Though I think that a lot of what the Beatles have written is wonderful there are a few songs that I find incredibly irritating - especially “When I’m 64” and the “Obladi obladah” song.
To add to your rich enjoyment of life, you can waddle down to the Old Folks’ Home and mock Frank Sinatra.
And I agree with you about the Eagles.
But I no longer badmouth the Beatles - the boomers won. They are one of the greatest rock bands ever!
And I’d never mock Sinatra-I’ve always liked him! Glen Miller, on the other hand…
When it comes to the Beatles, it’s impossible not to be overrated. This does not detract from their greatness in the least; it speaks more about the media sensation surrounding them.
Sometime you should watch Eric Idle’s mockumentary “The Ruttles: All You Need is Cash.”
Saying that the Beatles are overrated is kind of like saying that black and white tv’s are overrated. Of course, black and whites wouldn’t stand a chance in comparison to recent, modern advances in that type of technology. But, in their day, the first televisions captivated and mezmorized millions of people and so did the Beatles.
Obviously, God has an Inordinate Fondness for The Beatles
Hmmm. I answered this once, and decided not to post it. Oh well, we’ll see if I should have kept my trap shut.
There’s no denying that my age group is “boomer”. However, I DO think the beatles are overrated. And Elvis is WAY, WAY overrated. I don’t HATE the Beatles - I like some of the familiar stuff in the canon. I just never deified tham, or was fanatic about them at any point.
“Beatles man or Elvis man?”. May I respectfully decline, and invent another category?
I would contend that the pioneer who had the most to do with influencing the course of popular music was Bob Dylan. Nothing was the same after Sgt Pepper? I would contend that nothing was the same after “Highway 61 Revisited”. When Dylan “went electric” to the dismay of his established fan base at the Newport Folk Festival, a huge shift occurred. Terrifying the the folkies with the aid of Mike Bloomfield’s electric guitar, he simultaneously threw down the gauntlet to the whole pop industry, and dared them to elevate Rock and Roll to poetry.
The Beatles are often pointed to for innovating musically - thematic stuff and orchestral scores that didn’t exist in popular music before. Actually, there were antecedents. The Moody Blues released “Days of Future Passed” before “Sgt. Pepper”. I remember a certain opinion you used to hear in their heydey that The Moody Blues were what the Beatles “should have been”. In terms of musical development, they had a point. Of course, once we stripped off the mystical cult status of the Moodies, we were left with a shockingly ordinary band who wrote horribly trite lyrics. I still enjoy listening to their stuff every once in a while, but ONLY every once in a while, and it’s sort of a cerebral exercise, lacking in vitality.
I’ve also heard it stated that if Buddy Holly had lived, The Beatles would not have been neccesary. Holly was already beginning to take his stuff away from the standard love ballad, and push the edges. Might be true.
I’m afraid I can get rather hard on Elvis. I think he was the product of a very cynical pop music industry that sanitized R&B for for nice white kids. He might have “scandalized” people by wriggling his pelvis, but at the end of the day, nobody who mattered was REALLY upset. Hell, I was a nice white kid too, and learned about blues filtered through people like Eric Clapton, John Mayall, Savoy Brown and the rest of the “British Blues” movement. At least THEY had the decency to leave the form’s balls attached, and admit who they were stealing from, so their fans could dig up the original artists if they wanted to. Which I did. Of course, I don’t think I really connected the old black blues artists I started listening to to contemporary black people, or any kind of black cultural history until I was older - I just liked listening to it.
Waitaminnit, here - everybody has a right to their opinion and the whole Elvis/Beatle choice is fun, and Oblong has been pretty balanced about trying to ask a genuine question, but, c’mon - let’s look at the facts about the Beatles:
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They achieved a cross-over level of popularity that only the smallest handful of musicians have every received in the rock n’ roll era (Elvis, Michael Jackson, maybe Elton John, Madonna…)
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They sold a HUGE number of albums and charted in a way only the smallest handful of musicians have, holding all top 5 spots on the charts, selling over 100 million albums while still a band (the BeeGees during Saturday Night Fever, Elvis again…)
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They wrote their own songs (Elton, Madonna, BeeGees)
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They elevated both the pop song and the album to a level of “art” previously not considered for rock n’ roll music
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Their music, whether you like it or not, has endured - it still sounds fresh and timeless
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They went through a dramatic developmental arc - maturing as artists before our very eyes. As stated in an earlier post, listen to stuff from '63, '65 and '67 and stop and think about the fact that that is the same band - No other artist in our era has gone through that type of compressed evolution
Just from their historical context, let alone the strength of the music, no musical group even approaches the Beatles in terms of impact, influence and endurance. A lot of people can argue for Oscar Robertson, Dr. J., Wilt the Stilt and Magic Johnson, but there is only one Michael Jordan. (i.e., it’s fun to debate the topic, but when the dust settles, only one player did what he did, on the world stage, and kept doing it over and over again)
Once could argue that Zep had the same diversity and has sold a ton of albums (I love 'em), but they never had the same level of full-blown cross-over awareness that the Beatles did. Elvis didn’t write his own stuff and didn’t go through the same level of artistic development. Hendrix - brilliant songwriter and musician - who knows what could’ve happened? Michael Jackson’s songs have never been more than pop - the Beatles wrote more songs that transcended pop (Nowhere Man, Fool on the Hill, A Day in the Life). The Beach Boys - come close, but they couldn’t make the same full transition into the psychodelic era past Pet Sounds.
Am I a huge Beatles fan? Sure - but I also love each of the artists mentioned here. But as a music appreciator - when I break it down, I can’t not come to the conclusion that they are the toppermost of the poppermost.
Well, the Beatles are sometimes victims of their success. I find that most people that have your opinion of them are generally more sick of the fawning over the Beatles than the Beatles themselves.
The Beatles revolutionized studio recordings. They outright invented some studio techniques that are still in use today.
The Beatles were the first rock band to use classical instruments in some of the compisitions.
The Beatles were the first to fuse non-western music with rock and roll.
The Beatles were the first rock group to do feature length movies with their own soundtrack.
The Beatles had both talented song writers and musicians. George Harrison got high praise from Shenkar.
The Beatles were the first rock band to perform a ‘ballad’ in a concert.
etc…
Their influence is extensive. Their accomplishments unique. They deserve high praise.
I think the Beatles are incredible, right up there with Conway Twitty!
I always thought The Beatles were really corny.
Now The Coasters, man, did those guys know how to write a good song!
xanakis wrote:
The title “inventor of rock and roll” could be claimed by several, bud Buddy Holly is not among them. Rock and roll was up and running when Holly came along. In fact, he “borrowed” his sound from Bo Diddley.
Chuck Berry and Little Richard probably have the best claims as co-inventors of rock and roll. They were the early masters of the form.
Chaosopher wrote:
Nah. Buddy Holly utilized strings before them. Give a listen to “True Love Ways” or “It Doesn’t Matter Anymore.” Buddy was the first.
Chaosopher also wrote
Well, they were the first to use the sitar, anyway. But “non-western” music? When you get right down to it, rock and roll is based ultimately on African rhythms, and so the entire genre utilizes “non-Western” music (at least to the extent that “non-Western” typically is used as shorthand for “non-European”).
yabob wrote:
I love Buddy Holly, and he was a pioneer, producing his own records and experimenting with instrumentation, but I think you may be overstating his case a bit. He never did get away from love ballads. His last recordings consisted almost entirely of such stuff. His production did push the edges, though.
I agree with you about Dylan. I think his influence on the 60’s is more improtant than that of the Beatles. In fact, it was Dylan who showed the Beatles that rock and roll could be an outlet for poetic expression far beyond the insipid love song. (Though I’m not sure Paul ever quite figured that out. Oh well. At least Dylan got through to Lennon and Harrison.)
I am not a fan, I must say.
“Yellow Submarine” came on a bar jukebox last week, and…
Sweet Moses.
If it weren’t the Beatles, that song could very well go down among the stupidest songs ever recorded.
I’m not holding that song up as an example of their best work by any means. Hell, I don’t really know enough to even guess what their best work would be. I was just looking around at the people in the bar, several of whom were singing along, and thinking to myself:
Folks, are you listening to the words here?
All of the Beatles’ “hit singles” werw written by themselves. They never released a cover version as a single in Great Britain until after they broke up. In America, the record company decided what to release as singles and butchered the albums considerably. The British vinyl was superior to the American vinyl excepr with Magcal Mystery Tour, which in America included some songs released as singles in Great Britain.
Age might have something to do with it, but I am 15 and think the Beatles were and still are one of the greatest bands ever.
But then I think Yoko Ono did not break up the beatles and is very a talented artist.
I think the Beatles are overrated too. Yes, they must have been amazingly innovative at the time, but gosh, I’m alive now! So therefore, they are not so amazing to me…no, I have always been put right off the Beatles by the adulation surrounding them, if anything is too popular like that, it just makes me run a mile, generally.
I much, much prefer the Byrds. They are far greater musical innovators than the Beatles. They invented psychedelia (‘Eight Miles High’ came before ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’ iirc, not 100% sure though), they invented country rock, they blow the beatles right out of the water, as far as I am concerned! The Beatles took stuff from the Byrds a lot. ‘I’m looking Through You’ is mostly derived musically from ‘Bells of Rhymney’ so the Beatles themselves acknowledged the Byrds’innovation.
Also I have to say, I just don’t like the Beatles as people, I am afraid. They come across as rather unpleasant mysoginistic yobbos frankly. I really really don’t like the attitude towards women in a lot of their songs like the aforementioned ‘I’m looking through you’ and ‘Norweigen Wood’, women are seen as sexual objects only, blee, don’t like that. Don’t get that in the Byrds. It is probably irrelevant to the question of musical quality, but it affects it for me, anyway.
I do like some Beatles songs, ‘Across the Universe’ is great, ‘And Your Bird Can Sing’ is another really good one. But overall, I think they are okay, not god-like brilliant but okay. I still prefer the Byrds. If they had only got on a little better so that Mcguinn had not been obliged to dilute their magic with various lineup changes featuring Various Anonymous Guys With Beards ™their reputation would be sooo much higher.
Well that’s what I think anyway.
So then, how do you feel about the Byrds, Infectious Lass? 
The Bells of Rhymney is an Idris Davies poem, which was set to music by Pete Seegar, predating both the Byrds and the Beatles. I’m glad I looked that up - I thought it was traditional. Covered by both the Byrds and Judy Collins.
I like the Byrds, too. A lot. But I think you give them a bit too much credit here. McGuinn and the Byrds did an awful lot of covers. I don’t regard that as bad, since they often did very good versions, and picked good material to cover (including a lot of Dylan songs). McGuinn figured out how to do wonderful things with a 12 string Ricky, but I saw an interview where he mentioned becoming interested in the electric 12 string after seeing an early Beatles concert. He always readily acknowledges the influence the Beatles had on him.
It might have been a lot different if Gram Parsons had lived.
If you liked the Byrds, you might want to look up a not-very -well known 80’s LA band that had a very nice neo-Byrds sound - The Long Ryders.
I love the Beatles.
I also think that Lennon and McCartney are wonderful songwriters, but Harrison doesn’t get enough credit. Hell, RINGO doesn’t get enough credit. He wasn’t a bad drummer at all.
George Harrison was amazingly talented, and that talent was never truly acknowledged the way Lennon and McCartney’s were. It’s a sad thing, really.
Didn’t Ringo write “why don’t we do it in the road”?
I have no idea if he did or not, just making a little joke.