Oh, I’m sorry. I wasn’t aware this thread had been moved to Reddit.
Maybe I should reply with something like, “But Django had more little fingers than George.”
I tend to think it would have been whatever band Paul McCartney wound up in. Having looked at the Washington Concert with a performing musician’s eyes, it’s pretty obvious who’s leading the band. (And it’s not the first time I’ve noticed, either.)
What does that mean? Set the agenda? Did they have an agenda?
So why were none of the songs on their first album products of these people?
OK perhaps I’m wrong. Give me a list of rock bands with strings of hits in the early sixties.
I love when people argue that the Beatles weren’t so much 'cause “Elvis was just as big a sensation, and The Beach Boys were just as innovative, and the Stones rocked as hard, and Cole Porter was as prolific a composer, and…”
All such paeans to other musicians are true. What makes the Beatles so freakin’ astonishing, what people who use this argument cheerfully elide over, is that the Beatles combined ALL those traits. They encompass everything for which you have to name a dozen other artists as examples. Sure, everyone can name other individual performers / bands who accomplished amazing things. But you’d be damn hard pressed to find an artist / group who managed all these, and more.
I think you’d have to go back to Louis Armstrong to find an artist as versatile, influential, popular, talented, etc. In fact, Armstrong is arguably more important to the history of 20th century pop/rock music. But that still puts the Beatles in pretty rarefied fuckin’ company, yo.
It’s a real shame the way some Beatles detractors think that finding thirty separate musicians with great individual achievements somehow negates the fact that the Beatles, as one group, did the same thing. They’re a one-stop shop of awesome.
I think, at least for me, the Beatles were a “guess you had to be there” thing. Don’t get me wrong–I do like several of their songs (though I also think some of them, like “I Wanna Hold Your Hand” and “Help,” are just basic bubblegum pop and just as unremarkable as any other songs from that genre), but I was born in the mid-60s and thus missed most of Beatlemania. To me, they’re a good band that were great and innovative in their time, kind of like The Honeymooners was innovative TV–but I find it unwatchable now.
I don’t consider myself a Baby Boomer (I’m right on the cusp of that and the next generation) and sometimes get a bit frustrated by the BBs’ tendency to think that everything that’s the greatest ever came from their generation. Yes, the Beatles were a good band. Maybe even a great band. Yes, they were groundbreaking in their time. But the greatest that ever was or ever will be? Come on. That’s a matter of taste.
No offense intended to Beatles fans–I’ve got some bands I’m pretty passionate about too, and a lot of what makes a band great (as Quasi pointed out) is the emotional resonance it has for you…what was happening in your life when they were popular, and the memories that brings back. That’s a lot of what music is about, and *supposed *to be about. I just kind of wish people (in general–not in this thread, obviously! 
) would stop trying to shove the Baby Boomer Pantheon (and this includes a lot more than the Fab Four) down the world’s collective throat long after they really should be stepping aside for something newer.
Again, just my opinion and no offense intended. I readily admit that I’m not familiar with the whole body of the Beatles’ work, so it’s possible the I’ve missed something among their more obscure songs.
I don’t think I know more than three Beatles songs so yeah, I wouldn’t miss them at all.
Do they? This is not my experience at all. I’m a Generation Xer and the vast majority of Beatles fans I know are Xers and Millennials (aka Gen Y). None of us, so far as I could tell, hold 1963 as the genesis of popular music. I mean, do you hear Beatles fans slagging off the likes of Buddy Holly, Chuck Berry, the Everly Brothers and the like? I don’t.
Sometimes I wear my feelings on my sleeve, as it were, Kim, so please don’t give it a second thought. Plus, I’m old. 
You’re fine, and, like all my Doper friends, valued.
Thanks
Q
Yes, they had an agenda. They were ambitious.
Wow. That’s a shonky lawyer’s argument if ever I heard one – absolutely true and at the same time utterly misleading. Go and listen to the Starr Club bootlegs. They’re all available on Youtube. For me a cursory search brings up Little Queenie, Matchbox, Roll Over Beethoven, Sweet Little Sixteen, Talkin’ About You.
But there are plenty of covers of older songs in the official canon too: Twist and Shout, Anna (Go With Him), Baby It’s You, Money, Rock and Roll Music, Words Of Love, Honey Don’t, Dizzy Miss Lizzy.
I really don’t understand why anyone would object to the statement that the Beatles started out as a rock n roll band and were influenced by the older generation of rock ‘n’ roll artists. Their note perfect cover of Words Of Love I thought, was a dead giveaway. If you actually sit down and listen to Buddy Holly’s catalog, you’ll discover his influence on the Beatles is pretty obvious.
Who cares about the early sixties? I don’t, I wasn’t even born. There’s a hundred-and-twenty years worth of recorded music out there, and a whole bunch of that is entirely worth listening to. That’s my whole point.
But I do like Bo Diddley’s work from that time (the Duchess was awesome).
I’m an Xer too. And if I stuck to my own era, I’d be bending your ear about Nick Cave, and arguing that Daydream Nation is Sonic Youth’s best album, and one of the best albums of all time.
But I’ve been on Beatles kicks in the past, and Rockabilly (via The Cramps), and The Doors, and the Australian underground scene of the early eighties, and Jazz, and songs I’ve written and recorded myself. I’m pretty deep into the Blues at the moment.
I listen to a heck of a lot of music that’s older than I am, but I have a different attitude to that stuff than to the music I grew up with. I enjoy it just as much and get just as enthusiastic about it, but I don’t see any point in circling the wagons over it. The Beatles are pretty much the same to me as Sam Lanin. It’s a historical interest rather than a deeply personal one, and maybe that’s the same for you and your friends.
But the people I usually get into arguments like this with do have the personal connection and seem unable to be objective about it. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve seen someone flatly state, “There is no good music from before 1963 or after 1970.” I’m glad that dopers haven’t stooped so low in this thread.
Mostly these days I just roll my eyes and move on…
“There has never been an act as popular as the Beatles were in their day!” Yeah, Bing Crosby, but whatever dude. Have a nice life. :rolleyes:
The Beatles: Could you happily live without ever hearing another song of theirs?
Answer: I’d sure like to try.
Hehe. I know what you mean. The Beatles marketing juggernaut is remarkably… insidious.
Dammit. I had a nice logical post composed and something ate it.
Re: Marketing:
Epstein is responsible for the beatles Clean cut image. He is responsible for getting them onto as many media outlets as possible in 63’ when they had their first real hit. He rode the term “beatlemania” for all it was worth to land them a slot in the Ed Sullivan show. In the US it took off primarily as a teen fad. It was characterized by intense levels of hysteria demonstrated by fans both at the actual concerts and during the band’s travels to and from hotels, concert venues, and the like.
I never said that the band didn’t produce anything worthy. They did, but they are hardly the golden bards that many of their fans from that time remember them to be. They really were a decent group that had the benefit of the timing being just perfect for an act like theirs. If they had emerged five years later, they would be a footnote, and we’d all be talking about another band.
But, as I said, it’s not just people from that time who are singing this band’s praise. Many songwriters working today still cite the Beatles as inspiration and respect their work tremendously. Yes, there is a large element of “packaging” involved with the Beatles, but that era produced some of my favorite work, and the only peers I really can find musically from that era are The Kinks (probably my favorite band from the era, although I think the Beatles are qualitatively better) and some of the Beach Boys work. If there’s another band around the time creating work as memorable and consistently solid, I have yet to find them and with all the resources available for mining music, I’d surely have found something by now. Sure, they were a handsome and popular bunch with a heavily controlled image, but their songwriting and music was impeccable, too.
There should have been an option between ‘oh dear god yes’ and ‘I’d kind of miss them’. I picked the first because I wouldn’t miss any of their songs, but I don’t hate their music or anything.
You are missing the point. The beatles have become so ingrained in our popular culture that they they are in a feedback loop. Considering their deified status in pop/ rock music, it would be a pretty bold soul who outright came out against them. I never said they sucked, or that their success was do purely to image. Unlike the bubblegum pop starts of today, they did have musical talent and ability. In my opinion, they did not have anything extremely unique or special though. I compose and play a lot of music myself, and I just don’t see anything genius in it. They were a logical extension and combination of what came before. If they hadn’t done it someone else certainly would have. Would the PR, the image, and the stars have aligned right for that other band? Probably. In the early sixties America was ripe for an act like that more so than it ever had been or ever could be after that. I’m not hating, just take a good honest look back through your more mature and cynical eyes now and see it for what it was: A good band that made good music and took advantage of an emerging media market and unique political climate to vault them to success.
Well, we clearly hear different things. I’m of a musical persuasion, too, and I find their songwriting skills charming, quirky, subversive (both lyrically and in terms of the pop musical form), and intellectually, as well as musically, interesting. Like I’ve said before, they’re not even my favorite band of the era or top ten of all time. And I find Pet Sounds better than anything the Beatles recorded.
Perhaps, perhaps not. That’s a bit like saying, well, if Mozart didn’t exist, certainly someone else would have done what he did, as it was a logical extension of what came before. I think there was a special chemistry there and an intersection of personalities, timing, musical influences, and all the other intangibles that made this particular combination unique. And if in our alternate universe where we don’t have the Beatles but some other band that brought this much tight and inventive songwriting to the masses existed, we would be having the same conversation about them.
Oh, not really. The Beatles are an easy target to dismiss precisely because of their deified status and popularity.
I had to go with Oh dear God yes because Oh dear God yes, starting 25 years ago wasn’t an option. I change the station when they come on the radio.
I think some people have been saying this for years. I saw some clips of early British punk shows from around 1977, where they worked up the crowds by chanting “No more Beatles, Elvis, Rolling Stones!!!”.
They’re not so much over-rated as over-exposed. If we could just have a moratorium on all Beatles music for five or ten years, we might be able to hear the songs fresh again. As it is, they’re just too over-familiar to prompt much more than a shrug of recognition for me.