George Martin had always added orchestral parts to Beatles work
Actually, that's not so. The first time there was orchestral stuff where the Beatles were concerned was with "Yesterday." The other band members didn't feel they could add anything to it without it sounding heavy and they didn't think the song warranted that. Martin suggested a string quartet and they gave it a whirl and liked it. After that as the Beatles developed more as songwriters and arrangers, they began to state what they wanted in songs, be it brass, Indian instrumentation or orchestral stuff or tape loops or backwards stuff or random avant garde noise. But it was always what
they suggested. Martin carried out their instructions. And by the White album, they had outgrown him somewhat.
Paul was usually the schmaltzy love ballad guy in the first place
That's the general perception but it isn't borne out by the facts.
[FONT="]Ask Me Why
[/FONT][FONT="]Do You Want to Know a Secret
[/FONT][FONT="]All I´ve Got to Do
[/FONT][FONT="]Not a Second Time
[/FONT][FONT="]If I fell
[/FONT][FONT="]I’m Happy Just to Dance With You
[/FONT][FONT="]I’ll Be Back
[/FONT][FONT="]I’m a Loser
[/FONT][FONT="]No Reply
[/FONT][FONT="]You´ve Got to Hide Your Love Away
[/FONT][FONT="]It’s Only Love
[/FONT][FONT="]Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)
[/FONT][FONT="]Girl
[/FONT][FONT="]Good Night
[/FONT][FONT="]Sexy Sadie
[/FONT][FONT="]Julia
[/FONT][FONT="]Sun King
[/FONT][FONT="]Because
[/FONT][FONT="]Across the Universe
[/FONT][FONT="]Dig a Pony
[/FONT][FONT="]This Boy
[/FONT][FONT="]Yes It Is
[/FONT][FONT="]Don’t Let Me Down
[/FONT]These are all John songs and that's not even counting all the "love" songs he wrote like "Run for your life", "Ticket to ride" or "You can't do that" or the slower ones like "I'm only sleeping" or "I'm so tired."
Equally true is that Paul knocked out many of the band's great rockers.
I would have used that as the closer for the album, much like Good Night was the closer of the White Album
I think "Good night" is the worst of all the Beatles' album closers. In fact, for me, it's the only album closer that's a clunker. The rest range from damned good to superlative. Yet, it is the most logical and appropriate.
It's also ironic that John should criticize "Obladi Oblada" and "Maxwell's silver hammer" as being "granny music" when he was knocking out guilt embedded songs like "Good night."
I love most of the naked album, but I actually really like Spector’s version
I've dug the original release since I first heard it in '77. I won't even listen to the naked album or any remixes.
If I had done that song and someone else messed with it with out my permission, then I would go nuts as well
This is where the split personality of consumer and recorder rears its head big time. I love the album version of "The long and winding road" and have done since '76. Yet, if it were me in Paul's shoes, I'd be seriously miffed. Don't mess with my song !
It's not like Spector just decided to screw up somebody else's song. Its more like someone called and said "can you make something out of this mess? We've already done two full mixes on this album and nobody likes it
Such an important point. If Paul should have been angry at anyone for what happened, it should have been John because John commissioned Spector to work on the album. I think John did it out of spite because he had left the Beatles months before Spector was brought in. In fact, it's still a mystery how John had that authority in a band he'd left and how McCartney, Martin and Glyn Johns didn't know about it. Ringo knew about it.
What's also odd is that even after John had left, into 1970 actually, Paul, George and Ringo were recording "I, me, mine" specifically for the album.
The thing is, with Let It Be, Paul was trying to get them AWAY from the studio magic, back to being a basic live rock band
That's only partly true. John had always felt that his songs suffered from the Beatles' studio experimentation and told George Martin that he wanted "Let it be" {which was originally titled "Get back"} to be an "honest" album without any of his "jiggery pokery." Martin was offended because he thought John was saying that the music they'd done up till then wasn't honest. As Lennon put it though, he liked the basic plain inspired stuff, "not the clever 'created' stuff.'"
And even before that, George complained to Hunter Davies in '67 or '68 that they'd not played a complete song live together since they stopped touring.
to show them warts and all
"Let it be" did exactly that. And when they heard it, they shelved it with no discussions of when it might come out. That they went ahead and did "Abbey Road" tells one all one needs to know about the notion of the basic live band recording without any overdubs. It's easy to forget that the only album they didn't really do many overdubs on was their first one, "Please please Me." In many ways, home recording exists because of their progress in being able to craft an album meticulously, taking one's time and building things up bit by bit at different times.
Two Of Us was a song they wrote when they were kids, basically
That's what it sounds like. That's what I used to think. Phillip Norman even writes such in his biography of the Beatles {along with other erroneous stuff !} But Paul wrote it about the early days of him and Linda's relationship when they'd just go driving and get lost and find their way back home. It was written not long after they first got together. It's so seemingly naive, it sounds like one of the first things John and Paul must have written. But that was Paul, he was without a doubt the most versatile of the songwriting Beatles.
