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In this episode, we examine the process of a song becoming a record, as heard through the ears of those in the producer’s chair. Luther Russell, previous SATB guest and Fab4ConJam star, has operated as a composer, performer, collaborator, engineer and producer and is therefore more than qualified to offer his insights as a musical idea gets transformed into a production and how creative decisions are made along the way.
Non-Beatles music heard in this episode:
Ned Roberts: “Falling Away” – produced by Luther Russell
Weezer: “L.A. Girlz” – co-written by Luther Russell, Brian Bell and Rivers Cuomo, released on The White Album by Weezer (2016)
Those Pretty Wrongs: “Lucky Man” from the album Those Pretty Wrongs (2016), co-written by Jody Stephens and Luther Russell
Ned Roberts: “Falling Away” – produced by Luther Russell
Weezer: “L.A. Girlz” – co-written by Luther Russell, Brian Bell and Rivers Cuomo, released on The White Album by Weezer (2016)
Those Pretty Wrongs: “Lucky Man” from the album Those Pretty Wrongs (2016), co-written by Jody Stephens and Luther Russell
Luther Russell: “Tomorrow’s Papers” from the album The Invisible Audience (2011) by Luther Russell
From what I have heard and audibly observed John Lennon always kind of left it open or even relied on Band ARRANGEMENTS . It first hit me especially when hearing the development of STRAWBERRY FIELDS how the arrangemet took shape very different than he was writing it. Even in his last work on DOUBLE FANTASY he gave demos to JACK DOUGLAS his producer to do Band arrangement on the songs. Wheras PAUL a lot of his songs seem to be presented fully formed with arrangements this was particularly true in the latter 1967 onward Beatles records. George seems to have been given much more freedom on Lennon songs too as far as guitar parts. There are exception of course. THANKS.
Yes, Lennon seemed to have always excelled as a lyricist but melodies where often more of McCartney’s strength.
Ps. I DON’t agree that the Mellotron riff on Strawberry Fields comes from that bit of John playing the melodica in 1964! He plays a first two chords sounding similar but then stops to where it goes in Strawberrry and I think its a stretch to connect them myself. I think its a accident and Paul came up with that intro himself to Strawberry Fields on the MELLOTRON.
So Paul McCartney is yet again to blame for the break-up?
The song writing formula worked well up until 1967- Lennon and McCartney collaborated. What changed in 1968 – Yoko No-o.
She impacted on their ability to collaborate so McCartney had no alternative but to turn up with songs fully formed.
McCartney was always generous (helped Lennon with Don’t Let Me Down) and assisted Harrison with over 80 run-throughs of All Things Must Pass, yet somehow he is always the villain.
Not sure how.
ATMP was also on the shortlist for Let It Be btw despite them not getting on top of it.
Both Lennon and McCartney broke up the Beatles. It’s just that McCartney did it publicly and it was based on arrogance and resentment.
Lennon outgrew the Beatles as a creative outlet in 1965. He just hung around because his insecurity, fear governed his decision making until he met Yoko Ono. He wasn’t able to reflect on his impotence as a Beatle until he saw someone, doing what they wanted to do that reflected subversive actions and creativity, which is Yoko Ono. The fact that it was a woman and older than him revealed his Mommy complex.
Started out as a great program diseminating Demo’s and alternate takes to popular Beatle songs and turned into a promo show for mediocre Weezer.
Prompts one to compare the lack of creativity in the latter Luther Russell productions. They all, but one, sound alike, over produced whiny pop music.
There is a place for that program. Just didn’t expect it in the program nor did it enlighten.
This is yet another show where we get into “Paul bashing” and George is a saint.
Meanwhile, we all bypass the elephant in the room.
John was strung out on heroin and controlled by a woman who wanted him to sit in
bags for the benefit of acorns.
(Facetious)
Have any of your experts considered that John wasn’t John and that was the centrifugal
problem?
From that stemmed other problems.
In the Twickenham sessions … he was better but he still had that black cloud following him around.
I don’t see this at all in the movie. Some believe that John exaggerated his heroin problem.
My theory is that the problem with the sessions is that they were too close to the White Album. They were bringing into the studio more unfinished songs than usual. In fact, maybe that was the idea—to get them on camera working on not only the arrangement but the song itself. The sessions would probably not have been so frustrating to the band if the songs were complete, and they only worked on arrangements on camera.
Though we see the Beatles are having fun here, I think they were all feeling a lot of tension underneath, more than usual. We have the double problem of unfinished songs and no overdubs. Lennon called the sessions “miserable” (was that the word, expletives deleted?). Perhaps that refers to the pressure of the situation and not his relationship to the other bandmembers. Though, despite the laughs and giggles, the band thought they were on the verge of breaking up even before the sessions started.
There is a lot going on beneath the giggles. Too many, in my opinion, are just brushing this off as we had it all wrong, these sessions were happy. It’s a lot more complicated and I’m afraid I’m gonna have to wait ten years to get Lewisohn’s take on it all.
Agreed there is too much Paul bashing in this episode, had to cut out in the middle of the show. Lots of George apologists and john too, you really think John wasn’t a full blown junkie at this point? come on get real…
I don’t get what the George apologist saw in Ep 1.
He seemed fine the first week but returned the next week in a pretty rotten mood. He told John his song was shit on Monday the 6th, and basically said something similar again to John later that week. He seemed to pick fight’s all week and not just with Paul.
George had a lot of family problems that week with Patti moving out of their house because George moved Clapton’s ex girlfriend in the his house to started an open affair. Basically what John did to Cynthia months earlier. Love George but he’s a total jerk in the 2nd week of get back.
Paul is trying to walk a tightrope with them both…and creating monster hits all the while.
I’m not a working musician but I write songs and play various things. My take is:
1) Not enough full songs:
See my other posts. Drives me bonkers. (One panel member mentioned this critique.)
2) Some Tone-Deaf editing:
When Paul is discussing Don’t Let Me Down, he suggests that Lennon take out a section. But I can’t really tell what section that is. It seems to be a section that they eventually left in. Is this bad editing? I’m not totally sure. But it does come off like the film editor didn’t speak the language of the script.
3) First Instances:
I want to see the first instances of certain aspects of songs. Sometimes some new element of a song just appears out of nowhere. As a musician, I find this jarring. (This is not necessarily a critique of the Jackson movie.)
4) Dig an Edit:
Here is a specific example of the above. It is odd that after seeing a few clips of Dig A Pony, we see them decide to go into the control room to hear a playback. When they do, the song has the riff. But that riff was never heard before, it was later added. The editing is as if the decision to go to the control room was in real time, not a jump cut. One expects to hear what we heard. Musically, this comes off as just odd. Like magic, the riff appears.
5) Don’t Let Ringo Down:
I wrote out the score for the drum part on Don’t Let Me Down (The Internet and Beatles Scores have nonsense). I always admired Ringo’s choice of hitting the bell of the cymbals in the verses on this song. The first time around, he just hits one, but on the rest, he hits both bells. (I figured this out by slowing down the playback in Audacity.) But now I see that it was Paul that suggested this percussion and rhythm. (I believe someone mentioned in this program that Paul wasn’t suggesting what Ringo play. Not so.)
Though I found several of the comments interesting here, I wish the show concentrated more on the music or things that a working musician could only bring to the conversation. Instead, I found much of the conversation unrelated to the guests’ occupation. You might as well have psychologists come on to talk about the chord changes.
Still a good show but it would be nice if some outline were prepared and stuck to to make the show different than others.
I liked the program as each participant adds a bit more to my rudimentary knowledge of group dynamics and the personalities at play.
As an old guy however, I always blanche at the slew of F bombs. Why? Because I am a prude and my sensitive ears cannot handle a spot of vituperative linguistic enhancement?
No, I weary of it as they are too simple of words to add into a conversation in which meaning is paramount. I, for example, can lard up my sentences with blue words as its easy to do,
but it rarely helps in conveying deeper thoughts or unpacking complex situations.
Many argue that such language reveals a passion for the topic. Well, we frequently hear from Robert and his guests themselves that they are true Beatle geeks/fans/afficinados/etc. In other words, I have no doubt of their passion for the topic. That’s a given at this point.
Again, I really do understand as an old guy that the world belongs to the younger creators and entertainers and commentors, but it still is nice when they only infrequently season and spice their public comments and leave the other moments to strongly put forth observations and insights.
Believe me, it sounds so much better.
I know what you mean Neal! that’s why Disney needs to release every single hour of the video-sound footage, the audio-only recordings and the soundless video footage as well … and all in sequence.
Maybe they can cover the audio-only with cartoons or still footage this time, since it seems too hard to keep finding representative video with no sound. Plus its just not accurate.
As for the soundless video footage — hope it will be seen in the correct sequence (maybe a guest star’s commentary over it, or an earlier Beatle’s song). Peter Jackson filling the audio-only parts with out-of-sequence-soundless film footage was clever and understandable, but not ideal for the full works.
Heroin does not help!
Lennon was not emotionally present at Twickenham Studios. He was burned out and doing drugs with Yoko Ono at that time. Harrison was in a creative high at that time but McCartney was still trying to be Lennon-McCartney again. Starr was a good example that the four of them where rehearsing too early in the morning.
The changes
All agreed to meet later in the day at Apple and where more awake. Bill Preston made everyone behave more. Lennon felt obligated to stop using heroin. These are all agreements they made at George’s house. What remained the same was Lennon’s contributions where weak. Dig A Pony and Dig It and not very inspired songs. Due to his being disconnected.
In general the Beatles where all extremely passive aggressive with one another and didn’t know how to be direct in order to problem solve. It is part of the reason they could never get back together. Passive aggressiveness causes people to be indirect and never really resolve an issue.
If only the illusion of Lennon-McCartney had realized they needed to support Harrison. Passive Aggressiveness ruined their collective own opportunities.
Yes! Your discussion here commenced exactly where I have commented about on several youtube “reaction” to GET BACK vides. You are dead right the key response from GEORGE in that conversation is “I don’t think you know what that one is” ! PAUL is manic quite a bit early in these sessions and he is NOT ARTICULATING musically what he actually wants…he does the same thing right before GEORGE walks out when they are working on the guitar arrangement for the song GET BACK and he says the chord George is playing is “PASSE’ ” I thought WHAT! A chord is a chord but I give PAUL great credit always for his genius…but he was not really specifically telling Geoge what he wanted, of course that may have been another problem.
I give great credt to Lindsay-Hogg for getting all this footage, he was trying to do his job and his vision which was NEVER gonna happen. PAUL was somewhat frustrated to the end wanting more, to go and do shows etc… but he ran into a wall. I m also a defender of LET IT BE, I saw it first when it came out when I was 17 in 1970 but the GET BACK DOC is an absolute gift, I have watched it 4 times!!
Just a quick comment on Michael Lindsay Hogg .. I liked his promo videos of the band and Ready Steady Go .. I read an interview a few years ago and he was asked why the film ‘Let It Be’ was so “Paul- centric”; he responded by saying “one of them was doing something and the other wasn’t” .. Get Back tells a different story, so his outlook at the time of the interview (80’s? ) is puzzling …. I saw ‘Let It Be’ back then in a theatre as part of a double bill with ‘The Last Waltz’ ..
Thanks for a terrific show, guys. These were excellent musical and inter-personal analyses on the many aspects of “GET BACK.’
So there are enough songs here from this movie that they could release a soundtrack- The Get Back soundtrack…even if they are snippets of songs I like hearing the snippets…not every piece of music has to be exactly 3 minutes long. Art isn’t supposed to be consumed in just one way.
Greasepaint on his Face…I laugh every time I hear it
Palace of the Kings and Birds
Dehra Dun
Child of Nature
Give Me Some Truth
New Orleans…. I love that delay when George gets them into gear and it kicks out.
Back Seat of My Car
Because I Know You Love Me So
fast version of Get Back
fast version of Two of Us
etc etc
And they could have snippets of conversation…a bit like the BBC album in that regard.
etc etc..
I wish a soundtrack too… and Paul’s Strawberry Fields especially! …I wish he would cover it now… he was doing some cool stuff to it here on piano, adding some new stuff to it.
great job as usual, robert. keep up the great work. and ignore any negative feedback we sometimes see here….lol, which I’m sure you do. 🙂
I honestly think you have no idea of how this band’s dynamic worked. In fact, you have no idea at all about the men at all.
Duly noted, Nigel.
Robert and company… thank you!! This is a brilliant contribution that will be the kind of thing Mark L. will need to listen to for his later biographies. (He will have to listen to many of your podcasts actually.)
Your discovery of the lost Hoffner bass… and your friends’ sleuth work for other instruments was amazing!
George’s part in approving the Get Back song— saying ‘this is good’ — at the morning of the “big bang’ for this tune was so insightful… They all seem beyond the point of mentioning that a song is good, etc… but for George to do it here, really shows George using his power to help Paul at a crucual moment when he could have easily dropped it.
Also the comment about Paul being “confused” with this unheard of level of creative power surging through him was really a powerful. Sounds nuts, but I do think the Beatles were a miracle from above — the “4 evangelists of Joy’ or even something like the Holy Spirit reappearing on earth, but through song this time: the music power was spooky … and it was all about love.
I don’t often leave messages, as your shows blow me away to the point that I don’t feel I have anything to add. But I am here if you have a plan to petition Disney to adhere to sanity and just release every fucking hour!! Its criminal enough that so many fans died without ever seeing this.
… By the way, any ideas on why Lindsay-Hogg didn’t include the birth of Get back (just not enough time to go through it all under the timeline?)