Pithy Beatles thoughts

Friday 6/27/25

A Hard Day's Night is the Beatles' best album.

Sgt. Pepper has become overlooked because of how little we think now/are capable of thinking. It's a gestalt album; that is, it's more than it is if you just go through it ranking songs. It's also less a concept album and more like a suite; psychedelic English Ellingtonia.

"She Loves You" is the Beatles' best song.

The early Beatles were more inventive.

The best version of "Strawberry Fields Forever" wasn't released, but it also wouldn't have been as strong a single.

With the Beatles is the rhythm and blues record.

Ringo Starr was the band's most important instrumentalist.

The band was done when they were done--there wasn't more there.

The White Album is the actual mystery tour.

Beatles for Sale is the underrated jewel.

Please Please Me is the "most new" album in rock and roll history, as in, no album to that point prepared anyone for an album like that being a thing.

The most Beatles-y Beatles music of all are the BBC sessions.

1963 was the Beatles' best year.

"Bad to Me" is one of John Lennon's finest melodies.

"Yesterday" is part blues.

"The Word" isn't far from raga.

"Can't Buy Me Love" has the most important guitar solo of the first half of the 1960s until the Jeff Beck Yardbirds came along.

"While My Guitar Gently Weeps" basically has Eric Clapton soloing the entire time.

Most of George Harrison's guitar solos are restatements of the song's melody.

Lennon had the perfect rock and roll singing voice for a time.

Four examples of Lennon's early perfect voice for rock and roll: "Baby It's You" and "Johnny B. Goode" from the BBC sessions and "I Should Have Known Better" and "I'll Be Back" from A Hard Day's Night.

"Soldier of Love" is the Beatles' best cover.

Lennon's cold worked to advantage on Please Please Me.

Paul McCartney was equal parts natural musician and dedicated craftsman.

The Beatles' three Larry Williams covers--"Bad Boy," "Slow Down," and "Dizzy Miss Lizzy"--are all undervalued.

"Bad Boy" has one of Harrison's best guitar breaks.

Live at the Hollywood Bowl deserves to be talked about with the best live rock albums.

The guitar tone of Harrison's career is the one he produced on the solo to "Back in the US.S.R."; the solo has a little sign-off signature type of figure at the end. He sounds like this nowhere else on record.

"A Day in the Life" has some of the most important drumming in rock.

The Beatles had several "I'm-going-to-knock-the-shit-out-of-this-song" vocals: "Twist and Shout," "Money," "Kansas City/Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey!" "I'm Down," "Oh! Darling."

Elvis Presley was an ideological influence; Carl Perkins and Buddy Holly were practical ones.

"Please Please Me" was as new a sound as "Strawberry Fields Forever."

"This Boy" has the worst edit of the Beatles' studio career.

There are considerably more notable Lennon guitar parts in the Beatles' catalog than most think or allow for.

The Harrison acoustic version of "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" is one of the pinnacle tracks of the unreleased Beatles. Yes, it's subsequently been made officially available, but to hear it originally on Ultra Rare Trax was to be knocked out.

The same may be said for the first take of "Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)."

A Hard Day's Night the film is avant-populism.

"Honey Don't" on the BBC in 1963 with Lennon singing lead numbers among the band's best covers.

Harrison's fuzz-tone solo on Lennon's "Happiness is a Warm Gun" is a real shining moment for him. Again, you won't find a single other instance where he sounds like this.

Take 6 of "Across the Universe" on the Super Deluxe Edition of the White Album is an essential Beatles track.