@Old Thunder on the subject of Beatle records up to Rubber Soul:
It's amazing how good any of them are, considering how little time they got to spend making them.
Cranking out two LP's a year (the later one so they have a product for the Christmas rush) was a grind.
But in spite of unbelievable pressure, each album was good, if not great. At least good. Two days to record twelve new songs. Was incredible.
Starting with Rubber Soul, and continuing after they quit touring, they really showed what they can do in the studio.
Ironically, they were making better records, their live act went downhill. It was frustrating that whenever they played live, they got drowned out by screams. And all they had were the puny Vox amps. Fine in the studio, but weak against 60,000 screaming girls. And Marshall stacks were not perfected yet.
Some live bootlegs were okay, some of them were garbage. Just as well they couldn't hear themselves.
I rate Hard Day's Night pretty high, first album of all originals.
Yellow Submarine excellent film, but the songs were rejects from sessions they really didn't care about.
Sgt. Pepper vs White Album: Pepper had some mediocre songs, but fit together in a seamless package. White Album had better songs, but no flow to it. And rather than being a group effort, it was John songs, Paul songs, George songs, etc. And from Pepper onward, John didn't even play on George's songs. Piggies, While My Guitar, Something, etc. were pretty much done by the other three while John and Yoko stared at each other.
Let it Be- I have a number of bootlegs which were pretty decent. long and Winding Road without being buried under Spector's Wall of Sound is pretty good. But again, hard to make good music when everybody is getting on everybody's nerves. George quit halfway through. But the rooftop gig showed some strong moments.
Abbey Road- very close call with Revolver. But both are as close to perfection as you can get.
13 albums in seven years. Good work ethic.