In article <4aocq7$pik@vaneyck.ahip.getty.edu> nrozakis@getty.edu (Nick Rozakis) writes:

>I'll bet a certain level of laziness was there about doing
>a quality show.

Hard to do a quality show---much less concentrate on the artistic ability
to bring it off---when you're visiting 32 sites in 34 days. :-) Not to
mention running from plane to press conference to backstage to hotels,
thence to airports again. I suppose the occasional young ladies also
distracted them from creative verve, at least on stage.

>  Yes, they did have to travel many places in short
>periods of time.  So get 3 stage setups and stagger them around
>the country/continent so there is always the same amps and such
>aty all the shows.  I think it was greedy of them.  They stopped
>touring because of the death threats and because they just didn't
>want to go through the hell anymore, not because they were becoming
>bad musicians, as they like to claim. 

Well, as the highly esteemed Mr. Kozinn pointed out here a day or two
ago (it seems more accurate to say "about 900 posts ago"---it's roughly
the same thing), you can hear a definite degradation of their playing
ability in public performances. Compare their output in 1963 (radio
or concert tapes) to 1966; the spirit wasn't there for live music
anymore.

Perhaps, too, they had their own definition of hell---something akin 
to "a plane and a room, and a car and a room, and a room and a room".
It must have been very artistically debilitating.

IMHO, it was the audience who was greedy. :-) The demands of fans
for tours were justified, of course, as far as the fans were concerned;
but the Beatles were passing through the stage of being entertainers
for live audiences, and instead perfecting their enormously evolutionary 
craft of composing new pop music. They were finding an area of expertise
that was worth much more than the live arena. And plainly it was a far
greater thrill for the Fabs to be in studio and create their synergy
there.

Only they didn't ask those of us buying concert tickets if it was
okay with us. :-)

Instead, they gave audiences their $5.50 worth of pleasure and passion----
who could scream, faint, share air space with the Boys for all of
twenty-five minutes, and have tremendous memories of having been there,
wherever "there" was!

Who needed to hear anything?

Did anyone *ever* have to hear a perfectly performed concert, really,
even in the early days? The Fabs have always had profound memories of
their golden era on stage in Hamburg and the Cavern, but I'll bet you
even there it was less a hysteria derived from the perfection of
their playing than from the transcendent balance of the time---the sheer
joy of being in front of an audience, making music they loved, and
having fans go wild with joy's analog.

It's a rare band, I think, who could translate this musical passion
from the live medium to vinyl and other replayable media. How lucky
for us they did. Pushing the envelope of harmonic exploration, they
made record listeners astonished to hear new releases like "Day
Tripper", "Rain", "Tomorrow Never Knows", "Sgt. Pepper"....

Deft techniques and production innovations (sounds pushed backwards,
sideways, almost inside-out!), bits and pieces of real life (viz:
a radio drama becoming ethereal commentary on already surrealistic
lyrics)---this was their true metier. They were well beyond the
halcyon days of live performance.

Instead they were setting standards for all those pop bands who dreamed
about making records their medium of choice.

Unlike many bands, they'd had a taste of both worlds, *and excelled 
in both*. Most of us weren't there to hear first-hand the wonder of
those Cavern Club rave-ups...but some of its legend comes through
the ether, via dim old footage ("Some Other Guy") or the rapt words
of still-breathless witnesses.

And all that passion was some how repackaged and reformatted brilliantly
into each new song they wrote.

As far as I'm concerned, no matter where the Beatles played, no matter
how long, how short, how distant the music, how faint the tune...I got 
my money's worth. 

How about you? 

-- 
"If you tried to imagine the world as it would be if the 
Beatles had not existed, you wouldn't know where to start."
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** saki@evolution.bchs.uh.edu * saki@seltaeb.ghgcorp.com **