The Beatles - Chronology

This probably will be an incremental blog entry, because I just started to discover things. I made an iTunes list (on my personal machine for now) that lists all Beatle recordings chronologically, using Mark Lewisohn's "The complete Beatles chronogy" and "Revolution in the head" by Ian MacDonald. Of course I read these books time and again, but only yesterday it occurred to me to actually compose a playlist in the running order of their recordings. I must say, it delivers quite some insights. For example, three songs with very strong guitar riffage were recorded in mid-October 1965 within two days: Drive my Car, Day Tripper and If I Needed Someone were recorded straight after another. But, Day Tripper was a single and was not included on Rubber Soul, and the other two were sequenced far apart on the album.

Another observation is that the three EMI versions of Love Me do show that the replacement of Pete Best was inevitable, and how brilliant and much more interesting the Ringo version is than the Andy White version, when placed close together.

Also, She Loves You is surrounded by lesser material from other writers. Clear is that I Want To Hold Your Hand is recorded around the time that She Loves You is high in the charts, and from that moment on, the density of own material increases - only then, probably, they were trusted enough from a hit making potential point of view.

I Feel Fine and She's a Woman were recorded during Beatles For Sale and indicate a dearth of own material. The sequencing of the albums and the leaving off of singles in that period and the main reasons that this chronology offers these insights.

At the end of the collaboration, Abbey Road is a lot less coherent that it seems on the final sequenced album- almost all recording after the Brian Epstein era seems less organized and coherent, with no big differences between the White Album, Let It Be and Abbey Road.

Wherever possible, I used the versions from the Mono Mixes and for Let It Be, the Let It Be (Naked) versions - for the sole reason of that these must be close to what they heard themselves in this day to day chronology.