I can understand that. I do think Fagen is a fine singer. Heck, any of the Beatles could sing circles around Bob Dylan, as well, but it’s not really the point. I only brought up the vocal thing because that’s about the only thing you can really put your finger on when comparing the two, with most of the rest being apples/oranges.
That is completely different than asserting he had a fabulous voice, or that he was a great singer. They had voices that were quite good by rock and roll standards. I don’t think they could sing circles around very many musicians, though.
Lennon had a fabulous voice. He was a great singer. Singing is sales; so it all depends on whether people buy what you sell. I don’t mean literally as in sales volume, although that can be a factor.
Fagan sells his songs but with a limited instrument; he just happened to have a style of music he could make work with his voice. Twist and Shout and Lennon’s vocal chord-shredding version of it was huge.
I am most gratified by the responses to this thread. Superb insights very well explained. My thanks to you all.
It looks like the Beatles deserve more heavyweight credit than I was giving them before (despite my having loved virtually everything they ever thought about doing) so ignorance fought there.
Still, I have been known to tear up at excellence on occasion, and like Wordman alluded to with his crossword-puzzle/satisfaction analogy, when Fagen/Becker and their brilliant band of musicians really start smokin’ and “all of their myriad song parts lock in just so”, it can literally bring a tear to my eye and a lump to my throat. And that’s something I just can’t say about the Beatles.
Thanks again to all who posted, and if anyone wants to add more please feel free to do so.
I like the Dan and own many of their cds and dvds, and don’t own a single Beatles track. So I might be a little biased.
I think the Beatles were great songwriters, and I can appreciate that from a distance, but I just don’t like listening to the music, whereas I can listen to SD music all day, even though their songs might not be as ‘neat’ as a Beatles track.
Edit - non-muso here.
I’ve heard lots of rock critics assert that John Lennon was one of the best rock vocalists of all time, and I agree with them.
I’m not sure what that even means. It sounds as if you’re using criteria that would make Bob Dylan a fabulous singer.
Lennon’s voice was perfect for what he was doing, but I still maintain that, from a pure singing perspective, there are plenty of better examples throughout the history of rock and roll.
I wouldn’t necessarily disagree with that either. He was a great vocalist.
How about providing us with a few of those examples? So we get an idea of what your idea of better is.
Oh, please. Are you really asserting that there aren’t?
Oh, how about Freddie Mercury. Meat Loaf, for god’s sake, and I don’t even like the guy. What he could do with his voice was damn impressive. Roy Orbison. The argument could be made for Sting.
Pick just about any lead vocalist from Motown during the 60s. Nothing Lennon has done comes close to what David Ruffin was capable of. Marvin Gaye. Smokey Robinson.
Tina Turner, Aretha Franklin, Diana Ross, Gladys Knight.
Look, The Beatles are my favorite band of all time. Hands down, nobody really comes close to their body of work. I just think we might be taking the Lennon worship a little too far. He was not perfect.
Next, I’ll be getting into a discussion about who was a better bass player than McCartney.
Okay - you are discussing vocal technique. By that measure Christina Aguilera or Maria Callas are “better” vocalists - that’s fair, given your criteria.
I choose to look at it differently - impact matters. So yeah, Dylan is an amazing vocalist to me - granted, it took me *years *to get to that point, but I am there now. Who would you rather hear - Mariah Carey stretching out a word to an infinite number of syllables or Dylan telling you which way the wind blows? We all have our criteria.
Within that context, Lennon, from an impact standpoint, was brilliant - tuneful with an adequate technique, a nasal timbre that wasn’t going to position him well for opera 
but he could hit the notes and sell them emotionally better than, well, pretty much anybody within the rock/pop context up to that point - that’s a big reason the Beatles became The Beatles. When Lennon sells a pop confection like Please Please Me with his urgency and emotion? Puts the song on a whole 'nother level…
** Wordman**, I don’t disagree with one single word of this post. I was worried that we were on different pages, and I’m glad we got that cleared up. All I was talking about was pure singing.
No, I’d rather not listen to Mariah, or most of the people I listed, over the Beatles.
Well, Aretha combines Mariah’s technique with Lennon’s impact - so she pretty much comes first in any poll…
On another note, I went back and listened to My Girl a few years ago & pretended I’d never heard it before. I can’t even imagine what it must have been like to hear a song that damn good before the media had a chance to totally kill it (I wasn’t alive when it was written). The combination of Robinson writing & Ruffin singing just turned into something wonderful to listen to.
No, you misunderstood me. I’m not trying to engage in an argument at all. I just wanted some examples to flesh out, in my own mind, where you’re coming from. I’m not asserting that Lennon was the best singer on earth. I think he was great. I generally stay away from “who was better” type discussions, since personal taste is so important and valid. Lennon is one of my favorites. Some of those you named are also among my favorites.
As an old fart, I can tell you that hearing that song for the first time was amazing in the context of its time. I’ll tell you another one: Like A Rolling Stone. From that snare hit to the organ, to the vocals, and then the length of the thing. I’d never heard a song that long before. It felt like the laws of AM radio were being broken right before my ears.
Sorry, Crotalus. I agree about the “Who is better?” debates, and I rarely get into them. Incidentally, this may be the first time I’ve said anything even approaching negative about the Beatles.
The only good thing about being born too late is having the entire catalog of music from the 50s & 60s available to you all your life. The biggest downside is that it’s almost impossible to understand the music within the proper context. You can try hard & get pretty close (as I did with My Girl, and a lot of the Beatles stuff), but it’s difficult to get all the way there.
No worries, LD. The Beatles first came to my attention in December 1963, when I was 9, and they had an immense impact on me. I became a musician mainly because of them. It probably would have happened anyway, but they were the trigger. Anyway, I idolized them for years, but now I see their greatness and their flaws, and I still love the band. When I was 9 and 10, I didn’t “get” Lennon as a singer at all. I preferred Paul’s sweetness to Lennon’s grit, but that has changed over the years.
It still blows me away that the band only existed for 7 or 8 years after they hit it big. Their entire catalog of music happened over a period of time that is less than half of that of The Dave Matthews Band. One fourth of U2.
Sorry for the hijack, everyone.
FWIW, when I was talking about Beatles being better singers, I was definitely thinking of the powerful emoting as a big part of it. Like WordMan so aptly put, they “sold it” better. Steely Dan had a different feel and purpose. They were more cool, wry and yeah, sophisticated. Emoting wasn’t so much their thing.