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2.48am
1 May 2011
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I think the beatles/stones rivalry was hyped up by the press: nice clean beatles v dirty rebellious stones, which was not at all accurate but nice beatles was something Brain was keen to maintain. The Stones were seen as being anti-establishment whilst the Beatles were the ones you'd take home to meet your mum (not realising what would happen after suppertime when the parents had gone to bed).
There are stories that Brian Jones wanted to leave The Stones and become a fifth beatle but no idea how true that is, he did play sax on You Know My Name. And it was George H who recommended The Stones to Decca who gobbled them up.
No-ones written a detailed account of Ringos chess skills after learning during recording Pepper.
9.33am
26 March 2012
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vonbontee said
Not worthy of an entire book, obv; but I'd STILL like to know exactly when & how John learned piano. The Philip Norman bio and other Beatle history books I've read all make a big deal about how he came to play the harmonica & (obviously) guitar, but not a word about his learning keyboards.
This is interesting actually, I've never thought about it. When was the first time in the Beatles' career John used the keys? According to Lewisohn, the earliest I can find is that he played Hammond organ on "I Wanna Be Your Man", then piano on "Things We Said Today." I know there was a piano in the "music room" that he liked to sit about and trip in at Kenwood, and he did a lot of songwriting on that; I'm guessing that was moved in in 1964 when John and Cynthia moved in there. So I'm guessing he started learning very rudimentary piano from just messing about on it in Hamburg, then picked up further skills just from practicing and attempting songwriting on the one at Kenwood, and he probably learned a bit more from Paul and George Martin along the way. By his own admission John was even worse at piano than he was at guitar, but I think his minimalist playing style served his music very well, particularly the Plastic Ono Band album.
12.08pm
16 February 2011
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I have recently played some rudimentary piano myself, and I wonder how John learnt to play chords on the piano, because obviously he could play them, is that something you can just "catch" on? I mean, if you know the chords on guitar, can you play them "by ear" on piano as well? I don't think Paul intentionally taught John, anyway, I'm pretty sure he would have mentioned it by now if he did.
I would like to read a picture of book of John's cats
12.53pm
26 March 2012
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minime said
Yes. I started with guitar and bass and although I'm still not very good at piano I was able to teach myself all the major, minor, suspended, seventh and maj-seventh chords on piano by ear, experience with guitar helps. If you know the names of the notes of each key on the piano you can work it out fairly easily from there so I guess John did it like that.
5.00pm
10 August 2011
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Anything that HASN'T been written yet?
Good question. Considering the literally hundreds of books out there, what else is there to learn?
For one, someone from the Beatle entourage can still step forward to provide their take on things. Cynthia Lennon and Pattie Boyd have (relatively) recently done so.
And there's still Ringo.
Who wouldn't be interested in his Beatley opinions?
Essentially all books give you the historical facts + some analysis (musical, sociological,…).
What I've found to be lacking is a perspective on the feel for what it was like when Beatle songs, albums, and movies were released.
This of course is what led me to write Into the Sky, even though already 15 years ago when I started the project there were already hundreds of books on the Beatles (and the Race to the Moon).
If your first Beatle experience occurred after 1970, that means you instantly had access to the entire Beatle catalog.
In the space of a day you could listen to every Beatle song ever released.
This of course can be a major plus.
If you didn't like the "early" Beatles, you could instantly move to the psychedelic period – or vice versa.
But to every ying there's a yang; if you lived through the Beatle era, you experienced the anticipation and excitement of each release.
If you were a teenager, you devoted considerable time arguing with your classmates the merits of this or that song. Every day was one big BB Forum!
Joe, our fearless leader, has questioned the value of a historical novel, preferring to stick to strict history.
My feeling is that a strict history book with give you facts and analysis, but a historical novel has a much better chance of conveying a feeling or a mood.
What's going to give you a better sense of life back in the day: a history book or a novel by Charles Dickens?
1.32am
8 June 2012
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Full disclosure: I've visited this site somewhat frequently, but not enough to realize there was a message board. I'd written my own Beatles-related book and sought a place to get the word out a bit. I didn't want my first post to double as a new topic (from my message board experience elsewhere, newbies creating threads tends to be looked down upon) and I came across this one. It seemed perfect. While my book isn't covering new ground on The Beatles' material per se, I feel pretty confident that I've traversed new ground.
It's called Sonic and The Beatles, and it's a comparative analysis of the Sonic the Hedgehog series and The Beatles' music.
(Shameless plug, but here's a link -- it's a Kindle title, and it's free to borrow if you have Amazon Prime: http://www.amazon.com/Sonic-He…..038;sr=8-1 )
In short, I compare the game series and the musical output as a whole, noting the overarching parallels. Just as The Beatles struggled to live down the band's work in their solo offerings, the Sonic gaming series has failed to match the greatness (or critical perception of greatness) of its initial, Sega Genesis/Mega Drive titles from the early 90s.
More than that, I derive comparisons between individual games and albums, finding uncannily fitting Beatles matches for each and every Sonic release. I know I sound a bit too sure of myself, but this idea started as a bit of a joke and came to fruition after match after match between the games and albums offered almost eerie similarities and parallels.
At any rate, I'm hoping some of you might be interested in this (even if you aren't familiar with the Sonic gaming series, I took great pains to boil down those elements, as I always intended this book to appeal more fundamentally to the Beatles fan than the Sonic fan) and could give me some feedback. I'm not begging for purchases here, but if you are so kind as to buy the book I would be incredibly grateful. But what I really want is a discussion about the idea and the content of the book. I've yet to get a review (but I've got two "likes" on Facebook 
) and I'm craving critical response of any kind.
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