“It isn’t rhythm and blues. It’s not exactly rock ‘n’ roll. It’s their own special sound, or, as group leader Lennon puts it, ‘Our music is just — well, our music.’”
This, of course, is from the liner notes to “Meet the Beatles”. Don’t suppose this answers the question, but at least it establishes that people have been arguing the point for over 40 years.
Yes, it wasn’t exactly rock ‘n’ roll in the early tradition of, say, Chuck Berry and Little Richard, but neither is rock these days. At the time they were certainly stretching and pushing the boundaries of pop and rock music, but at the heart of it all they were quintessentially a rock band with impeccable pop sensibility.
From Allmusic.com:
Once again, I don’t think any pop musicologist (if there is such a thing) would argue with the fact that the Beatles grew out of the rock idiom and were most definitely considered a rock band.
Well anything before ‘Rubber Soul’ (1965) by The Beatles would be considered pop/rock & roll. A few of their songs during their ‘studio years’ such as Getting Better, Maxwell’s Silver Hammer, Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da, Octopus’s Garden, When I’m Sixty-Four and a few more are still very much grounded in pop music but The Beatles should definitely be considered a rock band.
Songs like the progressive rock piece I Want You (She’s So Heavy), the proto-heavy metal thrasher Helter Skelter, the chilled out, psychedelic Because, the blues rock classic While My Guitar Gently Weeps, the mellow folksy Here Comes The Sun, spaced out Across The Universe, Fixing A Hole, Dig A Pony, Love You To, A Day In The Life, Hey Jude and so many more… The Beatles can sure play amazing rock music.
I call them a rock band but I’m guessing many people only know their really popular songs which are mostly pop so they call them a pop band. Even John Lennon admitted to not really liking their early stuff and referring to their early work as “…pop songs with no more thought of them than that–to create a sound. And the words were almost irrelevant”. If people were to sit and listen to every one of their albums, they would certainly call them both a rock band and a pop band.