Wednesday 2pm: Sounds of The 70’s

Thursday 10pm: The Beatles: John Lennon / Plastic Ono Band (1970)

John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band is the debut solo album by English musician John Lennon. It was released in 1970, after Lennon had issued three experimental albums with Yoko Ono and Live Peace in Toronto 1969, a live performance in Toronto credited to the Plastic Ono Band. The album was recorded simultaneously with Ono’s debut avant-garde solo album, Yoko Ono/Plastic Ono Band, at Ascot Sound Studios and Abbey Road Studios using the same musicians and production team and nearly identical cover artwork.

John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band is generally considered one of Lennon’s finest solo albums. In 1987, Rolling Stone magazine ranked it fourth in its list “The 100 Best Albums of the Last Twenty Years” and in 2012, ranked it number 23 in “The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time”.

“Mother” – 5:34
“Hold On” – 1:52
“I Found Out” – 3:37
“Working Class Hero” – 3:48
“Isolation” – 2:51
“Remember” – 4:33
“Love” – 3:21
“Well Well Well” – 5:59
“Look at Me” – 2:53
“God” – 4:09
“My Mummy’s Dead” – 0:49
“Power to the People” – 3:22
“Do the Oz” – 3:07

Thursday 10pm: The Beatles – Let It Be (1970)

Let It Be is the twelfth and final studio album by the English rock band the Beatles. It was released on 8 May 1970, almost a month after the group’s break-up. Like most of the band’s previous releases, it was a number one album in many countries, including both the US and the UK, and was released in tandem with the motion picture of the same name.

The album was conceived as a return to the Beatles’ earlier, less complicated approach to music. It was recorded and projected for release (under its original title of Get Back) before their album Abbey Road (1969); for this reason, some critics and fans, such as Mark Lewisohn, argue that Abbey Road should be considered the group’s final album and Let It Be the penultimate. Rehearsals began at Twickenham Film Studios in January 1969 as part of a planned documentary showing the Beatles preparing to return to live performance. A project initiated by Paul McCartney, the filmed rehearsals were marked by ill-feeling, leading to George Harrison’s temporary departure from the group. As a condition of his return, the Beatles reconvened at their own Apple Studio, where they completed the recordings with the help of guest musician Billy Preston. It is one of three albums to not feature any lead vocals by Ringo Starr.

Following several rejected mixes by Glyn Johns, a new version of the album was produced by Phil Spector in March–April 1970. While three songs from the sessions were released as singles before the album’s release, “Get Back”/”Don’t Let Me Down” and “Let It Be”, the songs were remixed by Spector for the album and “Don’t Let Me Down” was not included. Let It Be… Naked was released in 2003, an alternative version of the album, without any of Spector’s production work and using some different takes of songs.

1. “Two of Us” 3:36
2. “Dig a Pony” 3:54
3. “Across the Universe” 3:48
4. “I Me Mine” 2:26
5. “Dig It” 0:50
6. “Let It Be” 4:03
7. “Maggie Mae” 0:40

1. “I’ve Got a Feeling” 3:37
2. “One After 909” 2:54
3. “The Long and Winding Road” 3:38
4. “For You Blue” 2:32
5. “Get Back” 3:09

Thursday 6pm: History of Rock and Roll with Bill Drake

This installment 

• Folk Rock of The Sixties
• Rolling Stones
• The Beatles
• Beatles Solo

 

Friday 6pm: History of Rock and Roll with Bill Drake

We continue the History of Rock and Roll

• The Beatles (1960 – 1964)
• British Invasion
• The Beatles
• Motown Part 2

Thursday 10:45pm: The Beatles – Hey Jude (1970)

Hey Jude (original title: The Beatles Again) is a 1970 collection of non-album singles and B-sides by the Beatles. It included “I Should Have Known Better” and “Can’t Buy Me Love”, two singles released by Capitol Records whose only previous American album appearance had been on the A Hard Day’s Night soundtrack album, which had been released by United Artists Records. The Hey Jude LP had been out of print since the late 1980s, although it remained available on cassette during the 1990s. The album was issued on CD for the first time in 2014, as an individual release and in a box set titled The U.S. Albums.

1. “Can’t Buy Me Love” 2:19
2. “I Should Have Known Better” 2:39
3. “Paperback Writer” 2:14
4. “Rain” 2:58
5. “Lady Madonna” 2:14
6. “Revolution” 3:21
7. “Hey Jude” 7:06
8. “Old Brown Shoe” 3:16
9. “Don’t Let Me Down” 3:30
10. “The Ballad of John and Yoko” 2:55

Thursday 10pm: The Beatles – Abbey Road

Abbey Road is the eleventh studio album by English rock band the Beatles, released on 26 September 1969 by Apple Records. The recording sessions for the album were the last in which all four Beatles participated. Although Let It Be was the final album that the Beatles completed before the band’s dissolution in April 1970, most of the album had been recorded before the Abbey Road sessions began. A two-sided hit single from the album, “Something” backed with “Come Together”, released in October, topped the Billboard Hot 100 chart in the US.

Abbey Road is a rock album that incorporates genres such as blues, pop, and progressive rock, and it makes prominent use of the Moog synthesizer and the Leslie speaker. Side two contains a medley of song fragments edited together to form a single piece. The album was recorded amid a more enjoyable atmosphere than the Get Back/Let It Be sessions earlier in the year, but there were still frequent disagreements within the band. John Lennon had privately left the group by the time the album was released and McCartney publicly quit the following year.

Although Abbey Road was an immediate commercial success and reached  No. 1 in the UK and US, it initially received mixed reviews, some critics describing its music as inauthentic and bemoaning the production’s artificial effects. Over time, the album became viewed as among the Beatles’ best and many critics have ranked it as one of the greatest albums of all time. In particular, George Harrison’s contributions, “Something” and “Here Comes the Sun”, are considered to be among the best songs he wrote for the group. The album’s cover, which features the four band members walking across a zebra crossing outside Abbey Road Studios, has become one of the most famous and imitated images in the history of popular music.

1. “Come Together” 4:19
2. “Something” 3:02
3. “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer” 3:27
4. “Oh! Darling” 3:27
5. “Octopus’s Garden” 2:51
6. “I Want You (She’s So Heavy)” 7:47

1. “Here Comes the Sun” 3:05
2. “Because” 2:45
3. “You Never Give Me Your Money” 4:03
4. “Sun King” 2:26
5. “Mean Mr. Mustard” 1:06
6. “Polythene Pam” 1:13
7. “She Came In Through the Bathroom Window” 1:58
8. “Golden Slumbers” 1:31
9. “Carry That Weight” 1:36
10. “The End” 2:05
11. “Her Majesty” 0:23

Thursday 10:30pm: The Beatles – White Album (1968)

The Beatles, also known as “The White Album”, is the ninth studio album by the English rock band the Beatles, released on 22 November 1968. A double album, its plain white sleeve has no graphics or text other than the band’s name embossed, which was intended as a direct contrast to the vivid cover artwork of the band’s previous LP Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. Although no singles were issued from The Beatles in Britain and the United States, the songs “Hey Jude” and “Revolution” originated from the same recording sessions and were issued on a single in August 1968. The album’s songs range in style from British blues and ska to pastiches of Chuck Berry and Karlheinz Stockhausen.

Most of the songs on the album were written during March and April 1968 at a Transcendental Meditation course in Rishikesh, India. The group returned to EMI’s Abbey Road Studios in London at the end of May to commence recording sessions that lasted through to mid-October. During these sessions, arguments broke out among the foursome over creative differences. Another divisive element was the constant presence of John Lennon’s new partner, Yoko Ono, whose attendance in the studio broke with the Beatles’ policy regarding wives and girlfriends not attending recording sessions. After a series of problems, including producer George Martin taking a sudden leave of absence and engineer Geoff Emerick suddenly quitting, Ringo Starr left the band briefly in August. The same tensions continued throughout the following year, leading to the break-up of the band by 1970.

On release, The Beatles received favourable reviews from the majority of music critics, but other commentators found its satirical songs unimportant and apolitical amid the turbulent political and social climate of 1968. The band and Martin later debated whether the group should have released a single album instead. Nonetheless, The Beatles reached No. 1 on the charts in both the United Kingdom and the United States, and has since been viewed by some critics as one of the greatest albums of all time.

Included are the Esher Demos

Original release
1. “Back in the U.S.S.R.” 2:43
2. “Dear Prudence” 3:56
3. “Glass Onion” 2:18
4. “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da” 3:08
5. “Wild Honey Pie” 0:52
6. “The Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill” 3:14
7. “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” 4:45
8. “Happiness Is a Warm Gun” 2:43

1. “Martha My Dear” 2:28
2. “I’m So Tired” 2:03
3. “Blackbird” 2:18
4. “Piggies” 2:04
5. “Rocky Raccoon” 3:33
6. “Don’t Pass Me By” 3:51
7. “Why Don’t We Do It in the Road?” 1:41
8. “I Will” 1:46
9. “Julia” 2:54

1. “Birthday” 2:42
2. “Yer Blues” 4:01
3. “Mother Nature’s Son” 2:48
4. “Everybody’s Got Something to Hide Except Me and My Monkey” 2:24
5. “Sexy Sadie” 3:15
6. “Helter Skelter” 4:29
7. “Long, Long, Long” 3:04

1. “Revolution 1” 4:15
2. “Honey Pie” 2:41
3. “Savoy Truffle” 2:54
4. “Cry Baby Cry” 3:02
5. “Revolution 9” 8:22
6. “Good Night” 3:13

2018 50th Anniversary Box Set bonus tracks
CD 3: Esher Demos

1. “Back in the U.S.S.R.” 2:59
2. “Dear Prudence” 4:47
3. “Glass Onion” 1:55
4. “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da” 3:10
5. “The Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill” 2:40
6. “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” 2:41
7. “Happiness Is a Warm Gun” 1:55
8. “I’m So Tired” 3:10
9. “Blackbird” 2:34
10. “Piggies” Harrison 2:05
11. “Rocky Raccoon” 2:44
12. “Julia” 3:56
13. “Yer Blues” 3:31
14. “Mother Nature’s Son” 2:24
15. “Everybody’s Got Something to Hide Except Me and My Monkey” 3:03
16. “Sexy Sadie” 2:26
17. “Revolution” 4:06
18. “Honey Pie” 1:59
19. “Cry Baby Cry” 2:27
20. “Sour Milk Sea” 3:43
21. “Junk” 2:36
22. “Child of Nature” 2:37
23. “Circles” Harrison 2:16
24. “Mean Mr. Mustard” 2:05
25. “Polythene Pam” 1:26
26. “Not Guilty” 3:05
27. “What’s the New Mary Jane” 2:42

Thursday 10pm: Beatles: Magical Mystery Tour (1967)

Magical Mystery Tour is an album by the English rock band the Beatles that was released as a double EP in the United Kingdom and an LP in the United States. Produced by George Martin, it includes the soundtrack to the 1967 film of the same name. The EP was issued in the UK on 8 December 1967 on the Parlophone label, while the Capitol Records LP release in the US occurred on 27 November and featured eleven tracks with the addition of songs from the band’s 1967 singles. The first release as an eleven-track LP in the UK did not occur until 1976.

Despite widespread media criticism of the Magical Mystery Tour film, the soundtrack was a critical and commercial success and a number one Grammy-nominated album in the US. When EMI issued the Beatles’ catalogue on compact disc in 1987, the track listing of the 1967 US LP was adopted rather than the six-song UK release.

1. “Magical Mystery Tour” 2:48
2. “The Fool on the Hill” 2:59
3. “Flying” (Harrison/Lennon/McCartney/Starkey) 2:16
4. “Blue Jay Way” (Harrison) 3:54
5. “Your Mother Should Know” 2:33
6. “I Am the Walrus” 4:35

1. “Hello, Goodbye” 3:24
2. “Strawberry Fields Forever” 4:05
3. “Penny Lane” 3:00
4. “Baby, You’re a Rich Man” 3:07
5. “All You Need Is Love” 3:57

Friday 12am: The Beatles – Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967)

Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band is the eighth studio album by the English rock band the Beatles. Released on 26 May 1967 in the United Kingdom and 2 June 1967 in the United States, it spent 27 weeks at number one on the UK Albums Chart and 15 weeks at number one in the US. It was lauded by critics for its innovations in production, songwriting and graphic design, for bridging a cultural divide between popular music and high art, and for providing a musical representation of its generation and the contemporary counterculture. It won four Grammy Awards in 1968, including Album of the Year, the first rock LP to receive this honor.

In August 1966, the Beatles permanently retired from touring and began a three-month holiday. During a return flight to London in November, Paul McCartney had an idea for a song involving an Edwardian military band that formed the impetus of the Sgt. Pepper concept. Sessions began on 24 November at EMI’s Abbey Road Studios with two compositions inspired by the Beatles’ youth, “Strawberry Fields Forever” and “Penny Lane”, but after pressure from EMI, the songs were released as a double A-side single and not included on the album.

In February 1967, after recording the title track “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band”, McCartney suggested that the Beatles should release an entire album representing a performance by the fictional Sgt. Pepper band. This alter ego group would give them the freedom to experiment musically. During the recording sessions, the band furthered the technological progression they had made with their 1966 album Revolver. Knowing they would not have to perform the tracks live, they adopted an experimental approach to composition and recording on songs such as “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds”, “Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite!” and “A Day in the Life”. Producer George Martin and engineer Geoff Emerick helped realize the group’s ideas by approaching the studio as an instrument, applying orchestral overdubs, sound effects and other methods of tape manipulation. Recording was completed on 21 April 1967. The cover, depicting the Beatles posing in front of a tableau of celebrities and historical figures, was designed by the British pop artists Peter Blake and Jann Haworth.

Sgt. Pepper is regarded by musicologists as an early concept album that advanced the use of extended form in popular music while continuing the artistic maturation seen on the Beatles’ preceding releases. It is described as one of the first art rock LPs, aiding the development of progressive rock, and is credited with marking the beginning of the album era. An important work of British psychedelia, the album incorporates a range of stylistic influences, including vaudeville, circus, music hall, avant-garde, and Western and Indian classical music. In 2003, the Library of Congress placed Sgt. Pepper in the National Recording Registry as “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant”. That year, Rolling Stone ranked it number one in its list of the “500 Greatest Albums of All Time”. As of 2011, it has sold more than 32 million copies worldwide, making it one of the best-selling albums. Professor Kevin Dettmar, writing in The Oxford Encyclopedia of British Literature, described it as “the most important and influential rock-and-roll album ever recorded”.

On 26 May 2017, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band was reissued for the album’s 50th anniversary as a six-disc box set. The first CD contains a new stereo remix of the album produced by Giles Martin. Created using modern and vintage technology, the 2017 mix retains more of the idiosyncrasies that were unique to the original mono version of Sgt. Pepper. Unlike the original album, first-generation tapes were used rather than their subsequent mix-downs, resulting in a clearer and more spacious sound. The other discs contain alternative mixes and previously unreleased session tapes. The set includes four CDs as well as a documentary and 5.1 surround sound mixes of the album in both DVD and Blu-ray form.

Sgt. Pepper’s Musical Revolution, a documentary produced by Apple Corps and written and presented by Howard Goodall, was televised on the BBC, PBS and Arte to commemorate the anniversary. The occasion was also celebrated with posters, billboards and other decorations at notable locations around the world, including a billboard in Times Square. The 50th anniversary edition of Sgt. Pepper topped the UK Albums Chart after its release. – Wikipedia

1. “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” 2:02
2. “With a Little Help from My Friends” 2:44
3. “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” 3:28
4. “Getting Better” 2:48
5. “Fixing a Hole” 2:36
6. “She’s Leaving Home” 3:35
7. “Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite!” 2:37

1. “Within You Without You” 5:04
2. “When I’m Sixty-Four” 2:37
3. “Lovely Rita” 2:42
4. “Good Morning Good Morning” 2:41
5. “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (Reprise)” 1:19
6. “A Day in the Life” 5:39

Thursday 11:30pm: The Beatles – Revolver (1966)

Revolver is the seventh studio album by the English rock band the Beatles. Released on 5 August 1966, it was the Beatles’ final recording project before their retirement as live performers and marked the group’s most overt use of studio technology up to that time, building on the advances of their late 1965 release Rubber Soul. The album’s diverse sounds include tape loops and backwards recordings on the psychedelic “Tomorrow Never Knows”, a classical string octet on “Eleanor Rigby”, and Indian-music backing on “Love You To”. The album was reduced to eleven songs by Capitol Records in North America, where three of its tracks instead appeared on the June 1966 release Yesterday and Today.

The Beatles recorded the album following a three-month break from professional commitments at the start of 1966, and during a period when London was feted as the era’s cultural capital. The songs reflect the influence of psychedelic drugs such as LSD and the increasing sophistication of the Beatles’ lyrics to address themes including death and transcendence from material concerns. With no thoughts of reproducing their new material in concert, the band made liberal use of studio techniques such as vari-speeding, reversed tapes, close audio miking and automatic double tracking (ADT), in addition to employing musical instrumentation outside of their standard live set-up. Some of the changes in studio practice introduced by Revolver, particularly ADT, were soon adopted throughout the recording industry. The sessions also produced a non-album single, “Paperback Writer” backed with “Rain”, for which the Beatles filmed their first on-location promotional films.

1. “Taxman” 2:36
2. “Eleanor Rigby” 2:11
3. “I’m Only Sleeping” 2:58
4. “Love You To” 3:00
5. “Here, There and Everywhere” 2:29
6. “Yellow Submarine” 2:40
7. “She Said She Said” 2:39

1. “Good Day Sunshine” 2:08
2. “And Your Bird Can Sing” 2:02
3. “For No One” 2:03
4. “Doctor Robert” 2:14
5. “I Want to Tell You” 2:30
6. “Got to Get You into My Life” 2:31
7. “Tomorrow Never Knows” 3:00

Thursday 11pm: The Beatles – Yesterday and Today (1966)

Yesterday and Today is a studio album by the English rock band the Beatles, their ninth album released on Capitol Records and twelfth overall American release. It was originally issued only in the United States and Canada, in June 1966. Typically of the Beatles’ North American discography until 1967, the album contains songs that Capitol had withheld from its versions of the band’s recent EMI albums – in this case, Help! and Rubber Soul – along with others that were issued on non-album singles.

The album is remembered primarily for the controversy surrounding its original cover image. Taken by photographer Robert Whitaker, and said to be the Beatles’ statement against the Vietnam War,[1] this ‘butcher cover’ image showed the band dressed in white smocks and covered with decapitated baby dolls and pieces of raw meat. Others said it was the Beatles protesting the fact that their North American albums had been ‘butchered’ – switched around and not as originally intended.

The album’s title plays on the title of the song “Yesterday”. Having been deleted from Capitol’s catalog in 1986, Yesterday and Today was reissued on CD in 2014.

1. “Drive My Car” 2:25
2. “I’m Only Sleeping” 2:58
3. “Nowhere Man” 2:40
4. “Doctor Robert” 2:14
5. “Yesterday” 2:04
6. “Act Naturally” 2:27
7. “And Your Bird Can Sing” 2:02
8. “If I Needed Someone” 2:19
9. “We Can Work It Out” 2:10
10. “What Goes On” 2:44
11. “Day Tripper” 2:47

Thursday 11pm: The Beatles: Rubber Soul (1965)

Rubber Soul is the sixth studio album by the English rock band the Beatles. It was released on 3 December 1965 in the United Kingdom, on EMI’s Parlophone label, accompanied by the non-album double A-side single “Day Tripper” / “We Can Work It Out”. The original North American version of the album was altered by Capitol Records to include a different selection of tracks. Rubber Soul met with a highly favourable critical response and topped record charts in Britain and the United States for several weeks.

Often referred to as a folk rock album, Rubber Soul incorporates a mix of pop, soul and folk musical styles. The title derives from the colloquialism “plastic soul”, which McCartney heard in reference to Mick Jagger’s singing style. After the British version of A Hard Day’s Night, it was the second Beatles LP to contain only original material. For the first time in their career, the band were able to record the album over a continuous period, uninterrupted by touring commitments.

The songs demonstrate the Beatles’ increasing maturity as lyricists and, in their incorporation of brighter guitar tones and new instrumentation such as harmonium, sitar and fuzz bass, the group striving for more expressive sounds and arrangements for their music. The project marked a progression in the band’s treatment of the album format as an artistic platform, an approach they continued to develop with Revolver and Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. The North American version of Rubber Soul contained ten of the fourteen new songs, supplemented by two tracks withheld from the band’s Help! album. The four songs omitted by Capitol, including the February 1966 single “Nowhere Man”, later appeared on the June 1966 North American-only release Yesterday and Today.

Rubber Soul was highly influential on the Beatles’ peers, leading to a widespread focus away from singles and onto creating albums of consistently high-quality songs. It has been recognised by music critics as an album that opened up the possibilities of pop music in terms of lyrical and musical scope, and as a key work in the creation of styles such as psychedelia and progressive rock. Among its many appearances on critics’ best-album lists, Rolling Stone ranked it fifth on the magazine’s 2012 list “The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time”. The album was certified 6× platinum by the RIAA in 1997, indicating shipments of at least six million copies in the US. In 2013, after the British Phonographic Industry changed its sales award rules, the album was certified platinum.

Thursday 10:30pm: The Beatles: Beatles – Help (1965)

Help! is the fifth studio album by English rock band the Beatles and the soundtrack from their film Help!. It was released on 6 August 1965. Produced by George Martin, it was the fifth UK album release by the band, and contains fourteen songs in its original British form. Seven of these, including the singles “Help!” and “Ticket to Ride”, appeared in the film and took up the first side of the vinyl album. The second side contained seven other releases including the most-covered song ever written, “Yesterday”.

The American release was a true soundtrack album, mixing the first seven songs with instrumental material from the film. Of the other seven songs that were on the British release, two were released on the US version of the next Beatles album, Rubber Soul, two were back-to-back on the next US single and then appeared on Yesterday and Today, and three had already been on Beatles VI.

In 2012, Help! was voted 331st on Rolling Stone magazine’s list of the “500 Greatest Albums of All Time”. In September 2013, after the British Phonographic Industry changed their sales award rules, the album was declared as having gone platinum.

Thursday 10pm: The Beatles – Beatles For Sale (1964)

Beatles for Sale is the fourth studio album by the English rock band the Beatles. It was released on 4 December 1964 in the United Kingdom on EMI’s Parlophone label. Eight of the album’s fourteen tracks appeared on Capitol Records’ concurrent release, Beatles ’65, issued in North America only. The album marked a departure from the upbeat tone that had characterised the Beatles’ previous work, partly due to the band’s exhaustion after a series of tours that had established them as a worldwide phenomenon in 1964. The songs introduced darker musical moods and more introspective lyrics, with John Lennon adopting an autobiographical perspective in compositions such as “I’m a Loser” and “No Reply”. The album also reflected the twin influences of country music and Bob Dylan, whom the Beatles met in New York in August 1964.

The Beatles recorded the album at EMI Studios in London in between their touring and radio engagements. Partly as a result of the group’s hectic schedule, only eight of the tracks are original compositions, with cover versions of songs by artists such as Carl Perkins, Chuck Berry, Buddy Holly and Little Richard being used to complete the album. The sessions also produced a non-album single, “I Feel Fine” backed by “She’s a Woman”.

In Britain, Beatles for Sale held the number 1 spot for 11 of the 46 weeks that it spent in the top 20. The album was similarly successful in Australia, where the band’s cover of Berry’s “Rock and Roll Music” also topped the singles chart. One of the songs omitted from the US version of the album, “Eight Days a Week”, became the Beatles’ seventh number 1 in the US when issued as a single there in February 1965. Beatles for Sale was not released in the US until 1987, when the Beatles’ catalogue was standardised for release on CD.