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1.09am
Reviewers
29 August 2013
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I have just been listening to Free As A Bird and Real Love again and it really struck me how much George’s guitar solos add to the songs. Whatever your opinion of them as Beatles singles I really think they would have sounded a lot poorer without his contribution, which again reinforces my view of how much he brought to the band.
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1.38am
22 December 2013
Offline George’s playing on both tracks is top notch, and it’s nice to see that the writing credit was split evenly amongst the four of them for a change, as it probably should have been for many Beatles’ tracks. Jeff Lynne often gets unfairly criticized for his contribution to making this long overdue “reunion” a reality, but he’s most deserving of “Fifth Beatle” status in my books for getting it right here, and George bringing Jeff Lynne to the table shows again just “how much he brought to the band”. As catchy as ‘The Threatles’ may sound, this is a bonafide ‘Beatles’ recording, with John spearheading the pathway for the others as he most often did in the past, leaving plenty of room for Paul, George and Ringo to “shine on”, he was never one to dictate to the others what to do and always allowed for them (even relied on them) to roam freely “Across The Universe “. Being an E.L.O. fan himself, Jeff Lynne would almost certainly have gotten no objections from John as a producer and I’m sure John would’ve been most proud and amazed at the job that ‘The Threatles’ did on these songs that he obviously wasn’t as keen on to bother finishing up…:-)
1.55am
Reviewers
Moderators
1 May 2011
Offline I’ve said it before that i’m not a fan of these as the quality of Johns vocals are poor (and always were going to be considering the quality of the demo’s) and i find Lynne’s production to be too heavy, sounding more ELO than 60’s Beatles
. Two songs i cannot get into – the clash between poor quality 70’s home taped vocal with 90’s studio quality instrumentation is just a little too jarring (i feel the same about George Martin’s orchestral additions to Grow Old With Me ). Admittedly George’s guitar work is good and you get the classic Beatles harmonies but i rarely play them and am very thankful neither got to number 1 so didn’t appear on 1.
And whilst John left FAAB behind he kept working on Real Love , and there are indications that it would have appeared on either Double Fantasy ‘s successor or the one after, if he had not been killed (not Yoko’s after-the-fact Milk And Honey concoction that featured studio run-throughs of the remaining tracks).
The following people thank meanmistermustard for this post:
Beatlebug"I told you everything I could about me, Told you everything I could" ('Before Believing' - Emmylou Harris)
2.33am
22 December 2013
Offline meanmistermustard said
I’ve said it before that i’m not a fan of these as the quality of Johns vocals are poor (and always were going to be considering the quality of the demo’s) and i find Lynne’s production to be too heavy, sounding more ELO than 60’s Beatles. Two songs i cannot get into – the clash between poor quality 70’s home taped vocal with 90’s studio quality instrumentation is just a little too jarring (i feel the same about George Martin’s orchestral additions to Grow Old With Me ). Admittedly George’s guitar work is good and you get the classic Beatles harmonies but i rarely play them and am very thankful neither got to number 1 so didn’t appear on 1.
And whilst John left FAAB behind he kept working on Real Love , and there are indications that it would have appeared on either Double Fantasy ‘s successor or the one after, if he had not been killed (not Yoko’s after-the-fact Milk And Honey concoction that featured studio run-throughs of the remaining tracks).
While the dynamic range certainly isn’t there (John’s vocals), it has an ethereal quality to it that I really like, not much different than the feel of his voice being put through a Leslie Speaker, like on ‘Tomorrow Never Knows ‘, or whatever the hell he asked George Martin to do to his vocals on ‘I’m Only Sleeping ‘ to make it sound like he was singing in his sleep. On ‘Free As A Bird ‘ & ‘Real Love ‘, John’s voice sounds exactly like it should’ve sounded, if however “morbid”, that he was singing from the grave. Being the far out kinda guy that he was, I would think that John would’ve been rather intrigued by the prospect of being able to “sing from the grave”, I love these two tracks and they’re my two favourites of all 3 ‘Anthology’ album’s tracks. ‘Free As A Bird ‘ is now often played at High School Graduation Ceremonies and brings people who aren’t even Beatles’ fans to tears for it’s a most suitable “send-off” to young ones who are about to “spread their wings and fly” for the very first time in their lives, it’s a true Beatles’ Classic in my eyes, excellent…:-)
5.36am
18 October 2013
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I agree with most of the points so far.
George’s playing is exquisite.
McCartney ‘finished up’ the song well.
Jeff Lynne did a fine job with what he had.
However, I feel George’s opting for Lynne was tactical. I’m sure he would have justified it on ‘production grounds’ but I reckon he thought if he was going to do this he didn’t want George Martin and Paul ganging up together. The strength of George’s contribution added to Paul and John’s validates this joint decision.
‘FAAB’ and ‘RL’ are ‘good’…….. For me though, the best post Beatles ‘Beatle’ song is, ‘Woman ‘. If John had not already released it just think how it may have been with Paul, George and Ringo on it.
5.53am
22 December 2013
Offline Atlas said
I feel George’s opting for Lynne was tactical. I’m sure he would have justified it on ‘production grounds’ but I reckon he thought if he was going to do this he didn’t want George Martin and Paul ganging up together. The strength of George’s contribution added to Paul and John’s validates this joint decision.
From what I understand, George Martin was their first choice but he declined because he didn’t “agree” with the idea of it, but of course, George Martin applauded the work upon hearing it which is perhaps the greatest compliment that Jeff Lynne could’ve hoped for ultimately…:-)
2.54pm
27 December 2012
Offline Billy Rhythm said
Atlas said
I feel George’s opting for Lynne was tactical. I’m sure he would have justified it on ‘production grounds’ but I reckon he thought if he was going to do this he didn’t want George Martin and Paul ganging up together. The strength of George’s contribution added to Paul and John’s validates this joint decision.
From what I understand, George Martin was their first choice but he declined because he didn’t “agree” with the idea of it, but of course, George Martin applauded the work upon hearing it which is perhaps the greatest compliment that Jeff Lynne could’ve hoped for ultimately…:-)
AFAIK George Martin’s ears weren’t up for the job as he was too old.
3.10pm
Reviewers
Moderators
1 May 2011
Offline Gerell said
Billy Rhythm said
Atlas said
I feel George’s opting for Lynne was tactical. I’m sure he would have justified it on ‘production grounds’ but I reckon he thought if he was going to do this he didn’t want George Martin and Paul ganging up together. The strength of George’s contribution added to Paul and John’s validates this joint decision.
From what I understand, George Martin was their first choice but he declined because he didn’t “agree” with the idea of it, but of course, George Martin applauded the work upon hearing it which is perhaps the greatest compliment that Jeff Lynne could’ve hoped for ultimately…:-)
AFAIK George Martin’s ears weren’t up for the job as he was too old.
If George Martin’s ears weren’t up to the standard required for the reunion sessions why was he on Anthology track selection duty? Is that why so many of the shitty edits got thru.
"I told you everything I could about me, Told you everything I could" ('Before Believing' - Emmylou Harris)
6.13pm
22 December 2013
Offline George Martin on “his ears”:
Here’s an excerpt from a George Martin Interview with ‘Rock Cellar Magazine’ on the prospect of him working on ‘The Threatles’ Sessions:
RCM: When Paul, George and Ringo recorded the two new Beatles songs, Free As A Bird and Real Love , did they ask you to be involved?
GM: I kind of told them I wasn’t too happy with putting them together with the dead John. I’ve got nothing wrong with dead John but the idea of having dead John with live Paul and Ringo and George to form a group, it didn’t appeal to me too much. In the same way that I think it’s okay to find an old record of Nat King Cole’s and bring it back to life and issue it, but to have him singing with his daughter is another thing. So I don’t know, I’m not fussy about it but it didn’t appeal to me very much. I think I might have done it if they asked me, but they didn’t.
RCM: Did you enjoy Jeff Lynne’s production of Free As A Bird and Real Love ?
GM: I thought what they did was terrific; it was very very good indeed. I don’t think I would have done it like that if I had produced it.
RCM: What would you have done differently?
GM: Well, you see the way they did it you must remember the material they had to deal with was very difficult. It was a cassette that John had placed on top of his piano, played and sang. The piano was louder than the voice, and the voice wasn’t very clear and the rhythm was all over the place. So they tried to separate the voice and the piano, not very successfully.
Then they tried to put it into a rigid time beat so they could overdub easily other instruments. So they stretched it and compressed it until it got to a regular waltz and then they were done. The result was, in order to conceal the bad bits, they had to plaster it fairly heavily, so what you ended up with was quite a thick homogeneous sound that hardly stops. There’s not much dynamic in it.
The way I would have tackled it if I had the opportunity would have been the reverse of that. I would have looked at the song as a song and got The Beatles together and say ‘what can we do with this song?’ bearing in mind we have got John around as well somewhere. I would have actually have started to record a song and I would have dropped John into it.
I wouldn’t have made John the basis of it. So where possible I would have used instruments probably and we would then try and get his voice more separate and use him for the occasional voice so it would become a true partnership of voices. Whether that would be practical or not I don’t know, this is just theoretically the way I would tackle it.
Here’s the ‘Grow Old With Me ‘ recording that meanmistermustard referenced in case anyone hasn’t heard it yet:
The disparity between the original demo and 1994 overdubs is much more noticeable with ‘Grow Old With Me ‘…:-)
8.11pm
9 January 2014
Offline I agree – George’s playing on those songs is fantastic. It’s a shame that as George was just coming into his own as a guitarist, the band was breaking up.
11.14pm
21 November 2012
Offline His playing was good, I give him that.
I just don’t like both songs that much (even though I LOVE the video for FAAB and I need to watch it combined with the music of course). It’s partly because of the ”dead John” thing GM also referred to and partly because of the quality of the sound of his voice. It just doesn’t really work for me and though to some it may feel as the Beatles, to me it doesn’t. It just sounds weird to me. It’s not even because of Jeff Lynne’s production, I think he did a good job considering the quality of material. Ugh I just don’t like it.
9.53pm
22 December 2013
Offline Atlas said
‘FAAB’ and ‘RL’ are ‘good’…….. For me though, the best post Beatles ‘Beatle’ song is, ‘Woman ‘. If John had not already released it just think how it may have been with Paul, George and Ringo on it.
I always thought that The Beatles’ version of ‘Free As A Bird ‘ strongly resembled the recording of ‘Woman ‘ from ‘Double Fantasy ‘. The tempo and feel are very similar, in addition to the multiple acoustic guitar tracks that have the “felt but not heard” Phil Spector treatment, the rich harmonies of the chorus and refrain during the outro of ‘Woman ‘ also resemble Paul & George’s for ‘Free As A Bird ‘. George Martin’s comments posted above on how “There’s not much dynamic in it (‘Free As A Bird '
” could be said about the ‘Woman ‘ production as well…:-)
6.50am
9 January 2015
Offline the beauty of George solos on Free As A Bird and Real love can only increase our regrets that Now And Then has never been completed and released (the John’s song was much better and beautiful than the other two, for me). does someone knows who made the fake that can be heard on bootlegs and web? i love it! in the beginning i thought it was a true Threetles
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