I liked birthday too and the non-single rendition of revolution ain't bad either. Would you agree with me at least that it's their worst album post-1964?

i wouldn't.

besides, love is just a collection album. you couldn't really rate albums if they're just music from a bunch of previous albums, especially because the songs are just a few incomplete songs mashed together.

all i said that it was fun and i may recommend it as a starter album for someone in the future.

Don't forget Happiness Is A Warm Gun, probably the darkest Beatle song ever that hints heroin use by Lennon. When the album was first released, Paul McCartney said Rocky Racoon was a humorous tribute to Bob Dylan's tranformation to more rustic song themes following his motorcycle crash. McCartney's imitation of Dylan's clipped vocal cadence at the beginning of the song (where McCartney sings: "Somewhere in the black mining hills of Dakota etc..) always brings a smile to may face.

Both Lennon & McCartney could do deadly parodies of other musicians and prominent public figures. Lennon also had a talent for clever word play as evidenced by his book title In My Own Write. George Martin infuriated the suits at EMI when doubled their he doubled the Beatle's song royalties from 1 penny to 2 pennies an album, during their first recording session. Martin's only explaination was that even without their musical talents, both Lennon and McCartney deserved additional points for the sheer entertainment value of their humorous observations.

With the White Album, one should consider the fact that it's a two volume album with 28 songs and 20 of those songs are up to par with the other Beatle albums and only 5 to 8 of the songs were filler. It's my favorite album by the Beatles of the post-Sgt. Peppers era and I like for the same reason many people dislike it: It's sprawling, overly ambitious and chaotic effort that baffled the critical establishment with it's wild mood swings and dark themes. McCartney's Rocky Racoon & Bungalow Bill sounded like children songs but each song had macarbe undercurrent of mayhem and violence. Harrison's Piggies and Lennon's Helter Skelter had similar themes.

The White Album was prophetic because the free floating dread of the White Album Beatles music seemed to anticipate the rise of heroin use by the hippie counterculture, the bombings of Weather Underground, the Tate LoBianca murders and chaos at Altamont. All of those events marked 1969 as the end of the dream.

If you want a picture perfect, mellow, coffee table Beatles album then Abbey Road should be your choice. I found Abbey Road to be a frustrating album for that very reason. Abbey Road was the Beatles retreat to the ivory tour of the Abbey Road 64 track studio to record breathtakingly beautiful songs that made everyone happy.

I can't really blame the Beatles for wanting to get out of the game at that point. There were thousands people like Charles Manson who thought the Beatles were there personal savior and their music contained a message to them personally, usually about some sort of imagninary future apocalyspe. Manson's personal message ended up with his final solution of Helter Skelter.

It wasn't just Manson, droves of people had personal fixations on the Beatles and their music. A friend of mine who went on to acheive minor noteriety as rock guitarist confided to me that the Beatles were a fullfilment of the prophesies of King David, in the haze of an acid trip one night. I shrugged when he whipped out a Bible read the passages out of the Book of Pslams that proved the divinity of the Beatles.. but I was a little bit worried about the guy. In a little over a decade John Lennon would be murdered by a guy that believed he was Holden Caulfield from the book Catcher in the Rye and Mark David Chapman really believed world would be a better place without a "phony" like John Lennon. I think Abbey Road was intended to be a chill-out album and a final farewell to that pathological class of Beatle fans. Unfortunately Chapman had the opportunity to deliver the message and was given the opportunity to do so because John Lennon trusted his fans and refused to hire body guards or use rear entry door to his home in the Dakota apartments.

The killing of John Lennon one of those traumatic events that will be forever imprinted in my memory like the Kennedy assasination, the 9/11 attack and the Kent State shootings. I woke up on the morning of Nov. 9th 1980 at 6 am to the sound of Lennon's Love Is playing on my clock radio. As I lay in the dark under the covers with my eyes closed, I was overwhelmed by the simple beauty of the song and as the song faded out, I heard WBCN dee jay Charles Laquidaria's announcement of Lennon's death at the Dakota and I cried... the dream was over. I've never been as overwhelmed with grief at the death of a public figure as I was with John Lennon's death.

A couple of small errors fixed. Excellent post by the way.

Thanks for pointing out the errors.

By the way one of the most surprising moments on the Love album was the combination of Good Night from the White Album and Octopus's Garden from Abbey Road. It actually made Octopus's Garden beautiful, which is damn hard.

there are a number of moments like that. kinda like listening to the avalanches.

I know, it is somewhat better with the mixing of different songs, but they're shortened, so it's kind of like something that's very different. "Because" on that album can scare the **** out of you because of it's silent intro, and you're waiting... waiting... waiting... and if you got on high volume, someone gonna jump out of their seat.