lazarus
Blue Crack Supplier
U2girl said:Magical Mystery Tour is an EP, not an album. Yes, I know it was his idea.
But do you see what I mean ? You can't blame him exclusively if some of those ideas worked better than others, or rather, if others *mostly John* weren't as keen on going on with the band. Is it a surprise John contributes little to Sgt Pepper or Let it be, compared to Abbey Road or White Album ? You can't keep up a band if at least one party, especially one of the two leading songwriters, isn't interested. Same goes for touring.
My impression is they offered the album, with which none of them were obviously entirely happy, to be produced to different people (wikipedia mentions 3 "Let it be" albums in the process) and that finally John and Paul basically handed over the tapes to Spector, it's just that Paul didn't agree on the production choices he made, because they wanted a more stripped down sound. My understanding was the other three all contributed drums for Back in the USSR.
Maybe it sped up things (even with them recording separately for White Album and George Martin qutting the production on that album in frustration?), but I'm not sure not doing it would somehow magically saved the band, considering how much was going on.
First, I didn't say MMT was an album; I don't get what you're trying to say there. As for John contributing relatively little to Sgt. Pepper's, I don't know if that's really the case; Paul wrote 2 more songs than John, but of the four songs John wrote, you couldn't call Lucy, Mr. Kite, or Day in the Life unambitious. He wasn't spinning his wheels. John's contribution was considerably less for Abbey Road, with only two real songs and some acapella singing over a backwards Moonlight Sonata. Also, if you include Don't Let Me Down and Ballad of John & Yoko, two strong tracks which I included on my version of Let it Be, John's efforts during that period are comparable in quantity to Paul's.
Again, I don't think Paul's conceptual ideas were what "kept the band going", whatever that actually means. You see him as driving the band forward, but what the other band members saw was an overly-controlling presence. Was Sgt. Pepper's a great concept? Obviously. But my main points with all this are that (A) Lennon was writing regardless, and would have contributed to the making of any album, concept or no concept and (B) Paul's idea to film the Let It Be sessions contributed to more tension in the band than ever before (including Lennon's mental disengagement from the proceedings), and are more a factor in the band's breakup than anything else. John, for one, would have been a lot happier had they just recorded an album without the film crew. Would they have broken up eventually? That's very likely, but certainly this hastened it by a year or two. Whether it would have resulted in another Beatles album is impossible to say.