Last night I was driving down I-95, definitely going too fast, blasting Who’s Next and signing along at the top of my lungs, and meditating on the subject of great rock albums. (Yeah, there’s gonna be another thread from me before the day is out.) Rather than starting this argument there, though, I thought I’d give it its own thread.
Viz: I don’t consider the Beatles a rock band. They’re a pop band – a very, very good one – but they never achieve rock-and-rolliosity. (I’m not knocking pop – good pop is a rare and beautiful thing [and tends to have better lyrics than straight rock] – but pop is what the Beatles did.)
I don’t hit the gas when a great Beatles tune comes on – I don’t crank it up and start playing drums on the steering wheel – if I sing along, it’s not at full throttle. (Of course, let’s not ask whether my singing full throttle is a good idea or not – Roger Daltry can definitely hit much higher notes than I can.) This is because the Beatles aren’t a rock group. What say you? Am I the only one who keeps the “rock” category pretty small? The Stones are rockers, the Who, the Allman Brothers, Cream – but Traffic aren’t. (isn’t?) And the Beatles definitely aren’t.
“Rock” is used as an umbrella term to encompass a variety of sub-genres including pop, folk, funk, rap, soul, doo-wop. Various “Top 100 Whatevers of Rock and Roll” will usually include representatives of these styles. But there’s such a wide spectrum of styles that the terms get blurry around the edges.
It’s hard not to play rock when your instruments consist of 2 guitars, bass, and drumes, but the Beatles could best be labeled “pop-rock”. Likewise we have country-rock, blues-rock, folk-rock, etc.
Not even remotely accurate. For one thing, how many varied artists of all styles have covered Beatles tunes throughout the years and will continue to do so. Their music stands the test of time. They weren’t a flash-in-the-pan fad. To this day, 20 years later, their albums still sell quite well and new fans are made every day. I always hear stories of young kids who get turned on to them to this day. They are never outdated. They still get regular airplay on many stations and I predict will do so for generations to come. Hell, they released a CD of their number one hits a few years ago and it went to number one on the charts. That wasn’t a bunch of old fogeys with Beatles wigs buying those CDs. It was a new generation of listeners.
If you can show how the NKOTB even remotely compare to that, I would be very interested in hearing your theory. Can you even name one of their songs? How well would a NKOTB greatest hits CD sell today? How many times have you ever heard anyone cover a NKOTB song?
They cut their teeth playing dives in the red light district of Hamburg beginning in 1960, not to mention their days in The Cavern and other clubs around Liverpool and London and their days touring until they quit touring in '66. Besides their music they have plenty of rock-n-roll school of hard knocks cred as far as I’m concerned.
And concerning the OP, I would agree that much of their music is in the “Pop” category. That isn’t because of any lack of talent on their part (unlike many of the artists today) but more because they are very difficuly to catagorize and about the only that can be agreed upon is that they have always been quite popular. But there is so much more to them than as a pop band.
Songs like “Tomorrow Never Knows”, “Revolution”, “Within you, Without you” could never be considered pop by any stretch of the imagination.
The Beatles were a genre busting band. Although I think Pop-Rock encompasses most of their output, there is no question that songs like “Helter Skelter” “Yer Blues” “Revolution” “I’ve Got A Feeling” are Rock songs, many other tunes went from kitchy vaudeville/British show tunes to experimental concrete music to Jazzy riffs and international music. Were they a great rock band? When they rocked, they rocked, when they didn’t they didn’t – it really is that simple.
The Beatles are a great band – they owe no loyalty to any one genre.
Well, I wouldn’t dispute that their early stuff is pure pop, which is not necessarily rock (for instance, I wouldn’t consider many boy bands nor Brit-clones nor 30s-50s crooners to be “rock”). However, later they started the subgenre of rock known as “power pop” to later generations – heavy guitars and rock drums paired with undeniably catchy hooks and lyrics. The second best example of power pop is Fountains of Wayne.
I would not say pop is a genre of pop – I’d be more likely to put it the other way round, but if you prefer, just make a Venn diagram of “rock” overlapping with “pop” and neither containing the other.
I have learned that any discussion of musical genre goes nowhere, because there is no consensus what those labels mean. The Beatles were a quintessential rock and roll band. Whether they rocked is up for debate.
Whether they were the NKOTB of their era is also for you to decide, although the fact that they wrote music and played instruments and influenced other bands are three obvious differences between them and the Kids. Also, they didn’t suck.
I do realize we’re not going to get to a final concensus here – but I find it interesting to see how people definte “rock” and “pop.”
And Club33 – in case it wasn’t clear in my OP, I’m absolutely not knocking pop as a genre – as part of the fine songwriting tradition of Gershwin, Porter, etc., it’s something I have a great deal of admiration for.
It’s also true that the definition of “rock” has changed considerably over the years. I still get startled when hearing what I used to term rock being played on a “lite FM” station.
In any case, when they first appeared and for their entire active career, the Beatles were considered to be a rock band. No ifs, ands or buts.
Rock evolved, and heavy metal and other perversions of music followed the sixties. Those set a different standard for what rock meant and relegated much of what was termed to be rock to be pop.
This is only true in retrospect. In the context of their era, the Beatles were rock, but also helped establish that rock could encompass a multitude of sounds and genres. From today’s perspective, they did some rock and some pop and some songs like Yesterday that really are neither. As with Einstein, everything is relative. Unless you establish your frame of reference first, you can’t make a meaningful pronouncement.
Remember, too, in the Beatles’ time, “pop music” meant people like Frand Sinatra, Barbra Streisand, or Dean Martin and was based on variations of the great American Popular Composers of the 30s like Gershwin, Porter, Kern, etc. Not that this music was bad, and there are some Beatles songs that are in the genre (“Your Mother Should Know.” “Good Night”). But the Beatles were primarily in the rock 'n roll genre.
The Beatles were quite definitely capable of rocking, as songs that have been mentioned in this thread (as well as some others that haven’t) demonstrate. Not all of their songs are rock songs, but this versatility makes them more than just a rock group, not less.
Yes, they were marketed partially on the basis of their looks and style of dress and threatening-yet-unthreatening nature to teenage girls, and in this respect they were like New Kids (or, more accurately, New Kids were like them). However, The Beatles were a “natural” band–they formed on their own, toured clubs, learned songwriting by covering pop, rock and roll, R&B, and skiffle songs, and then began to write their own material. The New Kids were put together by a producer and had their songs written for them. The image came first, then the band. If there was no record contract or producer, the Beatles would have still existed. If there were no producer, the New Kids on the Block would never have met. And that’s the difference between a “boy band” and a real band.
And if you don’t think the Beatles could rock, listen to their cover of “Money” sometime.