first album of beatles to listen to?

hey boys.
well as the subject says, what beatles album should i listen to as a non-fan/non-listerner of the beatles? let the debate begin!

i'm a rubber soul/revolver guy. although abbey road and let it be (the naked version) can slip in there.

revolver..

Agree.........Revolver.

I think it depends on what kind of music the person usually likes.

The reason I disagree with this is because no one liked Revolver type music before the album came out; it hit everyone by surprise in terms of the evolution of The Beatles and even though it was familiar it was equally new and uncharted terrain, yet within normal 3 minute rock and roll song structures. But this is now, over 40 years ago and we're listening backwards from the reference point of now, so what a person usually likes i guess makes sense in that context.

im hearing alot of revolver around. as well as abbey road. yellow submarine seems to be hated to all hell lol

there's some really good music on yellow submarine. actually you can't go wrong with any Beatles album. Magical Mystery Tour is a little spotty, but brilliant at times.
I'm not crazy about every song on Abbey Road or The White Album or Let It Be, but they're all great albums nonetheless.

**edit**

not to neglect or overlook Sgt. Pepper, but I feel that you have to know "Pet Sounds" to really get Sgt. Pepper in the context of step by step musical revolution, often driven by the force of competition between bands.

fair enough. i never really meant hated, but the least favorite.
what would you say is the best?

The thing about The Beatles is that they transcended "best" if you know what I mean.
"Revolver" is perfect in that it's experimental and trippy but within a rock and roll framework - I think that's a good starting point.

in as much that all they albums are that good?

no, personally i don't think so, but everything they did was an evolution of themselves so I feel all of their albums have tremendous value, but Revolver just has wall to wall great music and songs.

jeffp said:

no, personally i don't think so, but everything they did was an evolution of themselves so I feel all of their albums have tremendous value, but Revolver just has wall to wall great music and songs.

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What was your favorite song the first time you heard the album? Mine was Taxman.

that is a good question. the first time i heard it was in 7th grade music class - the teacher played us the album in its entirety. i was completely absorbed by it from start to finish.
here is the track listing:
1. Taxman
2. Eleanor Rigby
3. I'm Only Sleeping
4. Love You To / Here, There And Everywhere
5. Yellow Submarine
6. She Said She Said
7. Good Day Sunshine
8. And Your Bird Can Sing
9. For No One
10. Doctor Robert
11. I Want To Tell You
12. Got To Get You Into My Life
13. Tomorrow Never Knows

I don't know, honestly - that may be an impossible question to answer.

The next album that had that kind of effect on me was The Mothers of Invention, "Absolutely Free."
I didn't like it when I first put it on - it was obviously ugly and unpleasant in parts, not an enjoyable listen to a 12 year old.
But I only had a few other albums and I used to ride my bike home from school and play it - even though it was unpleasant there
was *something* amazing about this album that i didn't yet understand. And it kept calling me.
Eventually I became so obsessed with this album that I marked the exciting parts with chalk and made my friends listen to it when
they came over.
It took years before my friends opened up to Zappa.

To bring this back on topic, I did have Sgt. Pepper at the time and I felt it paled by comparison to Absolutely Free.

Later on in life I discovered Pet Sounds and that album had that same sort of total impact on me.

I am not an expert, but didn't the US version have two fewer songs than the English Version at first? Excuse me, I could be wrong.

from Wikipedia:
The original US LP release of Revolver, the band's tenth on Capitol Records and twelfth US album, marked the last time Capitol would alter an "established" UK Beatles album for the US market. As three of its tracks"I'm Only Sleeping", "And Your Bird Can Sing" and "Doctor Robert"had been used for the earlier Yesterday and Today Capitol compilation, they were simply deleted in the US version, yielding an 11 track album instead of the UK version's 14 and shortening the time to 28:20.

jeffp said:

Later on in life I discovered Pet Sounds and that album had that same sort of total impact on me.

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"God Only Knows". What a great song. Brian Wilson and music..........just magical.

yeah i saw Brian Wilson do the Smile concert at Carnegie Hall a few years ago. What an amazing experience. Van Dyke Parks was in the front center in the audience and from where I was sitting I could see the two of them zoning into each other through the show.

God Only Knows is a masterpiece. The thing about Pet Sounds is that it's like a world onto itself.
The first time I heard it I was immobilized, literally. I just sat there.

I saw the Smile concert too, and thought it odd he seldom played anything on the keyboard in front of where he stood. Great concert.

Yellow Submarine is a great album (edit: the Yellow Submarine Soundtrack is a great album), if you wanna listen to them from start to finish just listen to their #1 album, it has all their number one hits in order by which they were released, I like Black Bird off the White album (I will always have a soft spot for that song)

My favs:

1. Fool On The Hill
2. Blackbird
3. Penny Lane
4. Rocky Raccoon
5. Let It Be
6. Here Comes The Sun
7. With A Little Help From My Friends
8. Baby Your A Rich Man
9. Nowhere Man (some days this is 1)
10. Octopus's Garden

Basically in a nutshell the Beatles freaking rock!

"God Only Knows" Great song, but don't you hate when a T.V. show you really enjoy hijacks a song you like as their intro song (Big Love) Now all I can think of is that show when I hear the song, same deal with C.S.I. Damn you idiotbox.

macbill said:

I saw the Smile concert too, and thought it odd he seldom played anything on the keyboard in front of where he stood. Great concert.

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from where i was sitting i was able to see that Brian was, from where he was standing, reading lyrics off a teleprompter.
"Good Timing" was one of the show's highlights.. that's from Sunflower, isn't it?

SSS said:

i'm a rubber soul/revolver guy.

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also... I'm having a terrible time trying to get into Pet Sounds... I took it out at the library randomly a few weeks ago but so far I can't get past track 3... I'm usually more open to music but I just don't enjoy it :/

then that's that - it's just not your cup of tea, a good friend of mine who has very discerning musical taste doesn't care for Pet Sounds either - it sounds too wimpy to him or something.

Isn't it odd that some music can resonate so much with one person and not resonate at all with another. Kinda like flavors of ice cream.

Right, and then conversely there's so much vacuous musical product - every decade you say it can't get worse but it does - stuff we hate and it's the same stuff that defines the lives of millions.

we're truly in a dangerous turn of events. I don't care to see where the music trends go in 10 years. I say there's another 5 years of real computer-generated stuff left. Perhaps an 80s revival or something

Definitely agree with resonance of some music. I was actually going to tie that concept into one of my earlier posts but I thought I would just come off as being really high. (naturally I was). Certain genres have always appealed to me... different than most people I know. Did anyone else actually enjoy elevator music like me? I'm not talking 'myoozak' (you know when bands like, re-record instrumental versions of hits). I'm talking about like... that loung-ey music you hear in video games or tv. I always grooved to that kind of music. I wish I could explain this further... but the best way I can is by checking out this Flash game I found a long time ago. It's actually a neat game, enjoy it. But it's the music I'm showing as an example:

http://server-admin.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/motas/

I think that's influenced my appreciation for fusion jazz... that instrumental rock with really rich chords, thick textures...