Cliff Richard has been quoted as saying the Beatles were “out of tune“.  Not sure what’s got up his nose these days or why it’s being reported now, but he particularly singles out the guitar work, and one can assume he’s talking mostly about George Harrison’s playing.  Hunter Davies comes to George’s defense, but it’s not really needed. 

It’s hard to know what Cliff is bitching about because he doesn’t name songs, but certainly some of the early work *was* out of tune.  Not, in my mind, horribly, but you can certainly hear issues when you listen closely, especially on the CDs.  Additionally, the American reissue box set of the early US album remixes are even worse.  Not necessarily out of tune much, but with lots of gratuitous reverb, any problems seem amplified to my ear. 

The only real ‘excuses’ one might have for things being out of tune now and then are 1) I’m not sure anyone back in 1963 or 1964 had any idea that 45 years later people still would be scrutinizing and analyzing their recordings and 2) they often would record early tracks with just a few takes, given their touring and movie schedules.   I’m sure some people will claim there is no out of tuneness, but George Martin himself was on record as having said he was appalled at how bad some of the early stuff was out of tune – singling out “I’ll Be Back” from the Hard Day’s Night CD as being one reason why he decided to keep that whole CD mono instead of stereo – the stereo mix made the tuning problems much more apparent.

But I also have to agree with Hunter Davies’ view that Cliff’s “nose was put out of joint when the Beatles came along”.  Hearing Cliff tout his own record – “sold more records than anyone else ever” and such almost as embarrassing as McCartney trying to defend his own solo career against the Beatles’.  McCartney shouldn’t have to, and neither should Sir Cliff, but I guess everyone living in the Beatles’ shadow – even the Beatles themselves – has to try to highlight their accomplishments.

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… at least new to me.  In 1964, when planning a spring/summer tour around the world, Ringo got tonsilitis.  Plans were already made, and surprisingly, their manager decided to go ahead without him.  A replacement drummer, Jimmy Nicol, was brought in and played in Ringo’s place for a handful of shows – I think it was 9.

There is some footage of the four of them playing in Holland in the Beatles Anthology video series, but they are miming, which sort of stinks (apparently miming was a fairly common practice back then). There was a brief snippet of them playing in Hong Kong, Jimmy’s last show before Ringo rejoined in Australia, but there was no sound.

Last night, on Youtube, I found an entire 2 minute video clip which purports to be Beatles + Jimmy playing at a concert in Holland.  It’s certainly him playing, and the sound of the song is different than I’ve ever heard before.  The audio doesn’t quite sync up with the video, though, which brings down the wow factor a bit.  Also, I can swear I’ve seen bits of this video footage of the crowd in other compilations, usually just when people are putting together Beatles crowd scenes.  Diehard fans will know what I’m talking about.

Even so, I do believe it’s a relatively obscure video find.  I know there’s much more to be unearthed in the coming years, and I look forward to seeing cleaned up versions as I grow older.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=dJulGC4eDwU