Re: recording vs touring (U2 vs the Beatles) ??
dr. zooeuss said:
The longer U2 are around, as "biggest band in the world" the more they're compared to the Beatles as "biggest band of all time"
the Beatles put out an average of two albums a year for most of their career...
How were they able to put out so much material??
In comparing them to U2, I'm guessing they didn't tour nearly as much as U2...
It was just The Beatles --- all artists on major labels (who scored hit singles) normally put out three singles and two albums a year, from about 1963 to 1967 or 1968. As I'm sure you know, bands in those days recorded in more simple, direct (actually primitive) ways than bands do today, so the recording process itself was much faster (The Beatles first album, for example, was recorded in one day and was #1 on the UK chart for about 6 months!). Before The Beatles did Sgt. Pepper (from late 1966 to spring 1967 -- over a period of 9 months), the longest anybody had spent on an album was about 3 weeks, and that was considered excessive! (There were perhaps rare exceptions, such as Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys spending time and a fortune to complete the 'Good Vibrations' single.)
And there's more to it than just this. In the mid-60s, few bands wrote all of their own material, if any of them did -- even The Beatles 1st, 2nd, and 4th albums had about 40% cover material. The Stones didn't even try writing songs until about their 4th or 5th album. So there was comparatively little, if any, time needed to compose. And when you did compose, there was an 8 to 10 year, fairly undeveloped, legacy to contend with, as opposed to today where it's a multi-billion dollar industry with lawyers at every label ready to sue your ass off if your new song vaguely resembles three seconds of any record in the past 50 years.
There's more: In the mid-60s, the idea of developing your music didn't exist. Bands were expected to crank out the same shit for a couple of years, or however long their stay in the pop charts lasted (usually not long). Concerts were cheap, easy affairs at the pro level, too. The Beatles played 25-minute sets from 1963 to 1966, usually the same songs for the entire tour with no thought of changing anything.
And there's more: Bands in the mid-60s mainly made money from concerts (at theaters) and singles, NOT from albums. Albums were an afterthought for popular-music labels until the late-60s; I think 1969 was the first year that albums outsold singles in the USA (and I believe it was even later in the UK). So most pop albums (the Beatles and Dylan as exceptions, if you want to call Dylan "pop") were rag-bag affairs assembled by the record label as much as by the artist, usually consisting of one hit single (if in the US) and a bunch of boring filler.
The Beatles' entire career can be summed up in three phases, if you like:
1) Club-band in Liverpool and Hamburg (1960 to the end of 1962)
2) Beatlemania (1963 and esp. 1964 to 1966)
3) Studio-only band (1967 to 1969)
In stage one, they weren't making records, so they gigged to make money. In Germany, they played gruelling sets that went on for 7 or 8 hours (albeit with breaks). If you hear the rough recordings of them from 1962 (esp. after Ringo joins) they ROCKED and were an amazingly great live band, totally focused on their performance art.
In stage two, they were freak-show attractions for an international audience. People went to see them not to hear music, but to scream at idols. Hence...
In stage three, they developed their craft -- intellectually, artistically -- in the studio, producing the most essential four albums successively in rock history.
No sense comparing U2 to this era.
