<p>OMG, did you all see this? It was simply magical. I am near tears. So amazing.</p>
<p>Loved it! And we recorded it so we could watch it again. What a great show!</p>
<p>I thought it was great. It did bring tears to my eyes at more than one point. It was wonderful to see Paul and Ringo together and to see them still sounding so good . It was bittersweet because of John and George but glad to see their family so into things.</p>
<p>I didn’t realize Billy Shears was Ringo. Could they make a song Lucy in the Skys with Diamonds today? LSD.</p>
<p>Loved it!</p>
<p>I didn’t know about it until about 1:10 into it. Loved it but want to see the first hour.</p>
<p>I must say that for 71 and 73, Paul and RIngo still “got it going on.”</p>
<p>I thought that the best part was rock n’ roll set that Paul McCartney did with his band. starting with It’s Your Birthday and ending with Sgt. Peppers. We never got the chance to hear what the Beatles would have sounded like after technology made it possible to do big, good sound rock bands starting in the 70s.</p>
<p>It was fun to watch but I kept thinking the Beatles without John Lennon would have been a slightly better version of the pop band, the Monkees. It was John Lennon that made the Beetles edgy and rock and roll trailblazers in the late 60’s. Without Lennon, there is no Revolver or Sgt. Pepper’s. McCartney after the Beetles wrote a lot of schmaltzy love songs with his band, the Wings. I remember watching an interview with John Lennon in the early 1970’s who had nothing good to say of Paul’s post-Beatles song-writing.</p>
<p>The only cover that disappointed me was that done by Stevie Wonder, even though he is one of my all time favorites. Too many commercials!</p>
<p>Agreed, GP and gloworm. </p>
<p>I did not like Dave Grohl singing, but he was good on drums. </p>
<p>Katy Perry…no. Alicia Keys and John Legend…yes! Some of choices to sing were interesting. </p>
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<p>John Lennon often had nothing good to say about anything.</p>
<p>Paul was a good balance for John as well, imo. </p>
<p>I couldn’t believe how energetic Ringo was at his age. </p>
<p>Razorsharp, there’s plenty on the radio that is FAR more direct about drug use than Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds, so I don’t understand why you say “could they do that today.” Half the rap and hip hop songs out there glorify drug and alcohol use in FAR more concrete and literal terms than the LSD allusions.</p>
<p>Anyway, any good student paying attention in Beatles 101 knows that Lucy was inspired by a drawing that Julian Lennon brought home of a little friend in preschool, that he presented to his father as “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.” John has always steadfastly denied that it was about LSD. Paul did say years later that there were drug references, but John is the primary author of Lucy, so John gets to win any debate over that origin.</p>
<p>(You do know that Got to Get You Into My Life was about pot, and not a girl?)</p>
<p>Great to see Paul still playing his old Hofner bass after all these years. He got his first Hofner back in the Beatles Hamburg club era - a cheap German bass was all he could afford.</p>
<p>Goldenpooch, I don’t think you took Beatles 101 either!</p>
<p>To say “Without Lennon, there was no Revolver or Sgt Pepper’s” … </p>
<p>As for Revolver -
Paul’s contributions were Eleanor Rigby, Here There & Everywhere, Good Day Sunshine, For No One, Got To Get You into My Life, and (for Ringo) Yellow Submarine. John’s were I’m Only Sleeping, She Said She Said, And Your Bird Can Sing, Tomorrow Never Knows and the complete throwaway of Dr. Robert. There’s not a lot of comparison between those two lists in terms of impact and longevity.</p>
<p>As for Sgt Pepper - Paul was solely responsible for the concept of Sgt Pepper, and indeed the whole idea of a concept album! He was the one who was into John Cage and experimental music and musique concrete and all of the art and musical happenings of the mid 1960’s while frankly John Lennon was too busy being strung out on heroin to provide the innovation he was certainly capable of. There’s more than enough documentation from multiple people who were part of this, including Geoff Emerick (their producer) to support what I’m saying.</p>
<p>It’s a common canard about people who aren’t knowledgeable about the Beatles that Paul just produced sappy love songs and John did the rockers. But anyone who bothers to examine the catalog will see that both were clearly capable of both. Who did Helter Skelter and basically invented acid rock? Paul. Who did such lovely songs as In My Life and If I Fell? John.</p>
<p>In terms of innovation, Paul was far more innovative on the bass than John was on lead or rhythm guitar. Just listen to the bass line on Something, which <em>makes</em> that song what it is (no disrespect to George). From a pure technical musicality perspective, Paul and George were more innovative than John. John was innovative from a sonic perspective. </p>
<p>Yes, Paul wrote a lot of love songs with Wings. He also did a lot of rockers. Live & Let Die, Jet, Rockestra, as well as lighter songs like Listen What the Man Said. He’s the one who’s continued to explore new musical genres over the years (including writing for classical / ballet) in a way that John never once expressed interest in. </p>
<p>John in the early 1970’s had very little good to say about Paul’s songwriting because John, who was undoubtedly a musical genius of the highest order, also had an incredibly crappy childhood and was a mixed-up and not-very-nice person in general, who lashed out at people. He beat his first wife, he basically abandoned Julian and lashed out at Paul repeatedly in his solo work, which says very little about Paul and says a lot about John. </p>
<p>Don’t get me wrong, both of these men were musical geniuses of the highest order. But it’s sloppy revisionist thinking that because John died so young and so tragically, that he should be morphed into the better, more productive, more creative, more far-thinking of the two musically. He’s been deified in a way that isn’t consistent with reality, and you fell right into it. </p>
<p>It is a subjective thing, Pizzagirl. I think the two of them together were a good balance. They wrote excellent songs together. They were different people. </p>
<p>They had an ugly breakup as a band. If you look at post-Beatles songwriting, it is really, well still subjective. I wasn’t a Wings fan, but I did like John Lennon’s solo work up until his death. </p>
<p>They both wrote a lot of sappy love songs. That is what they did. Quite successfully, I might add. </p>
<p>Paul is still a legend. I love his work, mostly before 1970. Just not as much, afterwards. </p>
<p>I did laugh when I read the backstory about why “i Am the Walrus” was written. </p>
<p>Pizzagirl, I think you’re on to something. The Beatles are a fantastic part of music history. Lennon and McCartney are giants. But Lennon’s been canonized since his awful death and the truth is, often times he wasn’t a very nice guy to the people close to him, e.g. Paul McCartney and Julian Lennon.</p>
<p>For those of us who are in Beatles 400-level (and trust me, you want me on your team if there’s ever a Beatles Trivial Pursuit contest), check out the online series by Alan Pollack that deconstructs all of the Beatles’ catalog from a music theory perspective. He makes a persuasive case that both were geniuses, but in very different ways; he identifies their audio signatures / fingerprints and innovation; and he dismisses the myth that Paul was just the sweet sappy one and John the rocker. </p>
<p>From my purely personal point of view, John’s best work was either early on in the moptop days (“If I Fell” is really an amazing song, harmony-wise) or in the later days (“Julia” is underrated and haunting). In the middle, though, he kind of fell apart due to his drug use and subsequent lack of focus. Paul was more of the disciplined one, though discipline could turn to haranguing at times. </p>
<p>I feel sorriest for George, because he’d be a great guitar player / songwriter by anyone’s lights, but had the misfortune of playing third fiddle to the 2 of them. He was creative from the sitar / Indian music sense of the word, and in terms of how he played the guitar, but his audio signature is less varying (that is, there is a definite “George song” song structure, whereas both Paul and John had a wider range of songwriting styles). This is neither good nor bad, just an observation. </p>
<p>But yeah, “John was the creative one and Paul just the cute lovesong guy” doesn’t hold up to any critical scrutiny whatsoever. </p>
<p>George was very underrated. Sadly. </p>