THE BEATLES BOOK OF LISTS

THE BEATLES BOOK OF LISTS

JOHN MENDELSSOHN

American albums for which Capitol Records ought to be commended heartily for assembling and/or programming with a sharp ear for stylistic continuity and consistency of mood, not that there aren’t anomalies on each:

1. The Beatles' 2nd Album (maximum R 'n' B!)

2. Something New (their great rockabilly album)

3. Rubber Soul (their great relatively...uh, mellow album)

Posthumous “solo” singles that are so lame that one can hardly imagine their having made the charts without benefit of their being posthumous:

1. "Nobody Told Me" (John Lennon) Brutally ungrammatical parts of lines of songs by former Beatles:

1."But in this ever-changing world in which we live in..." (From Paul's "Live And Let Die")

Obvious instances of the Rolling Stones aping the Beatles:

1. "As Tears Go By" (a string-quartetbacked ballad released in the wake of the success of "Yesterday")

2. "Have You Seen Your Mother, Baby, Standing In The Shadow" (A brass-section-backed rocker released in the wake of "Got To Get You Out Of My Life")

3. Posing for the sleeve of the latter in dresses like those worn by John's Aunt Mimi.

Reasons why it was really amazing that George Martin could produce tracks like “Twist And Shout”:

1.He'd been trained as a classical musician and made his start as a producer working on comedy albums. You'd think he'd have thrown his hands over his ears when the boys got so raucous.

Famous pop stars who never ceased to be annoyed by the brutally ungrammatical part of that line in Paul’s “Live And Let Die”:

1. Bev Bevan (former drummer of ELO, present drummer of Black Sabbath) Famous pop stars who, by virtue of having joined Black Sabbath, have lost all credibility, so who cares what does and doesn’t bother them:

1. Bev Bevan

Titles of books having to do with former Beatles that involve puns that scrupulous editors would have forbidden in a better world:

1. A Twist Of Lennon (by Cynthia Lennon Twist)

Other famous Twists:

1. Oliver

2. Peppermint

Tracks with which Capitol would make up The Worst Of The Beatles if it had any sense of humor:

1. "Blue Jay Way" (a sonic atrocity— the group's worst track ever; features a whined lead vocal, intentionally dissonant backing vocals, idiotic words, and a tune that suits them)

2. "Your Mother Should Know" (a portent of the worst to come from the solo Paul)

3. "Mr. Moonlight" (some of their worst harmony singing)

4. "You Like Me Too Much" (feeble in every way)

5. "Revolution 9" (unlistenable pretentious nonsense)

6. "Inner Light" (pious claptrap)

7. "Love You To" (a sonic atrocity)

8. "Within You, Without You" (a sonic atrocity, pious claptrap)

9. "Hello, Little Girl" (you wouldn't have signed them either)

10. "Good Morning, Good Morning"

(tuneless and grating) 1 1. "Being For The Benefit Of Mr. Kite" (egregious filler, ingeniously produced or not)

12. "Tomorrow Never Knows" (unlistenable pretentious nonsense; pious claptrap)

13. "Yer Blues" (made "Good Morning, Good Morning" sound like "Here, There And Everywhere" in comparison)

Foreign cities the 1961 Beatles should have thanked 1heir lucky stars they hadn’t accepted engagements in, instead of belly-aching about the squalidness of their accommodations in Flamburg:

1. Calcutta

2. Leningrad

3. Peking

4. Saskatoon

5. Tijuana

6. Cleveland

Pre-Beatlemania Beatle girlfriends with names far more comical than that of even Bob Dylan’s post-high school heartthrob Echo:

1. Thelma Pickles (early flame of John's)

Tracks on which Beatles other than Ringo sang off-key at length:

1. "Eleanor Rigby"

2. "Anna"

Exquisite tracks made slightly less so by extremely ragged rhythm guitar playing:

1. "Here, There, And Everywhere"

Tracks whose guitar parts many a young guitarist in garages from sea to shining sea hemorrhaged trying in vain to play by themselves without benefit of multi-tracking:

1. "And Your Bird Can Sing"

Tracks on which the future producer of the Sex Pistols played the harpsichord:

1. "Piggies" (the player being Chris Thomas, also of Christopher Milk, Pete Townshend, and Elton John fame)

Songs sung partially in languages that our heroes made up themselves:

1. "Here Comes The Sun King," the latter half of which is sung in a combination of Spanish, Italian, and gibberish. Ideas that seemed terribly exciting at the time, but which in retrospect may be perceived as vastly pernicious:

1. Concert albums.

2. Pop songs with instrumental accompaniment by Indian classical musicians.

3. Pop songs adapted from such other sources as The Tibetan Book Of The Dead.

4. Yoko.

5. Linda.

Great George Harrison guitar solos not played by George Harrison:

}. Andrew Gold's on Linda Ronstadt's "You're No Good"

2. Eric Clapton's on "While My Guitar Gently Weeps"

Groups who at one time posed a serious threat to The Beatles’ preeminence, but who eventually fell by the wayside due to their consummate lack of sexual charisma:

1. Gerry & The Pacemakers. Extremely droll ways of referring to the Beatles derived from the British custom of referring to the queen and her relatives as “the royals”:

1. The Fobs (coined by press officer Derek Taylor).

Directions in which George’s songwriting went after “Don’t Bother Me,” which must be seen in retrospect as one of the greatest cases of beginner’s luck in pop history:

1. Downhill

Early ’60s pretty boy pop stars whom the Beatles badmouthed mercilessly after they made it, but who went on to show that they had significant talent and infinitely greater staying power than the jabs themselves:

1. Cliff Richard.

Former members of actual famous pop groups who went on to portray Rutles:

1. Neil Innes (the Bonzo Dog Band)

2. Ricky Fataar (Flame, the Beach Boys)

Aspects of Beatlemania thought about least frequently by young musicians who aspire to inspire a comparable level of hysteria in pubescent girls:

1. It was terrifying. From where I sat in Dodger Stadium when the boys played there in August, 1 966, it looked real cute when the limousine that had been hidden under the stage couldn't make a quick getaway through the center field fence after the concert, as had been planned. But years later when I met the chauffeur at a party, he didn't remember it as very cute at all. So many little girls had hurled themselves atop the limo that its roof had appeared on the verge of caving in. Can you imagine how terrible being trapped inside a car whose roof was caving in would be?

Groups who sounded like the Beatles but looked like bozos:

1. The Knickerbockers, of "Lies" fame. The singer, the one who sounded exactly like Lennon, turned out to be a chubby little embarrassment who also "did" the Righteous Bros., the 4 Seasons, and half of everyone else in the hit parade at the time.

Songs you’d never have expected the Beatles to write:

1. Paul's "For No One," which showed him to be just as capable of having his heart broken as fellows with whom tens of millions of girls and women wouldn't have given everything they owned to spend half an hour alone.

McCartney compositions that showed him to be every bit the equal not only of Lennon when it came to lyricwriting, but of anyone in pop:

1. "For No One." No one has ever written a more poignant, evocative, cogent song about lost love. No one is likely to.

Least plausible quotes by members of the original cast of Beatlemania:

1. "I learned to play bass lefthanded," said Mitch "Paul" Weissman, "but it was awkward for me. One night I switched back to righthanded, and nobody seemed to notice, so I kept doing it."

Glaring—no, absolutely blinding — omissions by the original cast of Beatlemania the night I saw them in March, 1978:

1. That of the unison hair-shaking that Paul and George would do as they sang the falsetto "ooh!" at the end of the chorus of "She Loves You." And this after they'd scoured all four corners of the globe looking for 17-fret Epiphone guitars, say, to ensure the absolute verisimilitude of the play!

Impressive comebacks by people who never produced the Beatles, but imagined that they should have:

1. Eddie "Electric Avenue" Grant's in 1983. After the group with which he first visited the upper reaches of the hit parade, the Equals, scored a hit in 1968 with their appalling "Baby, Come Back," modest Ed informed the English pop press that he thought he'd be able to do our heroes a lot of good in the studio.

Extremely cool moves by Paul McCartney in the 11 years since his last one (writing and recording “Jet”):

1. Appearing in the Tracy Ullman video without the heretofore inescapable Linda.

Occasions on which one of the Beatles performed not in the Cubanheeled dagger-toed boots with which they’d come to be so closely identified, but in bedroom slippers much like those found in any home:

1. The last Beatles performance in America, at San Francisco's Candlestick Park, August 1966. (George was the guilty party.)

Songs of which there exist live tapes of Paul giggling audibly at his own inability to reach the highest notes of his harmony part:

1. "If I Fell."

Books that will include occasional references to the Beatles that you can’t buy now, but will be able to— and should—buy in a few months:

1. The Kink Kronikles—The Book by John Mendelssohn.