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[tkitna]

How in the hell do you come up with stuff Kevin? You come up with some sh*t I would never think of looking for.

[Kevin]

How in the hell do you come up with stuff Kevin? You come up with some sh*t I would never think of looking for.

Ha Cheers. Be prepared for a very wanky answer. I'm really into evolution, and read as much as I can. It taught me to try and look at things in different ways.
I wanted to apply the same things to The Beatles. I try and be scientific (wank wank), instead of bones and rocks I look at what actually is in front of me, and try not to be influenced by the mountains of others opinions I've absorbed.
I want to be a Beatles Indiana Jones (ha ha).
Trying to find myself a niche.

[zipp]

I would have to argue that AHDN with it's accoustic backing and 12 string guitars looks more to the future than it does its past.

Yes, I think you've found something important here Kevin. The whole album has a different feel because of the accoustic/electric percentages.

And I know that one musician who decided to form a group after seeing and hearing AHDN was Roger McGuinn.
The group he formed of course was the Byrds who then influenced Dylan. Dylan and the Byirds then influenced The Beatles especially for Rubber Soul.

So we're slowly getting round to explaining why AHDN is a major album which can't be part of the "roots" group. And if we can't get this sorted out then the rest of the groupings become difficult to envisage.

[AngeloMysterioso]

There is also technological aspects, I guess.

Recording technology evolved greatly during the 60’s. The first two albums being made, mostly, from two-track machines – George Martin was a precursor in the field of recording technology. The full potential of four-track recording matured over the next few years : Revolver and Sergeant Pepper’s were both recorded on four-track – at a time when many groups were already using eight-track facilities. That came up for The Beatles, for most of the White Album; then Abbey Road..

[cubanheel]

Those darn Beatles just refuse to roll over and be organised, don't they?!!!

I like your 2 3 4 3 idea, zipp. I've always lumped MMT and YS together in a kind of snooty dismissive way, really. Cos they're not 'real' albums, (what is real, indeed, what is real...) Odd songs are outstanding but the rest are duff.

AHDN is of course a cracker of an album, sort of a promise of things to come, but somehow at the same time great in it's own (w)rite.

I do understand those who quibble with AR rubbing shoulders with LIB. I understand, yet I ignore you. HA!

In some ways, the more I think about it, really the Beatles albums are all individuals (bit like kids) and need to be treated as such.  Now, another thread could be 'if the Beatles' albums were children, what woudl their school reports say?', eg: YS  -  could try harden next term, lot of work stolen from another pupil on side 2.

Shut up, now, before everyone deletes your input, cubanheel. :

[Almighty Doer of Stuff]

As for Magical Mystery Tour: While the Beatles didn't choose the track listing themselves, they evidently approved of it, because they didn't come up with a new track listing when they made the CDs, and all the songs are from the same time period, so that's why I count it as a real album. There are only four new songs on Yellow Submarine, and they're all leftovers, so I don't count that any more than I count Long Tall Sally.

Although A Hard Day's Night does contain more acoustic guitar than the previous records, the previous records do still contain acoustic guitar, and the tracks on A Hard Day's Night are still almost entirely rock and roll. Semi-acoustic rock and roll, yes, but STRUCTURALLY they're still rock and roll. As I've said, this changes suddenly on the next album, where very little of it has the rock and roll structure.

Here's a summary of my theory:

Era 1 : Roots Era : Primarily rock & roll and ballads : PPM, WTB, AHDN

Era 2 : Fast Growth Era : Primarily non-rock & roll, non-ballad, folk- and country-influenced pop and pop rock : BFS, H!, RS

Era 3 : Psychedelic Era : Primarily psychedelic rock : R, SPLHCB, MMT

Era 4 : Splintering Era : Extremely stylistically varied : TB, LIB, AR

[dr marvalo]

I put "please please me", "with the beatles" and "beatles for sale" together based on the similarity of their formats (8 originals, 6 covers).   True, there are a lot of differences between these three albums, and the originals on "beatles for sale" really set it apart from the first two albums, but still, the similarities trump the differences.  

"a hard days night" and "help" are similar in that they are pure pop records...no 'nod to the past', and for the most part no attempts at expanding the boundaries of pop music...just pure pop

"rubber soul" and 'revolver" are very different sounding from each other, still they are alike in that the Beatles were actively attempting (and succeeding) to re-mold the standards of pop music

"sgt pepper" and "magical mystery tour", though very different conceptually, are still very alike in their sound, more so than any other two albums.  A lot of tracks could be interchanged and not sound out of place.

If "let it be" had been given the over-dub treatment "the white album" had been given, they too would have sounded almost inter-changable.   As it is, they sound quite different, but still, listen to the "white album" tracks on "Anthology 3" and listen to "Let it be naked".    The Beatles were definitely 'mode' of writing and playing when they made those albums

"abbey road" stands by itself.  It almost sounds like a completely different group.  The attention to detail is like nothing else they recorded.  All of them are playing with a skill and competence that exceeds any previous performance (George's guitar playing in particular).   It's not my favorite album, but in terms of tight ensemble performances, I don't think there is another album by any group that has the upperhand on "abbey road"

[An Apple Beatle]

There is also technological aspects, I guess.

Recording technology evolved greatly during the 60’s. The first two albums being made, mostly, from two-track machines – George Martin was a precursor in the field of recording technology. The full potential of four-track recording matured over the next few years : Revolver and Sergeant Pepper’s were both recorded on four-track – at a time when many groups were already using eight-track facilities. That came up for The Beatles, for most of the White Album; then Abbey Road..

This is a massive impact on their output and brings into scope the lush double tracked effects on AHDN that 4track afforded and how their imaginations began to become realised after that album. Beforehand was certainly a live sounding, mostly R & B arena.

[Kevin]

Era 1 : Roots Era : Primarily rock & roll and ballads : PPM, WTB, AHDN

Era 2 : Fast Growth Era : Primarily non-rock & roll, non-ballad, folk- and country-influenced pop and pop rock : BFS, H!, RS

Era 3 : Psychedelic Era : Primarily psychedelic rock : R, SPLHCB, MMT

Era 4 : Splintering Era : Extremely stylistically varied : TB, LIB, AR

Surely Revolver is far more "extremely stylistically varied" than anything in your "Era 4". And I'm not sure how LIB is more varied than any other Beatles album.

[Almighty Doer of Stuff]

Fair enough.

Anyway, I remembered one other thing that could probably account for why a lot of people associate Rubber Soul and Revolver with each other: Ringo's drumming. Those two albums and the singles from that era feature lots of complicated, fillful drumming, which is probably the closest Ringo comes to playing his drums as a lead instrument, a la Keith Moon. Of course, The Who's first album hadn't come out yet at the time of Rubber Soul's recording, but I wonder if Ringo had known of Keith's drumming already at that point anyway. I do know they became close friends at one point, with Ringo's son Zak calling the Who drummer "Uncle Keith" and Keith teaching Zak to play the drums, against Ringo's judgment at the time I believe.

I still listen to RS and Revolver together frequently, because although Revolver is much more psychadelic and harder than Rubber Soul, the drumming is very similar, and at least Paul's songwriting is very similar on both albums (although obviously not the arrangement).

[peterbell1]

I agree with you when you say there are many similarities between Rubber Soul and Revolver. I don't see them as being very different records.
I think RS songs like Nowhere Man, Wait and The Word could quite easily sit on Revolver, while there are songs on Revolver that could quite easily sit on RS. The albums were recorded less than a year apart, after all.
There is certainly an overall progression from RS to Revolver - songs like Tomorrow Never Knows and She Said She Said would definitely have seemed out of place in 1965 - but I don't feel that the progression is big enough to create a stylistic split between the two records.
My grouping of the LPs would be ...

PPM and WTB
HDN, BFS, Help
RS, Revolver
Sgt Pepper, MMT
White album, LIB
Abbey Road

I agree with a previous poster who said that Abbey Road is unlike any other album - it doesn't sit comfortably with any of the others.

[Revolver]

As usual, the Beatles defy proper categorization, IMO.  Your classifications are interesting and true to a certain extent, but not so true in other ways.

For example, the lyrical content of the Beatles songwriting may have taken a leap forward with Beatles For Sale, but in terms of music, A Hard Day's Night is a very complex and sophisticated album.  If I Fell is one of the Beatles more complex songs from a harmony and structure standpoint.  Nothing on Beatles For Sale is that complex.  IMO, AHDN is the best Beatles album until Rubber Soul.  AHDN, to me, stands apart from the early albums.

Abbey Road is the other problem.  IMO, Abbey Road, even though it sounds different from their other albums, creatively, I believe it belongs with Rubber Soul, Revolver, and Pepper as cohesive and innovative Beatles albums.  You could argue that the White Album is better, but the White Album is almost not even a Beatles album.  It's like each band member's first solo album.  Magical Mystery Tour, more or less, is just a continuation of Pepper.  In fact, most of the songs on the B side were from the Pepper period, anyway.

[Kevin]

In the endlessly exciting world of anthropology, protaginists are divided into two groups.
One are known as Lumpers, and they tend to seek out the similarities in various finds in order to classify them into neat groups.
On the other side are Splitters, who look for differences in specimens, believing mass classification to be too neat and easy.
No one can agree who is correct. But in the case of The Beatles I'm definately becoming a Splitter.

[Bobber]

A splitter who just got married?