Something About The Beatles

81: SATB’s Beatles Live Anthology

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satb-81It occurred to us, as it must have with everyone else, that the release of Eight Days A Week really called for an accompanying soundtrack, or at least a parallel collection of music spanning the whole of The Beatles’ documented live performing career. Into that void Robert and Richard have stepped, with their proposed collection of live performances ranging from the Star Club to Candlestick. Necessarily, some of the extant audio is rough, but not unlistenable and certainly essential to understanding what kind of live musicians these guys were (and how they did it to an audience). 

Locales represented here include Hamburg – Stockholm – London – New York City – Melbourne – Blackpool – Paris – Houston – Tokyo – San Francisco. 

Find Richard’s books here.

Find Robert’s books here.

Comments

16 responses to “81: SATB’s Beatles Live Anthology”

  1. Jim Dean

    Wow! Thanks! I’ll be listening to all of it tonight!

    Reply
  2. Jim Dean

    Wow! Thanks! I’ll be listening to all of it tonight!

    Reply
  3. Rob Boyles

    Thanks much for the download. Awesome and expertly assembled!

    Reply
  4. BW

    They changed the key in Yesterday in 66 because the song is originally written and recorded a full step down. But the song is played in the G position.
    So in 65 Paul tuned his acoustic down a full step and recorded it that way – But he used open chords and played it with G, F#m, B7, etc. open chords.

    So in 66, if he played it in the originally key, John, George, and Paul would’ve had to tune down a full step or have detuned guitars on stage that they’d have changed to. Paul, being a great singer at that time just said “Heck with that, we’ll just play it the way that I wrote it, but without the detuned instruments”.

    Note that in 76, Paul did the same thing… sort of. He plays Yesterday in the original, detuned key. THEN he plays Blackbird using the same guitar, meaning that Blackbird is actually a full step lower than the original recording. It was simply so he didn’t have to keep swapping guitars.

    Reply
    1. Michael

      @BW (regarding why they played “Yesterday” in what sounds like a higher key).

      Yes, you are exactly right…Paul recorded “Yesterday” in G position but with his guitar tuned down a full-step so that it came out in F….and Paul can be heard explaining this to George before the ‘Anthology 2’ alternate take. (I’m guessing George saw Paul playing what looked like a G chord but he heard something that didn’t sound like a G and thought “Hey wait a second…” )

      And as for the comments about how all the band is tuned down half a step at the first Tokyo show…My guess is that it was to make the singing a little easier, at least for the first night, so they wouldn’t have to hit notes *as* high. It was obviously a conscious decision to go down half a step because, as the video shows, the capo on George’s 12-string is one fret lower than normal (they were NOT going to detune the 12-string…those guitars are hard enough to keep in tune even for normal playing.)

      Reply
  5. Kent Roessler

    Much thanks for putting together the Live Anthology show!

    Reply
  6. David

    Excellent stuff. However I tend to think of The Beatles (based on the evidence we have) as a competent rather than a great live band. To me acts like The Who, The Stones, Springsteen, (at times) Dylan etc belong to that category, all those regularly surpassed the studio versions when playing live. Admittedly to do that in The Beatles is a tough call. You may excuse some of George’s frankly awful early live playing by saying the ‘energy” is good, but really he should have done better. As you say by 66 they had given up, would have been interesting to see how they would have been live in the 70s going out with all the baggage that McCartney deliberately tried to lose in the early days of Wings.

    Reply
    1. Pablo Ramon

      The Beatles of 1960-63 were, by all accounts, an amazing live act. By the 1964 tour, they were faced with enormous crowds that could barely hear them, an inability to hear themselves, and growing fatigue and apathy with the state of their live performances. When the audience can’t really hear you and frankly doesn’t much care what you sound like… I always try to keep in mind that this was a band that was still pretty damned tight, even when they couldn’t hear themselves. Had they hung in with the touring, at least the technology would have improved – technology available to the Stones and the Who and Springsteen in the era(s) in which they made their reputations as great live acts.

      Reply
  7. WingsJer

    “Hollywood Bowl” should have been reissued 30 years ago on CD and I feel Apple/Capitol took the easy way out by finally reissuing it now. At least a 2 CD “Live Anthology” would have been nice!

    Reply
  8. spiros xenos

    A very good selection, much appreciated! Is it possible to set up a download with markers for individual track selections? Cheers.

    Reply
  9. Tony DiMeo

    I would love to hear your thoughts on how the four Beatles recreated the beatles songs live in their solo careers.

    Reply
  10. Gary

    Great podcast, thoroughly enjoyed the journey!

    Reply
  11. Billy Shears

    The one towards the end of the show is the worst version of Act Naturally I have ever heard, poor Ringo !

    Funny, even Ald Bicknell admitted that John just couldn’t get the words of Help! right during concerts

    Reply
  12. Craig Davison

    Good picks, guys.

    Is it just me or does anyone else notice that the bass frequencies are boosted on the live tracks in this episode? I had to put a -6db bass cut on my car stereo to fix it. Hasn’t been an issue for me on other podcasts.

    Reply
  13. Colin Ricketts

    That performance of Ask Me Why at the Star Club is remarkable, and it comes across despite the far-from-perfect recording.

    Reply
  14. dmpc

    Would it be possible to get a list of the tracks you would include on this “Live Anthology” so that one could create a disc of this? I am pretty certain I would have any and all of the tracks you would include on the album in a lossless format.

    Reply

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