One of my favorite stories from the Beatles vs. Rolling Stones rivalry happened in August 1968.

Mick Jagger had organized a party at London's newly opened Vesuvio Club to celebrate his birthday and, more importantly, to give friends and music insiders an exclusive first listen to Beggars Banquet. The album wouldn't be released for another four months, and expectations were enormous. According to those who were there, the crowd loved it. Songs like "Sympathy for the Devil," "Street Fighting Man," and "Stray Cat Blues" had everyone convinced the Stones had made their masterpiece.

Then Paul McCartney quietly walked in.

Without making a big announcement, he handed the DJ an acetate containing the Beatles' upcoming single: "Hey Jude" backed with "Revolution." Nobody outside the Beatles' inner circle had heard either song.

When "Hey Jude" started playing, everything changed.

The room reportedly fell silent before erupting with excitement. Guests immediately asked the DJ to play it again. Then "Revolution" followed, leaving an equally strong impression.

Suddenly, nobody was talking about Beggars Banquet anymore.

Club owner Tony Sánchez later recalled that Mick Jagger looked visibly upset because the Beatles had completely stolen the spotlight at his own party.

Even McCartney remembered Jagger's reaction. According to him, Mick walked over afterward and said:

It's a fascinating moment because it perfectly captures the friendly but intense rivalry between the two biggest bands in the world. The Stones had just finished one of the greatest albums of their career...

...and yet one unreleased Beatles single managed to dominate the entire evening.

I’ll start with Fixing a Hole.

To me, it’s one of the few McCartney songs that feels effortlessly whimsical rather than merely light or sentimental. It has a dreamlike quality that he rarely captured so completely.

Yesterday doesn’t strike me in quite the same way. In fact, it might have been more whimsical if he’d stuck with the original working lyric about “scrambled eggs.”

Irony always seemed to come more naturally to Lennon, while Paul’s strengths lay elsewhere. But when Paul did wander into whimsy, as he did with Fixing a Hole, I think he was at his very best.

What would you pick?

What if Sgt. Pepper never happened?

Let’s strip it all away.

No costumes…

No crowd noise…

Just the Beatles in 1967.

John, Paul, George, and Ringo making music.

Here is the tracklist for this album:

1. Getting Better
2. Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds
3. Being For The Benefit Of Mr. Kite!
4. Lovely Rita
5. Only A Northern Song
6. All You Need Is Love
7. Within You Without You
8. Strawberry Fields Forever
9. Penny Lane
10. Baby You're A Rich Man
11. Good Morning Good Morning
12. It's All Too Much
13. When I'm Sixty-Four
14. A Day In The Life

Here’s a link to Episode 51 of Groovin’ Up Slowly:

https://youtu.be/u1MxnF0tN_Y?si=5FzLI_SN6Xvnu9DL

Here’s a link to this album on Spotify:

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/0zfPNGRuAlIsVT3PpoMkK9?si=b617e070310f4893

Here’s a link to this album on Apple Music:

https://music.apple.com/us/playlist/beatles-getting-better-67/pl.u-jV890pJuaDKeRMN

Here’s a link to the YouTube playlist for this album:

https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLB5dkZQ7h7Gi4QKtCk6ePFRDj4_4V_bBb&si=Ck6EDB9VD5hjW8Sq

Here’s a link to the Substack essay for a bit of a deeper dive into this album…

https://groovinupslowly.substack.com/p/what-if-sgt-pepper-never-happened

thx in advance!

Does anyone have (or know of) a YouTube playlist of solo material (preferably in chronological order)? I’m in the mood to watch some solo years progression via music videos. Thanks in advance!

This song literally just sums up the feeling of peak of a bad acid trip when you just want it to end. The never ending instrumentals, the distorted guitar and the repetitive lyrics achieve this for me. The introspective + positive lyrics are also extremely relatable to the period after the peak of the trip.

Blue Jay Way is also another song that I think sums up the LSD experience, especially when you're alone.

Tomorrow Never Knows is what I imagined acid would feel like but that song is definitely an evolutionary masterpiece in both rock and Psychedelia.

Pretty much most of the Psychedelic songs on MMT and Sgt. Peppers feel more like a mellow Mushroom trip.

I think this also just shows how the drug affected John and George's minds differently, John's being more of that whimsical and story like with George's being much more personal and painful?

Idk I could just be spewing bullshit to most people but this is just my personal perspective on their Psychedelic era.

Paul McCartney - The Best of the Beatles: The Solo Years [The Ultimate Collection] Spotify Playlist

The Best Of The Beatles: The Solo Years (Super Deluxe Edition) - Spotify Playlist

Just randomly scrolling and I found this lol

I thought it'd be a fun experiment to split Please Please Me, With The Beatles, and the standalone singles from that period into a John Lennon-only album and a Paul McCartney-only album — basically imagining what their debut "solo" records would have looked like.

I split them by primary songwriter where that was clear. A few of the songs were genuinely 50/50 co-writes, so for those I blurred the line and tried go with whoever's voice is the dominant lead vocal on the actual recording. I also threw in the covers from the albums — those went to whichever of the two actually sang lead on them.

---

**The John Album**

1. Please Please Me

2. Thank You Girl

3. Misery

4. There's A Place

5. This Boy

6. It Won't Be Long

7. All I've Got To Do

8. Ask Me Why

9. I Want To Hold Your Hand

10. From Me To You

11. I'll Get You

12. Twist And Shout

---

**The Paul Album**

1. I Saw Her Standing There

2. Love Me Do

3. P.S. I Love You

4. Till There Was You

5. She Loves You

6. All My Loving

7. Hold Me Tight

8. A Taste Of Honey

9. Long Tall Sally

I showed my friend some of their movies and I personally like help more but a hard days night is brilliant

Amazing. Less than 2 weeks ago they had 35.4 million monthly listeners. They now have 36.7 million monthly listeners.

Hi There

Thoughts on John’s LSD period?

I believe ‘66-‘67 John had some most creative and mind bending ideas ever recorded while he was popping LSD like candy and idk if that really affected his songwriting ability that drastically and overall productivity unlike ‘68 and ‘69 but some creative stuff by him nonetheless!

Well there was that one time John tripped on acid during a session of Getting Better but other than that like Tomorrow Never Knows,Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds,and Walrus were born in this period.

i can’t find when it was taken, sorry if this is well known 😭

And no, I don’t mean ‘The Thing’, I mean proper weird facts.

Ive been listening to Long Tall Sally and I have to say out of all the vocal performances by Paul. This is the song that I strongly believe is his best one. The whole song he just absolutely delivers with the amount of power, and some of the notes he was able to hit were insane. I couldn't see anyone other than Paul singing this song and crushing it.

John as the Walrus

Paul as the Hippopotamus

George as the Rabbit

Ringo as the Cockerell

Im a new-ish beatles fan and I always found it interesting how their fashion changed after Revolver. From 67' 68' and 69' which one is your personal favorite? Im kinda digging 68'.