Anyone ever try counting in the beginning of Everybody's Got Something To Hide (Except For Me And My Monkey)?
Anyone ever try counting in the beginning of Everybody's Got Something To Hide (Except For Me And My Monkey)?
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.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.
Beatles for the win!
/sarcasm
...or you could love
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.
I see. Well, lyrically, maybe..nonetheless, prog has it's own 'Dylans"..meaning Keith Reid, Peter Sinfield, Pete Brown..
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.
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.
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.
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!
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."
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.
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.
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!"
Eleonor Rigby was a prog song before his time.
“One good thing about music, when it hits you, you feel no pain.”
"The White Zone is for loading and unloading only. If you got to load or unload go to the White Zone!"
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?!
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!)
- Jon AndersonOriginally Posted by Jon Anderson
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