The panel goes over the new Revolver Super Deluxe remix (2022).
Topics covered: Revolver's importance in the Beatles' history and discography, Ray Davies' contemporary review of the album (not as mean as you might have heard, but also dismissive of major songs in a funny way), the murky meaning of "remaster" and "remix" and a summary of the history of Beatles re-releases, a bit of comparison of the new mix with the previous version, Will's grouchy take that these new releases are unnecessary (he was tired, folks), and wondering when the "deez nuts" version will come out.
We then pore over the extra tracks! We talk about the complexity of the early versions, the sadness of the original Yellow Submarine, the fuzz guitar that briefly existed on Got to Get You Into My Life, the insanely fast take of Rain, the magic vibraphone that vanished from I'm Only Sleeping, the disputed account of Paul leaving the session for She Said, She Said, the beauty of Paul's voice, the modernity of George's songs, Ringo's creatively great drumming, the spell John could cast, and more!
Other podcasts go deeper in the facts, but no one else enjoys their own "maybe we're wrong"ness more than us!
Panel: Will Hines, Brett Morris, Katie Platner, Joel Spence
In this two hour discussion, the panel gets into the amazing tour de force Beatles documentary "Get Back." Directed by Peter Jackson, released as three 2.5+ hour episodes on Disney+ over American Thanksgiving weekend in 2021, this doc is taking Beatle fandom by storm. It's an incredibly intimate look at the band at work. Yes, we see the fights and the tension. But we also see the friendship and empathy, the musical genius and passion for what they were making. You feel as if you are really hanging out with the Beatles in an unguarded environment. In addition to that intimate feeling, you see many now-iconic Beatles songs (aren't they all iconic, though) get developed, sometimes from scratch right before your eyes.
Among the many subjects we touch on: all the toast, Yoko Ono's presence, the relationships between Paul and John and George, whether Ringo is chill sad or hungover, the director Michael Lindsay-Hogg (villain or just arrogant 'college sophomore' energy), Billy Preston's incredible impact, calming George Martin, George's cool clothes, the musicianship and seeing them play, how we're hungry for MORE MORE of this kind of footage if only it existed, Ringo's fart, the cops and the straps in their mouths, the stuffy London business owners, Peter Sellers, Paul's ambition, the flowerpot conversation, the songwriting, Allen Klein, Glyn Johns, Apple Studios and Magic Alex' insane guitar prototype.
Beatles fans everywhere are joyfully examining and discussing this documentary. It's an incredible film and a joy to watch. I hope everyone listening to this feels the same way!
As all Beatles fans wait the release of Peter Jackson's documentary "Get Back," here's a fun "meeting a Beatles in real life" story.
Will Hines asks special guest J.M. DeMatteis (writer: Justice League, Spider-Man, Captain America, and a million more things!) to tell his story of meeting John Lennon! Will met J.M. on Will's comics podcast Screw It, We're Just Gonna Talk About Comics, and asked him to come on this one to tell this story.
Comics fans: check out J.M.'s new stories in "Justice League Infinity" and the soon-to-be-released "Ben Reilly: Spider-Man."
And check out J.M.'s album "How Many Lifetimes?" on Spotify, iTunes or YouTube!
(And while we're at it, can we get someone at Marvel to release J.M.'s run on Spectacular Spider-Man in trade form? Or any form? Those were terrific issues and this fan wants them in some easy-to-find format!)
Also, Will plugs a new project from Arthur Meyer and Bridey Elliott: "Bridey & Arthur Sing Some Songs By The Beatles" which is coming out on the 25th! Yes, that's the same day the "Get Back" documentary comes out!
This week, Peter Jackson released the trailer for his upcoming "Get Back" documentary, the much-anticipated reworking of all the footage recorded while the Beatles made their second-to-last album "Let It Be" (second to last recorded, last one released). There's tremendous excitement in Beatledom around the trailer and we wanted to talk about it! The Beatles looking happy! The story of the album told in a clear way! Cleaned-up audio! The Beatles being, like, you know, human beings with each other! We can't wait! So we released the Official Screw It, We're Just Gonna Talk About the Beatles falcon to gather the panel post-haste to discuss, and so we did.
The panel discusses the recent Paul McCartney documentary "McCartney 3,2,1." We love it, of course. We get into these topics: Paul's canned anecdotes, the way he's evolved into his job as Primary Beatles Ambassador, the joy of just WATCHING him listen to music, learning that the Beatles loved Bach, seeing Rubin take the low status role, hearing Paul give shout outs to the Kinks and James Jamerson and others, Paul's Spinal Tap moments, what John would have said if he were alive, why Klaus isn't in this doc and many other things!
Panel: Brett, Joel, Katie and Will.
A special episode about how the Beatles can bond family members! The panel takes a break and host Will talks to his youngest brother Brian about their lifelong love of the band, and how it is a big part of their friendship. Will asks a lot of his usual hypothetical questions to Brian: which concert would you see? What is the most John Paul song, etc? We also dig into silly inside jokes, trips to Beatles conventions, tribute bands, watching the Anthology and how we text each other every October 9 and December 8. We really indulge ourselves and get chatty. I hope those of you who share Beatles love with members of your family can relate!
Part 2 of our grab-bag of topics!
We continue with a quick look at George Harrison's 1982 album Gone Troppo (our take: hey, there's good stuff here) and also a choice video in which Paul walks around his high school!
Panel: Will Hines, Brett Morris, Katie Plattner, Joel Spence
The panel missed each other and hence, here is a new episode. We each picked a Beatles topic. But Will talked forever, so this is now the first of two parts.
In this episode we touch briefly on McCartney III Reimagined (our take: it's good), and then Will gets into the first half of Anthology 1, and Katie talks about the different ways in which songs can remind her of the Beatles.
Panel: Will Hines, Brett Morris, Katie Plattner, Joel Spence
The panel discusses Paul's latest album, McCartney III. We go over how he's adapted his songs to his voice, his ambitious lyrical choices, his cool drumming, the modern heavy sound of Slidin', his impressive producing talent, that one of the tracks was recorded 15 years ago and not all of us noticed.
Spoiler: we like it.
We also talk a bit about the new "trailer" for the Peter Jackson film/doc "Get Back."
In honor of the upcoming album "McCartney III," the panel discusses the 1980 album "McCartney II."
Just like its predecessor, 1970's "McCartney,"" McCartney II is a completely solo project -- just about everything done by only Paul. Unlike its predecessor, and unlike anything Paul had done to that point, McCartney II features a lot of experiments with synthesized keyboard sounds, ambient noise, repeated dance beats. Disliked by idiot critics upon its release, McCartney II ended up being seen as a prescient pioneer in the direction that electronic music would soon go in.
The panel discusses all this, and also gets into: Joel saying "the Wings" and Will pronouncing "jazz" like "jaws." Katie and Brett probably say dumb stuff too, who can remember? Anyway this is a fun episode and we hope you like it!
Oh, and we'll do a new episode when "McCartney III" comes out on Katie's birthday in Decemeber 2020!
A noble attempt to recapture the fun of the previous Beatles Games episode.
Some discussion: Which songs would you most like to have said you wrote? What would Paul say about Klaus? Which is the Beatles of social media platforms? How often can the subject of "bifurcated genitals" make its way into a Beatles discussion?
Panel: Will Hines, Brett Morris, Katie Plattner, Joel Spence
The panel plays a variety of games: F**k Marry Kill, Would You Rather, Listener Questions, Who Are the Beatles of X?, Which X is Which Beatle and perhaps regrettably: Klaustalk.
We call it "Beatles Games" in the audio of the episode, but then after we were done Joel suggested "Fab Bag" and I like it so here it is in the podcast title.
Lots of explicit language for the first five minutes, for almost no reason at all.
Panel: Will Hines, Brett Morris, Katie Plattner, Joel Spence
The panel takes a look at the Beatles second album "With the Beatles" (going by the British releases). It seems ot be overlooked in favor of Please Please Me and A Hard Day's Night, but we throw in the three mighty singles they also released around the same time: "From Me to You," "She Loves You" and "I Want to Hold Your Hand" --- whew, looks a lot better now, doesn't it? And it didn't look bad before!
This is the second time we've gone over this album for this podcast, for those obsessive SIWJGTATB fans.
Okay, and NOW the podcast is finished. Wink!
Panel: Will Hines, Brett Morris, Katie Plattner, Joel Spence
Recorded on March 18, 2020 while the panel members were trapped in their homes because of the Corona virus! Consider this a bonus episode, or unreleased track, or a momentary change of heart -- at any rate, it's a new episode.
The panel looks at the Beatles' first album "Please Please Me." It's the second time this podcast has gone over that album. The first time was the very first episode, which was the episode that your host, Will Hines, was LEAST prepared for. Now, all these years later, he's ready to take another crack at this album.
Standard panel of: Will Hines, Brett Morris, Katie Plattner and Joel Spence are on hand, remotely, to tackle this first, amazing, album.
Okay, and NOW the podcast is finished.
We go over the film Let It Be, the documentary that lets us see the Beatles... be quietly annoyed with each other. But also lets us see the glorious rooftop performance!
It's also the FINAL EPISODE of this podcast! It's been mostly dormant for about a year, and I felt like it was time to officially put it to bed. It's strange how a project occupies mental space until you really say THE END (Beatles reference).
I have loved doing this podcast so much and want to thank everyone who's ever listened to any part of it! And to all the amazing panelists who have ever been on it!
My final hot take on the Beatles is: they're great!
Your friend in Beatledom, Will Hines
Comedy writer/producer Jake Fogelnest comes on the podcast and announces his opinion of what a 12 song White Album should be. This was an unsolicited opinion that Jake brought on, and it's interesting and great. An interesting side note is that Will and Jake talked for over 2 hours and Will decided to include only this. The rest was great, but it was mostly Will bringing stuff up and Jake responding, and the White Album stuff was the stuff that Jake brought up of his own volition and passion, and so host/editor Will made the call and here we are. Hope you enjoy the ep!
The panel heads to Brett Morris' underground lair, where we all listen to the new Abbey Road 2019 remix in 5.1 sound on his superb system. We love the album, of course, and geek out on all the sonic details given new attention on this mix! We also talk about the cool extra tracks. And we give Wayland a hard time because for 10 seconds Will thought he was mocking Abbey Road (which he was not).
Skip to the final 15 minutes or thereabouts for Will Hines' note-perfect impersonation of Giles Martin!
Thanks to Brett for recording and mixing this episode! Apparently he used something called Abbey Road plugins, which I'm sure were unnecessary but make for a great creation story of this ep!
Panel: Will Hines, Wayland McQueen, Brett Morris, Katie Plattner, Joel Spence
We return to our series where host Will Hines plays Beatles albums for his Beatles-neutral friend Eugene Cordero, to see what Eugene thinks!
Eugene largely liked Sgt. Pepper! Interesting wrinkle: because of these episode, Eugene is now becoming a Beatles fan and also knows a lot about the band. He's starting to lose his unbiased view! Listen to how quickly he likes the first track! We talk about what makes Pepper great, how much Paul is on it, and of course the amazing final track. Oh, also Emmett Otter's Jug Band Christmas.
We discuss the 2007 film Across the Universe, a musical which used Beatles songs to tell its story. Host Will Hines joins Across the Universe superfan Alex Lewis (Lewberger) and moderate appreciator John Flynn (Two Old Queens) to watch the film and then discuss it! Bad news, skeptics: Will liked the movie. I mean, sure it's weird that it's about a guy named Jude who falls in love with a girl named Lucy (roommates: Maxwell, Sadie and Prudence). But the visuals are cool and the songs are good! Check it out!
Panel: John Flynn, Will Hines, Alex Lewis.
Host Will Hines and panelist Joel Spence (and Brett Morris via text message) talk about their experience seeing Paul McCartney live at Dodger Stadium July 13, 2019 --- featuring an appearance by Ringo Starr!
The panel reviews the movie "Yesterday," in which a struggling singer-songwriter comes out of a coma to find he's the only person on earth who knows Beatles songs. Will loved this movie and was dismayed to realize that it may in fact be not that great!
Panel: Will Hines, Wayland McQueen, Katie Plattner, Joel Spence
We go over the last John Lennon released while he was still alive: Double Fantasy, which came out November 1980. John had not released music for five years. Then he announced he and his wife Yoko were doing a co-album -- each one handling about half the tracks. It's easiest to consider them as two separate albums. As for John's half, they were a stellar set of pop songs expressing the insecurities and hopes of a rocker facing middle age. Tragically, John was murdered three weeks after it came out.
A fascinating album! We get into it.
Panel: Will Hines, Brett Morris, Katie Plattner, Joel Spence
After a long-ish break, the podcast returns! We talk about plans for the future of the podcast, the upcoming Beatles-centered movie "Yesterday" and then settle in for an in-depth talk about Paul's terrific 1973 solo album "Band on the Run." Well, it's a Wings album, really, but we think of it as a Paul solo album.
Panelists: Will Hines, Brett Morris, Katie Plattner, Joel Spence
The panel discusses the 2018 remix of the beloved double album: The self-titled The Beatles, better known as the White Album. Giles Martin's remix has all of Beatledom discussing this beloved album, as well as the newly collected original demos and lots of alternate takes!
Panelists: Will Hines, Brett Morris, Katie Plattner, Joel Spence, Heather Woodward