Booker T and the MGs made a record covering all of Abbey Road, all in good fun and presumably economic bounty, just months after the Beatles album came out. McLemore Avenue is the location of the Stax studios in Memphis.
Plus another cover of a song with half the same name, not so surprising, but also from the early 70s. Greetings from Asbury Park.
I don’t know. The lack of vocals make this four-minute version almost as boring as the seven-minute with-vocals version. But I usually do like stuff with Ronnie Van Zant in it.
I guess the comments on the later Beatles by Gene and Steve show the differences in sensibilities between them and me. I went along with the Beatles, and I guess that led me to the prog-rock realm (Pink Floyd, King Crimson, ELP, Genesis, Yes, etc.) in the early 70s. Which, of course, led me to despair in the late 70s when prog-rock got totally self-indulgent. I liked neither punk and what I saw as a lack of musicianship, nor disco with its lack of passion, so I listened to mostly jazz and blues (and, okay, the Grateful Dead, especially early Dead, which was blues-based at least to some extent). I do wonder if there’s some truth in the notion that what you like between the ages of, say 16 and 25, totally informs what you like the rest of your life. Some truth — I’ve come to like lots of weird shit I’d never heard of then, like Beausoleil, and Richard Thompson. (Weird in the sense that it was unfamiliar to me.)
Anyway, I enjoy being mostly a lurker here, it does expose me to informed commentary on music that I probably would dismiss without listening to thoughtfully. Even if I’m not convinced.
Oh, and I do think that a 2014 Beatles would be mostly geezers (assuming that they had survived intact under Paul’s leadership); at least, Jeff Lynne would be a member, and Ringo would probably still be a member. Agree that John and George couldn’t stay with Paul in charge.
There were and are many options. Choosing Beausoleil and Richard Thompson are pretty good choices.
But they don’t answer the big questions the Who asked.
For instance, Who Are You?
My answer is that everyone who could play played with everyone else. The best music was a great convention of players collaborating in surprising ways. Or they were already playing with other people.
Keep on playing!
BTW, George Benson also did a pretty cool cover of I Want You (She’s So Heavy):
I don’t understand a word Peter just said.
I never whatsoever understood judging music by musicianship. How many times have I heard, “their stuff sucks, but you have to admit, they’re great musicians”? (The flipside I’ve never heard, “their stuff is great, but I can’t listen to it because there’s not enough musicianship there.) (Clinic on the use of “there” “their” and “they’re” there for all you young writers at home.)
There will always be better musicians, so who cares? Undoubtedly there are musicians somewhere who laugh at the musicianship of Floyd, King Crimson and ELP. A terrible, self-indulgent example, but as a hack musician myself, I see players all the time who make me wanna chuck my stuff in the nearest dumpster and start a fire.
For me, if it turns my crack, socks me in the gut, grabs me by the balls, that’s all that matters. How many notes in how many time signatures with how many strange chords and weird progressions? Who give a rat’s? (A: Mike Fenger.)
And my point on the 2014 Beatles, as if anyone was asking? We all think to ourselves, “It’s so too bad that the Beatles packed it in.” But it also doesn’t take much imagining to realize the awful mess they’d probably have become by now.
To quote Fred Gwynne from “Pet Sematary”: “Sometimes dead is better.” (So, is it really better, Fred?)
pointing out the goofy of the flip side (“their stuff is great, but I can’t listen to it because there’s not enough musicianship there”)
– is the most sense making thing you’ve said this week. Huzzah.