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Ultimate Battle of The Beatles

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  • Registered Users Posts: 2,251 ✭✭✭speckle


    Semi Final

    For no one
    blackbird
    come together


  • Registered Users Posts: 5,703 ✭✭✭abff


    Reberetta wrote: »
    For No One vs A Day in the life
    We Can Work It Out vs Blackbird
    Come Together vs Here Comes The Sun

    All easy decisions for yours truly.

    Agree totally. All easy decisions fo me too!


  • Registered Users Posts: 14,643 ✭✭✭✭loyatemu


    For No One vs A Day in the life
    We Can Work It Out vs Blackbird
    Come Together vs Here Comes The Sun


  • Registered Users Posts: 6,523 ✭✭✭El Gato De Negocios


    Through to the Grand Final!


    A Day in the Life




    vs

    We Can Work It Out



    vs

    Here Comes the Sun




    We Can Work It Out by far the surprise package for the final three, I never would have bet that it would get anywhere near the final!

    As previously stated, the final will now be voted on by secret ballot ie, you PM me your pick and voting stays live until Sunday evening.

    Around 20:00 or so on Sunday I will reveal the winner and post reveal I will also post a list of who voted for what song so as to avoid any question of impropriety.


  • Moderators, Recreation & Hobbies Moderators Posts: 16,287 Mod ✭✭✭✭quickbeam


    Three excellent songs, in fairness. I am surprised, but happy by these making it.


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  • Registered Users Posts: 15,371 ✭✭✭✭rainbowtrout


    I'm not too surprised at A Day in the Life making the final, but wouldn't have expected the other two. To be honest the final 6 were quite unusual.


  • Registered Users Posts: 6,523 ✭✭✭El Gato De Negocios


    I'm not too surprised at A Day in the Life making the final, but wouldn't have expected the other two. To be honest the final 6 were quite unusual.

    Absolutely, HCTS is one that seems to be quite popular with "casual" listeners but it's one I've never really cared for. ADITL though is a classic.


  • Registered Users Posts: 10,433 ✭✭✭✭EmmetSpiceland


    Absolutely, HCTS is one that seems to be quite popular with "casual" listeners but it's one I've never really cared for.

    Maybe this cover by Steve Harley & Cockney Rebel will change your mind about that:

    The tide is turning…



  • Registered Users Posts: 2,884 ✭✭✭Rigor Mortis


    I've always believed that the Beatles are a band whose songs are often performed better by others. This is not another example of that.

    Jesus, thank you for this, This is possibly the worst cover i have ever heard.


  • Registered Users Posts: 2,293 ✭✭✭Reberetta


    Fun Facts

    A Day In The Life was inspired by a series of disconnected events that entered John Lennon’s consciousness: the death of millionaire socialite Tara Browne, his own appearance in Richard Lester’s film How I Won The War, and a council survey that found 4,000 holes in the roads of Blackburn, Lancashire.
    Just as it sounds: I was reading the paper one day and noticed two stories. One was about the Guinness heir who killed himself in a car. That was the main headline story. He died in London in a car crash. On the next page was a story about four thousand potholes in the streets of Blackburn, Lancashire, that needed to be filled. Paul’s contribution was the beautiful little lick in the song, ‘I’d love to turn you on,’ that he’d had floating around in his head and couldn’t use. I thought it was a damn good piece of work.
    -John Lennon

    The 17 January 1967 edition of the newspaper reported the coroner’s verdict into the death of Tara Browne, an Irish friend of The Beatles who on 18 December 1966 had driven his Lotus Elan at high speed through a red light in South Kensington, London and into a stationary van.

    Browne was the great grandson of the brewer Edward Cecil Guinness and the son of Lord and Lady Oranmore and Browne. He was in line to inherit a £1m fortune upon his 25th birthday, but died at the age of 21.

    In his authorised biography Many Years From Now, Paul McCartney suggested that the Browne story featured to a lesser extent.
    The verse about the politician blowing his mind out in a car we wrote together. It has been attributed to Tara Browne, the Guinness heir, which I don’t believe is the case, certainly as we were writing it, I was not attributing it to Tara in my head. In John’s head it might have been. In my head I was imagining a politician bombed out on drugs who’d stopped at some traffic lights and didn’t notice that the lights had changed. The ‘blew his mind’ was purely a drugs reference, nothing to do with a car crash.
    -Paul McCartney

    The middle section (“Woke up, fell out of bed”) was an unfinished song fragment written by Paul McCartney, its practical earthiness providing a perfect counterpoint to Lennon’s languorous daydreaming.
    It was another song altogether but it happened to fit. It was just me remembering what it was like to run up the road to catch a bus to school, having a smoke and going into class. It was a reflection of my schooldays. I would have a Woodbine, somebody would speak and I’d go into a dream.
    -Paul McCartney


    We Can Work It Out

    Paul McCartney wrote the upbeat verses and chorus, reportedly after a disagreement with Jane Asher, while John Lennon had the idea for the pessimistic “Life is very short” counterpoint.
    Paul did the first half, I did the middle eight. But you’ve got Paul writing, ‘We can work it out, we can work it out’ – real optimistic, y’know, and me impatient: ‘Life is very short and there’s no time for fussing and fighting, my friend.’
    -John Lennon
    Then it was George Harrison’s idea to put the middle into waltz time, like a German waltz. That came on the session, it was one of the cases of the arrangement being done on the session.
    -Paul McCartney

    Unlike its single counterpart ‘Day Tripper’, ‘We Can Work It Out’ never became a fixture of The Beatles’ live repertoire.

    ‘Day Tripper’ was originally intended to be The Beatles’ final single of 1965. However, ‘We Can Work It Out’ was felt by the group and Brian Epstein to be the more commercial song. John Lennon disagreed, and fought to retain ‘Day Tripper’ as the lead song. The result was the single being marketed as the world’s first double a-side. It was with this release that Lennon’s dominance of The Beatles began to cede to Paul McCartney, who was steadily becoming more influential as a musical leader of the group.


    ‘Here Comes The Sun’, George Harrison’s second song on Abbey Road, was written on an acoustic guitar in the garden of Eric Clapton’s house in Ewhurst, Surrey. The song expressed Harrison’s relief at being away from the tensions within The Beatles, the troubles with Apple and the various business and legal issues which at the time were overshadowing the group’s creativity.
    Here Comes The Sun was written at the time when Apple was getting like school, where we had to go and be businessmen: ‘Sign this’ and ‘Sign that’. Anyway, it seems as if winter in England goes on forever; by the time spring comes you really deserve it. So one day I decided I was going to sag off Apple and I went over to Eric Clapton’s house. The relief of not having to go and see all those dopey accountants was wonderful, and I walked around the garden with one of Eric’s acoustic guitars and wrote ‘Here Comes The Sun’.
    -George Harrison

    John Lennon didn’t appear on ‘Here Comes The Sun’; he was recovering from a car accident at the time of the first sessions, and later on George Harrison largely completed the song alone.

    Harrison’s understated use of a Moog synthesiser was a key feature of ‘Here Comes The Sun’. Robert Moog’s then-recent invention was a rarity in the UK at the time, and The Beatles were keen to experiment with its sounds.
    I first heard about the Moog synthesiser in America. I had to have mine made specially, because Mr Moog had only just invented it. It was enormous, with hundreds of jackplugs and two keyboards.

    But it was one thing having one, and another trying to make it work. There wasn’t an instruction manual, and even if there had been it would probably have been a couple of thousand pages long. I don’t think even Mr Moog knew how to get music out of it; it was more of a technical thing. When you listen to the sounds on songs like ‘Here Comes The Sun’, it does do some good things, but they’re all very kind of infant sounds.
    -George Harrison


    I agree with John Lennon; I would take Day Tripper over WCWIO. I'm surprised it made it all the way to the final, however excellent it may be; I think I'd put at least 50 Beatles compositions ahead of it.

    It's interesting how the final has pretty much equal contributions from all three primary songwriters, a fitting way to end. I'm sure ADITL has it sewn up but it would be more in keeping with forum games if a George Harrison song won the best Beatles song ever contest. ;)


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  • Registered Users Posts: 14,643 ✭✭✭✭loyatemu


    I'm voting for A Day in the Life - it's a monumental piece of music that was groundbreaking at the time and still sounds amazing today.

    BTW - for anyone who feels that McCartney's section of the song is too short, comedian and top Macca-impersonator Peter Serafinowicz has a treat for you: https://soundcloud.com/bren-murphy/a-full-day-in-the-life-by-peter-serafinowicz


  • Registered Users Posts: 10,433 ✭✭✭✭EmmetSpiceland


    loyatemu wrote: »

    BTW - for anyone who feels that McCartney's section of the song is too short, comedian and top Macca-impersonator Peter Serafinowicz has a treat for you: https://soundcloud.com/bren-murphy/a-full-day-in-the-life-by-peter-serafinowicz

    He does a decent Ringo as well:

    The tide is turning…



  • Moderators, Recreation & Hobbies Moderators Posts: 16,287 Mod ✭✭✭✭quickbeam


    loyatemu wrote: »
    I'm voting for A Day in the Life - it's a monumental piece of music that was groundbreaking at the time and still sounds amazing today.

    If you haven't already, don't forget to PM El Gato your vote as it doesn't count on thread.
    loyatemu wrote: »
    BTW - for anyone who feels that McCartney's section of the song is too short, comedian and top Macca-impersonator Peter Serafinowicz has a treat for you: https://soundcloud.com/bren-murphy/a-full-day-in-the-life-by-peter-serafinowicz

    This is great! :D


  • Registered Users Posts: 3,900 ✭✭✭trashcan


    I've always believed that the Beatles are a band whose songs are often performed better by others ..

    Eh, no. No they are not. In fact there should be some sort of law to stop people messing with Beatles songs. It’d be a very rare exception to that rule.


  • Registered Users Posts: 6,523 ✭✭✭El Gato De Negocios


    The votes are in and the result is finalised. Just a quick word of thanks to all those that partook in the tournie over the last few weeks. Ive really enjoyed reading peoples opinions on the songs and the band in general.

    Anyway.

    In third, quite surprisingly imo, Here Comes The Sun!!!!!!






































































    In first place, unsurprisingly given what it was up against, with approx 60% of the vote, the song that is widely considered to be the bands crowning achievement, this song also happened to top Rolling Stone magazines best ever Beatles song, it is of course, A Day in The Life.

    From Rolling Stone
    "A Day in the Life" is the sound of the Beatles on a historic roll. "It was a peak," John Lennon told Rolling Stone in 1970, recalling the Sgt. Pepper period. It's also the ultimate Lennon-McCartney collaboration: "Paul and I were definitely working together, especially on 'A Day in the Life,'" said Lennon.

    After their August 29th, 1966, concert in San Francisco, the Beatles left live performing for good. Rumors of tension within the group spread as the Beatles released no new music for months. "People in the media sensed that there was too much of a lull," Paul McCartney said later, "which created a vacuum, so they could bitch about us now. They'd say, 'Oh, they've dried up,' but we knew we hadn't."

    With Sgt. Pepper, the Beatles created an album of psychedelic visions; coming at the end, "A Day in the Life" sounds like the whole world falling apart. Lennon sings about death and dread in his most spectral vocal, treated with what he called his "Elvis echo" — a voice, as producer George Martin said in 1992, "which sends shivers down the spine."

    Lennon took his lyrical inspiration from the newspapers and his own life: The "lucky man who made the grade" was supposedly Tara Browne, a 21-year-old London aristocrat killed in a December 1966 car wreck, and the film in which "the English army had just won the war" probably referred to Lennon's own recent acting role in How I Won the War. Lennon really did find a Daily Mail story about 4,000 potholes in the roads of Blackburn, Lancashire.

    Lennon wrote the basic song, but he felt it needed something different for the middle section. McCartney had a brief song fragment handy, the part that begins "Woke up, fell out of bed." "He was a bit shy about it because I think he thought, 'It's already a good song,'" Lennon said. But McCartney also came up with the idea to have classical musicians deliver what Martin called an "orchestral orgasm." The February 10th session became a festive occasion, with guests like Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Marianne Faithfull and Donovan. The studio was full of balloons; the formally attired orchestra members were given party hats, rubber noses and gorilla paws to wear. Martin and McCartney both conducted the musicians, having them play from the lowest note on their instruments to the highest.

    Two weeks later, the Beatles added the last touch: the piano crash that hangs in the air for 53 seconds. Martin had every spare piano in the building hauled down to the Beatles' studio, where Lennon, McCartney, Ringo Starr, Martin and roadie Mal Evans played the same E-major chord, as engineer Geoff Emerick turned up the faders to catch every last trace. By the end, the levels were up so high that you can hear Starr's shoe squeak.

    In April, two months before Sgt. Pepper came out, McCartney visited San Francisco, carrying a tape with an unfinished version of "A Day in the Life." He gave it to members of the Jefferson Airplane, and the tape ended up at a local free-form rock station, KMPX, which put it into rotation, blowing minds all over the Haight-Ashbury community. The BBC banned the song for the druggy line "I'd love to turn you on." They weren't so far off base: "When [Martin] was doing his TV program on Pepper," McCartney recalled later, "he asked me, 'Do you know what caused Pepper?' I said, 'In one word, George, drugs. Pot.' And George said, 'No, no. But you weren't on it all the time.' 'Yes, we were.' Sgt. Pepper was a drug album."

    In truth, the song was far too intense musically and emotionally for regular radio play. It wasn't really until the Eighties, after Lennon's murder, that "A Day in the Life" became recognized as the band's masterwork. In this song, as in so many other ways, the Beatles were way ahead of everyone else.

    Final votes went

    HCTS x 3
    WCWIO x 4
    ADITL x 10

    I'll post who voted for what shortly.

    giphy.gif


  • Moderators, Recreation & Hobbies Moderators Posts: 16,287 Mod ✭✭✭✭quickbeam


    Thanks El Gato. Considering I'm only a moderate Beatles fan, that was actually hugely enjoyable. I also realise I like a lot more of their songs than I thought I did. But the right song won in the end.


  • Registered Users Posts: 6,523 ✭✭✭El Gato De Negocios


    Voters as follows

    HCTS - Zebrano, Zaph, Reberetta

    ADITL - Purgative, Quickbeam, abff, Rigor Mortis, Declan A Walsh, loyatemu, EmmetSpiceland, Nerdlingr, Collie D, Arghus

    WCWIO - Also Starring LB, Ficheall, y0ssar1an22, rainbowtrout.



    Im thinking maybe in a few weeks I might do another one for a different band, a bit more modern and a bit heavier. Stay tuned!!!!

    EGDN


  • Moderators, Recreation & Hobbies Moderators Posts: 16,287 Mod ✭✭✭✭quickbeam


    Im thinking maybe in a few weeks I might do another one for a different band, a bit more modern and a bit heavier. Stay tuned!!!!

    EGDN

    Yeah, have been wondering what other bands are big enough that this would work with. Only other one I could think of was Queen. Wonder if that's who you have in mind? No need to answer that, keep it a surprise for us.


  • Registered Users Posts: 18,503 ✭✭✭✭Also Starring LeVar Burton


    A worthy winner.

    Great game El Gato, really enjoyed it and loved the fact that there was always 24 hours to vote, nice relaxed pace to the game.


  • Registered Users Posts: 2,509 ✭✭✭Purgative


    Great job El Gato. Thoroughly enjoyed. Just as QB said, I'm not a Beatles nut, but there were a few forgotten gems here.


    Look forward to the next one - don't suppose you'd do the Stones?


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  • Registered Users Posts: 14,243 ✭✭✭✭Arghus


    Fantastic tournament El Gato. After all my disagreement with many of the choices made throughout, I have no complaints about the final winner. A worthy champ!


  • Registered Users Posts: 14,243 ✭✭✭✭Arghus


    Purgative wrote: »
    Great job El Gato. Thoroughly enjoyed. Just as QB said, I'm not a Beatles nut, but there were a few forgotten gems here.


    Look forward to the next one - don't suppose you'd do the Stones?

    A bit more modern and heavier.... Sounds intriguing. I think Metallica could fit that bill, perhaps.

    Stones could be a good shout, but they have an awfully huge back catalogue, with a fairly clear division in terms of quality between the first half and the second.

    The Beatles were perfect IMO because the catalogue is pretty big, but not ridiculously so and the quality was consistent all the way through.


  • Registered Users Posts: 2,251 ✭✭✭speckle


    Thanks El Gato for all the hard work you put in..really enjoyed hearing old favorites and some that passed me by... listening reminded me of a Beatles coverband that had a gig in front of their house in the suburbs...what fun...would have voted HCTS ...what about Led Zep next :D


  • Registered Users Posts: 11,286 ✭✭✭✭Collie D


    Great tournament and very worthy winner

    Thanks for running!


  • Registered Users Posts: 9,018 ✭✭✭Ficheall


    Thoroughly enjoyed that - many thanks, El Gato.


    Abba next, presumably :)


  • Registered Users Posts: 10,433 ✭✭✭✭EmmetSpiceland


    Well done, EGDN. Great tournament and winner.

    The tide is turning…



  • Registered Users Posts: 2,884 ✭✭✭Rigor Mortis


    Thank you for a very enjoyable competition


  • Registered Users Posts: 15,216 ✭✭✭✭Beechwoodspark


    Do one of the below please

    Pink Floyd
    U2
    John Bon Jovi
    Guns and Roses
    Nirvana


  • Registered Users Posts: 15,371 ✭✭✭✭rainbowtrout


    Arghus wrote: »
    A bit more modern and heavier.... Sounds intriguing. I think Metallica could fit that bill, perhaps.

    Stones could be a good shout, but they have an awfully huge back catalogue, with a fairly clear division in terms of quality between the first half and the second.

    The Beatles were perfect IMO because the catalogue is pretty big, but not ridiculously so and the quality was consistent all the way through.

    Ya, it would probably have to be an act that had at least 5-8 albums and were relatively consistent in their output, like there are acts on the go for 40 years but their current output is not played on radio/makes no impact on the charts and is probably bought by die hard fans.

    Queen is a good choice. David Bowie, ABBA was mentioned above, U2 probably fit the bill. Going more into pop territory you could have Michael Jackson, Madonna. Or more modern Radiohead, Pearl Jam, even though both are on the go about 30 years now, which is hard to believe.

    An REM tournament would be good.


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  • Registered Users Posts: 5,703 ✭✭✭abff


    Thanks El Gato. Really enjoyed it.


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