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Thread: The Prog Side of The Beatles

  1. #26
    Anyone ever try counting in the beginning of Everybody's Got Something To Hide (Except For Me And My Monkey)?

  2. #27
    Quote Originally Posted by arabicadabra View Post
    Anyone ever try counting in the beginning of Everybody's Got Something To Hide (Except For Me And My Monkey)?
    According to The Complete Scores it's in 4/4, changing to 3/4 after the first 16 measures and in the end it changes back to 4/4.

  3. #28
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    I'd go a little further back to The Who's "A Quick One While He's Away", but it's an endlessly debatable topic.
    Tomorrow Never Knows was recorded in April, 1966 and released in August on the great Revolver album. A Quck One... was recorded in November, 1966, released on the A Quick One album in December.

    Beatles for the win!

    /sarcasm
    ...or you could love

  4. #29
    Quote Originally Posted by grego View Post
    Dylan - a prog related figure? I'm afraid he doesn't know that.
    Dylan influenced prog from a lyrical standpoint. I think he made it OK to write about something other than I Want to Hold Your Hand. He pushed the boundaries and was influential on people like Steve Howe and Keith Emerson as well as The Beatles. Prog, musically, takes very little from him but lyrically prog owes a great debt to Bob.

    Bill
    She'll be standing on the bar soon
    With a fish head and a harpoon
    and a fake beard plastered on her brow.

  5. #30
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    I see. Well, lyrically, maybe..nonetheless, prog has it's own 'Dylans"..meaning Keith Reid, Peter Sinfield, Pete Brown..

  6. #31
    Member Paulrus's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Jeremy Bender View Post
    Tomorrow Never Knows was recorded in April, 1966 and released in August on the great Revolver album. A Quck One... was recorded in November, 1966, released on the A Quick One album in December.

    Beatles for the win!

    /sarcasm
    You are correct -- for some reason I thought "A Quick One..." went back to the late 1965.

    Of course, there's also the song "Rael" from the same album. Also very proto-proggy.



    From what I've read Townsend was working on ideas that led to things like "A Quick One..." and "Rael" long before they were recorded. But it's always amazing to realize that "Tomorrow Never Knows" was actually the first song The Beatles worked on for Revolver.
    I'm holding out for the Wilson-mixed 5.1 super-duper walletbuster special anniversary extra adjectives edition.

  7. #32
    Quote Originally Posted by Adm.Kirk View Post
    Dylan influenced prog from a lyrical standpoint. I think he made it OK to write about something other than I Want to Hold Your Hand. He pushed the boundaries and was influential on people like Steve Howe and Keith Emerson as well as The Beatles. Prog, musically, takes very little from him but lyrically prog owes a great debt to Bob.

    Bill
    Don't forget Jimi. Dylan was an immense influence on him.
    "The White Zone is for loading and unloading only. If you got to load or unload go to the White Zone!"

  8. #33
    Bill Bruford once said that Sgt. Peppers changed everything in the sense that bands now had license to do whatever they could think of in a song. So, The Beatles weren't Prog per se, but the Prog movement might never have started if the Beatles hadn't started experimenting with popular music.

  9. #34
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    Quote Originally Posted by Adm.Kirk View Post
    Dylan influenced prog from a lyrical standpoint. I think he made it OK to write about something other than I Want to Hold Your Hand. He pushed the boundaries and was influential on people like Steve Howe and Keith Emerson as well as The Beatles. Prog, musically, takes very little from him but lyrically prog owes a great debt to Bob.

    Bill
    And from a conceptual standpoint: If it was OK to write lyrics about something other than I Want to Hold Your Hand, then it was OK to write music that was something other than two-and-a-half minutes of verse-chorus, verse-chorus, bridge (maybe), verse-chorus and out, three or four chords, 4/4 or 6/8 all the way through, and played by vocals, guitar, bass, drums, and maybe Farfisa organ. Even though Dylan never went in that direction himself.

  10. #35
    Quote Originally Posted by Rarebird View Post
    According to The Complete Scores it's in 4/4, changing to 3/4 after the first 16 measures and in the end it changes back to 4/4.
    But the intro is hard to count properly, which I think is what arabicadabra meant. The guitar plays on the "and" of 1, 2, and 3, but it always sounds to me like the guitar is playing on the 1, 2, and 3 instead, which throws you off when the full band kicks in.

    Same thing with Bonzo's drum intro on "Rock and Roll." It sounds like he comes in on 1, but it's really the "and" of 3. No matter how many times I've heard that song, I still can't nail down the beat until the band comes in!

  11. #36
    Jazzbo manqué Mister Triscuits's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Adrian View Post
    But the intro is hard to count properly, which I think is what arabicadabra meant. The guitar plays on the "and" of 1, 2, and 3, but it always sounds to me like the guitar is playing on the 1, 2, and 3 instead, which throws you off when the full band kicks in.
    That's how it works if you count the first drumbeat of the song as the 1. But I don't think that's how the Beatles played it. To my mind, Ringo's drum pattern during the intro clearly places the guitar chords on the downbeats of 2, 3, & 4, but the first downbeat of the first bar is missing, and there is a corresponding extra beat at the end of the intro, before the splice into the main body of the song. And that surely is a splice, as the main song is in a different tempo. It wouldn't be the only rhythmically jarring splice on the White Album--see also "Yer Blues."

  12. #37
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    George Martin said that he thought the hardest song The Beatles ever did was Good Morning,Good Morning. On The Making Of Sgt. Pepper he counts the verse and it is totally wacky.

  13. #38
    Quote Originally Posted by Rarebird View Post
    According to The Complete Scores it's in 4/4, changing to 3/4 after the first 16 measures and in the end it changes back to 4/4.
    What I actually meant was, anybody ever try coming in correctly (playing) with the beginning?

  14. #39
    Quote Originally Posted by grego View Post
    I see. Well, lyrically, maybe..nonetheless, prog has it's own 'Dylans"..meaning Keith Reid, Peter Sinfield, Pete Brown..
    I wonder how much Dylan influenced these guys? Dylan was huge in the UK in the 60's. I doubt Reid, Sinfield or Brown weren't influenced by Dylan's writing.

    Bill
    She'll be standing on the bar soon
    With a fish head and a harpoon
    and a fake beard plastered on her brow.

  15. #40
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    Quote Originally Posted by Rand Kelly View Post
    George Martin said that he thought the hardest song The Beatles ever did was Good Morning,Good Morning. On The Making Of Sgt. Pepper he counts the verse and it is totally wacky.
    I was just going to mention that tune as an example of Beatles tunes that have shifting time signatures. The verse starts with two bars of 3/4 and one bar of 4/4, then there's some even more tricky stuff later (I think there's a bar of 5/4 in there, but I'll have to check). Another signature shifting tune is "She Said, She Said." Then there's "All You Need is Love," in which the verse is in 7/4 and the chorus is in 4/4. I don't consider The Beatles to be prog necessarily, but they certainly opened the door for it.

  16. #41
    Member since March 2004 mozo-pg's Avatar
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    What do people think about the Benefit Of Mr. Kite? I saw it live on Paul's recent tour and it sounded as proggy as hell.

  17. #42
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    Quote Originally Posted by mozo-pg View Post
    What do people think about the Benefit Of Mr. Kite. I saw it live on Paul's recent tour and it sounded as proggy as hell?
    That one to me is more pure psych than prog, much like a lot of the Syd Barrett material on Pipers.
    I'm holding out for the Wilson-mixed 5.1 super-duper walletbuster special anniversary extra adjectives edition.

  18. #43
    chalkpie
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    Sorry for the O/T, but I don't own the mono versions of these albums. Were these the way the lads intended their music to sound?

  19. #44
    Quote Originally Posted by chalkpie View Post
    Sorry for the O/T, but I don't own the mono versions of these albums. Were these the way the lads intended their music to sound?
    The monos are considered definitive, up to and including "Revolver, but I add "Pepper," as well. After that, great attention was paid to both mono and stereo. There are marked differences between mixes, especially with White Album. There really was no mono "Abbey Road." (Although, I have a South American vinyl that is, I believe, compressed to mono.)
    "The White Zone is for loading and unloading only. If you got to load or unload go to the White Zone!"

  20. #45
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    Eleonor Rigby was a prog song before his time.
    “One good thing about music, when it hits you, you feel no pain.”

  21. #46
    Quote Originally Posted by Musitron View Post
    Eleonor Rigby was a prog song before his time.
    I was thinking about this just earlier today. Yes, it has different two signatures, but one only appears during the chorus ("ahhh, look at all the lonely people"). If that's enough to label it prog, then I'd guess we could build one hell of a list.
    "The White Zone is for loading and unloading only. If you got to load or unload go to the White Zone!"

  22. #47
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    Quote Originally Posted by ronmac View Post
    I was thinking about this just earlier today. Yes, it has different two signatures, but one only appears during the chorus ("ahhh, look at all the lonely people"). If that's enough to label it prog, then I'd guess we could build one hell of a list.
    Sorry to keep disputing you about time signatures, but Eleanor Rigby is all 4/4 too.

    I've always loved The Beatles and like I said, they opened the door for prog, but this whole thread is falling into that old "what is prog?" category. Eleanor Rigby: cool string arrangement and great melody, but what is "prog" about it? Another one I don't get is "Tomorrow Never Knows." It's just two chords with a repetitive melody. Cool and unique drum groove and lots of psychedelic effects, but it's a super simple tune. (shrug) "Strawberry Fields" and "I am the Walrus;" I can see those as being proto-prog; maybe "She Said She Said" and "Good Morning Good Morning" too, but to me, it's not a long list. Does everything have to be "prog" to be good?!

  23. #48
    I'd say the Beatles were definitely progressive rock (especially starting around Rubber Soul/Revolver). There was no such thing as "Prog" at the time. But they were a rock band and they were very progressive. Yes, even Eleanor Rigby & especially Tomorrow Never Knows. Odd time signatures are not the only way for a rock group to be progressive. They were just adding all kinds of new colors, sounds & styles to what they were doing, and everybody knew they were progressing, influencing others, innovating, and opening up the possibilities for rock groups. (Zappa was doing it too, but of course, the Beatles were mainstream!)

  24. #49
    Quote Originally Posted by Jon Anderson
    "Tomorrow Never Knows" was like a breakthrough, and from then on, obviously they got into other major work, so they were the gods.
    - Jon Anderson

  25. #50
    Quote Originally Posted by No Pride View Post
    Sorry to keep disputing you about time signatures, but Eleanor Rigby is all 4/4 too.
    No need to be sorry. I am not a musician and thought it was.

    I'll have to disagree with you about SFF, though. That's prog in my ears.
    "The White Zone is for loading and unloading only. If you got to load or unload go to the White Zone!"

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