Category: The Beatles

Beatles fans around the world are having orgasms of delight at the announcement, a couple of days ago, that the SDE version of Rubber Soul is coming later in the year.

SDE is Super Deluxe Edition. We have already had these for Sgt Pepper, Revolver, The Beatles, Abbey Road and Let It Be.

There are lots of videos and postings and goodness knows what with people listing and commenting on the contents. Enough to say there are multiple versions, cd and bluray, vinyl, coloured vinyl, whatever…. Completists will get them all. Did we say Apple was trying to money grab from the fans at multiple hundreds of pounds per version? No, we didn’t.

Rubber Soul is OK. We have written about it before, and it’s not on our list of favourites. The lads were still touring but coming to the end of the Fab Four era and getting into more serious stuff. Rubber Soul marks a boundary. It’s got a more Dylan feel. Most of the songs are fine, but the album as a whole doesn’t amount to much. Nothing really stands out. It’s pleasant but unmemorable. It’s even hard to remember the track titles or order.

Rubber Soul also had an American version with different tracks.

There’s a new film out about Paul McCartney.

It appeared in my local cinema for one night only but I am sure it is on subscription services.

It is called Man On The Run (get it?) and covers the years from the end of The Beatles to just after John Lennon’s death, so late 60s to early 80s. It includes McCartney solo albums and the creation of Wings.

And Linda. Lots and lots of Linda.

Among the long list of production credits is MPL (aka Make Pot Legal), McCartney’s company. This tells you straight away that there are few harsh words to be found here.

There are voice interviews from the archives and new, but no talking faces. Lots of clips. We’ve never followed Paul’s solo career, or any of the others, in great detail so nearly all of it was new to us, but if you are a fan you may have seen it before.

The duff songs are rather skipped over, except Mull of Kintyre, so no Ebony and Ivory, for example.

If you were a Beatles fan, or just interested, it may be worth finding. Just remember it’s sanitised.

There are probably more books, articles and documentaries about The Beatles than any other musical act, except perhaps Elvis. Many contradict others.

This is not surprising. No-one was filming the Fab’s events in the 1960s, there was no YouTube or blogging. We rely on newspaper reports, studio records, people’s memories and what other people have made up written.

It’s amazing that authors can find a fact and stretch it out to a whole chapter of a book, adding in what people were thinking, speculation about the future and other nonsense.

How The Beatles broke up is a bit vague. Ringo seems to have left during the recording of The Beatles album, but came back. George left during the filming of Let It Be, but came back. John left but agreed not to tell the world. Paul did leave and did tell the world.

The exact date the group ended is not clear. Was it December 1970?