Think you guys might be over thinking the whole thing. Like @Eoink I think it’s a great album and the little hiccup that’s MSH is easily overlooked and for me easy to forgive.
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I’m with you on MSH @graham55 . That’s what I love about ripping CDs to the NAS. I always edit out the crap …
Plus Maybe I’m Amazed, Octopus’s Garden
I paricularly enjoyed this aspect of the series, that insight into compositions as they move from ideas into full songs.
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Indeed, one bonus of streaming from one’s own source is that it allows all manner of personalisation, including re-ordering tracks if desired, or creating a compilation album and retaining the original in case ever wanted. When I first ripped my Beatles albums I also ripped Get Back and Don’t let me down from the 7” single (the first single I ever bought!), and added to the end of Abbey Road. I later downloaded the Past Masters compilation and copied those two tracks to vastly improve the well-worn sounding originals.
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You gotta love Maxwell just for Mal Evans on hammer.
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I called MSH a lapse of taste above, on reflection I mean that it is a song that’s dated in a way that most songs on Abbey Road have not. Cultural tastes change. There’s a disjunction between the dark content and the lighthearted tune and singing. The sea shanty ‘Hanging Johnny’ could be an influence.
I suspect I’m not so comfortable with casual misogyny now as I was when I was 17. But it is definitely the tone that is troubling. I do relish Fairport’s ‘Matty Groves’ and sometimes Nick Cave’s Murder Ballads. Perhaps it is the feeling that McCartney wanted to engage with the serial killer, Hindley and Brady horror, but is evasive in a way that Cave and Fairport are not.
I’m happy with MSH. Hardly their finest moment, but another quirky, original idea. Sometimes I guess you’ve got to kiss a few Frogs in the process of finding a Prince.
If I could delete a Beatles track from any album it’s got to be Revolution #9 from the White Album surely?
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The Beatles ‘ditties’ are part of the charm. There to make you smile. If you don’t get 'em, then part of the Beatles persona you just don’t understand.
Octopus’s Garden
Yellow Submarine
Ob la di, Ob la da
Rocky Raccoon (comic pastiche)
Bungalow Bill
Maxwell
Maggie May
etc etc
They are great !
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Yes exactly. I edit the content at least 50% of the time. There’s quite a few albums that I enjoy listening to a lot more now because I don’t have to skip around the bits I don’t like.
Maybe they wouldn’t have bothered, but they certainly wouldn’t of.
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Just think Teddy Boy could have been on Let It Be.
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Wow!
I suppose I might have done that if I was streaming when I first started buying music – but I became accustomed to buying an album as an album and only really were there tracks so bad that I skipped them.
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Tempted to buy The Lyrics written by McCartney and edited by the poet Paul Muldoon. I admire Muldoon’s poetry. Paul McCartney credits his English teacher, himself a student of F. R. Leavis, with encouraging close reading. So those ‘ditties’ are up for scrutiny. The music may have come first, but the words are never inconsequential.
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Worth reading Revolution In The Head and other books on Ob La Di. Musically there’s something very clever going on. No matter how you see it transcribed each musician is actually playing a slightly different part on each verse, chorus etc. Nothing is repeated at all whether it’s bass, keyboards, drums etc. Underestimate that song at your peril. It’s a crafty piece of work.
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Following a moderate traumatic brain injury, I can suffer from extreme tiredness where everything gets muddled, and what can be a 5 min task can take me 30 mins. So, thanks for your helpful input in pointing out my grammatical errors.
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Well yeah, there were lots of albums back in the 60’s, 70’s, and even 80’s where the entire album was playable. But even albums like The Wall, I only like about 60% of it, and when I put it on when we have friends over it’s a much better album when edited IMO. I’m really not interested in re-living Water’s upbringing thru his music, he’s there to entertain me as far as I’m concerned, so I only want to hear his entertaining songs.
But I do get, and respect, your point about an album in it’s entirety. It’s just not my thing all the time.
Funny how some prefer to skip tracks and others like to play the album all the way through like it’s maker intended. I’m definitely a whole album kind of guy, I see an album as an exhibition and like to take in the good and the not so good. Mind you I do have a few albums that I’ve bought on the strength of one track, some of them can be painful and it does find me reaching for the remote.
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Yes, I really do get the bit about trying to play the whole album. Many people take it as an art form and I fully respect their take on it, but to me, musicians are just entertainers and I expect to be entertained. Most of the musicians that I listen to are so grossly overpaid for doing something that they (usually) love doing, it’s a bit superficial anyway.
And, of course, I’m not referring to the newcomers and Indie bands that I support.
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Good thing we’re all individuals. 
It’s music and it’s meant to be enjoyed. I get my back up when people start telling you who you should listen to and how.
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Yes exactly, each to his own. I have a fairly strong opinion regarding musicians/celebrities, but it applies only to myself and I certainly wouldn’t wan to crap on someone else’s visions or heroes.
Cheers.
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