In the space of just 7 short years, The Beatles were able to produce some of the most inventive music ever. To achieve this, they also needed to work unlike anyone else. / davidhartley94
Buying a Beatles record was like buying a magazine. The longest gap between records was the six months and nine days between Revolver and Strawberry Fields Forever.
@@danpierce8862 "Strawberry Fields Forever" was released with "Penny Lane" as a double-A-sided single in February of 1967. Sgt. Pepper was released in May of the same year.
Yeah Paul for sure. I think at the start they were both very competitive (Paul & John) but eventually John got lazy (Yoko didn't exactly help) whilst Paul got even more motivated and inspired
The insane work ethic was due to Paul. Ringo has stated this on numerous occasions. He states that we have Paul to thank for the # of records. They would have done 3 or 4 less without him pushing all the time.
Yes, good point; Ringo has said, "Paul was the workaholic." And John could do things with 'dispatch'. As John proved when he burst into the room and rifled off the intro piano to Obla-di Ola-da when the others were stuck.
"Let's get in the studio, lads." A big reason Lennon quit The Beatles was because he just couldn't keep up with McCartney's output. Paul wrote 3-4 songs to John's 1.
@@Falconlibrary I heard John say during an interview that Paul would call him up at the last minute and tell him "we are going into the studio" so John said, "I would have to whip up 30 songs in a hurry!"
One of the things to remember about their lack of traditional music knowledge was George Martin covered this for them when needed. it's still important.
@@crazyquilt Sorry sounded flippant considering there's not all that many strings outside Let It Be which I think was Phil Spector although Spector usually used an arranger I think
Thank you SO MUCH for not using AI to narrate your video. You're a pleasant fellow with a kind narrating voice. The RU-vid algorithm dropped your video in my feed tonight and it was the best 8 minutes online I've had all night. I've liked and subscribed. Thank you again.
AI will produce stuff which only AI will consume. And then AI will create charts of the most successfull stuff that AI has produced rated by AI ... and ignored by humans ... that WOULD be nice.
The success of the Beatles wasn't just that they worked with flow (which they did), but that two (at least) insanely naturally talented writers met each other at the right time of their lives in the early days of rock and roll and had the freedom to experiment and let their talent shine.
The four of them grew up a 15 minute bike ride away from each other. How is that likely? George thought they were friends in another lifetime and were reincarnated into Liverpool.
I thought the same thing. The foremost element in the beatles is John's lyrical hability; he even suggested modifications in Paul's and George's lyrics. Besides, John could lead the pack, and hence, lead the social movement. Paul liked harmony (and so did George Martin), so they decorated what John sang. period If you have that, then you can flow or not; you can break some rules or not.
Even "Something" had lyric modifications by Lennon, this is not a minor issue. Paul, of course, has a lot of merit with excellent decoration habilities (so did George Martin), but seldom times did he write a great lyric 100% on his own, he always checked with Lennon.
Yes, they arrived at just the right time. If born 40 years later, Paul would be writing Broadway tunes or commercial jingles, George would be a studio guitar player, John would probably be writing electronic music and Ringo would the maestro at the local side show. The odds were billions to one that the two greatest songwriters in the history of popular music would work together for over 10 years pushing each other to creative heights neither would be capable of without the other. Keith Richards said it best - putting Lennon and McCartney together didn't make them twice as good, it made them ten times as good.
What are the odds.. that two super creative musicians, both gifted writers, both great singers, both very good guitarists, both have similar tastes, both smart as hell, would live as kids within a mile of each other, meet and decide to work together and stay together for a highly productive ten years?
Ofc Paul would say “the Beatles were just a great band, nothing more nothing less”. He was on the inside, in the eye of the hurricane. He couldn’t know what it was like to listen to those records for the first time. Those songs were nothing short of magic.
I suppose being in the eye of the hurricane is a bit like the plot of Up In Smoke, in which Cheech and Chong were just trying to score a hit while unknowingly driving a large van made of processed marijuana!
They were hard workers even in their savage years (1960-63). According to Mark Lewisohn in his "Tune In" between january and march 1961, therefore, two years before the emergence of Beatlemania, "...inside just fourteen weeks, they’d rocked Hamburg for about 415 hours - like 276 ninety-minute shows or 830 half-hours - and every night tried not to repeat themselves. No one stopped to realize it, and there was no way of knowing anyway, but the Beatles had to be the most experienced rock group in the world, not just Liverpool. And Hamburg didn’t only multiply their repertoire, it toughened their voices, seasoned their characters, enriched their personalities and strengthened their stamina. Four months earlier they would have struggled to play more than a couple of hours, now it was a piece of cake. All the same, witnesses say they played every show with total conviction. The effect was incredible." No wonder why they achieved such a huge success in seemingly such a short period time. They'd already toughly built themselves up.
@@im1who84u That's an intersting point about Ringo being a better Beatle. I'd say he was a better drummer for the band in terms of his style and his creativity, Ringo had to create quickly (at short notice) during studio time, and he obviously created great stuff. I do feel sorry for Pete, the other Beatles didn't even do the dirty work of firing him but got their manager to do it (I think Paul has expressed regret about that to be fair).
Ringo said Paul was the workaholic. The other 3 were happy to relax, but Paul couldn’t stop writing and would call them into the studio to record with him.
Only 10 of the 14 songs from Please Please Me were recorded that day. The other 4 came from the 2 singles they released before. One true performance very few people talk about is the 13-hour recording session (from 6pm to 7am) in which they recorded a good chunk of Rubber Soul (5 songs : The Word, You Won’t See Me, Girl, Wait, I’m Looking Through You). Two weeks later, the album was on the shelves.
Paul wasn’t just the driving force of the Beatles, he was also the most influential when it came to the “sound” that people tend to associate with the Beatles which becomes even more evident when you listen to the solo careers of each of the four after the Beatles. Only Paul’s stuff tends to sound the most like a Beatle’s song when you listen to it.
@@xmathmanx they played 292 times at the Cavern between 1961 and 1963 alone...plus many gigs in Hamburg. Then in the fame period they did regular world tours for 3 years solid. I'd say that was enough especially when you see the level of fandom that followed them.
@@xmathmanx It certainly is....I've done loads of gigs in my time and I've always found as much as I enjoyed it, it was always physically tough too. A lot more goes into gigging than people realise. Of course you are doing what you love, but it can be hard work too at times. I think the Beatles got fed up with live work because of all the hassle that went with it and they couldn't hear themselves which is always a pain
Although all of them saw what was going on around them culturally I think Paul really saw the big picture artistically... the possibilities presented by new technologies and the new attention to production in the studio. No coincidence his bass playing took off during Rubber Soul and the studio-centric part of their experience. He was inspired the most by that, and understood the amazing opportunity that he and John had as a songwriting team, I believe. A shame he (as well as John and George Martin) seemed to be a bit blinded to the emergence of George's songwriting.
I’ve worked with Ken Scott, who began working with the Beatles from 67 onwards (he can be seen at the mixing desk in the clip of All You Need Is Love). His first day & session at Abbey Road in 1964, age 16 (making tea), was for the song A Hard Days Night, which he said was finished a in little over two hours. Normally a Beatles single at the time was recorded in 90 minutes, so an A & B side in a three hour session, but AHDN involved percussion overdubs and splicing the intro chord and outro onto the main track, so took a little longer. But two hours? Most bands take a day to get the drum sound now. Mindbending how fast these guys worked on those early tracks.
One thing that really stood out to me watching the Get Back series and the restored version of the Let it Be movie was how little concern there seemed to for isolation or controlling spill in the studio. With the bulk of everything being recorded live, no separate vocal booth or drum room, no gobos separating the musicians. I don't think anyone even wore cans, they just had a couple of big monitors on stands in the room. It seems they prioritised setting up in a manner that allowed them to work comfortably for extended periods, able to freely throw ideas around. All in stark contrast to the clinical, almost laboratory conditions most records are made in today.
If it’s one thing the Beatle’s Get Back documentary shows, it’s that no matter how naturally talented you may think musicians are, good musicians work at their craft. For that reason, it’s one for the best docs out there on the creative process.
Malcolm Gladwell has an incredible chapter of his book "Outliers" on this concept of how hard the Beatles worked. It was part of the 10,000 hour theory that he discusses.
5:10: and in fact, She Said She Said HAS a perfect drum sound! The drums on that track are killer! It’s big, bigger even than Bonham & Page’s best recording efforts for big drums (classic example: When the Levee Breaks). It especially shows up on the original mono mix.
John may have been the "basher" in the group, but he often didn't know exactly what he wanted. They spent over 50 hours in the studio on "Strawberry Fields Forever." It paid off because it's one of the Beatles' best songs. But it's proof that they didn't always work quickly. I would say the "finish things" part of your statement is more important than working quickly. You don't want to work so slowly that you overthink, but everyone has a different path to getting art done. And different songs might require different methods. Radiohead have been known to record 5-10 different versions of a song over 10 years.
hey Davey, i subd to your channel because: 1 - you asked me to 2-you have been cranking out vids SINCE 2011 !!!! AND 3- you shared some very new , original info and history about Beatles in a way that helped anyone who loves to create (art)
Another interesting thing about the Beatles is they released singles that were not put on the albums such as Penny Lane and Strawberry fileds forever. They release them whilst making albums to keep the public interested. I am a great believer that you don't do things because you think people will like them you do it because you like it and hope that others will. That's originality.
They did it because of pressure from the record company for product and a belief at the time that they would be ripping off the fans if they put singles on albums by forcing them to pay for the same songs twice. I think there was some regret for this policy later, particularly leaving Strawberry Fields/Penny Lane off SPLHCB.
Synergy. Can't take away 1 of them, exactly why they were The Beatles. Perfect match in time, society and circumstance, ie cosmic magic. Never to be duplicated or even imitated again. Glad I saw Paul in concert last year, ridiculous.
Enjoyed this! I would say that their EMI album contracts meant they were working under some time pressure. Also, they had George Martin and a team of pioneering studio engineers who were translating the creativity onto record. Excellent content:)
Paul's dad was a musician too and so I think he understood the music business. Paul's dad was a fireman, but he was a musician as well. Working class lads.
Ahhh this finally makes sense. I can’t read or write music either. I can play other people’s music mostly by watching and listening. His bit about only remembering what is good explains why I can never remember anything I come up with on my own 😂😂
Who else likes how straight-foward this video is? dude just cuts to the chase, quick and effective, without ever feeling rushed or lazy, just the right amount of words, the right rhythm, all in the exact amount of time, just like a Beatles song!
The PLEASE PLEASE ME lp included both sides of their first two (previously-recorded) singles, so the album wasn't actually done in a day. That doesn't diminish the band's tremendous accomplishment, but it is important to stay true to history. Keep up the good work.
As stated at the beginning of this video, recording an album in a day or two was normal for most artists at that time. Spending weeks and months in the studio started about1966-67.
@@jiminycrintNo, Love Me Do wasn't recorded that day. Ringo's version of Love Me Do was recorded a week before Andy White's version. Ringo's version was actually the single that had already been released, and the Andy White version ended up on the Please Please Me album.
@@michaelharrington75 - oh my word, you’re right! So what was all that in the anthology about Ringo turning up and not being allowed to play. Martin made it sound as if he’d never met Ringo before he hired Andy White. I only ever owned the Red album which contains the White version so I thought that was the single (according to Wikipedia the White version was released as a single as the 2nd pressing - the plot thickens)
The Beatles debut album in the USA was "Meet the Beatles. I remember because I was one of the first in line to buy their album after seeing them on the Ed Sullivan show! I think Please, Please me, was their second album.
7:32 Same goes for Steve Miller. After his "The Joker" album was a huge hit, his producer told him to learn music theory. Steve was ready to try, but the producer changed this mind, saying, "Wait, I know plenty of people who know music theory who can't write half as well as you can already, so forget that advice." Steve did and sighed with relief going on to make other classics like "Jet Airliner" and "Fly like an Eagle." It's like someone may know how to talk, but not write.
Roy Orbison is my favorite example of clueless genius. His ignorance of music theory gave him a freedom from formula check out the song “In Dreams” for proof. This song eschews the typical ABABACAB form in favor of the non-repeating ABCDEFG!
They knew music theory. They knew what chords combines with what riffs and licks. You dont have to read the notes on the staff to know how music works.
Most of the music world operates without written music. Just the classical and commercial western music bits of it. Plato noted that people who didn't read or write usually have much better memories than those who do.
Hamburg was the making of them. They learned to be musicians and deal with hostile crowds. This is where they Beatles came of age. Tough cookies and talented beyond reproach ! Love 'em.
Thank you, David Hartley. I just wrote a book and did a youtube. My goal was two books, two youtubes. Now I will work on music, so thank you for this channel. And Mr. Beato's channel is excellent, although I have ten years of piano, theory has not been learned for me, so thank you.
To say that they didn’t know much is misleading. Paul had grown up with a bandleader as a father and absorbed the sounds of classic Tin Pan Alley and dance band songs. They all steeped themselves in the sounds of Rock and Roll, analysing and borrowing for their own material, and in Hamburg they played music from every era and genre of popular music, for 6 hours a night. Perhaps they couldn’t read and write music, but they certainly knew their stuff.
I am always baffled by the idea that music theory is actually telling you what you can or what you can't do, and therefore it is a liberation to have no formal training. Of course this is not how music theory works at all, unless it is gravely misunderstood or mistaught. Music theory is actually a descriptive field of study, not a prescriptive one. Much like the theory of gravity is not ordering you to fall when you jump (and therefore not knowing about gravity would make things easier in life beacuse you can fly), it is merely describing what happens when you jump. I second your point about flow though, and that overthinking is a major problem in music production. So while knowing things does rarely ever hurt you, it is always good to know when to be or not be obsessed with detail.
Swagger plus Rock and Roll, equals human played music, I love it. The fact that a bit of ruggedness and a mistake here or there, make it human and all the more listenable for it. Love that Malcomb - ACDC, deletes the thirds because of the high volume. He strips the chords back to a more minimal version, and its better for it. The Beatles inovated so very much, that folks like Malcomb and Angus could come after them. They revolutionised music, whilst providing the soundtrack to my life! What more can you say but thank you.
@@colnuttall9035 I agree! It's often the left-field-ideas that make room for new sounds and ideas and progress. Doesn't mean "music theory" would keep ypu from any of that though.
Wonderful video. It actually adds something to the Beatles discussion. You'd think everything had been said about that band but you introduce the theme everyone who wants to be a rock star doesn't want to hear: to be successful you have to work hard. Well written, narrated and edited.
actually such a great video, was completely packed with information that made the video feel like it was 3 minutes long and 15 all the same time in the best way
Seeing those four guys sitting in a room together just having a chit chat; I wonder if they knew what an impact they were having. They left such a huge indelible mark on music, life and culture~✨
you got a sub partly because you asked so creatively, partly because i love the beatles, and partly because this video is fantastically made, very high quality content, thank you! your voice is so soothing to listen to:)
I believe this is engrained in the modern music industry, because now every song is super eq’ed, super cut, super processed and mastered super loud! In fact, the studio process involves first recording the takes then walk away to let the mixer and mastering engineer do their job! Then and only then is the song ready to impress!! This is a disconnect between the sound and vision the artists originally envisioned, versus the super processed package that is delivered to the fan. We just have to reach a middle ground! Let’s talk facts: I’ve seen mixing engineers produce an AMAZING sounding piece, but in the daw! “Oh I just brought 220 hz down -2 db, oh I just added a clipper. Oh I just created a send track with reverb”. Andy Wallace, Joey Sturgis, so far all these big names overproduce every piece of music they touch!! They sound amazing, yet it doesn’t take away it’s OVERPRODUCED! This has a 2 fold effect: new artists want that sound, because they need to compete with these magical ethereal ( yes mastering and mixing have that effect on you ) musical pieces! So not only are the current artists trapped in this costly recording and mastering process, the new artists think that is the way to go so no one is seeking to go another new way to capture the soul of the intent of the musician, as well as make it sound polished! This all started with the famous “wall of sound” method of recording, place many microphones in the room instead of just one. This way the recording has every “musical angle” of the room, as if you were there in the room with the musicians!! So where does that leave the souls and passion of the music? TO BE CONTINUED…
In 1969 all four Beatles were still under 30. Only Ringo was a family man at that stage with 2 kids, John hardly saw his son and Paul and George were yet to start up families. So they probably could stay up all day and all night recording songs without other distractions.
The Get Back documentary gives a good look at how they did it- chop wood, carry water. George said he never practiced. I think they tried so many options per song that all they did was practice.
Super cool breakdown mate. Your channel feels like a pull back towards what makes music truly human. I’m a songwriter myself, guilty of limiting perceived perfectionism, which is precisely the enemy of flow. Breathe and strum and onwards
The Beatles put out quite a bit of stuff, and it was incredibly impressive. From 68 to 70 they put out 4 great albums, no small feat and i am sure putting a stop to all the touring by ‘66 helped them do that. But if high quality output is impressive, during those same years Frank Zappa put out 9 great albums, and was constantly touring throughout (he also produced all those albums as well). In fact Zappa put out another 6 or so albums from 71 to 73, while touring and releasing a movie AND he has thrown off a stage and was hospitalized for a number of months during all that Not to diminish the Beatles efforts in the least, but I do hear how prolific the Beatles were, but during that same time period Zappa was putting out even more stuff, of extremely high quality and it doesn’t seem to get mentioned very much
there may have been two discs in the album, but the name itself refers to the whole project as an 'album'. if you look up their discography, it lists the White Album as a single release, not two. this is some kinda hair you are trying to split and I am unsure why. nothing i posted was wrong
Zappa had a more diverse crew to work with, the Beatles were mostly 4 guys messing around in the studio most of the time (McCartney mostly being the only work centric while the other 3 slacked off), 1 producer, and 2-3 engineers at most came in helping the album process
Of course The Beatles knew chords. They were an accomplished performance group before recording. You don't just stick your fingers anywhere on a guitar neck, hope for the best, and produce some of the best sounds of that era. Lyrics are often scribbled down without chords, so you don't forget them. But a song only has a handful of chords that can be easily remembered. John and Paul, after working on a song, would show the chords to George; there's lots of evidence of this. Paul also had formal piano lessons as a child but found them boring.
Paul drove John mad. He said at one stage that Paul was an egomaniac. Well, a lot of us are glad he had that 'weakness', but at least it was used in a constructive way.
Such an interesting story! I didn't know they recorded it so easily and fast without overthinking and perfectionism. Amazing. Perfect is the enemy of good enough.
If you KNOW you have time for only a single take, you will perform that take infinitely better. Many of our greatest recordings in all genres are live takes. Orchestras are famously single-take practitioners.
Good point. Though this also makes me think of John Entwistle's famous first-take bass on The Who's "The Real Me". Entwistle thought his first take would never be used, so he played a "busy" version just for his own amusement. Everyone loved it and it became the official take.
Its just the way things were back then. Maybe there was less distraction in the world, because people like Dean Martin and Frank Zappa were releasing 3 or more albums a year and touring non-stop.
Dean Martin had other people help him in writing songs, Zappa knows music theory and surrounds himself with people who could write as fast as he is. The Beatles mostly fumbled in the studio and made songs that they deem good enough, they have no formal music training, the most they had was their guitars and references to music they've listened to, and the experiences they had during their gruelling hamburg days, and yet they still managed to crank out 13 successful albums
Nice work, thanks. Amazing that the band included not only the most prolific pop writer genius of all time, McCartney---but a writer even greater. John Lennon: arguably even greater than Paul. The sheer genius of his best stuff remains totally unmatched, even by Paulie. PLUS George Harrison, and the inimitable Ringo. Never will their star fade.
