(VOIDED PLEASE VOTE AGAIN) What is it that keeps your interest in The Beatles alive?

[IFeelFine]

I'm 64 this year and my earliest Beatle memory is listening to With The Beatles on the radiogram and I have loved them ever since.
Got into Bootlegs years ago and it opened my eyes to the excitement and chaos of live concerts, as well as the brilliance and breadth of the BBC performances.
In recent years, apart from the new and better quality discoveries, that excitement has been amplified by the deconstruction and often remixing of the music.
With the brilliant people on this forum who use the new technologies, listening to the layers of music unpicked leaves me in awe of The Beatles genius.
As an example, I was never a fan of Paperback Writer until I heard all of the tracks unpicked and now I love it (it's not as good as Rain though).
Hearing individual constituent voices of harmonies in the songs is fantastic (eg John's own harmonies on Rain) and hearing things so clearly you are almost next to them in the studio (Hearing just John on Ticket to Ride still makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand up).
I also love the amazing work done to clean up and improve recordings (eg LR's Stowe School efforts).
All these things and more have not just kept my interest alive, but magnified it and my admiration and appreciation for fellow fans even more.

[C90]

I also am still 'in the game' for the lure of unreleased stuff, ideally studio outtakes.

I think Pete Townshend once described how being into rock and roll is like a drug in that you hear some astonishing, exciting piece of music, fall in love with it and it becomes familiar.. but you keep on wanting that first thrill of hearing it the first time, and you keep on searching for it elsewhere. Maybe the same band, maybe something completely different, but that 'hit' keeps you investigating and delving and searching out ways to renew it.

If you remember the Ultra Rare Trax / Yellow Dog sessions CDs appearing in the late 1980s like me, you'll never tire of wanting to find similar stuff! Same with the 'Beatles at the Beeb' LPs - jaw dropping to hear outtakes I'd only read about, and in such quality. And over the years all-new, uncirculated bits and pieces have emerged, and continue to do so.

And a key thing we should all acknowledge is the existence of the internet, and Beatles fan forums like this, which maintain our interest by sharing info and of course material. Such free accessibility to information and content, thanks to generous public-spirited fellow fans and experts, has transformed the Beatleg world far beyond anything we had in the 1970s/ 80s/90s...

[fab4gear]

Apart from unreleased Music, my main interest is in collecting Beatles Memorabilia & Paraphernalia, such as Concert Tickets, Programs & Bubble Gum Cards etc, but there was no category for it so I just chose books.

[MarkRJones1970]

I also am still 'in the game' for the lure of unreleased stuff, ideally studio outtakes.

I think Pete Townshend once described how being into rock and roll is like a drug in that you hear some astonishing, exciting piece of music, fall in love with it and it becomes familiar.. but you keep on wanting that first thrill of hearing it the first time, and you keep on searching for it elsewhere. Maybe the same band, maybe something completely different, but that 'hit' keeps you investigating and delving and searching out ways to renew it.

If you remember the Ultra Rare Trax / Yellow Dog sessions CDs appearing in the late 1980s like me, you'll never tire of wanting to find similar stuff! Same with the 'Beatles at the Beeb' LPs - jaw dropping to hear outtakes I'd only read about, and in such quality. And over the years all-new, uncirculated bits and pieces have emerged, and continue to do so.

And a key thing we should all acknowledge is the existence of the internet, and Beatles fan forums like this, which maintain our interest by sharing info and of course material. Such free accessibility to information and content, thanks to generous public-spirited fellow fans and experts, has transformed the Beatleg world far beyond anything we had in the 1970s/ 80s/90s...

Same for me. Found the Beatles in 1980 when I was 10 (after watching 'Help!' the day John died) then started hunting down unreleased stuff around 1983 once I'd listened to all my Dads albums (everything up to and including the White Album, then I had to acquire the rest myself!) My 1st boot being the NEMS boot 'Strawberry Fields Forever' on tape at a record fair for £3.50. I taped 'The Beatles at the Beeb' off the radio, lived through the whole 'Ultra Rare Trax', 'Unsurpassed Masters', 'Liverpool May 1960' era and I bought the Great Dane 'Beeb' box that I still have but is somewhat redundant now, and then I worked in a record shop during the Anthology period. Those were great days

I NEVER tire of hearing the Beatles at work in the studio. It's true, some of the appeal was that we weren't supposed to be able to hear these recordings and while the expanded boxsets have now become the main source of new material, it's not quite as exciting because they are allowing us to hear these. It's not as naughty!

But the well has been very dry as to new audio. I mean, the last major unreleased recording to come out on bootleg must have been the long version of 'Revolution #1' on 'Take Your Knickers Off' and that came out in 2008. Other bits and bobs have turned up since but it's the studio stuff that lights my fire! (Odd that this appeared so long AFTER all the main cache of studio outtakes appeared - has anyone worked out WHY yet? Did it escape at the same time but was sat on? Or did someone manage to grab a copy many years later?)

Thankfully, new video clips keep appearing so that keeps me satiated somewhat. If something pops up on YouTube then it gets downloaded, saved to my memory stick that I use on the TV. I do this 1) So I that I don't have to put up with the ads and 2) Something on YouTube might be there one day and gone the next.

I'm still hungry for new Beatles recordings, be it audio or video, but it's getting less and less when anything significant turns up.

I'm nearly 54 now. But, when I'm listening to The Beatles, it makes me feel that's everything's alright. They calm me down, make me feel happy, they still make me laugh and I love 'em and always will!

[Gringo557]

I vaguely heard the talk about them in 1964 but don't recall too much of that year (I was 7) and I never saw them on Ed Sullivan Show (until many years later). We always had a good stereo and lots of LPs in the house growing up. Lots of middle-of-the road stuff but also some interesting things to, like Peter, Paul and Mary. Another was A Hard Day's Night, the UA soundtrack album with the instrumental music. I eventually fell hard for that record and this was in 1967. The first 45rpm I ever bought was Hello Goodbye / I Am The Walrus and it must have been in the fall of 1967. Pretty cool stuff for a 10-year-old.

I eventually got into guitar and I can honestly say Bob Dylan and The Beatles taught me everything I ever needed to know about anything. I was never given a good reason to stop loving these guys and it's as simple as that for me. I'll listen to anything they did at least once!!!

[Wogew]

To me, The Beatles is one of my hobbies. I started off a Wings fan, and gravitated towards the other solo-Beatles plus the Beatles themselves in the mid to late 70s. Hollywood Bowl and Star-Club suddenly exploded and gave insight to the live Beatles as well as the fledgeling Beatles, which I enjoyed very much. Started buying or borrowing books and was fascinated by The Beatles story.
In 1980, a Beatles fanzine called "Norwegian Wood" started here in Norway, and I would write something for them every so often, mainly correcting some fact from their last issue. On an interrail trip in 1982, when I was twenty, I visited Beatles sites from Hamburg to Paris to London to Liverpool to Amsterdam, and in London met George Martin and had a chat with him at Air Studios and the next day I met Paul McCartney outside his mpl building! Back in London the year after I went to see the Beatles at Abbey Road Show in the number two studio.

Video had come along and as I have always been attracted to film, rented "The Compleat Beatles" a number of times. A friend taped "Help!" off Swedish Television at Christmas 1980 and we watched that so many times that I knew every line. So in 1983 in London I met a fellow collector of video tapes and traded with him, which was the starting point of a huge collection of video cassettes.

I took over as de facto editor of Norwegian Wood in 1988, and stopped when I got a kid and was raising him. Still, internet appeared and I started a website for "Norwegian Wood", which I still maintain to this day. Got back in the editor-in-chief chair for the magazine a decade ago and just got out of that. While researching the Helen Shapiro tour for an article in Norwegian Wood, I decided to do a blog, Wogblog about it (since my nick on the web was always Wogew - Roger as spoken by Pilate in Life of Brian), which later changed into The Daily Beatle and has turned from a waterfall into a trickle.

Bootlegs was always part of the fun, ever since they were on vinyl Lps behind the counter of my favourite used records store. I used to be on bootlegzone, dimeadozen etc and I believe I had a hand in inspiring this place through a blog post of mine.

So what keeps my interest? Like I said, The Beatles is on of my hobbies. I have been to places I would never have gone to and met people I wouldn't have known if it weren't for the fab four. Seen around 30 McCartney concerts and at least five by Ringo (he doesn't gig in Europe very often). I had decided to stop going to McCartneys concerts after he played in Oslo in 2015 but then he came back to Norway and played in Bergen in 2016, so I had to go. After all, he was in my country. And then when a friend had one ticket too many for a McCartney concert in London, I was tempted to see him one more time and lo and behold - Paul brought Ringo on stage! Lucky me.
I am still looking forward to every new album or EP from Paul and Ringo, and I enjoy every little fact that was unknown before that suddenly appears. And every little bit of previously unknown audio and video, plus upgrades.

[Nimbus]

Multitracks. I've been a Beatles fan since the early 70's and thought I'd seen, heard and read everything. There was certainly a lull in all things Beatles and then the internet happened. And then Rockband and other multitracks started to appear. I remember the first time I heard the Sgt Pepper multitracks. John & Paul's backing vocals to ' With a Little Help From My Friends'. I had my headphones on, there was an awful lot of silence... then the chorus and suddenly "DO YOU NEED ANYBODY.." wow, I was there in Abbey Road with them. And now with AI and the talented people on this forum there's a whole new world of them. Some are better than others but a recent 'Here, There & Everywhere' backing vocals had the same effect. Someone on here once suggested a bootleg called 'Ooh's & Aah's' - what a fine bootleg that would be.

Also, I have a penchant for BBC radio documentaries (and BBC TV). The quality for me is always there, and has been since the 60's.

My only problem these days is that there's just too much (or is it just me?). I'll never get to listen to all the stuff I've had from here, watch all the video content I've downloaded and read all the books, mags & PDF content I've collected over the years.

[Ziggy C]

I was first turned on to the Beatles in the mid-60's by my parents. They were playing the Help! album (US version.) The song,"Help!" struck one heck of a chord in this 3yr-old. The path towards my complete involvement in everything Beatles took a few more years to be fully realized. My first acquisitions were a few singles: All You Need Is Love b/w Baby You're A Rich Man, I Am The Walrus b/w Hello Goodbye, and "Yesterday b/w Act Naturally. All on the Capitol orange & yellow swirl label. I still have them. I started checking out music from the local LA Public Library, which had a small selection of Beatles available. My first album purchase was the Hey Jude album. Gradually I was exposed to more and more and more, shunning the solo work until around 1977 when I had got up the money to buy Wings Over America, an album which changed my life. My slight shade of ocd guided my purchases throughout. And my growing musical archive, nearing 50Tb, (or is it 100Tb...so hard to count when you lose count. Why count at all?) is a testament to my obsession towards completeness. Even if that means that I will never have the time to sit down and listen to every last byte. The archive is for my friends and family. Any whim. Any suggestion, sends us down a rabbit hole. I like that.

What keeps my interest in the Beatles alive? Well, as many have stated already, limiting oneself to the studio works renders the music, not boring, but more finite. It wasn't until I started getting high right before my high school calculus class when I really began to comprehend the implications of infinity. These implications have become more real recently with vast improvements to AI technology and the separation and isolation of musical tracks and instrumentation. There are infinite possibilities and infinite combinations based on the unique individuals' focus when they go to work manipulating this awesome music. So the remixes, both official and fan-created intrigue me and certainly hold my interest and feed my compulsion. But moreover, it's the surfacing of unreleased sights and sounds that rekindles that fire. The Roxburgh tape. Harry And His Box. Master Jedi's excruciatingly detailed cataloging of the sessions. AdamBound's endless search for fan footage, and his equally insane obsession with synching it up to music to create something instantly nostalgic, yet brand new. Silver2000's upgrades to the video content as well as some interestingly curated colorizations.

But aside from that, my musical interests are cyclic in nature. I go through the pantheon and listen to the hell out of them. Stones, Who, Jimi, Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, Bowie, Crimson, Tool, Rush, X, Van Halen, Boomtown Rats, Chicago, Beatles,...on to compilations such as American Graffiti, DooWop (common and way way forgotten,)...and then there are the major 60's festivals: Woodstock, Monterey, Isle of Wight, Texas Pop,....and into the 70's, Cal Jam 1 & 2, etc. With each of these, and perhaps a dozen or so more, I get completely into it. I have my favorites and go-to's from each band and era. But each time I expand a little and try something new.

What keeps the Beatles alive for me is that when I come back around to The Beatles (which never really go away....we are constantly bombarded by the whole commercialized aspect of it which limits our exposure on radio to just a handful of songs (a big handful, but a handful nonetheless.)) The Beatles, every time I get back into their groove, always inspire me. Their music makes me feel good. It brings back such palpable, emotional, and tactile memories. Time and time again. Their music is a window into my past, and a beacon towards the future. Like so few other bands, their music is timeless.
Their is always the potential for new discoveries. I find that exciting. That kind of excitement, along with everything else I've mentioned, is what keeps my interest in The Beatles alive.

Does that answer your question?

Because I have another...
If not The Beatles, then what band? If there had not been that kismet, that serendipity, that "thing" that manifested as The Beatles, well,...then what? Then who? Would we all be raving in a tremendously widespread Pretty Things craze? Or maybe it would've been Liberace (God help us all)? Julie London? Mitch Miller?

If not for The Beatles, then....

[Lord Reith]

I've tried to get into otehr bands but I find that they are usually have only one string in their bow and once you've heard their greatest hit, it's all downhill from there. So many albums are just one good song and then 30 mins worth of derivative crap. If I trawl through an artist like U2 with a career spanning 40 years I can just about make an album's worth of Beatles quality tunes. So I am a definitely a "Greatest Hits" lp guy. And even then, some of those are pretty ropey. The Creedence greatest hits has only about 5 songs I really like.

[zaval80]

Obviously a Creedence fan would be able to say the same about The Beatles and then there are albums which not always represent "songs" yet are great. For example, "What's the New Mary Jane" is just not up to anywhere near the level of the mighty "The Parable of Arable Land" by Red Crayola