The Beatles

[Fox92]

Unbelivable.

 

Fans on Beatles tour spot Sir Paul McCartney at traffic lights - BBC News

 

[Foxdiamond]

4 hours ago, Fox92 said:

Unbelivable.

 

Fans on Beatles tour spot Sir Paul McCartney at traffic lights - BBC News

 

Hello Goodbye 

[Free Falling Foxes]

On 21/07/2026 at 09:24, Fox92 said:

Unbelivable.

 

Fans on Beatles tour spot Sir Paul McCartney at traffic lights - BBC News

 

Reminds me of this picture.

Iirc, the woman had just been to a Beatles exhibition in New York and her friend took this picture as they were leaving.

It wasn't until they looked at it, they recognised the fella crossing.

[MC Prussian]

Not the biggest Beatles fan, but I find the recent colourized tour videos fascinating. There's the ones from the Munich circus show, on US TV, at Shea Stadium (where they barely could hear their own playing because of how loud the crowd was), or this one:

You notice how tight they were live, and that it sounded just as good as the record, if not better.

And McCartney's and Lennon's harmonies were insanely good.

Edited 23 July by MC Prussian

[Dr Marco]

 

[Free Falling Foxes]

22 hours ago, Dr Marco said:

 

Rubber Soul boxset is now available - in various formats.......... and budgets

[Free Falling Foxes]

Treasure trove for Beatle fans

[Fox92]

On 02/08/2026 at 13:12, Free Falling Foxes said:

Rubber Soul boxset is now available - in various formats.......... and budgets

Rubber Soul is one of my favourite albums ever. Mental to think it hasn't even got a single on (I think a lot of other bands would have just put Day Tripper and/or We Can Work It Out on it) but the album is so great all the way through.

 

I played Rubber Soul and Revolver yesterday. Brilliant back to back, and then consider Sgt Peppers was after Revolver so a run of three genuinely great albums. 

 

Regardless of that though, there's no way I'll be paying the sort of money they want again. Shame.

[Free Falling Foxes]

A Dolls House - original working title for the 'White Album'

Not an official release but dressed up like one.

[Dr Marco]

[MC Prussian]

17 minutes ago, Dr Marco said:

They look nothing like the original.

Shame on the casting director. You're not worthy.

[MC Prussian]

On 02/08/2026 at 14:12, Free Falling Foxes said:

Rubber Soul boxset is now available - in various formats.......... and budgets

Not out until October 2nd.

[davieG]

Mary Squires

 

The final photoshoot in 1969.

 

They look like a band of Quakers or Amish although they weren't keen on music or musical instruments.

That wasn't all misery......

[davieG]

Abbey Road Tribute ·

Follow

 

Why George Martin Believed Lennon and McCartney "Suffered" Alone

The partnership at the heart of The Beatles didn't just produce hits—it acted as a fierce, built-in quality control system.

When the band splintered at the end of the 1960s, its principal songwriters suddenly found themselves entirely untethered on their solo paths.

Looking back on the immediate fallout of the 1970 breakup, George Martin famously observed that John and Paul began to suffer by comparison. Freed from the competitive studio dynamic of EMI Studios, both artists began to indulge their specific whims without their primary partner there to act as an editorial sounding board or say "no."

For Lennon, this meant trading meticulous pop discipline for avant-garde art and literal protest records during his radical political phase.

Martin openly worried that an untethered Lennon was drifting into heavy-handed activism that occasionally lacked the sharp musical self-awareness the band format once guaranteed.

Critics at the time agreed, with some even calling his 1971 single "Power to the People" a weak, mass-manufactured rehash of "Give Peace a Chance."

McCartney didn't escape the post-breakup critique either. He retreated into deeply domestic, lo-fi experiments, secretly recording his 1970 debut album, McCartney, on a basic four-track machine at home.

While fans and contemporary reviewers dismissed it as a minor, homemade "family project" rather than a true successor to Abbey Road, even Paul privately questioned the significance of these minimalist tracks.

Ultimately, George Martin believed that neither Linda McCartney nor Yoko Ono could ever truly substitute for the once-in-a-century alchemy of the original songwriting partnership.

In his eyes, their unique musical magic required a co-writer's push to reach historical heights.

Without it, the early 1970s exposed the steep challenges of absolute creative isolation.

George Martin argued that without each other to please or compete against, both John and Paul indulged their worst musical excesses in the early 1970s.

Looking at their early solo catalogs, do you agree that their standards dropped, or do you think raw records like McCartney and Plastic Ono Band represent a vital, necessary liberation from the constraints of the group?

#TheBeatles #GeorgeMartin

 

[davieG]

 

THE BEATLES  · 

Historic Facts ·

On August 29, 1966, The Beatles performed their final scheduled commercial concert at Candlestick Park in San Francisco, bringing their touring era to an unexpected close. John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr had spent several years traveling from city to city, performing for increasingly enormous crowds. By 1966, however, touring had become exhausting and sometimes dangerous. The musicians often struggled to hear themselves over screaming audiences, while security concerns made large concerts increasingly difficult. At Candlestick Park, more than 25,000 fans gathered to see the band perform. The Beatles played a set that included Rock and Roll Music, She's a Woman, If I Needed Someone, Day Tripper, Baby's in Black, I Feel Fine, Yesterday, and Paperback Writer, finishing with Long Tall Sally. The concert was relatively short, but its historical importance became clear later. Paul McCartney had asked Beatles press officer Tony Barrow to record the performance, creating an important audio document of the band's final ticketed show. John Lennon and Paul also took photographs from the stage during the concert. After leaving San Francisco, The Beatles returned to Britain and shifted their attention almost completely toward studio recording. This decision opened a new chapter in their career. Without the pressure of constant touring, they could spend more time developing ambitious recordings and experimenting with new technology. The following years produced some of their most celebrated work, including Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, The White Album, and Abbey Road. The Candlestick Park concert therefore represented more than the end of touring. It marked the beginning of a period when The Beatles would become even more adventurous as recording artists. The fans in San Francisco did not know they were witnessing their final ticketed concert, making the photographs from that night especially meaningful today.

If you had been inside Candlestick Park that evening, would you have wanted to know it was their last show?

 

[davieG]

The Beatles Group  · 

Joel Soroka ·

 

58 years ago tomorrow I was in London lost on a bus when a woman came upstairs, sat next to me and asked me if I wanted to meet the Beatles who were making a promo video for their new song the following day. I ended up being the first and only person to get on stage in the first take where I picked up Ringo’s tambourine and ‘played’ it softly. I played the tambourine in all twelve takes. Other than seeing my kids being born it remains the most beautiful experience of my life.

I think of this opportunity as a Karmic Freakout because so many variables had to be in synch for me to have been on that stage. I could have gotten on the right bus instead of the wrong one. The woman could have been a few minutes later or earlier and not been on this bus. Or she could have gotten on this bus but not come upstairs.

 

[Free Falling Foxes]

9 hours ago, davieG said:

The Beatles Group  · 

Joel Soroka ·

 

58 years ago tomorrow I was in London lost on a bus when a woman came upstairs, sat next to me and asked me if I wanted to meet the Beatles who were making a promo video for their new song the following day. I ended up being the first and only person to get on stage in the first take where I picked up Ringo’s tambourine and ‘played’ it softly. I played the tambourine in all twelve takes. Other than seeing my kids being born it remains the most beautiful experience of my life.

I think of this opportunity as a Karmic Freakout because so many variables had to be in synch for me to have been on that stage. I could have gotten on the right bus instead of the wrong one. The woman could have been a few minutes later or earlier and not been on this bus. Or she could have gotten on this bus but not come upstairs.

 

The performance and outakes from the show.

 

[Fox92]

49 minutes ago, Free Falling Foxes said:

The performance and outakes from the show.

 

One of my favourite performances of theirs. 

[SpacedX]

The 2026 remix of the pivot album then - Rubber Soul. It occupies a very special place in the pantheon of Beatles greats for me. It was not only the first album by the Beatles that I bought, it was the first album I ever owned. Actually, that's not true. I used a Boots token that I got for Christmas to buy 'Oldies But Goldies' because 'A Hard Day's Night' had just been on the TV, (the BBC used to show all the Beatles films at Christmas). First studio album then - and after that I received a Beatles album every birthday and Christmas...I still recall the first Christmastime I heard Revolver. But Rubber Soul was dear to my heart. I used to charge home from school as a nine year old and play it..and play it again, invite friends round to listen to it, I knew every number inside out, every note, every nuance. 

 

Sadly, Christmas 2025 brought some very grave news health wise. Basically, it looked as though it may be my last. I went to my local country pub on Christmas Eve with my daughter who was seven months pregnant believing that I wouldn't see her experience the joy of parenthood or my granddaughter grow up . It was heaving so we went into the rarely opened back room with the owners and some close regulars and someone put Rubber Soul on the turntable. Listening to 'The Word' I felt this overwhelming wave of love for her and the unborn child and everyone around me - nothing to do with alcohol, I'd recently given that up. This seminal music of my childhood was reaching out again and telling me that everything was going to turn out fine, and miraculously, it did. The transformative album indeed. 

 

So what's it like? Well it's Rubber Soul ffs,. No one needs me to tell them how brilliant it is though I've previously voiced frustration on this thread about how, as great as they are, but even greater Beatles albums could have been were it not for the omission of tracks designated for single releases caving in to constant corporate pressure by EMI for single product/a chart topping hit. Think 'Day Tripper' and 'We Can Work it Out' in place of 'What Goes On' and 'Run For Your Life'. Regardless we can take the era as a body of work at the time and like I said, this was the artistic turning point where the band evolved from a pop sensation into mature studio artists, blending folk-rock and more introspective, observational lyricism although you could sense the emergence of the latter as early as 'Beatles for Sale'. Rubber Soul is the pivot point for the Beatles then, the bridge between Beatlemania and the descent into psychedelia. Help!, their previous album, ends with “Dizzy Miss Lizzy.” Revolver, the next one, ends with tape loops, backwards guitar, and chanted meditations on ego death. Together with Dylan’s contemporaneous forays into electric music, Rubber Soul also represents a significant pivot for the popular music genre in general. Not renowned for eloquence, Brian Wilson summed up Rubber Soul’s impact very simply: “The first time in my life I remember hearing a rock album on which every song was really good.” 

 

This ‘special edition’ release has clearly been constructed for the most devoted of Beatles fans, comprising an exhaustive 68-track release, including new stereo mixes, Dolby Atmos mixes, the original mono mixes, and a selection of studio outtakes, demos, and off-cuts whilst from what I've read, Kevin Howlett's liner notes are indispensable. But what's the new mix like in the hands of Giles Martin's (and Sam Okel's) new stereo and dolby atmos vision? I expected the usual sharp clarity and separation, but apprehensive about his previous excessive creative liberties, changing the original balance, boosting the low-end (bass and drums) heavily, or lowering or altering the presence of certain elements compared to the original mixes by his father. My foreboding was justified in part. Though originally utilising just four tracks at Abbey Road, the group and Sir George, hand-in-hand with engineer Norman Smith and second engineer Ken Scott, were at the vanguard of sonic experimentation. But all of that experimentation was in clear service of the songs - and what songs they were. Of course, as ever, it's a bold reinterpretation, that is inevitably going to divide opinion. On first listen, the drums and vocals are definitely crisper and more prominent and more accessible for modern headphone and spatial audio setups by pulling vocals toward the center. I recall discovering that if I changed the balance on my parents Thorens stereo to the right, I could listen to the vocals practically in isolation, which fascinated me as a kid. They've applied the "MAL" de-mixing technology (pioneered during Peter Jackson’s Get Back production), so this extreme hard-panning of the original 1965 stereo mixes has been rebalanced. When George Martin prepared the album for its first CD release in 1987, he adjusted the placement somewhat by splitting and shifting some of the vocals, but they still leaned heavily to the right side rather than sitting dead center like this. Obviously, if you listen to the original mono version of the album, the sound is centered rather than separated into left and right channels. But actually listening to this again, most of the lead vocals are actually placed left and right, cleverly creating the aural illusion that the vocals are coming from the center. The bass and drum tracks have arguably been pushed too hard, creating a punchy low-end on certain tracks in a bid to capture modern production values. This can be a bit jarring for those accustomed to the vintage mixes. 

 

The late Geoff Emerick always said that it was the mono mixes, (that you can also find here), those that the message board guys insist is the purest expression of the band’s artistic intent. As this deluxe box set demonstrates quite clearly, along with my experiences since the age of nine, there is no one real Rubber Soul. We all have our own.

[Free Falling Foxes]

I've Just Seen a Face cover. 

Love it!

Edited Thursday at 07:36 by Free Falling Foxes