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The Beatles: A Unique Quartet
16 December 2014
10.13pm
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Hildy
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It’s funny, isn’t it?

Bands can carry their name through the years even when they lose one, two, three, or in some cases, all the original members, but the Beatles would never have been recognised as the Beatles even with just one member absent. When John departed, reunion possibilities were over. 

Leaving aside legal complications, though, if a band can retain its original name when only one member has a link to its glorious past, it is theoretically possible that either Paul or Ringo could claim that their current bands are the Beatles – and imagine if Ringo was to join Paul’s band – Paul and Ringo and the rest could make an even stronger claim that they are the Beatles. 

I remember seeing Fleetwood Mac with Peter Green. The current band is completely different with just two original members, and yet the Fleetwood Mac name travels on. If John McVie and Mick Fleetwood can still be Fleetwood Mac, Paul and Ringo can surely still be the Beatles.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not making an argument for this. The Beatles were the Fab Four and each of them respects their former entity enough not to tarnish the memory. Even if Paul and Ringo got together again, for us and for everyone else, they would still not be the Beatles, so perhaps we should be grateful to them for leaving the Beatle name in the past when they went on to pursue individual careers..

Lesser bands try to keep the old flame burning for commercial reasons, and this is perfectly understandable, however the Beatles were so big that each of them was a household name. This enabled them to respect their former collective identity and keep it sacrosanct, and they even resisted massive financial offers to revisit old territory, which I think we can agree, they were right to refuse.

It is possible though that if all legal obstacles had been swept away, Paul McCartney could have just completed his recent tour – not under his own name – but as the most prominent member of the Beatles in the 21st century.

The Stones are still here – so could the Beatles have been – even with just Paul and Ringo.

Perhaps this tells us just how highly regarded the Beatles were as a band and as individuals. Other bands can add and subtract members and carry on as before, but The Beatles were a unique quartet that had to stand together – or not at all.

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thisbirdhasflown
18 December 2014
4.55pm
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Zig
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You bring up some great points about several bands being mere shells of what they used to be in terms of personnel. This point however, made me pause:

Hildy said

The Beatles were a unique quartet that had to stand together – or not at all.

Wasn’t it a case of, with the possible exception of Paul, they just didn’t want to? Then I think, “well, even if just two of them wanted to, they could have but still didn’t sully the name”. And of course, that fits in with what you are saying. Food for thought to be sure. Great post, BTW.

To the fountain of perpetual mirth, let it roll for all its worth. And all the children boogie.

18 December 2014
8.40pm
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Hildy
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Zig said
You bring up some great points about several bands being mere shells of what they used to be in terms of personnel. This point however, made me pause:

Hildy said

The Beatles were a unique quartet that had to stand together – or not at all.

Wasn’t it a case of, with the possible exception of Paul, they just didn’t want to? Then I think, “well, even if just two of them wanted to, they could have but still didn’t sully the name”. And of course, that fits in with what you are saying. Food for thought to be sure. Great post, BTW.

Imagine if John had left and the others had carried on or if Paul had departed and the rest had continued. In each case, a new Beatle would almost certainly have been created. The band could have continued for a few more years or maybe even a few more decades.

Somehow, though, it wouldn’t have felt right. When George was tiring of the routine there was talk of Eric Clapton coming in, but while Clapton would certainly have performed well, I suspect that personnel changes would have continued over the years and maybe tarnished the band’s status.

With the Beatles coming to an end when it did, the passage of time has turned the whole concept into an impregnable monument to a fascinating era in western culture.

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Zig
18 December 2014
9.03pm
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Ahhh Girl
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ahdn_paul_06 That reminds me of this thread that some of you may be interested in visiting or revisiting.

18 December 2014
9.14pm
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meanmistermustard
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‘The Beatles’ were the four of them – John, Paul, George and Ringo (tho Ringo did join just as they were about to hit the heights of fame), it wasn’t just a band name. That was part of the problem for them when Yoko turned up and was around all the time, it stopped being just the four. So whilst the idea of getting someone in as a replacement be it Klaus, Eric or even having Billy Preston be more involved it was never going to happen.

 

And for that i am thankful. I would have hated it if Paul and Ringo were still going on under the name ‘The Beatles’; Brian May and Roger Taylor are doing so as Queen+ and the results are horrid and feel like they are dragged every last ounce out of decency from it.

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Matt Busby

"I told you everything I could about me, Told you everything I could" ('Before Believing' - Emmylou Harris)

26 December 2014
11.31pm
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Hildy
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meanmistermustard said
‘The Beatles’ were the four of them – John, Paul, George and Ringo (tho Ringo did join just as they were about to hit the heights of fame), it wasn’t just a band name. That was part of the problem for them when Yoko turned up and was around all the time, it stopped being just the four. So whilst the idea of getting someone in as a replacement be it Klaus, Eric or even having Billy Preston be more involved it was never going to happen.

 

And for that i am thankful. I would have hated it if Paul and Ringo were still going on under the name ‘The Beatles’; Brian May and Roger Taylor are doing so as Queen+ and the results are horrid and feel like they are dragged every last ounce out of decency from it.

John should never have had Yoko beside him ‘at his work’. When you are in a longstanding group of four, you don’t bring a new girlfriend into the studio with you. It can only end in tears.

Girlfriends have to be kept at a safe distance for the group to function ‘normally’. John should have known that. Holidaying together is one thing but the studio is different. Any girl with a keen sense of awareness would not have wanted to be there.

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Matt Busby
27 December 2014
2.30am
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meanmistermustard
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Sorry but i dont see what John did wrong. Big whoop, he brought his girlfriend with him. So what? Not too soon after Pattie was singing backing vocals on ‘Birthday ‘ and Maureen was assisting with ‘Bungalow Bill’. Maybe Yoko should have been more aware but at the same time John wanted her there all the time.

"I told you everything I could about me, Told you everything I could" ('Before Believing' - Emmylou Harris)

27 December 2014
10.58am
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Hildy
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meanmistermustard said
Sorry but i dont see what John did wrong. Big whoop, he brought his girlfriend with him. So what? Not too soon after Pattie was singing backing vocals on ‘Birthday ‘ and Maureen was assisting with ‘Bungalow Bill’. Maybe Yoko should have been more aware but at the same time John wanted her there all the time.

John may have wanted her there but I’m not sure that the others did. Having an inhibiting influence so close to the sharp end of the operation isn’t a good idea.

Inviting contributing musicians is fine but having a girlfriend attached undermines the relationship between people who are longstanding working partners and friends. In this environment, girlfriends are effectively unwelcome strangers. The other girls may have chipped in from time to time but they never had the level of presence that Yoko did.

This is where a boss of sorts would have been a good thing – someone to say no. The Beatles were so rich and powerful that they could work any way that they wanted, but the presence of Yoko was a step too far – and John should have known that.

27 December 2014
11.25am
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meanmistermustard
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John would not have listened to anyone, not even Brian over Yoko being in the studio. As for the others they should have been grown-up and dealt with it.

"I told you everything I could about me, Told you everything I could" ('Before Believing' - Emmylou Harris)

27 December 2014
11.42am
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Starr Shine?
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^ Shouldn’t John have been more grown-up and not brought someone that everyone else didn’t want there?

https://youtu.be/52nwiTs7bk8

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27 December 2014
11.52am
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meanmistermustard
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So John cant take his partner into the studio because his bandmates wont like it? That’s pathetic and school boy stuff.

"I told you everything I could about me, Told you everything I could" ('Before Believing' - Emmylou Harris)

27 December 2014
11.57am
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Starr Shine?
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^ There is no reason to bring her to work. Did they have the no girlfriends policy before he brought Yoko? 

https://youtu.be/52nwiTs7bk8

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27 December 2014
1.06pm
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meanmistermustard
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The reason was he wanted to be with her and not be separated. Paul did the exact same with Linda after the split and as Ringo notes below he does now does it with Barbara. John just had the balls to do it first.

There was an unwritten rule made back in 1962 but a lot had happened in those six years, not only with the Beatles individually and collectively but also in society in general.

Ringo from the Anthology book

  RINGO: Yoko being in the studio a lot was a new thing. It was all new. We’re very Northern: the wives stayed at home and we went to work – we dug coal and they cooked dinner. It was one of those flat-cap attitudes which we were losing by then. I think if Maureen came to the studio five or six times that would be about it, and in all the years Pattie came several times at the most. I don’t remember Cynthia coming much when she was married to John. It was just something that didn’t happen. And suddenly we had Yoko in bed in the studio.
            It created tension because most of the time the four of us were very close, and very possessive of each other in a way; we didn’t like strangers coming in too much. And that’s what Yoko was (not to John, but to the three of us). That was where we were together, and that’s why we worked so well. We were all trying to be cool and not mention it, but inside we were all feeling it and talking in corners.
            I used to ask John: ‘What’s this about, what’s happening here? Yoko’s at all the sessions!’ He told me straight, ‘Well, when you go home to Maureen and tell her how your day was, it takes you two lines: “Oh, we had a good day in the studio…” Well, we know exactly what’s going on. And that’s how they started to live – every moment together. (That was something Barbara and I took up when we got married; we were absolutely moment by moment together for the first eight years of our marriage.) I was fine after that, and relaxed a lot around Yoko.

Seems to me that folk point and lay all the blame at John for being totally in the wrong for daring to bring her into the studio and Yoko for daring to go in yet ignore the pathetic, childish, shitty behaviour of the other three as if there being some unwritten rule justifies how they acted.

If someone said to me i couldn’t bring my girlfriend with me i’d have told them to piss off.

"I told you everything I could about me, Told you everything I could" ('Before Believing' - Emmylou Harris)

27 December 2014
2.05pm
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Starr Shine?
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^ The Beatles was a job and John bringing Yoko to work with him against the wishes of the others disrupts the work flow. Does she do any work there that would justify her being there? 

https://youtu.be/52nwiTs7bk8

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27 December 2014
4.34pm
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Hildy
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John was wrong. He disrespected the others by bringing his girlfriend to work. The ambience is undermined and no-one wants to be the one to tell a friend and band member that he should stop bringing his girlfriend to the studio. It’s a sensitive situation and not easily managed. 

Paul had his girlfriend in the band when he started Wings but that was his band and his rules. The rest could accept it or reject it right from the start. He wasn’t changing an established situation. He was telling fellow band members – this is the way that it is. At the time, a lot of people thought that Wings was cheapened by accommodating someone who was there only because she was married to the band’s leader.

27 December 2014
4.38pm
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meanmistermustard
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It was more than a job, being a Beatle was also who they were (and what they wanted away from, George hated being a “Beatle” due to all of that and John had lost a large part of his desire to be one, even before meeting Yoko), it was full time non-stop and John wanted Yoko to be a part of that as well as everything else in his life.

"I told you everything I could about me, Told you everything I could" ('Before Believing' - Emmylou Harris)

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