion people use YouTube and it hasn't even reached its 15th birthday. The infrastructure that is in place must be powerfully advanced since 300 hours of video are being uploaded every minute.  Yes, minute! And 5 billion hours of video watched every day. Yes, billion. Every day.

You might say that the Google has a vested interest in keeping it all going and now currently supports a 2000 man army of Minutemen on two artillery bases to protect the YouTube Complex.  (Please: THIS is Fake News. I made that up.)

YouTube was started in 2005 by three former PayPal employees who became quite rich when thy sold the video-sharing service to Google a year later.

According to surveys, 6 out of 10 people prefer Online Video to television, which is why we're seeing such a massive amount of content being created for online distribution. In part, this is one of the drivers behind the Catalyst Content Festival which will be held in Duluth next month. The demand for quality content is exceeding the supply.

Exceeding supply? 300 hours being uploaded a minute and the thirst is greater?

Re-read the sentence: The demand for quality content...  is insatiable.

Catalyst exists to help more content creators become more professional, to be suitably prepared for working in this expanding industry.

* * * *
This past month I read Paul McCartney: The Life and found it to be an exciting, insightful read with many lessons about many aspects of life, business and the challenges of success. One of those challenges has to do with managing money, and managing relationships.

As a Beatles fan, it was (for me) all about the music. I didn't read the mags and the rags or the books till much, much later. Through Philip Norman's book I gained a much deeper understanding of the legal crap these four boys never imagined they'd have to deal with one day. When they were starting out, rock stars last a year or two at most. Their unfathomable wealth was not part of the dream they dreamed.

So, when I came across this video of George and Ringo on the Aspel & Co. show, a British talk show featuring high profile celebrities, I tuned in. If you watch, you'll find a brief segment in which their lawsuits are brought up. They seem surprisingly good-natured about it, which just shows how classy these two guys were.

Here's the URL if the embed fails at some point down the road.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQaqcLPAI_s

It won't be long before we'll find the entire history of media on YouTube. And maybe, just maybe, at some point in the future--when time travel has been worked out--we'll get ALL of history on YouTube. Whatcha think about that?

Related Links
My Dinner With George (scene from a dream)
Have You Ever Wanted to Work in Media?
Was Ringo A Starr? Oh Yeah

Was Ringo a Starr? Oh Yeah.

I recently watched a fascinating and insightful documentary about Led Zeppelin. I still recall exactly where I was when we heard their first mind-blowing album. Scott Homan's basement in Bridgewater, NJ. This album was their U.S. kickoff. The final punch-in-the-gut punctuation mark for their end as a band was the death of drummer John Bonham. The way the documentary put it, Bonham was the best rock and roll drummer that ever was.

Was he? For a long time I thought Ginger Baker was the man. His work with Eric Clapton and Jack Bruce put him on many critics' short list of stellar drummers.

And then there's Keith Moon of The Who. What about that crazy wild man? You can watch the YouTube and see his maniacal workmanship. Masterful mayhem.

I had all of Jimi Hendrix's albums and what stuck out for me was Mitch Mitchell's drumming on Manic Depression. To be part of the Hendrix experience you had to be good. Buddy Miles became the sequel in Jimi's abbreviated career.

Another phenomenal drummer was Buddy Rich whom I had the opportunity to see in Allentown a number of years ago, with his big band. Turns out he doesn't qualify as a great rock drummer because he's a great jazz drummer.

So, where does Ringo stand in all this? First off, those who dismiss him suggest comparisons of drum solos. Ringo's recorded drum solo is a relatively brief 16 bars at the end of Abbey Road, side two. Try Ginger Baker's "Toad" on Wheels of Fire. 

But are drum solos the true measure of a drummer? Charlie Watts (Rolling Stones), like Ringo, didn't really go for drum solos.

So where does Ringo stand as a drummer? Was he lucky or was he good?

When I was in college I remember a Playboy poll that had Ringo as Number One for several years in the 60s. (I'm going on hearsay here.) Was this bias due to the Beatles' fame?

His birth name, as every 60s kid knew, was Richard Starkey. Born in Liverpool he bested the Beatles' original drummer Peter Best, and became the fourth cornerstone of the most famous group in rock history. When the Beatles burst on the scene he was the steady force behind the boys, and showed his stuff not with dramatic drum solos, but rather with his charismatic, easy-going reliability.

Despite his career ups and downs since the breakup of the Beatles, Yoko Ono recently claimed, ‘He was the most influential Beatle." According to this 2015 article in the Spectator when Paul and John first spotted him in Hamburg, in his suit and beard, sitting ‘drinking bourbon and seven’, they were amazed. ‘This was, like, a grown-up musician,’ thought Paul. One night Ringo sat in for their drummer Pete Best. ‘I remember the moment,’ said Paul, ‘standing there and looking at John and then looking at George, and the look on our faces was like… what is this? And that was the moment, that was the beginning, really, of the Beatles.’

Here's an article that puts the Ringo question into perspective: 13 Reasons To Give Ringo Some Respect.

Ringo's influence can be noticed in the many ways others imitated him. For example, Ringo started the trend of placing drummers on high risers so that they would be as visible as the other musicians. When Ringo appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show in 1964, he immediately caught the attention of thousands of "drummers to be" by towering over the other three Beatles. Elvis's drummer was looking at a collection of backs.

Ringo's ability to play odd time signatures helped to push popular songwriting into uncharted areas. Two examples are "All you Need is Love" in 7/4 time, and "Here Comes the Sun" with repeating 11/8, 4/4, and 7/8 passages in the chorus.

There have been a lot of significant drummers and plenty of lists of the top ten or top 100. When it comes to Ringo's stature he's well respected by those in the know. Here's one list of the Top Ten Drummers of All Time. When describing the Beatles' drummer they state, "Without Ringo, The Beatles wouldn’t be The Beatles."

Ringo provided the essential foundation upon which the other Beatles could build anything and everything. What do you think?

A Whiter Shade of Pale

Ok, admit it. You loved the song, have always loved the song, but have never been entirely sure what it was all about.

That’s how it has been for me to some extent. Right from the start when it first aired in the Summer of Love it had a gripping, seductive quality. The chord progressions mesmerized as did the lyrics, strangely abstract yet vivid enough to play with your imagination. It seemed like there was something there but you just couldn’t get your hands on it. At least that’s how it was for me. Whether the lyrics or the evocative music, in England when Sgt. Pepper was the number one album, this was the number one single.

Twenty years later I still played the 45 once in a while. (I think it’s still inside my Wheels of Fire album by Cream.) And to this day as an amateur pianist I can’t help but run through those chords now and then, just letting the sweet sounds saturate the room.

But those lyrics… Unraveling the poetic unto total transparency is not always necessary. Appreciating a turn of phrase, and accepting the ambiguities, this is what gives a poem or a song like this one, and many of Dylan’s, it’s longevity. The mind can play with it endlessly, like an impossible labyrinth or Borges’ Library of Babel, and you never figure it out. But each time it leaves you with something to take away, a moment of delight and self-forgetfulness.

It's the opening line of the second verse that really used to get me. "She said there is no reason, and the truth is plain to see..." Which truth? The truth that there is no reason? Or the ultimate truth that caused her face to turn a whiter shade of pale?

The playing cards speak to me of the old "know when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em" type of thing, though Kenny Rogers didn't do The Gambler till a few years later. Dylan, too, refers to having to play the cards your dealt in Series of Dreams. And the last couplet in that stanza "Although my eyes were open, they might just as well've been closed" it speaks of an interiority of transcendence, the contrariness of Truth with a capital T, and seeing the light. Which I did, but did not. Or, of blindness in spite of light.

Here then are the lyrics. Frivolity and fear, clarity and obfuscation, vividness and ambiguity all rolled into one. Afterwards I've given you a link to a page with much more insight about this song than I would have mustered on my own. Before you head there be sure to watch the YouTube vid below featuring Gary Brooker, who co-wrote this, accompanied by Peter Frampton on guitar and Ringo Starr on drums.

A Whiter Shade of Pale

We skipped the light fandango,
Turned cartwheels 'cross the floor.
I was feeling kind of seasick,
But the crowd called out for more.
The room was humming harder,
As the ceiling flew away.
When we called out for another drink,
The waiter brought a tray.

And so it was that later,
As the miller told his tale,
That her face at first just ghostly,
Turned a whiter shade of pale.

She said there is no reason,
And the truth is plain to see
But I wandered through my playing cards,
And would not let her be
One of sixteen vestal virgins
Who were leaving for the coast.
And although my eyes were open,
They might just as well've been closed.

And so it was later,
As the miller told his tale,
That her face at first just ghostly,
Turned a whiter shade of pale.

For more background about White Shade, check this site out. Listen first to the music, however. Let it take you away.