She came in like a hurricane
Wearing boots and diamond rings
With a fox fur on her shoulder
She set wondering
And I could tell she was feeling abandoned
Because she flashed a look across my way
She said hop for a ride
You’ll never ask me but I’ll tell you anyway
She took me out on the blackboard jungle
Put me straight in a hurricane
She hypnotized my eyes with her silver heeled ways
If I could sing like Paul McCartney, or get funky like Etta James
I’d never change, I’d never change, I’d never change silver heeled ways
Read more: Fleetwood Mac - Silver Heels Lyrics | MetroLyrics
Dear RunningCoach both of your cites have been used before - but of course you didn’t read shit because that would take effort. I know it is hard to read and then click and then read some more. And your lack of comment on your already dealt with links is just more evidence that you are so tired from teaching people quickly put one foot in front of the other (I guess my kids are gifted since they learned to do that all on their own) that clicking and typing are beyond your capacity. I get it, catch your breath.
While you are cathing your breath I will deal with your recycled attempt point by point in the hopes that others are not so marathonned-out that they can still see and I won’t have to go through this again.
To recap - The challenge was to:
Provide an unsolicited example of a musician saying that A (singular) Beatle was a major influence on their playing / singing.
Give me the best Beatles lyric and I will beat it with a contemporary.
RunningCoach You have very, very poorly attempted number 1. You fail go sit on the bench and read (no clicking I’ll save you the effort. Don’t comment either since, based on your post, you are to fatigued to do so. Don’t strain yourself.
Billy Joel - “In an interview, he once said:
“The single biggest moment that I can remember being galvanized into wanting to be a musician for life was seeing the Beatles on The Ed Sullivan Show,”” <– when he was a kid he saw the Beatles and decided to be a musician.
2)“Are you a big fan of the Beatles?” “Isn’t everyone?”
A famous quote by The Police’s guitarist Andy Summers.
Summers was open as to how much influence The Beatles had on their songs, and there is a definite ‘Beatlesque’ underlying tune in the majority of their tracks.
Even Sting said they were the single greatest group of all time!
Solicited and WTF does “‘Beatlesque’ underlying tune in the majority of their tracks” even mean? Still, no mention of A Beatle being an influence and I’ve listened to every song the Police ever put out more often than they have song them. Beatlesque? I defy fans of the Beatles to find “Beatlesque” in any of their songs let alone the majority. Beatlesque. Fuck
Brian Wilson - In 1966, the Beach Boys and Brian Wilson recorded Pet Sounds, regarded as the surf rockers’ masterpiece.
Wilson’s inspiration came when he first heard the Beatles’ Rubber Soul.
“As soon as I started hearing it, I loved it. I mean, loved it!” <– Not even the band but one album. Again, no mention of influence and further away from A Beatles than the whole band.
Bee-Gees - “They were a great influence to us because they were songwriters, they broke a lot of rules and they created an artistic credibility in the pop music business, which was never there before,” added Robin. “The Beatles broke those walls down and started selling a lot of albums, which pop artists didn’t do before them… When the Beatles came on they changed all that. And pop music started.”
Again, not A Beatle but the Beatles. fine. They wrote songs and made money and paved the way for other bands to …write songs and make money? Though we have already dealt with the “they wrote their own / no the didn’t and so what if they did” thing. So the Bee Gees are influenced by the band because they wrote songs nad made money.
U2 - Bono and the boys cite many artists as their influences, including Elvis, David Bowie and The Rolling Stones. But none more than The Beatles. Much like Billy Joel, watching the boys perform is what made the Irish band pick up their instruments for the first time…
Really? So each individual band member saw the Beatles and said I want to be in a band? Fair enough. Again, no single Beatle influencing anything. They all just wanted to be rockstars. Still no mention of influence on anything other than aspirations of toddlers.
Perhaps the next one
Lou Reed said he didn’t like the overproduction of Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Heart’s Club Band album, and enjoyed the rock and roll simplicity of She Loves You.
What else need be said?
AC/DC - “Even a great band like the Beatles goes off on a detour and does a bit of cabaret for awhile. But you’ll find that the truly great ones always come back to playing real rock and roll, I thought [Abbey Road] got a bit glossed over at the time it was released. But those bluesy fills and huge riffs [in I Want You (She’s So Heavy)] showed they were still terrific rockers right to the end.”
No mention of influence. In fact it boils down to “they sucked for a while and then they didn’t”
Oasis - Did you know: 75% of all Oasis songs owe some debt to the Beatles?! It’s true … Liam and Noel don’t agree on much, but they are both pretty certain that The Beatles is their number one musical influence
Even this doesn’t mention A Beatle as being an influence. Yet again it is the band.
Bruce Springsteen - It’s a hard night to come out and play tonight when so much has been lost. The first record that I ever learned was a record called Twist and Shout. It was a Beatles record. If it wasn’t for John Lennon, we’d all be some place very different tonight. It’s an unreasonable world and you get asked to live with a lot of things that are just unliveable. It’s a hard night to come out and play but there’s just nothing else you can do.”
So Twist and Shout lead to Springsteen and he credits Lennon for that. This comes perilously close - but again it is when I was a kid I listened to this and wanted to be a rockstar. He said this in a concert the day Lennon took a bullet.
He didn’t say it before Lennon died. He didn’t say, “John Lennon’s writing and vocals inspired me so much.” He said, “The first record that I ever learned was a record called Twist and Shout. It was a Beatles record. If it wasn’t for John Lennon, we’d all be some place very different tonight.”
Again a shout out to the Beatles (as a group) from a man recalling being a little kid hearing a record and thinking, “I wanna be a rockstar.” If the Beatles meant so much why didn’t he say it before Lennon caught a bullet? Why hasn’t he said it since?
Dave Grohl - “When I was young, that’s how I learned how to play music – I had a guitar and a Beatles songbook. I would listen to the records and play along. Of course, it didn’t sound like the Beatles, but it got me to understand song structure and melody and harmony and arrangement. So, I never had a teacher – I just had these Beatles records.”
Even the late Cobain admired the Beatles, said Grohl. “Even in Nirvana – the Beatles were such a huge influence. Kurt loved the Beatles because it was just so simple. Well, it seemed simple… they sound easy to play, but you know what? They’re hard!”
Yet again it wasn’t A Beatle it was THE Beatles. But fine, this comes closest to meeting the challenge. It doesn’t meet it, but it comes closer than the others The obvious question is what if he’d been given a different band’s songbook and records? Would he be working at Wal-Mart?
Notice how he doesn’t mention what songs or who wrote them? There is nothing to indicate that any one of them was an influence. Just that - yet again - he grew up with the Beatles. Kurt Cobain loved the Beatles - so says Dave (though you’d think that if Kurt had ever said so publicly he’d have been on the list.
D’oh RunningCoach You tripped just short of the starting line.
In my next post I will tackle your second offered-as-if-it-is-the-word-of-God cite that I’ve already read at least twice.
This is funny. Much ado about nothing, way too much thought and writing trying to support a meaningless premise. Bluster all you want, you still can’t change the facts.
First off the goal posts have never shifted - okay they did once when I disallowed questions like “How much do you love the Beatles?” There was that one change. Other than that they have stayed the same. Unsolicited testimonials from a musician about the influence of A Beatle.
So you can eat your snark snarky snark snark.
But congratulations. You seem to have finally done it. A musician (and yes I know who Geddy fucking Lee is - but I appreciate the needles contempt) who without prompting (benefit of the doubt since the question can’t be heard) cited A Beatle as an influence.
Yay, you win!
Now how many posts did it take to get there? Shouldn’t it have been easier for the bestest band ever to meet that very simple challenge? One musician who, unprompted, names A Beatle as an influence on their playing / singing.
But they are the best so it should take a 100 odd posts before someone can do it. The Beatles are just that strong.
See if you can find a second. Not a challenge… I’m just curious if two can be found. It took about a hundred posts to find 1 how many more to find a second?
These things always kinda just seem to go in circles, don’t they?
Zeke, just out of curiosity do you think there is any sort of evidence could be produced on this board that would convince you that The Beatles are ONE of the greatest groups ever creatively/qualitatively? Like on a par with groups like Anthrax that you have cited as a top 5?
Or this more or less an unshakeable assertion on your part? If so further argument probably doesn’t serve much point, other than the already implicit one that taste is subjective. Unless you just like arguing from the minority position - some do :).
Okay - so many examples of Paul McCartney being an influence came up while I was responding to other stuff. Sorry about that.
So challenge one has been more than satisfied (and I misoverestimated the number of posts that it took.) Still better than 70 and the only Beatle anyone has anything to say for is Paul. No Ringo, No John, No George.
Alas, 1/4 of the Beatles influenced people. You’d think the best band in the world ever could do better than 1 for 4.
But challenge #1 is more than met. I’d like to thank you all for playing but especially Pulkymel who walked my ass up to the fence and then kicked my ass over it.
If anyone can find the equivalent sort of clips / comments about the other three please supply.
Serious questions. Who cares whether individual Beatles were influential beyond the band? Would you say that every individual of your chosen groups were influential on later groups? Why are you using this as a metric rather than the influence of the Beatles as a group? Why are you surprised that nobody took your question at face value, since nobody else uses this as a measure?
To your second point, do you really imagine Beatles fans believe no one has ever written a melody or a lyric as good as the Beatles? Is that seriously what you think? Because of course it’s a laughable idea on its face.
No one is saying the Beatles produced the only good work, or that other artists didn’t sometimes match or exceed them. (I personally would rank Dylan higher as a composer and overall innovator.) But the fact is no artist of the rock era has created a comparable body of work that is simultaneously so immediately appealing and so distinctive and innovative. The group’s lyrics, while better than you seem to think (“Eleanor Rigby,” for example, is an outstanding piece of writing, and you’re welcome to compare it to Eminem or GnR or whomever), are by design universal enough to appeal to listeners far removed from the Beatles’ own time and place.
Their musical experimentation is wedded to songcraft so solid that the group never appears to be showing off or indulging in cleverness for its own sake. Most people hearing “Penny Lane” don’t realize that the song modulates between keys seven times; that “Eleanor Rigby” consists of (basically) two chords; that “I’ll Be Back” shifts between A major and A minor without ever resolving on either; that “Happiness Is a Warm Gun” changes time signatures in practically every line; and so on.
It doesn’t matter if this one song has a better lyric than the Beatles, or this other song has a better melody. The fact is, no one combined innovative songwriting and production with so-called “conventionally” appealing melodies and performances as consistently as they did. If that’s not true, well, I’m sure you can tell us who we should be lauding in their place.
Ringo not an influence on drummers?
John not an influence on songwriters?
Really?
I think the OP overcorrected. The Beatles were a marketing thing, yes, and celebrities. And they largely latched onto forms others had developed. But they were influential as a band that a lot of young people heard, that actually played their instruments, and yes, tried different things.
Next you’re going to tell me the Monkees weren’t important.
Ooooo, yet another post with nothing in it. What facts? Which ones? Or just facts in general? Like all the facts? Quoth the Reagan “facts are such useless things” which facts is my bluster trying to change. You’ve put no facts before me.
I get it, this is an existential thing since you factually exist and you postulate that I am blustering non-facts you are wondering if I may possibly bluster facts and thus negate you… or something like that.
What the fuck was your point?
Durrrrrr, I was responding to pm’s and trying to keep up durrrrrrrrr. two hands one keyboard limits ability to reply to deluge. durrrrrrrr.
Seriously man does it seem like I’m neglecting the fucking thread? No. So go and have a splendiferously wonderful fucking day. Fuck sake.
I have never, ever, not even once said the Beatles suck. I have said many many many many times that I actually like the Beatles.
See unlike you and the others, I read stuff. If someone says here’s a cite I actually read the fucking thing. If someone makes a post I actually read the fucking thing. It’s just this stupid habit I have that allows me to… think.
I’ve read more about the Beatles and listened to more of their music in the last 48 hours than I have in the last 10 years.
Was the thread title a bit harsh? Maybe. It was counterpoint to the “Beatles” are the awesomest. Did they have an impact? Certainly.
But they were the first boyband, they were bubblegum-pop, they weren’t great innovators (except for their management and production team(s).) For the most part their lyrics sucked.
Was saying “not even close” over the top? Maybe, but so is “they’re the best ever.”
I have never once said they were no good, I have never once said that I don’t like them. I have always said that the reverence is inline with zealotry. When the cult takes the red pill I’ll take the blue one and we’ll meet in the middle.
But so long as people hold on to this idiotic idea that the Beatles are the best that were, are, and ever will be. I will maintain - loudly - that they aren’t, weren’t, and never will be.
Simple as that.
Again, you will note, if you actually read what I have written, that I have never once said they suck. I’ve never once said their music is awful. I have, many times, said that I like them.
Now it took 80 or so posts before someone came up with musicians giving A Beatle as an influence and so far it is only one of the four.
The closest that anyone has come to meeting the lyric challenge is some mutt who threw in Fleetwood Mac.
Seems to me that if they were the bestest ever the musicians citing them as influences on their playing or writing should have fast and furious. They didn’t.
Seems to me that if Lennon and / or McCartney were such brilliant lyricists then examples would be passed around like syphilis at an orgy. But no. The closest was from a band that ain’t the fucking Beatles.
That ought to tell you something.
Now I have done much more reading and listening in the last 2 days than any one of you (and likely all of you put together with the exception of Pulkyamel) and I have come to the following conclusions:
The Beatles were a decent band whose importance far outweighs their merit.
The cult of the Beatles will not be recovered. They will insist against all evidence that the Beatles invented everything and thus they are to be worshipped
Better bands have been utterly ignored because the commercial shadow of the Beatles blocked out the light.
The cult will never accept anything less than complete surrender.
And that’s cool with me man. Donald Sutherland ain’t never gonna get a chance to scream at me. From now on when someone says Beatles I will enthusiastically intone “best band ever” and carry on my merry way.
Every single one of them was a master of their instrument… all instruments in fact. They could all sing like angels and write like God was holding their hand.
In fact, Jesus wanted to be a Beatle and when they wouldn’t let him join he opted for the cross. That’s what John was talking about in his famous quote.
So please, I want to tell you, I hope you’ll understand / that I, well I’m with you, I’d like to hold your hand. Come together with me right now and we’ll twist and shout right into that topsy-turvy Yellow Submarine of joy.
Oh yes, please love me do as we stroll through the strawberry fields forever, Down Penny Lane and onto fuck it… I’m sure I can pass.
This is a warning for you. You’re going way off the end here. Stop posting in this thread if you can’t reply to others without insulting them, because if you do so again, I may suspend you temporarily until you can cool off.
Take your issues and insults with other posters to The Pit.
I don’t expect this to dissuade you from your rant but just to add some perspective -
I’ve taught music for many years now. I often let my students choose what music they would like to focus on. To this day, I constantly meet young musicians of all ages who love the Beatles and ask for help learning their music. They are as smitten with this brilliant music as I and just about every musician I’ve ever met was the first time we heard it. It’s simply an astonishing catalog of masterful songwriting.
You don’t get it. That’s fine. It’s odd that you are being so combative about it though. Did the Beatles once hurt your sister or something?
I was going to leave this shit alone after my last screed (and you’ll notice I already said to take this shit to the pit - if you could be bothered to read… but it is too much effort and your frail eyes might assplode.)
This is yet another pointless fucking waste of pixels. What the fuck is your problem chum? Really?
I’d been hit with the same fucking links multiple times and RunningCoach thought he’d slide in a couple of links like a fucking spammer and split. I laid out the criteria many fucking times. He opted to do a lap or something rather than read before he replied and I - in good faith - addressed every single one of the points in his first link - points which had already been addressed frankly - but he thought he’d be super-fucking-smart and dump a couple of links to show off his coolness.
I didn’t bother with the 2nd link because it was pointless. The challenge was met while I was dissecting his 1st link. Where the fuck do you see bad faith in that?
Seriously? Where? In this thread I’ve been insulted for not worshipping this fucking band, I’ve been wrongly accused of trolling and now you’re saying I’m arguing in bad faith? Isn’t that a weaselly way of saying trolling?
So alright Sunshine, explain to me how I’ve been acting in bad faith. You made the accusation now back it up.
Seems to me that I laid out the rules of the challenge many times and pretty fucking clearly. When the challenge was met I conceded without equivocation. Where the fuck is the bad faith butterfly?
Oh, maybe you just had nothing worthwhile to add so you thought you’d just join in on the dog-pile, as a late comer.
You’re not one of those guys that waits until the fights almost over and then throws a feeble kick in order to prove his manhood. You’re not are you, Sunshine?
Get happy you entirely useful little bumblebee you. You’re so cute I could kiss you. Cuddles to you kitten.