[aderack]

Also note the tip of his nose now, compared to his younger photo.

[aderack]

John is iconoclastic; Paul is maudlin. For better or for worse, one of them questioned and rewrote conventions; the other is an expert at working within them. Generally they were strongest when together, as John's progressive instincts were reined in and humanized by Paul's classical sensibility, and Paul was prevented from devolving too much into sentimental pap by John's weirdness.

George sat outside this dynamic, so never really got the attention he needed.

And Ringo, well, he played the drums.

...

I'm recalling a story from a few years ago of a guy who showed up to demonstrate a sampler for Paul, and Paul eventually started to bark at him, because what was the point of having all these recordings of instruments when you could just play the real things? To contrast, I get the feeling John would have been all over sequencing tools the moment they arrived on the market -- and then done something with them that no one was supposed to.

[aderack]

Oh, I deleted what I said about Plastic Ono Band, upthread.

Yeah, it's probably my favorite "Beatles" album altogether. Though I haven't listened to post-Beatle George, much. I keep intending to!

[aderack]

Seriously, watch A Hard Day's Night and Yellow Submarine. Help! is fun, though less consequential than the other two.

Their "serious", shut-in music development period started with Rubber Soul. It and Revolver are kind of considered sister albums, and show some really interesting growth. They're the first albums they put together that were really deliberately composed as such, rather than as a random collection of songs.

Then came Sgt. Pepper, which isn't really as great as you'd expect. If Strawberry Fields and Penny Lane were on it, as they were meant to be, it would be a hell of a lot stronger. Magical Mystery Tour and the Yellow Submarine album are like the extended fallout of Sgt. Pepper. Some good songs, though they're just kind of there.

Their "late period" -- White Album and Abbey Road -- is what's usually considered their artistic peak. Also, Let It Be... Naked fits in here pretty well. Speaking of Phil Spector barf, you might want to avoid the original Let It Be except for scientific curiosity.

So I'd say go with Rubber Soul, Revolver, the White Album, and Abbey Road. Plus their late singles, which you can find compiled on Past Masters Volume 2.

If you want a taste of the early stuff, from before they really hunkered down and figured out what they were doing, the movie albums are your best shot: A Hard Day's Night and Help!. The former is actually pretty darned solid, for what it is.

[aderack]

Note that I didn't say "best"; I said their artistic peak. I think it's pretty clear that's as far as their songwriting really evolved.

I think I probably like Revolver best. Sometimes.

[aderack]

You've got to admit, excepting the movie soundtracks the actual albums are tedious as fuck until Rubber Soul: full of covers and tossed-off filler, with maybe one or two decent songs. Beatles for Sale is kind of ridiculous.

Until they holed up and focused, most of their important stuff was single-based. Which I probably should have noted above, yeah. So that would be Past Masters Volume One. Catch that, Hard Day's Night, and Help!, and you've got the early period about as covered as you need to.

[aderack]

Mind, if EMI felt like issuing non-shitty versions of the albums, they could include all the associated singles and thereby raise the quality of the early stuff by zooks and zounds.

And Sgt. Pepper would be kind of solid, finally. Hell, no one REALLY wanted to take the two best songs off it.

From my own experiments, this usually works best if you jam the main single and its B-side (in one order or the other) into the split between sides A and B.