Did the Beatles write all their own songs?

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neverfoundthetime
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Wed Apr 01, 2020 5:46 pm

Well, did they? The Sage of Quay, Mike Williams has taken a long hard look at the Beatles' prodigious out put and reckons it was impossible for Lennon/McCartney to have produced and recorded their material as history tells us. Mike is no crank, being a musician and songwriter himself, the deeper he looked, the more he doubted. If you have time on your hands, you may find this quite interesting. Mike is the go-to guy on all matter PID, Paul is Dead.

Make of it what you will, you will certainly be wondering at the end about how they pulled off Rubber Soul and you will hear what sounds like the inspirations to Hey Jude, When I saw her standing there, Yesterday, I am the Walrus, Come together , Lady Madonna, Revolution and other songs, you may be in for a surprise or two. Enjoy or ignore, as you see fit.
I will add another video of Musicologist Howard Goodall on the musical structure and influences of the Beatles' music. Fascinating!





BigBear
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Thu Apr 02, 2020 6:36 pm

There's quite a few actually: Even a few big hits!

“Maggie Mae,” a traditional Liverpool folk song
“Money (That’s What I Want),” by Berry Grody and Janie Bradford
"A Taste of Honey," by Bobby Scott and Ric Marlow
“Act Naturally,” by John Russell and Vani Morrison
“Anna (Go to Him),” by Arthur Alexander
“Baby It’s You,” by Burt Bacharach, Barney Williams and Mack David
“Boys,” by Luther Dixon and Wes Farrell
“Chain,s” by Gerry Goffin and Carole King
“Devil in Her Heart,” by Richard P. Drapkin
“Dizzy Miss Lizzie,” by Larry Williams
“Everybody’s Trying to Be My Baby,” by Carl Perkins
“Honey Don’t,” by Carl Perkins
“Twist and Shout,” by Phil Medley and Bert Russell
“Till There Was You,” by Meredith Wilson
“Please Mr. Postman,” by Robert Bateman, Georgia Dobbins, William Garrett, Freddie Gorman, Brian Holland
“You’ve Really Got a Hold on Me,” by Smokey Robinson
“Long Tall Sally,” by Robert "Bumps" Blackwell, Enotris Johnson, Little Richard
“Roll Over Beethoven,” by Chuck Berry
“Rock & Roll Music,” by Chuck Berry
“Mr. Moonlight,” by Roy Lee Johnson
“Words of Love,” by Buddy Holly
“Bad Boy,” by Larry Williams
“Kansas City/Hey-Hey-Hey-Hey!” by Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller
“Slow Down,” by Larry Williams
“Matchbox,” by Carl Perkins


wrench
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Fri Apr 03, 2020 12:11 pm

That's an impressive list Bear.

In Greg Lake's "Songs of a Lifetime", he talks about asking Ringo Starr about the high number of hits the Beatles had. Ringo commented that every day, John and Paul both brought in songs they wrote the night before, and as Ringo put it, "they were invariably hits". Two hundred hits in five or six years suggests these guys had a very efficient hit ratio (see what i did there) to songs written. I would be tempted to suggest that producing music at that rate required simple compositions, but trying to play some of their stuff, as many of us have, I find a lot of their work fairly challenging.

And to think Paul and Ringo are still making music nearly sixty years on................


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neverfoundthetime
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Fri Apr 03, 2020 6:18 pm

Rick and Dan! Me thinks I'm in a time warp! Great to hear from you again, I sure hope life is good and you are getting plenty of guitar time in!


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neverfoundthetime
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Fri Apr 03, 2020 6:30 pm

I was amazed to see the time line on Rubber Soul, how the heck did they write all those songs, some of their very best and record them so fast. These are not simple tunes like, I wanna be your man which could be knocked out in 20 mins!

Welcome back to TG guys!


unclewalt
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Sat Apr 04, 2020 11:33 am

"Mike is no crank"

I'd never heard of the guy, but from what I just saw, he apparently is very much a crank. He follows a bunch of lunatic conspiracy theorists on Twitter (and also Donald Trump and Ron Paul, who both certainly fit the definition.)

He follows David Icke, who believes that many world leaders are actually lizards in disguise. Really. And he has all kinds of nutty stuff on his web site, too. So I assume this four-hour (!) examination of the question must veer into crank territory as well.

While the question of how the Beatles created so much great music in such a short time is an endlessly fascinating topic, I think there are saner, less mercenary voices to listen to on the subject -- like Neil himself, who said on this week's news that they were just naturally super-talented guys who had a lot of help. I would add that they also just simply worked their asses off. I would also add that a lot of it seemed to be synergy: The three songwriters all put out a lot of great solo stuff, but they never matched (certainly in terms of volume) what they had created together, even just adding stuff in the studio to songs written by just one of them. Count Ringo in that equation (a little, anyway) as well.

Bottom line, I think: unlike a lot of other bands, they were *primarily* driven by music, and not primarily by girls, fame and money. So they learned, like, ninth chords and stuff, and also figured out how to make them work in pop songs. Again: work.


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neverfoundthetime
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Wed Apr 08, 2020 5:27 pm

Well, we can rely on you to sort the world into black and white and whats right, Walt! :laugh: That's for sure!
Glad its all sorted.


unclewalt
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Wed Apr 08, 2020 7:42 pm

You declared flatly that he "is no crank." Is that "black and white," or no? Crank, or not a crank? You said not. I said yes, and provided reasons.

I grew curious, and skeptical, when I saw that he had made a four-hour video examining whether the Beatles wrote all the songs they claimed credit for. So I looked him up, and found that he's a fan of, among other ghouls, a guy who believes that lizard men run the world. If you think it's debatable whether to listen to a guy who believes in lizard men, ok. So, let's say it's a gray area -- because in 2020, pointing out that something is "true" or "not true" is no longer allowed, unless you're defending nonsense -- and let others decide whether to pay attention to the guy based on the information at hand.

Here's his follow list on Twitter: a mixture of Beatles accounts and a bunch of characters who "many people say" are complete lunatics and bad characters:

https://twitter.com/SageOfQuay/following

Here's his Web site, where one item is titled "The Satantic Music Industry Exposed." There are lots of items about how the pandemic is really no big deal, and others about how it's being caused by radio waves. Another very classy one is titled, "Lets Get Them All! Gates Birx Fauci Soros all of them!". Whether or not we should "get" Fauci, a lifelong infectious-disease expert who has saved countless lives, because he's telling the truth (or what "some people believe" is "the truth): not a black and white question, I guess. Maybe we SHOULD get them! Maybe we should string them up! Who am I to say that stringing them up might be a bad idea?

https://sageofquayblog.blogspot.com/

Now, to me, the question of whether the dude is a crank seems very black and white. But that's just me, and my reality, which I refer to as "reality." Others, I realize, might "disagree," and when they say he is "no crank," that's not being "black and white," somehow.


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neverfoundthetime
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Sat Apr 11, 2020 3:26 am

Like I said, we can rely on you Walt to sort the world into black and white. The debate was about the Beatles music, not Mike Williams. He is a guitarist and song writer, so that does make him very suspect! ;)

Take a chill pill and lets keep it about the music.


unclewalt
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Sat Apr 11, 2020 11:06 am

"The debate was about the Beatles, not Mike Williams."

What? it was his video!

In any case, as you might notice, most of my initial response was about the Beatles' songwriting, but you chose to ignore that part and focus on the fact that I had demonstrated that your (black and white!) assertion that the guy was "no crank" appeared to be false. I guess I don't get how what I wrote was off topic. And I was pretty polite about it until you came in with the insults about I'm a big know-it-all because I think guys who believe in lizard men might not be worth listening to.

But OK, keep sharing conspiracy theorists' crazy videos, as long as they're music-focused, and I'll try to ignore that they're lunatics, and take them seriously. I bet there's one out there that spends 14 hours discussing the theory that John Fogerty is actually a space alien sent here to steal all our precious nitrogen, working in league with the Tri-Lateral Commission and Major League Baseball. They also staged the moon landings. Go ahead and post that one, and we'll all discuss it as if it were totally normal.


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