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Posts from Base Camp

Assessing the post-breakup albums of the Beatles

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(Kingston, Ontario, Canada)

In my previous post, I ranked the Beatles’ studio albums from least best to best. This time around, I’m looking at the most significant post-break-up releases that you are likely to come across. And I’ll reverse the order, so that I’m starting with the “best”. My criteria is simple: which releases are best for repeated listening?

Past Masters, Volumes One and Two

I could end the list here. These are the only truly essential post-breakup releases. They contain every non-album track (singles, EPs) ever released while the Beatles were together. Volume One is solid, with a slew of classic singles.

But Volume Two is light years beyond. “Day Tripper”, “We Can Work It Out”, “Rain” (the drumming!), “Lady Madonna”, “Hey Jude”, “Revolution”…even the B-sides such as “Old Brown Shoe” and “The Inner Light” still stand up nearly 60 years later. Although it is technically a compilation, I would easily rank this in the top half of the Beatles’ studio albums. It’s hard to believe that they left all of this stuff off their regular albums.

Love

Whatever you think of the Cirque du Soleil show for which this remix/mash-up was created, this album remains a surprising and thoroughly enjoyable listening experience. The songs are truncated, turned inside-out, and even mashed together with other songs. In my view, those mash-ups are the ones that truly reward repeated listening. The collision of “Drive My Car”, “The Word”, and “What You’re Doing” takes two unheralded tracks, adds a third, and somehow creates a roller-coaster of middle-period magic. The mash-up of “Within You Without You” and “Tomorrow Never Knows” is almost as good.

Let It Be…Naked

The original Let it Be album was a mixed bag. (Very) Overproduced by Phil Spector after the band had called it a day, it frustratingly veers between unpolished “back to basics” tracks like “One After 909” and overproduced goop like “The Long and Winding Road”. Did that simple ballad really need strings, harps, and choirs? Let it Be…Naked seeks to rectify that, by presenting a crisper collection of songs without the overproduction. And it mostly succeeds. It’s no Abbey Road, but it’s a marked improvement on the original Let it Be. (And it’s also better than Get Back, the shelved first attempt at making a listenable album out of the Let it Be-era material).

1962-1966, 1967-1970 , and 1

All of these are perfectly serviceable compilations for the casual listener. The 2023 remixes/expansions of 1962-1966 (the “Red” album) and 1967-1970 (the “Blue” album) get my vote for adding songs that were left out of the original 1973 releases…and in most cases, the additions deserve the inclusion. Some of the remixes are especially good: “You Can’t Do That” and “I Saw Her Standing There” come to mind. But most of these early songs come to life in their newly-demixed/remixed form. Paul McCartney’s bass playing is a particular revelation.

I’m not as enamoured with 1. In part, this is because I don’t think all of the Beatles’ best songs were singles. “A Day in the Life” and “Here Comes the Sun” are just two examples of songs that are absolute classics but were never released as singles when the band was still together. There is also a certain degree of overexposure with the songs on 1 too, as every one of them was (as the title suggests) a chart-topping single. But I’m not the target audience for 1 anyway. It is still a great introduction to the band for those who are less familiar with their work.

Anthology, Volumes 1 to 4

When I first listened to the three Anthology albums released in the mid-1990s, I thought they were great. In addition to the “new” songs “Free as a Bird” and “Real Love”, they contained a bunch of previously unreleased/unknown songs that had only been rumours…or available only on dodgy bootlegs (“Leave My Kitten Alone” was much stronger than a number of songs officially released by the Beatles in 1964). The alternate takes were fascinating. And some of the live tracks were tremendous recordings, full of the energy of the band’s early days.

Over time, however, my opinion has changed. Yes, they are essential listening for serious fans. But, in most cases, the unreleased stuff was in fact inferior to what was released the first time around. as the years go by, I listen to them less and less. I cannot see myself ever needing to upgrade my mid-1990s Anthology CDs to vinyl. And, in a telling gesture, I have yet to acquire a copy of the new Anthology 4 (released in 2025)…which duplicates many tracks from the various “Super Deluxe” editions that have been issued in the recent past.

Live at the BBC (Volumes 1 and 2)

These releases features songs that the Beatles recorded for their BBC appearances in the early years of Beatlemania. In addition to many of their best-known tracks, the two Live at the BBC collections also include songs that the Beatles never released on their albums. For me, those are the treasures of these compilations. And I like how they recreate radio shows of the era, with brief interviews and introductions. But even there, my appreciation of these collections is qualified. For the most part, these recordings can be described as…fine. Without a true audience, there is no urgency. There are no lost classics. Just competent, but quickly recorded, renditions of songs in their repertoire. And given that these albums are both in excess of two hours long, it is hard to get excited about repeat plays.

Live at the Hollywood Bowl (2016 version, released with Eight Days a Week movie)

While this remixed collection of concert recordings from 1964 and 1965 sounds better than the 1977 Live at the Hollywood Bowl LP that it replaced, it still suffers from rough sound quality, rather sloppy performances, and less than ideal recording conditions. It definitely has historical interest, and shows just how insane the concert conditions were. However, like the BBC and Anthology recordings, I can go years without playing this record.

This ends my Beatles “mini-series”. I’ll continue to include the occasional music-related post, but the next post will definitely be travel-related!

[The copyrights in the album covers lie with Parlophone/Apple Records. And the photo at the very top of the post is of the famed Abbey Road studios in London, England.]

Posts from Base Camp

Ranking albums by the Beatles

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(Kingston, Ontario, Canada)

One of the most-read posts on this blog was my early 2025 post about my interview with Bob Dylan. While this remains a travel blog, I see no problem with doing the occasional post about music. Especially when I have written related posts in the past, such as the posts about my 2005 visit to Liverpool, my Beatles pilgrimage in 2014, or my broader “Beatles journey.”

So, today, I will take on the difficult task of ranking the Beatles studio albums from “least best” to “best”. I could probably write an entire post about each album, but I’ll keep my comments as short as possible.

13. Yellow Submarine (1969). This album had only one side of Beatles music, and even then only four of those songs were previously unreleased. “Hey Bulldog” is a good song, but these leftovers can’t hope to compete with their other proper albums.

12. Beatles for Sale (1964). Their fourth album in two years sounded tired. They looked tired on the cover. Even their cover version choices seemed uninspired. “Eight Days a Week” and “I’ll Follow the Sun” are highlights, but this will never be a Desert Island Disc for me.

11. Please Please Me (1963). Their debut album contains three incredible performances: “I Saw Her Standing There”, the title track, and “Twist and Shout”. The rest is generally fine, but they haven’t really found their feet yet. It wouldn’t take long: their second release of 1963 would be much better.

10. Help! (1965). When I listen to this album, I think of the word “competent”. They tentatively explored some different directions here, but I still get the feeling that they are in a bit of a holding pattern. “Yesterday” was ultimately overplayed, but who can complain about the melody? “Help!”, “Ticket to Ride”, and “You’re Going to Lose that Girl” are among the other highlights.

9. Let it Be (1970). Millions of words have been written about this trying phase in their career. I will just say this: despite some acknowledged classic singles, I just don’t find this album as enjoyable as the ones ranked above it. It’s a different kind of fatigue from “Beatles For Sale”, but it is fatigue all the same. Some questionable production decisions don’t help. The “Naked” version that came out in 2003 was preferable in that regard.

8. Magical Mystery Tour (1967). Side two, which collected their recent singles, is mostly brilliant. “Penny Lane”/”Strawberry Fields Forever” may be the best single ever released. How could you call either of those a “B”-side? “Hello Goodbye” and “All You Need is Love” also keep the quality high. But side one is a tougher slog, and keeps this from ranking higher.

7. A Hard Day’s Night (1964). An amazingly consistent release, with all 13 songs written by Lennon-McCartney. And pretty much any of them could have been a single. Indeed, some of them became successful singles for others. The title track, “Can’t Buy Me Love”, and “And I Love Her” are justifiably classics. Maybe the lyrics were still simple, but by now they had mastered the musical side of the equation.

6. The Beatles (a.k.a. “The White Album”) (1968). Some people would rank this a lot higher. And I admit, there is a lot here to like. “Back in the U.S.S.R.”, “While My Guitar Gently Weeps”, “Blackbird”, “Dear Prudence”, and “Helter Skelter” are undoubtedly among their very best. But, as a listening experience, this double album might be just a little too long. I think I would have left “Revolution 9” as a B-side or an EP track, and culled some of the undeveloped fragments. “Hey Jude” and “Revolution” came out as a single around this time: wouldn’t they have made an excellent addition?

5. With The Beatles (1963). This starts with the breathless “It Won’t Be Long” and doesn’t let up until “Money (That’s What I Want)”, the fierce closing track. As an album, it is perfectly paced. And despite having six cover versions, they don’t diminish the album at all. Both “Money” and “You’ve Really Got A Hold on Me” achieve the rare feat of dwarfing the Motown originals. And the bass on “All My Loving”…

4. Rubber Soul (1965). This was a significant leap forward from “Help!” and the albums that came before. A couple of soft spots mean that it doesn’t quite make my Top 3, but by and large the songs are outstanding. “In My Life” is a remarkable accomplishment that thankfully hasn’t been overplayed over the years. Any other band would have killed to have this as a single, but the Beatles never bothered.

3. Revolver (1966). My Top 3 is basically interchangeable. If you pitted the individual songs from those albums against each other, I think Revolver might prevail. “Taxman”, “Eleanor Rigby”, “I’m Only Sleeping”, “Here, There and Everywhere”, “She Said She Said”, “Good Day Sunshine”, “And Your Bird Can Sing”, “For No One”, “Got to Get You Into My Life”, and “Tomorrow Never Knows”…all amazing, and also mostly without precedent. The only reason why I don’t rank it higher is the top two albums hold together as albums just a little bit better. But this is really splitting hairs.

2. Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967). It’s very hard for me to rate this album objectively, as it contains “A Day in the Life”…my favourite Beatles song, and possibly my favourite song period. Nothing had ever sounded like that before (or since). And tracks as diverse as “She’s Leaving Home” and “Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite” push the envelope of popular music too. By virtue of having a theme (for a couple of songs at least), it just sneaks past Revolver.

1. Abbey Road (1969). It’s definitely the best-sounding Beatles album. And even if the songs aren’t as uniformly great as Revolver, I currently think this is the best Beatles album experience. The huge medley that concludes side two is a stunning suite of music, despite being bunged together from a collection of half-finished fragments. And don’t sell the other songs short: “Here Comes the Sun” and “Something” are my two favourites, and are justifiably famous, but “Oh! Darling” and “You Never Give Me Your Money” are two of the many underappreciated and lesser-known tracks. To me, this album sounds like a band knowing it is going to split up, but is still determined to set the standard even higher…just one more time.

[The copyrights in the album covers lie with Parlophone/Apple Records. And the photo at the very top of the post is a photo of me crossing Abbey Road at that zebra crossing.]

Posts from Base Camp

My Beatles Journey

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(Kingston, Ontario, Canada)

This year has been special for Beatles fans. More than 50 years after they broke up, a new Beatles song called “Now and Then” appeared last month. Featuring all four members, it was an unexpected but fitting conclusion to the recording career of this unparalleled band. It was also accompanied by an evocative video that tugged at the heartstrings one last time.

“Mendips” – John Lennon’s childhood home in Liverpool

My Beatles journey began in high school, when I discovered my sister’s old Beatles albums. That was 40 years ago, but I’ve remained a fan ever since. And while my collection has expanded to include everything from Antonio Carlos Jobim to Bajofondo Tango Club, the enduring influence of the Beatles is abundantly clear in other favourites such as Crowded House and Jellyfish.

3 Savile Row – former headquarters of the Beatles’ business empire

When I look back, I see that a significant amount of my travel has been Beatles-related. The most obvious trip, of course, was a 2005 trip to Liverpool. While there, we visited the childhood homes of John Lennon and Paul McCartney. But we also visited their early 1960s haunts such as the famous Cavern Club and The Grapes pub. We even stayed at the Adelphi Hotel – the top hotel in town in the 1960s, and the very definition of “faded grandeur” by the time we stayed there. You can read more about this trip in this post from 2015.

Abbey Road Studios, St. John’s Wood, London

Just as memorable was my November 2014 trip to London, England. I attended several great musical events while in London, but I also took an extended tour of Beatles sights. In addition to the Apple headquarters on Savile Row, I saw the Abbey Road Studios where almost all of those great songs were recorded. I even crossed Abbey Road, as you can see at the very top of this post. But I also saw several other places that were less obvious parts of the Beatles story. You can read more about that day in this December 2014 post. 

Street entrance to the Cavern Club in Liverpool

London and Liverpool – those aren’t surprising Beatles destinations. But there’s more. On a trip to New York City, we stopped by the “Strawberry Fields” portion of Central Park and the adjacent “Dakota Building” where John Lennon spent the last years of his life. And, like I have on many of my travels, I also found a very rare Beatles-related record as a souvenir. On this occasion, it was a very elaborately packaged Paul McCartney solo vinyl single from a shop in Greenwich Village.

The Weeklings, with string and horn sections, live at Monmouth University’s Pollak Theatre.

On a completely separate trip, I found myself at Monmouth University in the state of New Jersey…for a Beatles symposium! My friend (and fellow Beatles fan) Anthony heard about an academic conference commemorating the 50th anniversary of the 1968 “The Beatles” album (a.k.a “The White Album”). Well, why not? You can read about that conference in this post from November 2018. Pictured above is a concert we saw at the conference…The Weeklings were brilliant, and played most of The White Album live!

Paul McCartney live in Halifax, Nova Scotia (July 2009)

We’ve seen Ringo Starr in concert a couple of times: once at Casino Rama (north of Toronto), and another time (just last year) right here in Kingston. And while I saw Paul McCartney in Toronto when I lived there in the early 1990s, we also saw him many years later in…Halifax, Nova Scotia! We were visiting friends in Halifax but managed to include Paul’s concert as well. You can read about the 2009 concert in this post from 2015.

Poster for an upcoming Beatles cover band concert (Budapest, Hungary – June 24, 1991)

Beatles connections seem to pop up in the most unexpected locations. Who would have thought that Paul McCartney had a connection to Verona, Italy? Or that we would cross paths with a Beatles event in Trois-Rivieres, Quebec? How about a Beatles tribute in Budapest, Hungary? Or a Beatles link to a rockabilly concert in the Beaches neighbourhood of Toronto?

The Straight Eights live at Castro’s Lounge (Toronto, Ontario)

Unexpected links are a great part of travel. And while this post features previously published photos, I’ve just unexpectedly discovered some “new” photos from prior travels. I’ll be sharing some of those in my next post…coming soon!

Posts from the road

An awesome concert in New Jersey!

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(West Long Branch, New Jersey, U.S.A.)

On very short notice, I decided to join a friend on a road trip to a four-day academic music conference at Monmouth University in New Jersey.  This was purely for fun and had nothing to do with my employment.  I was free to attend whichever seminars and events caught my interest.

My previous exposure to New Jersey consisted only of passing through Newark Airport on my way to and from New York City.  Most of what I saw was concrete.  This time, however, I found myself at an idyllic college that seemed far removed from urban America.

Stop for gas in Pennsylvania’s Pocono Mountains

The conference itself was scheduled to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the Beatles’ eponymous 1968 album (popularly known as the “White Album”).  While most of the seminars had some connection to that album, the topics ranged from the media in 1960s Germany to “irregular hypermeters” (more about that in a future post).

Yes. New Jersey’s Garden State Parkway passes through a place called Cheesequake!

In addition to the daytime seminars, there were “working” lunches with keynote speakers, dinners with live entertainment, evening presentations for all attendees, vast numbers of books for sale…and, on the first night, a concert by a band called “The Weeklings“.  They seemed to be fairly well known, so we decided to attend as the tickets were included with our conference fees.

I was so impressed with Cheesequake that I took another picture

I had no idea that this concert, by a band that was completely unknown to me,  would be one of the very best that I had ever attended.  The Weeklings are primarily a Beatles tribute band, meaning that they replicate the songs of the Beatles in concert.  I’ve seen plenty of these bands before, and many of them are quite good.  My brother-in-law even portrayed John Lennon in one of them. However, the Weeklings (see photo at the top of this post) don’t look anything like the Beatles, nor do they even try.

The interior of Monmouth University’s Woodrow Wilson Hall, where we ate our dinners and attended a number of presentations

The concert was a live recreation of (most of) the White Album.  For those of you who are unfamiliar with that double album, it is by far the most musically varied of any Beatles album.  The songs range from acoustic ballads to heavy metal, ska to music hall, and everything in between.  The songs are also full of musical tricks, including multiple time signature changes within the same song or even the same verse. Playing it live is an extreme test.  But the Weeklings were up to it…for this special event, they even had a 5-piece string section and a 6-piece horn section.

Descending the marble staircase into Woodrow Wilson Hall’s dining area

It was astonishing.  Even with Paul McCartney’s vast financial resources, the string and horn parts at his concerts are generally played by one guy with a fancy keyboard.  To hear these songs live, with the actual arrangements and instruments that appear on the record, was really something special.

The Weeklings on stage at Pollak Hall

But that wasn’t all – the Weeklings then proceeded to play a handful of their original compositions (with obvious Beatles influences)…and then play even more Beatles songs that are rarely performed live with full string and horn sections.  While their string-heavy and amped-up version of “I am the Walrus” was deeply impressive, it was “A Day in the Life” that really took things to the next level.

“A Day in the Life” is, in my opinion, the Beatles’ finest song.  The recording, with its unprecedented and seemingly random 24-bar orchestral crescendos, represents one of the highest points of 20th century popular music.  To hear it live, with that instrumentation, was like nothing I had ever heard.

The musicians acknowledge the crowd at the end of the show

It has been said that writing about music is like dancing about architecture:  it is very difficult to do well.  But If I haven’t conveyed it clearly enough, please just take my word for it…this was amazing, and you should definitely see these guys if you ever get the chance.  They don’t always have the strings and horns with them in concert, but even as a 4-piece band with a keyboard player on the side, they are still incredible.  What a great way to start the conference!

Posts from Base Camp

Travel Flashback: Liverpool, England (2005)

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(Kingston, Ontario, Canada)

If you followed my trip to Abbey Road last November, then you can probably guess why we incorporated a visit to Liverpool into our 2005 Wales holiday: to see the Beatles sights in this northern England city.  To make the experience as authentic as possible, we stayed at the Adelphi Hotel: it is an ancient place that would have been the top hotel in town during the 1950s and 1960s.  Guests have included Winston Churchill, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Frank Sinatra, Judy Garland and Roy Rogers (and his horse Trigger!).

Prior to becoming global superstars, the Beatles gained an intensely devoted following in their hometown of Liverpool.  The venue most associated with them is the Cavern Club on Mathew Street, where they played hundreds of shows “before the fame”.  It was a damp, dingy and crowded underground venue dripping with condensation that nonetheless attracted throngs to each Beatles performance.

Near the Liverpool waterfront on a blustery day in northern England
Near the Liverpool waterfront on a blustery day in northern England

One would think that such an important sight would have been preserved as a tourist sight.  Nonetheless, it was in fact “filled in” in 1973 to accommodate an underground rail line.  Some say that the Cavern was not saved because there was some lingering resentment over the “local boys who left”.   Using the original plans and some of the original materials, a “new” underground Cavern Club was soon built in the same general area  and it has been filled with tourists ever since.  This is the Cavern you see in the photo at the top of this post.

Our van for the National Trust tour of the Lennon and McCartney childhood homes in Liverpool, England
Our van for the National Trust tour of the Lennon and McCartney childhood homes in Liverpool, England

While it hosts bands of all types, during the daytime almost everybody there is a tourist attracted by the Beatles connection.  Not wanting to miss out, we went down there to see what it was like.  A passable guitarist sang Beatles songs on the stage.  We ordered Cokes, as many of the lunchtime attendees would have done in the Beatles’ day, and (along with a lot of tourists) managed to get a small feel for what it might have been like in the early 1960s.

Before going down into the Cavern, we stopped at The Grapes.  This is a nearby Mathew Street bar where the Beatles would sometimes relax before or after shows at the Cavern.  Again, most Beatles fans know this.  A couple of local patrons offered to take our picture, which we thought was a nice gesture.  It soon became clear that they were hoping for some money or drinks for their trouble!

"Mendips" - John Lennon's childhood home in Liverpool
“Mendips” – John Lennon’s childhood home in Liverpool

While it was relatively expensive, we then went on a National Trust tour of the boyhood homes of John Lennon and Paul McCartney.  A full-time housekeeper lives in each one and the only way to get inside them is by taking the National Trust tour from downtown Liverpool.  Advance  reservations are required, as only a limited number of people can visit each day.  Indoor photographs are not allowed.

John’s home was first…and it might be a revelation for some.  Although Lennon wrote a song called “Working Class Hero” and rebelled against privilege from time to time, he actually grew up in a relatively posh home (it even had a name: “Mendips”) with his aunt.  Mendips has been preserved as it would have been in the late 1950s and early 1960s.    We saw the front “foyer” where John and Paul would practice their vocal harmonies because the wall tiles resulted in great acoustics.

20 Forthlin Road (centre left) - Paul McCartney's childhood home in Liverpool
20 Forthlin Road  (centre left) – Paul McCartney’s childhood home in Liverpool

From there we went to Paul McCartney’s former home at 20 Forthlin Road.  This was much more modest – a cramped row house where Paul lived with his brother and father (his mother died when Paul was just 14).  We saw the living room where John and Paul composed some of their early songs “eyeball to eyeball”.   As with Mendips, the house has been restored to how it would have been when Paul actually lived there.  Although it was much humbler than John’s house, it would have been filled with music as Paul’s father had once been a bandleader.   The housekeeper here even bore a passing facial resemblance to Paul and naturally had the same Liverpool accent.

If you are interested in the history of the Beatles, visiting the National Trust houses is probably the best way to see “The Beatles’ Liverpool”.  The Cavern is also worth a peek but be aware that, out of necessity, the authenticity is just a little more compromised.