No. No, I don’t notice that in the least. Apart from a microphone issue at the start it sounds fine, for a live performance. 
I can definitely get behind this.
The minute Lennon completed that ditty about the dude who keeps a ten bob note up his nose.
mmm
Don’t be such a mean old man.
nm
On The Ed Sullivan Show. They were apple-cheeked and lovable, but had low-rent Liverpool accents. They filled a void that had existed since Elvis went onto the Army and, upon release, stayed around Vegas and made crappy movies.
Musically, they were unremarkable (although I thought Rubber Soul kind of elevated them). They were the prototype for boy bands to come, but they wrote their own songs, made controversial statements and did things that cost them a shitload of money, like shun endorsements and stop touring. They were of little interest to males and adults until they made Sgt. Pepper. After that, they were bulletproof (except for Magical Mystery Tour). They made their mark as celebrities, not musicians.
[QUOTE=Krokodil]
…They were of little interest to males and adults until they made Sgt. Pepper…
[/QUOTE]
You know this is utter cobblers right?
Anyhow I’m in the Rubber Soul camp. Maybe you could push it back to I Feel Fine, or the opening chord of Hard Day’s Night.
Huh. They sure generated a LOT of comment, discussion, praise, and amazement for being “unremarkable.” And now I’d love to hear the explanation of how they transformed the pop music world by virtue of their celebrity rather than their musicianship.
Are you pulling our legs, or are you really that blind to their musical contributions?
Aside from the question of when the revolutionized the music, A Hard Day’s Night was pretty revolutionary as a marketing device. Of course Elvis had made movies before that, but the lads were playing themselves, and dishing out large servings of charm and wit in the process.
To be fair, it wasn’t the Beatles who decided to do a movie; it was done by a producer who told Universal Pictures to do it. Universal didn’t like the idea and asked why they should. The producer said, “To sell the soundtrack album.” The movie was greenlit.
The Beatles were talked about as soon as they hit the US and not just by teenaged girls. People like Aaron Copland, Leonard Bernstein, Leopold Stokowski, and Ned Rorem praised their music very early on, and it was unheard of for classical composers of that stature to say anything good about rock music.
Wow. Are you a musician yourself?
You glibly dismiss the music of a band generally held up as one of the most respected set of music creators of the recent century? Gotta anything worth stating to back that up? Sounds like sharp knees to me. 
I think the release of Paperback Writer/Rain was pretty revolutionary. This is was probably the most sophisticated 1-2 punch they had released in single form. From that point forward it was an avalanche of greatness-- with nary an appearance of a traditional love/relationship song til the brilliant “Something” in '69. Once they got away from the notion that rock n roll had to be about girls, break-ups, relationships, love and lust, it was a game-changer.
Yeah, the idea that they were “musically unremarkable” just flabbergasts me. I can’t think of a single artist who contributed more to the development of pop music and form than the Beatles.
I think there are two questions to be answered (for the OP); there’s not just one:
When did the Beatles make it clear to people who knew music (for lack of better words) that they were revolutionary?
When did everyone else realize it?
I think Sgt Pepper fits the latter. That was knocking everyone over the head with the fact that this was historical (this being what the Beatles are doing and what they’ve done).
But those who truly understood music could see it happening much earlier.
.
Even the members of the Fantastic Four had Beatlemania.
When you run into this kind of statement, it’s always important to ask what the person dismissing the Beatles’ musicality considers “musically remarkable.” In my experience, nine times out of ten, they start going on about Yngwie Malmsteen and you can safely ignore them.
(Kidding! …mostly :p)
Interesting point. I mean, Love Me Do is bland and fun to giggle at from a “look where they came from” POV, but their very next single, Please Please Me - from a musician’s standpoint, the songcraft just jumps out immediately. The wordplay, the great intro and outro, the fact that every element is hooky, the harmony dual lead vocal - it is just *perfectly *crafted. And then She Loves You and I Want to Hold Your Hand? Songs crafted like that jump out immediately - no different that hearing Smokey Robinson’s songs - it was clear that this was very well-wrought songcraft from a mile away…
Same thing, frankly, with the Monkees - they may have been pre-fab and built for a TV show, but when you hear a song like I’m a Believer, you know immediately that *someone *with great songcraft skills is supporting this band (in that case, Neil Diamond), and that the music was going to endure longer than just random pop trash…
Okay, my comment didn’t do them justice. It may well be that their performance capabilities were a significant part of what brought them to the fore in their earlier years. What I was trying to express is that it was their songcraft rather than their performance ability that effected a revolution in music.
Almost everything in the second paragraph is grossly false.
Sharp and tinny.